The Time Lost

It has been two months since I last wrote anything here. What have I been doing with my time? Have I suddenly been cured? Not likely, I have recently and reluctantly admitted to myself. I have frequently wrestled with the question, “What if I am fighting this fight for the rest of my life?” The worry has been there. But even though, I myself, am a seasoned health and mental health professional (15 years of caring for others in the worst moments of their lives), I have been reluctant to accept something about myself and my illness. That’s what it is, an illness, and that is what I have. I have a mental illness. It is not just a “few episodes of depression”. It is not something that will be cured by my attainment of some self imposed quasi-perfection. I WILL be fighting this for the rest of my life. And that is what I must do. I must fight.

About two months ago I came across a TED Talk by an author named Andrew Solomon. The talk is titled, “Depression, the secret we share.” I happened upon it in one of the rare moments that I had actually decided on something. I decided to watch this talk and as I listened to him talk I was struck. Not only was he describing how I was feeling at that very moment, but how I had felt at so many times during my life. He then said something that has stuck with me, “You may get through it, but you’ll never be 37 again. Life is short and that’s a whole year you are talking about giving up. Think it through.” This is a shortened version, I have learned, of a quote from one of his books. But even as simple as it is here, it is moving and served as a warning to me.

How long was I going to continue on denying the full weight of my problem? How much time was I willing to lose because I couldn’t fully face the despair in my own mind? I kept saying, “What if this is how I am forever?” I couldn’t have been closer and yet farther from the reality I am facing. Mental illness is not something that just goes away and there is so much that is not known or understood about it. The truth is, I will likely have this illness forever. But I don’t have to succumb to it.

I will never be this age again, and I will never gain the years lost to me in the haze of my depression. I can, however, be present in the rest of my life. I can fight, I must. Even as I write this I am plagued with the ever present anxiety of “what-ifs?” It is scary to know that you might be in a battle with your own mind, for control of said mind, for the rest of your existence. I still wrestle with weather or not I think it is worth it. But that is the clincher….It is up to me to MAKE it worth it.

I have spent the last two months getting back on medication and facing a stark reality that I had not allowed myself to face. In my unwillingness to subjectively look at the state of my mind I had not realized that I was/am running out of resources in a way. I have been dependent on medications in the past but have always stopped taking them due to side effects that were undesirable and the eventual up cycle kept me from having to come to term with the fact that I am running out of medications to try. My official diagnosis is Major Depression, Recurrent of the Severe type and Generalized Anxiety. What this means is that I have a severe type of depression that always seems to come back. I have been on all of the newer medications (paxil, effexor, zoloft, prozac, wellbutrin, buspar, lexapro, vibryd, celexa, cymbalta, and probably others that I don’t even remember) and am now running through the older classes.

I am a week and a half into Remeron and I am holding out hope. I try to give ever medication its fair shot to run out the side effects and receive the full benefit that they might have to offer. Unless of course there is some side effect that would be detrimental to wait out. I am holding out hope, I say yet again to remind even myself, despite the nagging worry at the back of my brain. I have to reason that if I were planning on killing myself then my time would be wasted anyways, so what’s a few more weeks trying out another medication? I tell myself these things instead of listening to the part of my brain that asks how much time I am going to waste feeling this terrible or how long I am going to drag out the torment of those close to me who are suffering with me. I must fight. I can’t lose any more time. One way or another there has to be an end in sight.

 

 

You can watch the amazing TED Talk by Andrew Solomon by following or pasting the link:

http://www.ted.co/talk/andrew_solomon_depression_the_secret_we_share?language=en

P.S.  It is amazing, I have watched it several times. Once with the bf to try and give him some insight as he has never experienced depression personally.

Escape

The longer I write the more I see the emptiness in my life.  It’s mine, no one else’s.  I don’t blame anyone for myself ending up in the situation I find myself in.  I have brought myself here, maybe led by items in my history but there is some dark part of myself that has wallowed in it.  I have let myself sink down into dark water.  I have drank of it, filled myself with it until there was no hope of surfacing.  I have come to like my loneliness.  I have depended on it.  The constant, the unchanging immovable feature of my life.  I don’t know how to over come it.

