Wha' Happened?

I am currently suffering from something.... depression, anxiety, stress.  To be honest, I am not quite sure myself.  I have always thought of myself as a pretty strong person.  Maybe I wasn't being honest with myself but I have been through some bad times in my life, starting as a child.  Dealing with a bi-polar mother isn't easy when you're seven years old.  But I've never used that as a crutch to excuse my bad behaviour.  I am what I am.  Or I was what I was.

What I was was this - At one time, I was a nice person.  A REALLY nice person.  Some said I was "sweet".  I know that this is probably a shock to those who know me and I only can hope that they see some of that niceness that perhaps is fighting to come out again.

But somewhere along the line I changed.  I changed from nice, sweet, patient, kind to cynical, negative, mouthy, rude, argumentative.  Why, I wonder?  These are things that keep crossing my mind lately.  What happened to nice Sue?  Where did she go?  Why did she go away in the first place?

I am hesitant to blame the events in my life.  That's what people do.  It's never their fault.  It's always someone else's.  But somewhere I became a mistrustful bitch and I don't know why.  Was it the stress?  Was it just what happens when you turn forty?

The past five or so years have been stressful for me, but I was dealing with it.  I thought.  But we're all good at hiding, aren't we?  We like to pretend we're all that, strong adults with purpose, we've got it all under control.  But the sad reality is that you can pretend all you want.  It doesn't change what's going on, what's really going on.

So while I have the time to clean my basement and organize my house, play a bit of guitar and read, I ponder where the nice girl went.  And hope she comes back one day.