Captain’s Log – Page 17

Can’t Stop the Sadness

My name is Phil, and I am depressed.

My therapist wanted me to write a sentence, and now I’ve written three. I haven’t written in a while because I am depressed. It is so very hard to find the motivation, the will, and the desire to do even the most basic of things when battling depression. She, my therapist, said it well: “sometimes your brain is amazing and you can trust it; sometimes it’s fucked.” Sometimes I am very logical, I can work through almost anything, I have strength and I amaze myself by enduring what I thought was unendurable. But then, my mind flips on me, and even getting through a day without staring at walls is an insurmountable task.

I often compare being depressed to being an alcoholic. Neither is a choice, neither is banished simply through a force of will, both are medical conditions that can be treated, but alcoholics have it one up on depressed individuals: they have an external symptom that while difficult to deal with, is external and is avoidable. An alcoholic can avoid taking a drink. They don’t need a reason to drink, or to be drunk, but in order to be sober all they have to do is not drink. An outside factor is their tormentor, and as such, it can be avoided. Avoiding it is the really tough part.

But no matter how many meetings of Depressed Anonymous I attend, I cannot ever choose to avoid that which torments me: my brain. I live with imbalances, deficiencies, shorts and faulty wires in my head. Short of a lobotomy, the death of who I am, I am unable to be free. I am an alcoholic that cannot choose to stop drinking. I cannot chose to be happy, to not be sad, to change what I feel. All I can do is depend on some medication that makes the swings of emotion less monumental, less forceful, and continue to rely on my therapist to talk through the rest, to keep things in perspective, in focus.

I can’t stop the sadness, but I can keep it at bay, at arm’s length, at a distance.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer said it this way: “the hardest thing in this world is to live in it.” Living life, for me, is the hardest thing I do on a daily basis. Most people get up, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, enjoy some television, and go to bed and that is their every day routine. I have to force myself to watch television and I barely enjoy the process. Some of that is an effect of the medications I am on, some of that is my depression, it is hard to know which at any given time. All I want out of life is the normal routine of normal people, but today, that is out of my reach. Most days it is out of my reach. But I’m never going to stop reaching, and that is what I can do as a depressaholic: I can keep reaching for normality. I don’t have a convenient external tormenter, but in the midst of my unending torment I can reach towards the light, no matter how dim or distant.

My challenge was one sentence. Here are many. Here is me reaching towards the light, today. If this is all I do today, it is a win for me.

To read what else I have written on the topic of depression, simply search for the word “depression” on my blog.

By Way of Apology

I feel like I should apologize.

After all, my mother was there, and saw the whole thing. My grandmother was honored at the occasion, and some of my best friends were on hand to see it all go down. My oldest brother stood beside me, I looked across the aisle to catch the eye of my sister. My father cried, at the time with pride and joy. I stood before God, and everyone, and said two words that would change my life forever: “I do.”

And, right now, I don’t. I’m not. I…can’t.

My marriage is practically over, and has been since sometime in June, maybe July, I don’t know exactly when it ended because I didn’t end it. My wife did. To be clear right here right now: I am not blaming Hannah for the failing of my marriage, I guess I should say, our marriage. I’m not blaming me, either.

Blame implies intent, and it was neither Hannah nor my intent to end the marriage we started three years, nine months, twenty five days, and roughly six hours ago. At this time then we were in our bed (no, don’t get icked out) reading all the cards we got, absorbing the well wishes of those who gave us their best on our special day, listening to the Atlantic Ocean crash against the beach.

When Hannah packed her bags and left this May it was on a relocation for work that happened to coincide with an agreed upon separation. Our marriage has been enduring my depression and mental illness and Hannah’s burden of caring for me and working full time. One or the other would have been manageable, perhaps, but not both. Also, two years back, I dealt her a hard blow: I de-converted from evangelical Christianity. In the process I inadvertently damaged my wife’s religion and her marriage. She married one person, one person who prayed with her during our wedding ceremony and stood before God to promise I wouldn’t ever hurt her, and now she was married to a person who now not only no longer had a God to promise to, but was adamant no God at all existed. In my religious self-destruction, Hannah caught a lot of shrapnel and collateral damage.

