At the beginning of winter I was given a new diagnosis from my therapist.
I suppose it isn't so much "new" as it is "new to me". Even then I am not really sure that it is "new to me" so much as "new to me being truly aware of it in a "forefront of the brain" kind of way".
Yes, Yes, There is depression. Always and eternal, my shadow dawn that lingers in the closet, waiting to knee tackle me when I get cocky or have no energy to resist. She is a mean bitch, that shadow-dawn. And brutally unforgiving. And critical.
Luckily - if one can calls this luck - the damage I do is primarily to me. When I emerge from the bad depressions - the ones that go on and on and need medication changes, and months of therapy to get me to stop weeping continually, or lying in bed, alternately wishing I would spontaneously fold in on myself and die OR sleeping for 18 hours only to get up and then decide I am too exhausted to do anything - I am usually both scared and timorously exalted.
Mostly because I am always shocked when I realize I have been depressed. That what I was/am feeling was an honest to fucking god depression. I chide myself for not knowing. For not catching on...I mean, for fucks sake, how many times do I need to get hit in the face with this particular frying pan to recognize it?
So, as I reviewed the past year with Gilda, my long suffering therapist, I said this:
"I'm not depressed anymore. I know that feeing. I wake up at a normal time, and fall asleep at a normal time. I have gotten more work done in 6 months than I have in the past 5 years. But I am not happy. "
To not be depressed, but not be happy? Forgive me when I confess that I was flummoxed by this. Now, I might not be the most enthusiastically joyful person at the best of times, but when not depressed I have never felt....Unhappy.
And Yet, there it was. I felt unhappy.
For a while I blamed Terrance. It was Him. He made me unhappy.
Of course, this rang untrue to me, even as I was blaming him. My husband is many things, but patently cruel has never been one of them. Can he be a bullying asshole? Oh, yeah. But does he seek to make me unhappy? No, not really.
Week after week I would slide into my chair at Gilda's office and unroll my litany of sadness. I wasn't happy, and I was trapped in it. How did I get to this place in my life? How did I become this woman, this wife? I despised my own grief and mourning for something I couldn't name.
I was productive, Yes, but not happy.
This unhappiness made me feel ludicrously uncertain. I just didn't KNOW....and this began to trickle into realms in which I am generally sure of myself.
My writing for example. I would email Maija and ask if she Understood it, because I couldn't be certain that what was coming out of my head through my fingers was coherent. I became oddly paralysed, frozen by my inability to judge what I was feeling. As a person whose intuition is generally spot on, this left me feeling like I had lost a limb.
I knew I was unhappy, but I trusted nothing coming in from my senses. My intuition was firing away, and I was receiving those messages - but doubting the content.
That's fucked, people. It's like seeing a colour and knowing it is Red, but then pausing and thinking "Well, maybe it is't red. It could be Yellow. I just don't know.
It is crazy making. Srsly. This is the kind of shit that drives you Crazy. This is also the kind of shit that I know from my Years with Crazy D. She was Queen Grand Poo-bah of telling you what you were seeing, or feeling or experiencing was Not Happening. Did Not Happen. Nope. No Sir. Not Here, by golly.
And I wasn't shaking it. I wasn't shaking the voice, the doubt. I no longer trusted myself.
The rest is coming, I promise. It's just too damn long to fit into one post....
I suppose it isn't so much "new" as it is "new to me". Even then I am not really sure that it is "new to me" so much as "new to me being truly aware of it in a "forefront of the brain" kind of way".
Yes, Yes, There is depression. Always and eternal, my shadow dawn that lingers in the closet, waiting to knee tackle me when I get cocky or have no energy to resist. She is a mean bitch, that shadow-dawn. And brutally unforgiving. And critical.
Luckily - if one can calls this luck - the damage I do is primarily to me. When I emerge from the bad depressions - the ones that go on and on and need medication changes, and months of therapy to get me to stop weeping continually, or lying in bed, alternately wishing I would spontaneously fold in on myself and die OR sleeping for 18 hours only to get up and then decide I am too exhausted to do anything - I am usually both scared and timorously exalted.
Mostly because I am always shocked when I realize I have been depressed. That what I was/am feeling was an honest to fucking god depression. I chide myself for not knowing. For not catching on...I mean, for fucks sake, how many times do I need to get hit in the face with this particular frying pan to recognize it?
So, as I reviewed the past year with Gilda, my long suffering therapist, I said this:
"I'm not depressed anymore. I know that feeing. I wake up at a normal time, and fall asleep at a normal time. I have gotten more work done in 6 months than I have in the past 5 years. But I am not happy. "
To not be depressed, but not be happy? Forgive me when I confess that I was flummoxed by this. Now, I might not be the most enthusiastically joyful person at the best of times, but when not depressed I have never felt....Unhappy.
And Yet, there it was. I felt unhappy.
For a while I blamed Terrance. It was Him. He made me unhappy.
Of course, this rang untrue to me, even as I was blaming him. My husband is many things, but patently cruel has never been one of them. Can he be a bullying asshole? Oh, yeah. But does he seek to make me unhappy? No, not really.
Week after week I would slide into my chair at Gilda's office and unroll my litany of sadness. I wasn't happy, and I was trapped in it. How did I get to this place in my life? How did I become this woman, this wife? I despised my own grief and mourning for something I couldn't name.
I was productive, Yes, but not happy.
This unhappiness made me feel ludicrously uncertain. I just didn't KNOW....and this began to trickle into realms in which I am generally sure of myself.
My writing for example. I would email Maija and ask if she Understood it, because I couldn't be certain that what was coming out of my head through my fingers was coherent. I became oddly paralysed, frozen by my inability to judge what I was feeling. As a person whose intuition is generally spot on, this left me feeling like I had lost a limb.
I knew I was unhappy, but I trusted nothing coming in from my senses. My intuition was firing away, and I was receiving those messages - but doubting the content.
That's fucked, people. It's like seeing a colour and knowing it is Red, but then pausing and thinking "Well, maybe it is't red. It could be Yellow. I just don't know.
It is crazy making. Srsly. This is the kind of shit that drives you Crazy. This is also the kind of shit that I know from my Years with Crazy D. She was Queen Grand Poo-bah of telling you what you were seeing, or feeling or experiencing was Not Happening. Did Not Happen. Nope. No Sir. Not Here, by golly.
And I wasn't shaking it. I wasn't shaking the voice, the doubt. I no longer trusted myself.
The rest is coming, I promise. It's just too damn long to fit into one post....
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