My former self lurks underneath the surface.

It's been a crazy, hectic, somewhat irritating week... but somehow I'm managing to hold up amongst it all.

One of the main things that happened is that I have given up drinking soda in any format - diet or otherwise. I have had a huge diet Coke addiction for the last 20 years, and... I don't really know what spurred me to quit drinking it other than a slight, nagging feeling that "it was time". I know - it makes no sense. But as of tomorrow, it'll be the first full week in 20 years that I haven't drunk diet Coke, and the first full week in God-knows-how-many-years that I haven't ingested some kind of soda product. And honestly? I feel fine. It wasn't a death sentence. Just like I'm starting to realize that giving up a lot of things haven't been death sentences, and indeed.. might even be for the better.

My life is beginning anew. I am on the precipice of better times - I can feel that. And I'm ready for whatever comes next. Certainly the past five years have contained enough apathy and pain and futility to last a lifetime. I admit that a lot of it was caused by my own stupid self - but now I know better, and there isn't a day that I don't kick myself for allowing it to happen.

I'm not ready to really discuss that, yet. But someday I will be, and it'll be fine, just like it's fine now. I am at peace. I am content.

This therapy has helped me in ways that I didn't even find possible five years ago. Maybe my depression isn't a lifelong prison. Maybe I've even been let out of that prison. I don't know, and it's too soon to tell.

But I'm going to enjoy what I can, when I can. Life is too short for less.