Along the way, we struggled with each other and ourselves over who we were, what we were about, and what we were doing with our lives. I, for much of the marriage, have been completely unable to answer those questions or even reasonably approach them. Hannah felt trapped and unable to assert herself, a self that continually diminished the longer she was with me. More and more of her life was spent trying to keep me on an even keel.

The failure of the marriage was my fault. Had I been mentally well and able to share my burdens and care for Hannah as a husband, and had I regained my faith, Hannah would not have felt so alone, so tired, so scared all the time. The failure of the marriage was Hannah’s fault. If she had stuck by her vows and her promises and not left me, she would have been around to see breakthroughs we never thought possible in my condition, and the start of me standing on my own two feet. But the failure of the marriage is not Hannah’s fault. It is not my fault. It is our fault. It takes two to tango, and just as strangely, it takes two to keep tangoing. One person dancing is not a tango, and it really doesn’t matter who stopped dancing, or who started dancing a different dance. When both partners stop being in harmony, the tango is over.

But, because the marriage failed and many of you were there to see it begin and witness the promise I made, I feel I should apologize to you for failing to uphold the marriage, for letting it fail, for not keeping it together. I’m sorry the words I spoke proved empty and vain. I am sorry that I wasted your time and your trust and your well wishes. I am sorry that I proved a failure as a husband and that you had to see it. It was never my intention, never what I wanted.

At this moment, I feel empty. There is a massive, gaping, bleeding hole in my heart and in my bed, and on my couch, and in my life. My wife is missing. I want her back. I really feel that we haven’t given this marriage our all, not yet. But I am only one person. No matter how hard I dance on the hard wood, I cannot dance a tango solo. I don’t know what is going on for Hannah, not anymore, so I can’t speculate or talk about that. Everything else in my life is finally starting to go right. As soon as I can get a job, I’ll be good. I just need someone to share it with for the rest of my life.

And since you were there to see me promise that of and with Hannah, and that has shattered: I offer my apology. And I thank you, for all your support and love along the way. I learned a lot from Hannah, she will always be incredibly special to me, and I will love her till the day I die.

Hannah, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I failed you. I wish you all the happiness in the world. I love you.

World Mental Health Day

Hi. My name is Phil. I have a mental illness.

It just struck me as I was typing that line that mental illness is often the punchline of a joke or having a mental illness is played for laughs in some circumstances. I know some people would be upset or indignant about that, but I don’t care.

Not caring is a symptom of mental illness, in my case, depression. It takes feeling and a certain level of self actualization to generate outrage and moral fiber and the will to do something, even if it is to say “hey, maybe there really are mentally ill people and they don’t like being made fun of or something”. Also, I find mental illness jokes funny. A consequence of my long association with depression is a very dark and subtle sense of humor. Mental illness jokes appeal to me on a very wrong level. Well, not wrong so much as abnormal.

Anyway, today is World Mental Health Day. I started writing about my experiences with depression a long time ago as a way to help myself articulate what I was feeling to everyone who knows me and bothers to read what I write, and also as a way to destigmatize mental illness. It is a condition anyone can have, just like anyone can break a bone or get cancer. I am an otherwise normal person who is depressed.

I am not sad because of life circumstances, although I do have plenty of those to feel pretty sad about, the reality is I am sad even when everything is great. Case in point: it is currently October, and I am a baseball fan, and October is the time for the MLB postseason. Usually this is my favorite time of the year. It has magic, wonder, the best teams in baseball, and exciting high stakes games. I have to force myself to enjoy my most favorite thing in the world outside of Star Wars. And I haven’t watched Star Wars in over a year, either. And I love Star Wars most. Most people enjoy what they enjoy. They don’t have to try, they don’t ever think about it, they just enjoy it. I have conversations in my head: “Hey, Phil, look: Star Wars!” “Oh, that’s cool. I guess. I mean, it isn’t not cool.” “What?? That is a salt shaker shaped like a Darth Vader PEZ dispenser on a super fluffy blanket that is also a Jedi cloak!! That is mega-Star Wars-awesome!” “If you say so. Hey, is that the ground? It looks like the ground.” Er, something like that. My point is: depression robs me of my chance to feel and to enjoy.