The sad part is that there is something comfortable about it.  I know it well, we are old friends, this darkness and myself.  What is the thing in myself that is so connected to it?  Why can’t I let it go?  I don’t know how to be anything other than what I am.  Stuck in this darkness until I can’t even find the desire to hope for a light.  All that would be illuminated would be the wretchedness that has become the core of my existence.  I still don’t fully understand myself how it happened.  I don’t know if I have always been this way.  I am aware that my train of thought tends to discolor all of my thoughts and even my memories.  So then what good is it to think of the past?  When you are such a poor historian what can be gained.  Everything looks dark and bleak in my mind.  That is just how it has been, as long as I can remember, whatever that may mean.
I know that I have had happy moments in my life.  They have been there.  Fleeting or colored with the general anxiety and unease that has plagued me.  None of my memories seem to be without it.  Because I know what comes after and what preceded these happy moments.  There was always an edge behind things.  A tightrope to walk.  So then here I am thinking of my past anyways and seeing it’s influence on me.  As much as I refuse to lay any blame for what I am about to do, I can see the history of my life in my decisions.  It’s there no matter what I do.  I don’t know how to escape it or myself.  There really is only one escape.  But you know that don’t you?  You can see that I don’t have a choice.  What else can I do but give in?
If I can’t save myself then who can?  I don’t think that anyone can save me.  I wish they could.  I wish that being understood was enough but deep down I know that it is not.  I’m afraid of carrying on.  I’m afraid of living and then looking back through my life and seeing nothing but this.  This emptiness.  This plague in my mind.  It’s so full of nothing.  So full it’s about to crack.  My mind wants to break open and then spill the darkness of nothing all over everything.  It’s like the Never Ending Story in my mind, being taken over by the Nothing.  All that was once good is forgotten.  So forgotten that I’m not sure it ever happened.
How many ways can I spin myself around in this circle?  I always hope to find a door that I have missed.  An exit somewhere in my periphery.  If I just go over it one more time….check my alarm one more time, check the lock on the door once more, rewrite that note once more, make it perfect.  Somehow I know I can find the door if I just do all of the things right.  But there is such an endless amount of things.  I can’t make them perfect, I can’t make me perfect as much as I want to.  I’ll never be perfect, the hope is gone as quickly as the obsession takes hold.  I’ll die in this hole.
And no one will ever know about it, the dark hole deep down, no one but you.  You, whoever you are, reading my mind.

The Anger of Depression

It has often been written that depression is “anger turned inwards” and as such that depression stems from the inability to effectively express anger.  I’m no psychologist or psychoanalyst, but I do know things about depression and about the anger that comes along with it.  Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  It’s difficult to say personally and from what I have read it seems difficult to tell from the outside as well.  But anyone who has ever been depressed or on the receiving end of a depressed persons’ anger can attest that it is a topic worthy of some attention.  It’s the first topic to accompany anger in any Google search…

 

Perhaps you didn’t even know the person venting their rage was depressed, or maybe you being depressed cannot see the anger you feel for what it is.  And what is it?  Personally I have come to find that my own anger seems to stem from the alienation that depression can cause one to feel.  It is difficult to imagine that anyone understands how you feel.  And if I’m being quite honest there is a sense of condescension when someone attempts to relate when you can sense quite plainly that they don’t have any idea what you are going through.  Like a parental figure patting you on the head as a child and telling you “,this too shall pass,” it just seems like a borrowed and canned response.  That is to say that from the inside this is very much what it feels like.  Depression is very isolating and causes very ruminative type thoughts that only isolate the mind of the depressed further.  When you feel like no one understands you and that you are alone it can be very easy to become angry.  So tell me, did the anger appear only after the depression began or was the anger part of that circular thinking that got you here?  I’m sure many depressed people couldn’t tell you, especially while in the grips of depression.

