The pursuit of happiness..

Here comes a wall of text! (Tl;dr I'm a mental case but in a good place at the moment)

I have something of an out of control brain at times. Myers-Briggs type INTP, tendencies towards anxiety, inner dialogue I'm only nominally in control of, and a tendency to fixate on and obsess over my many failures and failings, and creating self-fulfilling prophecies that tend bring down the things I try to do.

I endlessly catalogue and analyse my lowest moments and the things that lead to them. I don't do that when I'm happy, and the result is that I tend to understand why and when I'm sad, and be bewlidered by the things that make me happy.

A month ago, I was at a very low moment. My self confidence was missing, as it sometimes goes. A combination of factors, which aren't really productive to go into had dragged me back down again. The result is that I become a pretty toxic person to be around, especially for the people who love me.

I withdraw, avoid, disengage. Try and hide myself in whatever distraction is convenient. I ignore the people around me, knowing that I'm hurting them, but unable to do anything else for fear of making it worse. Despair is a hard feeling to escape from under.

A month ago, I found myself comforting my wife, in bed and in tears at three o'clock on a sunday afternoon, her own sense of self-worth completely eroded by the disappearance of mine. Understandably, seeing this and knowing I had caused it was heartbreaking. I love this woman more than anything, and to have made this happen was...excruciating.

But it was also catalysing. We talked a lot. All afternoon, about the things we'd been feeling, and what might have caused them. Then, a new sense of intimacy blossomed. We played. We fucked. And since then, things have been...good.

I'm not sure why, not sure what's changed in me. But I feel different, and that confident, strong feeling has stayed longer than it has in the past under similar circumstances. I feel so much more sure of myself than I'm used to.

I just can't work out why! That part of my brain that's obsessively self-conscious is missing in action.

That's...uh. Well. Hm. That's probably the answer, huh?