Butterfly's Recovery Journal

I want to post something positive for once, so I'm going to talk about something that's making me smile right now.

I was looking around on Netflix and I found this cartoon called "Twelve Forever". I've heard about it before, but I actually watched the trailer to it yesterday and it looks so fun! And the premise feels a lot like how I live my life. Basically, the main character is twelve years old and she's realizing that she's growing up, but she doesn't want to grow up and the people around her think there's a problem with her still playing pretend and stuff. I want to watch the show to see what the adventures are like and what happens to the main character.

But before I watch the show, I wanted to take some time to kind of process some thoughts after my initial reaction to the trailer. It's a cruel sort of funny, but I always come across to other people as being immature myself because I am 25 and still have a very youthful energy about me. There is a highly serious side to me too, but I don't want to be serious all of the time because you really can't take life seriously the entire time. Our time on this earth is limited, so we ought to enjoy it while we can, right? And my way of enjoying it is indulging my youthful side by watching cartoons, drawing pictures, writing stories, and stuff like that.

But I realize, too, that perhaps I am clinging to the idea of having an eternal sort of youthful presence in my life. It's the "clinging" that I am concerned with, mostly, and I believe it stems from a place of not wanting to lose my joy or zeal for life. It's hard for me to explain, but I believe that this issue that I am presenting is me trying to cope, and I think that perhaps I need to continue to foster a sense of balance between the serious side, the playfully youthful side, and the me that just needs to mindfully exist in the moment. All of that ties into me finding balance between managing all of my system together.

Right now, I believe there is a bit of an imbalance going on inside, so in therapy today, I gave myself some homework for before I see my therapist again in two weeks. The homework is that I am going to be doing a write-up of each of my parts, going into detail about their issues, but also presenting their strengths and what helps each one to de-stress. In writing this document, I believe it would assist greatly with containment, expressing emotions, taking breaks, having fun, and so forth.



I think everything is going to be okay, but I really should be practicing my mindfulness and meditation exercises more often. That would almost certainly assist with cutting down on the stress levels.

--Butterfly