I am on medication, which is why my depression no longer completely debilitates me. I used to live in a black fog where nothing ever was anything other than a painful haze. Now, sometimes, I do enjoy things. Sometimes the sun breaks through and I have a good day. Those days are still rare. What is worse, I have absolutely no control over when I have sunny days or when I have hazy days. They happen when they will.

Because of this I cannot hold a job, most days I cannot bother to look for a job. A month ago I did look for a job. I found a job. I got excited about a job. I even got called to come and interview for the job. I then emailed two days later and turned the job down. In the space of two days I went from feeling like I would be able to engage in an awesome month long job (it was working in a haunted house) to feeling like it was the biggest mistake I could make and there was no way I could handle it. Ever since I have gone back and forth over anger at myself for turning down work when I need the money, disappointment over turning down a cool haunted house job, or being so glad I did because I can’t bother to take a shower much less get out of the house and into makeup and feel any sort of enthusiasm for scaring anyone. Although the reality is most of the time I feel nothing one way or the other about the job.

And the struggle with mental health goes deeper than me. I lost all of my close, emotional support because of my mental illness. My wife left me, being completely unable to understand or cope with my mental illness. I don’t blame her, usually because, like with most things, often I don’t have the ability to be mad or sad about losing my wife. In my few moments of clarity, I acknowledge that living with someone who is completely debilitated by something entirely in their head is not easy at all. It takes a supreme amount of patience, love, and self-strength. I should know, most of the time I hate being me. I wish I could get away from me. But I can’t. I never will. And nothing I do can change that. She could leave, and the truth is: I envy that she could.

So I do my thing. I struggle to get out of bed, to do something on any given day. My dishes go unwashed, my house goes uncleaned, my hair goes uncombed. Then, every so often, I get a breakthrough, a surge of energy and of feeling and I can do some or all of those things. Right now I struggle to pay bills and afford what I need because I have no job and employers aren’t eager to hire people with mental problems, even if I could find a job I could con myself into applying for. Life is tough and you would never know it because I seem so normal, I can write well, when you ever see me I am putting on a terrific acting performance to hide from you what I really am. I smile, I converse, I do things, I seem completely normal. It is entirely an act. I rarely feel anything I emote. And the act so completely exhausts me that I spend the next few days in a fog.

I am strong, I am resilient, which is why I am still here, but being that takes everything I have on any given day. And that is why I am a twenty-six year old man living with a dog in an apartment that I rarely leave and struggle enjoying the best sport in the world at the best time of the year: I have a mental illness, and it is crippling.

Today is World Mental Health Day. Remember that not everyone is obviously ill, but many are suffering in ways you cannot imagine because you are normal. Be the best friend you can to everyone you know, because you might not always know who needs that the most. Don’t try to fix a mentally ill person. You can’t do it. Just be their friend and never stop, no matter how hard that seems. That is the only thing that works. Spread love as far as you can. Some of us need it more than you could possibly imagine. Above all, know this: mental illness is real, and it is just as damaging as cancer or any other human condition.

Search my blog for “depression” to find other posts about my struggles.

A Thousand Cuts

My name is Phil, and I have clinical depression.

Last night I tweeted this:

“Life is a death of a thousand cuts. The question is: can you find meaning before you bleed to death all over the carpet? Me, I don’t know.”

A twitter friend, a fellow nerd and author, asked his followers to tweet to a woman who truly believed she was ugly and to tell her the truth. I perused this woman’s feed, and was deeply saddened to see that her voice was almost gone. Most of her recent posts were retweets from suicidal accounts. [Author’s note: A suicidal account is an account on social media that is almost entirely thoughts, pictures, and poetry about suicide. They are everywhere on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Most are run by truly desperate people. Take a break from kittens sometime and read the pain that no one sees. It will sober you up in a hurry.] I felt so lost and so small. I had nothing to say to this woman that would ease her pain in the least. But I couldn’t back away, I couldn’t just be silent. So I said this:

“You are beautiful and you are not alone. I know your pain and it can get better.”