Depression is like a cocoon.  Initially you feel shielded from the hurtful and anxiety provoking things in the world and you may relish in it.  But after a time you realize too late that the cocoon is also keeping out the good feelings that you so desperately want and need from those around you.  The anger is the outer portion of the cocoon, perhaps not a cocoon but something harder like a chrysalis.  It deflects.  It is a mechanism for keeping people at bay and keeping them from seeing that anything is wrong with you.  Something is wrong with me. Because something is most certainly wrong.  But you can’t tell anyone, no one can know.  You can’t be different, you can’t be weird unless it’s that quirky attractive kind of weird.  But by the time I realized that I was pushing people away it was like an automated response that I didn’t know how to turn off.  I don’t know how to turn off.  I have been labeled a bitch many times because I so successfully shielded the very deep depression I was experiencing.  I am experiencing.  I was trapped and unable to escape. I am trapped.  The small attempts of loved ones telling me to , “keep my chin up,” sounded so cruel and fueled my angry and alienated feelings.  To be true they still have that affect on me.  No one could see how I felt.  I want to hide. I started wishing I had some physical affliction that they could see, so I would have an “excuse” to feel depressed.  This only made me feel more and more alienated and increasingly angry.  It still does…

 

 

Something that I try to remember on this most recent attempt at recovery, for there have been many, is that every time that I come out of it people are there and understanding and scared but at my side.  I try, and without much success I am sorry to say, to remind myself that those around me simply don’t know what to say because they don’t actually know what I am going through.  I try not to let those hopeless thoughts creep in when I realize that in all likely hood they never will understand.  I try to be grateful when there are people still waiting on the other side for me.  I feel ashamed of my anger because I know that it is there.  I try not to let the shame drag me back down.  It’s a constant struggle of circular thinking.  I try not to let the thought of this being my life forever make me angry and hopeless.

My point is, compassion is our friend.  Show it and be merciless in your compassion.  You never know what someone is going through.  And for all of the people in my ranks….be merciless in your compassion, to yourself, forgive yourself and the people that love you who only wish they could help you but don’t know how.

 

Put It Gently (a poem about eggshells)

For your father’s sake please

don’t bathe me in lukewarm sentiment

that whispers and hints and skirts your mind

spill ever last thought as acid

burn my soul with the onslaught of your heart

there is ONE that is more YOU than anything

show me that side

scare me in the night

make me run away

but do SOMETHING true that will

put us out of our misery

don’t leave me with fitful sleep

half awake to who you are

shake me to the core

scream your intent to leave me

rattled amongst your echo

don’t make me guess and leave me

writhing in uncertainty

the harshest truth is more gentle than a

placating lie

Dating with Depression (a poem)

staying safe is what I do and it makes me a murderer

all those times I feel so lonely, what I’m doing is killing you

can’t you feel the ground pulling all the time I’m pushing you away

too bad you didn’t know that away is just down

now you’re stuck sucking my wake

only I’m not moving forward, I’m just drowning you

so that I can follow you down

I don’t want to feel alone anymore

Is it wrong to want you forever

I know I’m scary

you’re lucky I always give myself away

now’s your chance to escape if only you’d take it

don’t you see I’m a killer on a spree

I just want to take you with me

The real me is when I’m chugging

the  real me is when I’m hugging

suffocating you

I want to write it out clearly

but there’s nothing good to say ,muddy words

no ditches for them to wash into

I want the rain to come

my shirt will be stained but maybe in can be clean

the water will muddle my words

inky black on the page and my hands

I’ll just wipe them dry

what does it matter if they are stained too

it will all just make me think of you

the things I don’t know how to say

maybe you’ll know anyways

reading the stains like a rorschach

seeing the words melted between the lines

making sounds where no words are

clarity never was my style but I try try try

fingers crossed hoping

it’s a double edge

a liars caveat

because I can’t keep you

saying clearly go go go

but dirty ink saying no no no

I can’t save you from myself because

I’m a trap

So eloquently put and so true…

Continue reading

On Being Forgiven (Or, Learning To See Yourself As You Really Are To Give Someone Closure)

