Long time, no type, Bloggies. (I don't know if that's a thing, but it sounded good.)
I can not come up with an excuse for my long absence. I can only say that I promise to tell you the truth about where I have been since November, when I promised myself I would write often and without care for the dissenting voices in my head.
I have been in a battle. Truth be told, I do not know when, exactly, it started. It came upon me slowly.
I noticed sometime around Christmas that a lot of me was gone. A lot of my hope and most of my joy and a terrifying portion of my personality. It all just POOFed on me. January, and turning (gasp) 40 took a lot out of me, and pretty soon I was facing February mostly from the safety and security of my bed, where I would find myself pretty much every moment of the day that I was not working. Sometime in mid-February, I was driving to work one morning, trying to decide how fast my car would have to be traveling in order to kill me if I intentionally crashed it. Then I caught myself counting pills in a bottle of pain medication prescribed to me last summer for a back injury, and Google-ing what the estimated fatal dose would be. There was a great deal of trouble in River City. It took until mid-March for me to admit, aloud, to another human being, how deeply I was suffering and how far down the rabbit hole I had fallen.
I made an appointment with my doctor. I got a prescription for an anti-depressant and the name of a therapist that I made an appointment with for the following week. I've seen her every week since the third week of March. I have missed very few doses of the medications. I see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it's getting closer every day.
That's a long winded way of saying that I am being treated for depression and anxiety, and that, at this point, the treatment is working, so I am one of the lucky ones. And I'm grateful. It all seems so simplistic, typed out into a neat paragraph like that, but it's been hard, and complicated, and I am only just now, realizing the impact my mental health has had on me, and my family. The problem with falling down the rabbit hole is that when you climb your way back out again, you have to stand in the light an let your eyes adjust to it.
A couple of weeks ago, my Facebook feed was jam packed with the news of Kate Spade's suicide. I was sad. That's a sad thing to hear, even though I do not know her, and I have never owned anything she designed. Then, days later, Anthony Bourdain ended his life, and I was even sadder. I was a fan. Something about me is attracted to his brash, unapologetic world view, and there's the added sadness of knowing that even two people who seemingly "have it all" couldn't handle the demons they battled. Days later, I logged into a blog that I have been reading for years. The woman who writes it has inspired me, as a mom, a teacher, and a woman. I have never met this woman, she does not know my name- but I was devastated to learn that she had attempted suicide and had spent two days in ICU and a week in the psych ward of a hospital.
In March, or even April, this depression seemed insurmountable. I couldn't wish or pray or hope my way out of it. The news of these fellow warriors who lost their battle, and almost lost the battle, have made me nervous. I don't want to go back to that, I'm scared every day that tomorrow I will wake up and feel hopeless and useless again. I worry that I will look in the mirror and only see the woman who failed at so many things.
I'm grateful that I have a support system that allows me to have a bad day and celebrates my little victories with me, but I can't know if that's going to be enough. I'm happy to have put an end to house hunting and the stress of having to move, but I can't know if that will be enough. I am thrilled to be able to feel the love from my family again, but I can't know if that is enough. The demons are so strong, and so far, I am winning the battle, but I can't know if that's forever, or just for now. I'm a girl who likes a plan, and all of this not knowing is hard to live with, but I am living with it, and I am deeply grateful that I recognized just how dark the world had gotten and that I had to power to ask for help in locating the light switch.
I'm only now, months into this journey, realizing that it's a marathon, not a sprint, and there are going to be setbacks, but a bad day doesn't mean a bad life. My therapist is helping me learn to ignore the lies that the depression feeds me, and the constant scroll across the screen of my brain that lists my faults and failures. Make no mistake- depression is a liar. The battle to sort out what is truth and what is fiction is exhausting. I don't know what to make of the fact that my own brain sort of turned against me. Or that it isn't the first time it's happened, which is how I recognized the problem to begin with. Depression, and her best pal, Anxiety, are unwelcome house guests who overstay their welcome and eat all the good food from the place. The good news is, I'm done with being a good host to them and I have decided that they should go, the bad news is, it's a process that doesn't happen overnight.
So, there's my truth. I have depression and anxiety. I'm working on it. I'm doing better than I was last week, and the week before, and the month before that. I'm winning this today. I will wake up and try my hardest to win this tomorrow, as well.