It was as honest as I could get. Every woman is truly beautiful. Depression is not something you suffer as the only depressed person on the planet. I do know that pain. And it can get better. Why didn’t I say “it will get better”? Because I do not know that to be true. I have been in therapy for nearly two years now. I am on medication. I have worked through so much pain and childhood trauma. But I still don’t feel much different than I did when it all began. I don’t have the black fog, but I am rarely happy or positive or upbeat. I certainly believe that things can get better. I simply lack convincing evidence that things will get better. I was frustrated that such a small truth was all I had to offer a woman in pain.

I am starting to refer to this year in particular as the year from hell. Ever since Christmas, when some things went horribly wrong and got very, very black, this year has been trending downwards. Me and my wife stopped drifting apart and started racing apart. Then she left, and at the time, I was glad to see her go. I got a job and lost it. I have been unemployed since July. I have sold half of anything I owned of value to simply pay bills. Only recently did I force myself to use a little to buy groceries. I lived for a month on hot dogs and microwave popcorn because the last time I afforded food both were on sale. Last night at my brother’s house was the first time I had a substantially healthy meal in months. I am so lonely I want my wife and my miserable marriage back just so I will no longer be alone. I have lost the ability to hope, to imagine a better future, or to dream of anything beyond my current daily misery. I don’t exaggerate and I don’t sensationalize any of that. I try to present it as mundane and boring, because that is what pain has become to me.

So you can see how that can resemble a year from hell.

Most days I do not know how I will endure until evening. Bedtime is a weariness. I toss and turn most every night and sleep badly.

At this exact moment, I have no idea how I will pay the next two bills that are due soon. It is hard to focus on anything else at the moment. If you are a friend and have been following any part of my social media life lately, you will see that on this blog I have been writing a little, and on Facebook I have been posting lots of Lego Portraits. I have no idea where the creative spark is coming from these days, but I jump into it whenever I feel the slightest twinge because it is all I have. I barely enjoy it, I certainly should, I love Lego, but enjoyment isn’t something I have much control over. I try my damnedest, but usually I only manage a lukewarm enthusiasm. But when you are freezing, lukewarm feels very hot.

This is turning into a bit of a ramble, so I think I will end it soon. The rambling fits, anyway. I’ve hit half of tank of gas and have no idea if I’ll be able to afford to fill the tank when it runs empty, but I’ve started to obsess again over how far I need to travel to do anything. I just want this all to end. Not in a slash-the-arteries and swallow-the-pills suicide ending, necessarily. I’d be happy if there was no tomorrow. If everything just ended. No fanfare, no heaven, no hell, no afterlife, just an end to existence. That wouldn’t bother me right now. I don’t want to die, I don’t want to miss the upcoming Ender’s Game or Hobbit films, but right now, I wouldn’t care if I did. I might even prefer a nothingness because nothingness isn’t pain and frustration and misery.

I’m living a death
of a thousand cuts
my blood spills slowly

I watch each drip
drop into the carpet
soaking microfibers and dust
dead skin cell fossils
splashed with the facade of life

given proper suction
you can drain the body of blood
in 8.6 seconds
so why has eternity
come and gone and I still bleed?

I guess that’s life
with blood and pain and carpet
stained corpses of a million dead cells
each having expended purpose, exfoliated

my purpose remains, I’ve yet to be scrubbed
from the skin of the world
so I endure the thousand cuts
seeking my purpose
and my dessication

That’s not very good, but I do get so poetical and more than a bit macabre during these times. Forgive me.

Death and Life

My name is Phil, and I am depressed. Search my blog tags for “depression” and you can read all about it.

Yesterday was an interesting day. I really don’t want to talk about it, but because I made one of the darkest parts of my everyday reality public, I feel like my friends and family deserve a little explanation.

The truth is I lie. A lot. You can be all shocked if you want to, but you lie, too. If you are reading this, I can assume a few things about you: you understand English, you are human, you lie. Our religious culture would have us believe that lying is an abomination before the Lord or a bad thing to do, but it is deeply human. Most lies are not harmful at all. Most lies are necessary. Colloquially, we refer to them as a social contract. I don’t tell nearly every single woman I meet that I admire the curvature of her breasts, or that I really want to have sex with her. I am not a sex fiend or a creep, I am a heterosexual male that is biologically programmed to find females physically attractive. But I lie by omission. And almost every single woman I meet knows this. Don’t ask, don’t tell: web of lies. And that is just one very, very small example.

