A Girl Named Depression

I have been updating less and less. I have, at least for the moment, run out of witty observations. The ugly truth, my friends, is that I have been fighting against depression for the last month and a half. Part of me doesn't want to admit it and the other part of me recognizes that we all deal with it sometimes...there is no reason to feel shame for it. That only feeds the monster.

I was very confident about my second drug. I really dug my heels into being positive, I was expecting the best. Instead I was told it wasn't working. I was put on a pill, and like that was thrust squarely into maintenance mode. Curative options were off the table and I felt like I had to accept reality...that I would deteriorate, that my life would get smaller and smaller until it vanished from existence.  Couple this with a horrible first month on the drug...three straight weeks of high fevers, little sleep, weakness, extreme weight loss, home bound - hand in hand with my growing feelings of loss and grief- and it was a perfect breeding ground for all the terrible fears and insecurities in me.

Before my diagnosis, I felt like I was finally getting my life to where I wanted it. I had fought through a lifetime of hurdles but here I was...a lovely apartment, financial stability, a wonderful husband, the love of my friends and family. I felt like a new beginning for what would be a beautiful life. Fast forward a year later, I feel like that life has been taken from me piece by piece. I am angry. I feel loss. I have nothing and no one to direct it to. I want my life as it was, even fragmented, even just bits of its shadow.

When you feel loss, you hold tight to what is left. And what wasn't broken, you break yourself in your desperation. You burn bridges to places that feel distant and inaccessible. You isolate yourself until its you, your bed, and the ceiling. You become a black hole that devours what little bits of precious light remain.

I haven't been feeling positive these days. I don't feel strong. I feel like a fraud.

Depression lives inside us all at times. We experience loss - of confidence, of love, of freedom. We feel devalued, unwanted, and incapable of effecting change. We lash out in pain and fight the wind, only to realize we hurt only ourselves and those we love as we took wild punches at the universe. We eat cookies, cry, stare at the ceiling, and try to stuff all the ugly bits back inside ourselves when it's time to step back out into the world again.

I am taking steps to heal. Trying to find hope, even if it means collecting unicorn farts against all reason. If my fears are true, I don't want to live the rest of my life in anger, fighting, and burning the world down around me. And if they aren't, I don't want to wake up one day to find that I was the one who destroyed what good remained out of grief.

Depression isn't something you snap out of. You work on it day by day. You employ logic and delusion in equal measures. Find your friends, seek your family, create, make things to look forward to...forgive yourself for essentially being human. Take the pieces and make something beautiful. Might not be what you wanted, but it will be what you need.