depressive

I am a lot of things and sometimes most of these things, especially the good parts, get covered up with depression. It’s a lifelong thing. It’s a matter of suffering. I’ve talked about it before. It’s what’s going on, so I’m talking about it again. A friend said something like, “You guys allow me to learn in front of you” and that smacked me in the heart-gut. I know the Internet is not the safest place to learn in front of people, but for years I’ve done just that. Transparency is my jam, with everyone I meet, so be it.

So, let’s talk about depression.

In my 46th year, I find the episodes to be much worse. Hormonally worse, which is to say, there is a good week or two a month in which doing things becomes difficult enough that I am astounded by it, every time. Even a puzzle, one of my favorite distractions, is akin to marathon running. (Not that I know how to run a marathon but I imagine it’s…well, a marathon.)

I am (hopefully) coming out the other side of one such depressive episode. I’m still struggling to function, but I feel something lifting. Slow but sure, every time, it lifts. I don’t know why I get to be one of the ones with depression that can come out of it. It’s not lost on me. I see you, if you do not cycle, if it’s just One Big Endless Episode. I see you.

I can count on the cyclical nature of my illness. It’s always been that way for me. But during the worst days, I start to lose hope. I have thoughts that scare me. I let people down. I let myself down. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. The pain is deeper than non-depressive folks can understand. And then I say to my big burly husband, “Please don’t give me advice.” He doesn’t. He watches and waits. He knows it will pass. We’ve been through it and through it and through it.

But a close eye is still needed. That’s a terrible job to have, to be the close eye on the depressive. Having no control over it, no fixes, no pep talks. Having energy sucked away by the void where your person was. I tell him I’m sorry all the time. I say, “I’ll be back” and he says, “I know”. We hope together that this will get better when I’m through this shitty hormonal season of midlife. We know it will get a lot better after winter passes.

Depression is dangerous because it is the most excellent liar. It’s the Hitler of the mind, convincing you to join with evil, brainwashing you into darkness. It takes the best of who you are and tries to erase it. Erase you.

A few phrases from my program of recovery from alcoholism come to mind now when I’m in the worst of it. “We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.”

Believe me, I am sometimes baffled, but after almost twelve years of sobriety, I remember those lines. Because I can so easily recall my postpartum depression, when I was not yet sober, and I can remember being baffled, at a loss, no hope, no answers, just grief. I could not then see my way through. I could not hold on to the belief that any of it would pass, and so I teetered toward remaining there, never coming out. I fantasized of a life for my family without me, believing they would be better off. And yet, something held me here, stitching my torn soul with a string and a needle. I got help, though the help was not ever perfect and there wasn’t ever a miraculous removal of depression.

For me, at 46, a shitty half-answer to my problem is acceptance. I am a depressive person, and that’s okay. This is genetic for one thing, just ask my family. See our history. The suicides and institutions. The alcoholism. The struggle. Acceptance means I know that time machines don’t exist and therefore I cannot go back and erase the traumas of generations. Anxiety and depression run deep, the body keeps the score. Acceptance can even mean gratitude for me, because I know what pain creates in me. Tenderness. Empathy. Compassion. I GET YOU. I KNOW. I love you.

This disease used to baffle me, but now I intuitively know how to handle it. Sort of, anyway. I mean, I’m not a guru or anywhere near perfect. So I do not say that with pride. I do not judge those who cannot climb out. I know there is no climbing possible when a person cannot lift their head from the pillow, let alone do a puzzle. I do not believe it is always mind over matter. Just like alcoholism, there are some of us that are sicker than others. Asking why why why will only baffle us, there aren’t always answers, not those we can wrap our feeble minds around anyway.

My intuitive ability to handle it is simple. No matter how dark the room, how weary my body and soul, I am somehow capable of remembering that change always comes. No, not always by way of a miraculous lifting, but maybe even just a tiny shift. And that shift, for me, most often comes with speaking my pain, being fully honest about it. This often means telling more than one person, like a friend often says, “If the power isn’t taken from it after I tell one person, I tell another person, and I keep telling until it works.”

Don’t get me wrong, doing that never completely relieves my problems, but it does something, maybe even a tiny thing and a tiny thing is everything when you feel nothing but pain.

Last night a friend walked me through a list of things that help after saying, “Why didn’t you call me?”

I don’t know. I didn’t even think of it. My brain doesn’t work.

Sooner or later I remember what I need to do, usually when it starts to lift. Before that, in the dangerous place, all I have is that inkling that change is coming and it is hope and I am no longer baffled. When I cannot take a shower or focus or even cry, this glimmer of intuition pulls me through to the remembering stage. I am grateful. I am one of the lucky ones. Truly.

Because not everyone makes it through this alive, and I’m so sorry. It isn’t anyone’s fault. It is not your fault. It is not your fault. We are souls clothing ourselves with borrowed bodies. I don’t even know why I say that here. It just came out onto the keyboard. Maybe it’s because the problem of suffering is not going anywhere while we have bodies and accepting that is key to something. It must be. I used to fight to escape the reality that much of life is a long-suffering beautiful awful journey, and it is exquisite. The pain moves us to see, to really see, with our souls, underneath. I’m almost always okay with that.

(Please know that I am not suicidal. I do not have a plan. I am not entertaining the idea that I need to be gone. I am simply being fully honest about all that I am because I find that doing so is healing and it helps others. And if I know anything at all, it’s that helping others is another string through the needle that patches me up. Peace.)