A bigger example of the lies I tell: I am doing just fine. Yes, I am handling my every day reality. No, I do not want to kill myself.

Yesterday, I posted a suicide note to my Facebook page. I don’t remember what it said, and I have since deleted it. I then ignored my phone and my computer. Because I suffer from back pain, high blood pressure, and mental illness, I have a variety of medications available to me. I don’t know exactly how all of them work, and I have been assured that most of them work fairly well together. Being that I am an intelligent person, I know that becomes less true when you mix non-recommended dosages in non-recommended combinations. I dumped a few pills on the counter and wondered which cocktail would help end the pain the easiest. I’m no pharmacist, so I experimented. I don’t remember what I took, except that there were a fair amount of the pain killing variety included.

I was unaware that my Facebook posting had alarmed the people who saw it. I became aware when my Aunt Jane called me. I can ignore my wife, I can ignore my mother, I can even ignore my dog. I cannot ignore my Aunt Jane. She commands too much respect. All my life I have known two things about Aunt Jane: she is awesome. You don’t cross her. If she tells you to do something, you do it, no matter how much you don’t want to. If she asks you a question, you don’t lie. If she says something, she means it. So I had to answer the phone when I saw Aunt Jane was calling. She convinced me to live. Fortunately, I also did a bad job picking out pills because all I did was get a little fuzzy, dizzy, and sleepy. She may have convinced me to make it through the day, but it was my lousy attempt that made it possible.

Why did I try to end all things? I will try to explain, but it will be hard to understand. Most of you are normal. I am not. I have a mental illness. I do not want to die. Let’s be clear about that. I have many things I want to do, and experience, in life. I love my family and my friends. I love my puppy. I do not want to live. Every day is a constant struggle. Every minute is a battle. I am in constant physical and mental pain. Stress is destroying me. I barely sleep. I cannot relax. I hallucinate (mostly sounds, rarely I see things). I hear knocking at the door. I hear a phone buzzing, or ringing. I see bugs crawling on the floor. The problem is, there is no one at the door, my phone isn’t buzzing, and bugs don’t move that fast. Believe me, I have investigated rigorously. What I experience isn’t real. And that freaks me out.

The only peace I ever get is when I am in a movie theater watching a movie, or when I am building a LEGO set. Immersing myself into a film, in darkness, in front of a large screen, with loud surround sound makes everything else melt away. It doesn’t even have to be a particularly good film, but it makes everything else disappear. For those two hours or less, I am free. Similarly, when I bust open a LEGO set, spill the pieces in front of me, and start working through the instruction booklet, nothing else can intrude. Clicking one brightly colored plastic block onto another allows me to concentrate only on which brick I need next to complete the build. Seeing a building, or a robot, or whatever emerge from the chaos of scattered pieces fills me with ridiculous joy and peace. I cannot explain it better than that. But it is real. That is as close to relief from what I feel as I ever get and it does not last. I cannot build LEGOs constantly. I cannot go to the theater constantly.

If you know me, you might wonder if writing does that for me. Nope, not at all. You have to think to write. Writing for me is another compulsion. I can’t help it. Words beat at my brain demanding release until I get up and let them out. I have been woken up by words that demand to be written. In the middle of the night I will get up and go to my computer and type. Sometimes it takes five minutes. Sometimes it takes hours, but until they are all out, I cannot stop. That is not really much fun, relaxation, and it certainly isn’t peaceful. The only solace I get is that I am really, really good at writing. It is better to have a compulsion you are good at, I guess. But then, people with a cleaning OCD usually clean very well, too. So I’m not special.

