People have told me here, and in various other forums, that they appreciate my candid discussion of my experiences with depression. I hate that that is mostly what I am posting lately, but it is what I have the energy to deal with right now. Some mornings (or other particularly difficult times) I find that journaling helps me to work through the roil of emotions and thoughts that flood me. Below are this morning’s ramblings (be warned, sometimes my prose gets… well, helplessly poetic).
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Thinking on paper. A tough morning. Hard to focus, and that pit that hangs out behind my sternum. And that verge of tears. And the tired. I am not kind to myself. Hard to focus, and feeling slightly nauseated – was wondering if I was going to stay home, but I didn’t. I am not kind in how I treat my body, in how I hold expectations for myself.
I am having trouble focusing. I want to sleep. I want to cry. I want to curl up around my stomach/chest and protect that inexplicable ache- that echoing hollowness, that sinking pit of “meh.” Just curl up and sleep, and shut out the world. The noise. The ambivalence. I seek, instead, escape into the trivial games on my phone, into books and into TV. Entertain me, so I don’t wallow, so I don’t have to think, so I don’t have to face the fact that I’m broken, on some level, and I don’t know how to fix myself – just cradle the cracked pieces in my hands and hope they don’t entirely shatter.
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Oh, Christy love. You’re not broken. I know it can feel that way; worrying about what was wrong with me was the worst, bleakest, most persistent part of my depression. I wish I could curl up around you too, protect you and help you feel better. Please remember, you are not your illness, and depression does not make you a broken person. You are whole, and you are complete, depression or not, and you are strong, even if depression is making things hard, trying to bury you. But you are still there, whole underneath depression’s sludge. You are pushing back against it, and when you do not feel strong enough to push, we will be there to grab your hand and pull you up, to clear away breathing space, to support you.