I very recently and surprisingly had to unique opportunity to be forgiven.  Forgiveness means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.  For some it means acting as if an offending incident never occurred.  To others forgiveness means acknowledge and systematically talking out feelings about an upsetting event.  There are two “standard” definitions for the word forgive.

for-give
・ stop feeling angry or resentful toward someone for an offense, flaw or mistake
・ cancel a debt

In my instance it was both really.  When you are depressed, sometimes you don’t treat the people around you very well.  With everyone the symptoms vary, but feeling down all of the time can lead a lot of peoples’ depression to be come out as anger.  For me, feeling down all of the time had led me to keep my distance from people.  While having a short span of feeling good I would start dating, ignoring the inevitable downturn that would be fast approaching.  Sometimes I would find something wrong with them.  Sometimes I would acknowledge the wrong in myself but didn’t ever know how to maintain a relationship once that realization occurred.  When you are so awful why would anyone want to be with you?  I would sit there and try to rationalize staying in the relationship but I could never manage.  In my mind it would seem unfair to drag anyone in to the darkness that my mind so frequently sank.
In short, I was afraid.  So afraid of so many things.  What if they found out how horrible I was?  That was the big one.  I say this in the past tense but it’s still a thought I frequently have.  There is a part of my mind that is convinced that I am fundamentally bad.  This leads to me having the irrational fear that others will find this out.  The real paradox is that the only thing I hide from people is my depression but that is the very thing that causes me to feel like I have to hide.  So how do you break out of this pattern?  I am just starting to hopefully figure it out.  For a long time I didn’t see a light at the end, only myself trudging along in the darkness for what would feel like an eternity.

My fear led me to cut ties with people frequently and not in healthy or grown up ways.  Better to leave them behind before they saw me for what I was, a freak and a failure.  I couldn’t bear their rejection once they found out how undeserving I was.  I am.  I was/ am selfish.  But I’m getting better.  I was not able to see other people’s feelings, I couldn’t recognize things for what they were.  I was so frequently led astray by my own mind.  I feel betrayed by myself.  I justified my actions as a way to keep from hurting people with my perpetual flaws when in reality I was hurting them anyways.

This realization hit home this last week when I ran into an ex of mine.  He is a server at a restaurant that I frequented before we started dating and in fact that was how we started dating.  We only dated for a few months before those feelings of inadequacy started creeping in again.  I quickly made a sloppy exit.  This was several years ago and I am reluctant to admit that I don’t even recall exactly what happened as this scenario has played out a few times.  The shame is overwhelming, but the need to heal is more so.  The facts that I am sure of are that I left him in a state of bewildered anxiety about why I had left and that I had left him angry and resentful toward me.

It has been a few years now, I am in a different relationship that I am trying to find my own personal peace in, while being open about all of my destructive feelings.  I’m growing, I’m working a change in myself.  And that brings us to last Wednesday night.  I had gone out to this particular restaurant a few times in the last year and was on speaking terms with my ex, but we had never talked about what happened.  He had just accepted me being around again and seemed to have decided that he didn’t want to rock the apple cart.  This night, a friend and I had started drinking beers and were handed a few shots by a friend who happened to be the bartender there.  At one point during the night my ex was helping me to facilitate getting home safely as we had all been drinking and he and I had a moment alone at my car.  His wall came down a bit after the earlier shared drinks.  He asked me point blank what had happened.  Why I had left?  What if anything it had to do with him?  He didn’t yell or get upset, he just wanted to know why.  He just wanted what I had denied him.  What I OWED him.  Closure.