Who wouldn’t want to escape my life? Does that sound like fun to any of you? To make matters worse, I am alone. The only other thing that usually distracts me is human interaction. But I have almost none of that any more. My wife left. She isn’t coming back, no matter how much I want her to. No one else is really eager to come over. Most people don’t enjoy hanging out with someone who lives on the ragged edge. I am angry, volatile, sarcastic, acidic, very awkward. I make people uncomfortable. I exude an aura of anger, or negativity. This isn’t intentional. Most of time I am unaware of it. I am just so uncomfortable I don’t know how to act, much less react, even around people I know well, even around my family. It is no wonder my wife did leave, I don’t blame her. I am actually surprised she managed to live with me as long as she did.

So, back to the suicide. I don’t say anything I’ve said to garner sympathy or attention or pity. I am merely trying to explain why yesterday morning, so many people became inescapably aware of the fact that I was actively seeking death. It was, as they say, a call for help. I wanted somebody to know that I was dying from pain.

What can you do to help? Very little. Do not call 911. Nothing makes me trust people less than people who call the cops on me but can’t show up themselves. If you are concerned for my safety, come to where I live. If you find me actually dying, then call 911, ride in the ambulance, and be there when I wake up. Do not tell me you struggle with depression. Unless what I have described is 85% of your daily reality, you don’t. Even if it is your reality, I find no comfort in knowing that other people are as miserable as me. That actually makes me feel worse. Do not tell me what you have endured. I know that my life, objectively speaking, is fantastic. It simply does not matter. Depression does not care about socioeconomic divisions. I gather from the news that a member of the Glee cast died of a heroin overdose. His life, objectively speaking, was better than mine. And yet the guy was alone with heroine and alcohol. In any case, reminding me that some people live worse than I do does not help. It makes me feel guilty, petty, and stupid, none of which relieve the depression. Do NOT tell me how upset I made everyone or how badly I scared X family member. First, I know. Second, I cannot care. It isn’t that I don’t care, I can’t. If I am at the point of trying to end my life, worrying about how my mother will feel is probably not on my mind. That would be on the mind of a rational person. Suicidal people are not, strictly speaking, rational. The decision of death is one made under extreme duress and not as the result of a logical thought progression (usually). Also: it doesn’t help me feel good enough about my life to stop trying to end it.

What can you do to help? Be here. Physically be here. Come to my house and hang out with me no matter how angry, bitter, dark, or un-fun I am. Deep down, I know you care enough about me to be with me, to make the effort to come to me and to stay there. Failing that, simply tell me you care about me. Period. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. Then I know that even if you won’t or can’t be with me, chances are you would if you could. That’s it.

And, while I appreciate the offer, no, I do NOT want to talk about it. I have a therapist. She is the only person on the planet I will tell anything and everything. She is the only woman on the planet that can move right past that and still talk to me about what really matters. The only social contract we have is that she won’t judge me and I can tell her anything. Unless you are her, no, I probably will not willingly talk to you. But I DO appreciate the offer. Just don’t worry or be offended when I don’t.

So that, right there, is the brutal honest truth about my everyday and specifically yesterday. Today, I’m ok. I am handling things. (Lying? probably a bit). The truth: I haven’t ODed today. I haven’t thought about driving my car into oncoming traffic. Physically, I am safe.

I’m depressed. Today isn’t as bad as yesterday. Today is a win.

New Reality

My name is Phil, and I live with depression.

When I began my recovery from the black world of depression I did not know that recovery was even possible. I doubted that my daily experience could ever change. In a way, I didn’t want it to. I did not want to get better. My life, and my everyday occurrences had been organized around my depression. I knew what to expect, how to react, and was comfortable in my environment. None of this means I was happy, but when you know misery, or emptiness, it is amazing how familiar and ordinary that can be.

I am currently re-watching one of my favorite television shows, House MD. Dr. Gregory House has a pain problem, and as an extension of that, a pain medication problem: he is addicted to Vicodin. Throughout all of the 8 seasons, but primarily in the first three, House’s narcotic addiction is a constant source of trouble, discussion, and explanation. Is he an addict? Should he stop taking Vicodin? How does it affect him? Does he need it? The show makes a pretty strong case for the physical pain House endures, but never really indicates exactly how much of House is drugs, or just personality. Either way, House refuses to change anything. He admits he takes too much Vicodin regularly, but the bottom is line is that ever since his infarction, he has defined his life by his pain and his relief of that pain. He recognizes that it isn’t a perfect situation, and abusing the narcotics or not, he isn’t happy. Rehab and physical therapy is a door to a healthier life, but House cannot (or will not) do the work to change. He is comfortable in his misery. I was Dr. House: comfortable in my misery.

