Don’t even read this.

Mrs. Messiness — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:52:28 +0000

Tonight, I am one of those people I can’t stand that look at sad things and read sad poems and listen to sad music and be sad.

I suck. I hate it when I do this.

The problem with being someone who “suffers from depression” is that you can’t tell the difference between sad or down or blue and depressed. You don’t know how to just be down because there are so many times when you got down and didn’t get back up. You end up being scared to be sad and suspicious of your own emotions and paranoid that this is more than just ‘regular’ sad so that every time someone asks ‘are you ok?’ you shoot back from the hip with ‘OF COURSE I’M OK-WHY WOULDN’T I BE OK-WHY DO YOU KEEP ASKING ME IF I’M OK!?’.

That’s usually when your inner-jerk whispers “only unstable people scream things like that through their teeth”.

Can you even imagine being stuck in here with this inner-jerk and my logical self arguing all the time? I wish they would just make out and get it over with.

Emerging

Mrs. Messiness — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:53:22 +0000

“I am prone to depression”.

No.

“Sometimes I get depressed”.

No.

“I struggle with dep-” No.

“Depression has always been a-” No, that’s stupid.

I never talk about it except to my husband, and even that is new. Before him, the only time I came close to discussing it was if someone demanded that yes-I-did remember that-one-time that-one-thing happened, and I have to find a delicate and elusive way around the fact that I don’t. At all. I don’t remember most of what you said or he said or she said or I said at all during that particular time. The worst “bout of depression” years ago, that required 4 or 5 different prescriptions and a psychologist to fish me back out. I am still fascinated by stories with me in them that happened during that time; pictures with me in them that I don’t remember posing for. I lost a lot of that time, but the point is, I survived, and for the most part, for most of the time, that was all I was doing.

And now when it creeps in, I hide and deny. I don’t want drugs or doctors or labels or diagnoses. I am immediately terrified that it is going to get that bad again and I hide and pretend I am fine; all the while snapping at my family, agonizing over old wounds I can’t bear to let heal, building walls, rationalizing the idea of never leaving the house again. Giving in.

And then I emerge and I look around, three months later this time, and realize I have been disconnected, disjointed, disengaged. I come out with almost a manic explosion; I need to write this out, check everything, ask everyone, know everything, NOW. I have to get out, get moving, get something, go somewhere – do something. All in an effort to bandage anything I let bleed while I was ‘gone’. Gather up anything I missed, pick up whatever I dropped, feel anything I shuttered against and let bounce off me while I was under my rock.

I hate and love this part. Hate that I missed things. Hate that my baby is four months old and I just shrugged a three month drudge off my shoulders. Love that it didn’t last three years and I am here now. Hate that I must have felt distant to my kids and they (like I did at their ages) may have wondered what they did to deserve that. Love that I came out of it long before they got fed up and gave up on me (like I did at their ages).

Finally the blackness has lifted, but my bones ache after dragging it around for so many miles.

But it lifted, and I came out and now I am gathering up everything I missed out on while I was gone, and that’s the point.

There. Now I officially ’talk’ about it.

This Blessed Mess » depression

Don’t even read this.

Emerging