It seemed so simple at that moment.  I explained as best as I could about my depression and anxiety and how in the end I had made poor choices and had not been the kind of person that I wanted to because of it. I apologized and I apologized.  I apologized without expectation because he deserved my apology (not because I thought I deserved his forgiveness).  The truth is that I beat myself up needlessly, but the other part of that truth is that sometimes the negative words in my mind ring true.  I am not always a good person.  I had to accept that in order to be kind to another person.

Then, something amazing happened.  He forgave me.  He asked how I was doing now and was glad to hear that I was with someone who understood and was treating me well.  He said he was glad we could be friends again.  I was relieved and in shock.  Part of me had wondered about any underlying resentment.  I was lucky.  You don’t always get the chance to be forgiven and even when you do the other person may not want to.  You have to accept it.  I am learning that part of moving on and getting better is learning to see things for what they are, this includes my faults, and a few awesome traits that keep people wanting to be my friends.

    The journey continues….

Another Post? Doing What Is Healthy

Yes I know…..another post?  Not that it matters, no one has read any of these anyways haha.  So the audience is just a figment of my imagination but even my imaginations is saying, “Hey!  I thought you were a functioning member of society?  Why the hell are you spending so much time writing about this?”  I have to justify it to myself even.  The reason is, partly, because I need to get it all down to help myself feel better.  I need to be able to remove myself from it, but at the same time I need to look at it.  I need to train my brain to see things differently.  I don’t want to be the person that I am anymore.  I am so tired, so tired of my mind.  I need to see the better version of myself.  I need to feel it.  I’m going insane, I feel trapped, like I’m digging a tunnel out and at any moment it may collapse on me.

And that is part of it I think.  Part of recovery.  It is uncomfortable, change is scary even when it’s for the better.  I have to work hard to change how I think about things and reevaluate aspects of my life that may not support my being a healthy minded individual.  I have to look at aspects of myself that I am not happy with and accept that they are realistic so that I can work on them to make myself better.  I don’t want to just fall back on, “Well I’m depressed so of course I feel bad.”  Or, “I ate a whole cake because I am depressed.”  I can’t justify negative choices but I also have to find a balance of not punishing myself with the endless barrage of negative thoughts just because I mess up.  My mind has been stuck in depression for most of my life.  I see glimpses of myself when my jailer of a brain forgets to pull the shades down but I want to be FREE!!  I want it so bad that it’s scary.

 

No….literally….scary.  Wanting things is scary and admitting that you want them is even worse.  When you want something but are afraid to admit it, it’s like you are shielding yourself, saying, “I didn’t want it all that bad anyway.”   So then you can manage the disappointment when you don’t get it.  The only problem with that is, when you do admit that you want something sometimes you don’t get it.  You have to open yourself up and let yourself be vulnerable in order to get some of the things that you want in life.  It’s such a scary balance!!!  Eeek!  But I’m trying and actually found a really great TED talk on the subject.  It makes so many valid points.  A gentle little dose of reality to remind myself that the risks are worth it.  Besides, once upon a time I recall writing, “If it doesn’t make you nervous you aren’t far enough out of your comfort zone.  As such, I only like doing things that make me nervous.”  Here is a link to that wonderful talk!!!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCvmsMzlF7o

So I am halfway through the day and feeling a might bit hopeful.  The crazy thing is that even a small amount of hope feels incredible.  I used to think of hope as something that was dragging me down because it was what kept me hanging on to what I could only describe as a miserable existence.  Today I can look back and see how far I have come already.  I just hope I possess the insight when I feel down the next time.  I know that it will happen again, and that too is facing reality, but I hope.  I hope that it will be less and less intense each time it happens in the future now that I am finally learning some tools to help me.

One of those tools is writing and another one is working out and keeping my body physically healthy.  There are two trains of thought behind this really.  I know that when my body is physically healthy it is easier for my mind to follow suit.  Of course I would like to look better, at 5’5″ and approx. 155lbs I am definitely not in the shape that I could be, but I won’t discount the positive.  I don’t have a bad shape, tend to curve in the right places, I just know that I could be better.  And I also know that if I focus on the getting healthy part I will likely get to that “better” point without having to freak out and obsess over my weight and what I am eating.  I don’t want to obsess!  I just want to be mindful.  Here’s hoping!!

The Down and Dirty of A Depressed Mind

So maybe I should just get down to it.  What IS it like in my brain?  Does it matter?  No.  But I have to get it down, somewhere.  Then maybe I’ll have the chance to look at it later in a more objective light.

My lows, are well….low.  Sometimes I can feel the burden I am on those I love.  That’s right, I love many people around me, and I know they love me.  But that’s what hurts about it all.  They love me, which means that I affect their lives.  I wish that wasn’t the case most of the time.  I feel like an absolute drain on them.  Especially my boyfriend.  He has tried to be very understanding but I can see the strain that I am sure will build into resentment(or I will make sure it does).  For a long time he wouldn’t ever admit that there was ever anything wrong and I could sense it.  I couldn’t shake the feeling, when you just know that someone around you is unhappy.  You can see it in everything they do and hear it in everything that they say.  He just kept on denying it, thinking he was being strong for me or hiding from his own feelings I am not sure (and I’m never sure if I’m just over analyzing).  And now that I know that he was hiding that I wonder what else he isn’t saying.  I wonder when I “get better” what else he will have to say when he is “sure I can handle it.”

I know that my depression is hard on everyone I am close to.  But I’m not outright delusional.  When I beg for someone to be honest it’s because I need some clarity in my life.  I need to see things as they are and not how my mind wants to distort them.  I wish I could get them to understand, but I know that it is a double edged sword.  I know that when I am not doing well that I would not take such news well, but I also know that my anxiety and “what-if” thinking demands straightforwardness of the people in my life.  This is something that I try to keep in check.  I am always on edge trying to make sure that I am not over reacting to a situation and letting my emotions run away with me.  As such I am often unsure and feel very alienated because I cannot validate my own feelings.  I never know if I am justified when I am upset or not.  Maybe I’m just “being crazy”.  That’s how I feel.  I know it’s not PC and I don’t give a shit.  I feel fucking crazy.  I scare myself and the people that I love and there is not a nice way to say that.  It is an ugly thing.  Something that I want desperately to get in check even though that part of myself keeps telling me that I never will and that it is hopeless.

Eggshells eggshells, they are everywhere….like little landmines.  I’m not sure where they are so I have to tread like they are everywhere.  My boyfriend is writing music about me.  I can tell because of the lyrics, they talk about being in love with someone and being dragged down and trapped by their circumstance.  If it isn’t about me then I guess he dated someone with identical issues before.  But it’s not something that I can bring up because then he wouldn’t share things or play when I could hear.  We are supposed to be moving in together and part of me feels like we are falling apart just before we get there.  But I’m not sure if that is just my anxiety playing tricks on me.  Maybe things are fine and I’m just over reacting.  I never know and I’m never sure if I can ask because I feel like the asking is a self fulfilling prophecy.  I’m constantly on the edge of breaking down, even on days when I feel insanely happy.  The mood swings are so intense sometimes I don’t know how I got to the other side of things.  The spiral down is so steep, all it takes is one misstep and I am sliding toward the abyss at the bottom.  It’s disheartening but one of the patterns of thinking that I have to break.

 

The problem is this.  If you have never had depression or anxiety then it can be hard to understand just how paralyzing it is.  You know that it is irrational, you know that all of the terrible things rolling through your head probably aren’t true.  But BUT BUT!!  There is always a but!  No matter what you do you can’t seem to shake that feeling like something is wrong, and when you can’t find what’s wrong outside where else do you have to look but within?

But then the other problem is that if you HAVE had depression then you are all too willing to overlook the self destructive behaviors of someone struggling with depression or anxiety.  AKA…excessive drinking, eating, sleeping, hiding in your apartment, isolating all together and just generally not taking care of yourself.  So then what are you left with?  You have to do it yourself.  You can’t rely on someone else to dig you out of your hole.  They can’t, they don’t know how to do it or they are at risk of falling in with you.

It seems like such a treacherous climb up.  Even though I have to do all of the lifting I’ll take all of the cheering on I can get,

Writing Away My Depression?

Where should I begin?  Should I start at the beginning of my life?  The beginning signs of my later diagnosed disorders?  The thinking behind starting this blog?  There are so many beginnings and endings in our life, the phrase “Begin at the beginning” seems so open ended, and that is the first problem.  Some of you reading may know what I am talking about.  The possibilities, choices, and outcomes are so many.  It’s overwhelming.  It seems impossible to know what the “right” choice is.

What is the “right’ choice even?  What the fuck does that mean?  I will tell you what it means.  It means the choice that is least likely to rock the boat, the choice that keeps everyone around you comfortable, the choice that doesn’t make you cry or cringe in your apartment alone when the phone rings.  The “right” choice is the fixer, part of the grand scheme that is going to “magically lift you out of your illness and change the state of your mind”.  So then making the “wrong” choice becomes terrifying.  You don’t want to spend another second with the mindset you still have, you are sick of yourself and are absolutely sure that everyone else is too.  If you just “make the right choice” you can “snap out of it”.  You would suddenly see clearly the action that is going to move your life forward out of the stagnating permanence that is depression and anxiety.

But that’s just it…..there is nothing that is going to save you from the waking nightmare of depression and anxiety in an instant.  There is no miracle cure, there is only diligence.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  There is still the problem of the choice.  See, even though I know logically that I could just as easily start anywhere and move my way around to touch on everything I still remain stuck.  I know a great many things LOGICALLY.  And herein lies the great misunderstanding when it comes to depression and anxiety.  I am actually a very bright woman.  I work in a physically, mentally and emotionally demanding job which I happen to excel at due to my quick thinking, insight and ability to think critically.  I am frequently reading several books at any given time (not all junk fiction either haha).  I am a functioning member of society.  There is however one very pervasive thought in my mind that seeds itself in everything I do, say and feel.  This underlying thought seems so simplistic that one would think it easy to overcome.  That thought is, “You are not good enough.”

This thought is the paralyzing agent in my life.  It trumps almost all logical thinking in my mind.  It is my jaw clenching my teeth behind my smile and it is something I live with every day.  Sometimes it is hard to act or choose because when you “know” that you aren’t good enough it is easy to see that no matter what you do it will be wrong.  Your choice will not be right and most certainly will not be good enough.  Good enough for what?  Or whom?  The sad part is that it is myself.  I am the one setting my own standard now although not consciously.

I was diagnosed with Major Depression and Generalized Anxiety when I was 17 but this sadly is not where my journey begins.  I can remember having anxiety as far back as the third grade based on the idea that I “should” be “better”.  My father also drank heavily until I was 9 years old.  It is no coincidence that my initial memories of anxiety that I can put an age to are at the time when my father entered “recovery”.  Just before most addicts attempt to quit they have reached their “bottom”, this is in fact usually what spurs them to want to change.  They are at their worst and darkest place.  So, it is no surprise that this is also one of the most stressful times for those living with the addict…..and when you are 9, well it is beyond stressful, it’s terrifying.  But even farther back than that, there are shadows.  Memories of emotion, of fear and tension.

So now I guess I have already started the telling.  My inability to choose has still in fact been a choice.  Even inaction leads you somewhere, the question is, “Is it leading you where you want to go?”

 

This is a small glimpse into the daily workings of a mind in flux.  The logical part of me believes that I should be able to think my way out of my way of thinking.  The emotional part of me is afraid of having to fight this fight for my entire life.  Somewhere in between I want a shot at an exciting and fulfilling life despite of whatever may be in front of me.  This is the story of me, trying to reconcile who I am, was and want to be.  A 30 something woman trying to face the demons that have been growing with me my whole life.