But, as I have written about, I sought and found change. It took me over a year and a half of daily work and weekly meetings with my therapist, but by all accounts I have emerged from my depression. Medication and a fundamental shift in how I think about the world has brought me into the light. Then, about two months ago, my life altered significantly, nearly destroying all the progress I have made. I’ve been waiting for my newfound clarity to fog up, for my positive equilibrium to shift negatively. For all the lights to go out. But they haven’t. My recovery is solid. I have found a new reality, and fortunately reality rarely changes. Circumstances change, people come and go, growth and learning take place, but reality is constant. Mostly. I was born and lived under a certain reality. Somewhere around middle school my reality changed into depression. Last year, my reality changed again, out of depression, and into this newness of life I have been enjoying.

And all of that was threatened.

My wife left me. Legally, we are still married, but when she packs all her things, moves nearly 4500 miles east and eight hours into the future, the marriage is pretty much over. I could have gone with her, but following a spouse who is leaving the marriage seemed like the wrong thing to do. Our life, everything we had built over three and half years of marriage was here. Our life was not across an ocean and in a different world. The leaving happened abruptly. I was not ready: physically emotionally mentally psychologically. I had barely emerged from my darkness, and my wife grabbed her opportunity to seize her dreams and leave me behind. I scrambled madly, if only to ensure my own survival. Every plan, every expectation I had for my recovery had to be scrapped, or at best, reworked. Suddenly, I had to find a job. That I was not really ready for a job was beside the point: if I wanted housing and food, I needed employment. I needed companionship most of all, but fortunately I had already adopted a dog. In lieu of a wife, my puppy was all I could count on. At the last minute, I got a job. In between begging my wife to stay, trying to rationalize the sudden end of a marriage, and keeping up appearances for family and friends, I nearly imploded. Once or twice I got close.

Hannah flew away on May the 11th, 2013. We were married on January the 3rd, 2010. My marriage lasted 1,225 days. The fiction we tell friends and family is that this is merely a separation, a time to reevaluate who we are and what we want. The truth is we are never going to be anything other than friends.

Today I vacuumed the apartment, washed dishes, dusted, and tidied up the place. I cleaned the bathroom, changed towels on the racks and sheets on the bed. I swept floors. I had done none of these things since Hannah left. I know, gross to normal people, normal to depressed people. All this time, a little over a month, two things were constant in my head. One, I was not entirely certain I was not going to implode. I felt weak, devastated, lost, unsure of who I was, or what I should do with myself. I’ve been unusually depressed, angry, and numb. Two, I wasn’t convinced that it really was over. I thought Hannah would see the error of her ways and come back. I thought she needed this marriage, or me, or something bad enough to realize her mistake and return to start healing. She didn’t. If anything, she seems to be blossoming and growing in ways she and I never thought she could. She is better off where she is. Without me. And that was something I did not want to admit. Could not realize. Was too painful to face. I did not think I would survive, and everything around me was put on hold until I knew which way the world would fall. Why bother washing dishes if you are going to collapse into a dark depression? Losing a wife and facing a cold, scary world in the space of about a week and a half was about the hardest trial I could have endured (short of a close friend or family member dying at the same time). The surprise is that nothing fell. I covered my head and dove for cover, but the bomb was a dud.

I’ve been sick for several weeks now. General cold symptoms mixed with body aches and pains and psychological turmoil to create a vicious sinus infection and exhaustion. Middle of last week I stopped in my tracks, unable to go on. I could not work, I could not eat, I could barely sleep, and only then with a combination of drugs. But, this time I knew what to do: I got help. This time, mostly medical. A doctor checked me out, prescribed rest and antibiotics. I got both. This morning I woke feeling better than I have in a long time, physically and emotionally, and I knew what I had to do: embrace my new reality.

No wife was going to come back to nurse me to health or help with life. All I had was myself. And though I could scarcely believe it, I was strong enough to meet that challenge. I cleaned up my apartment. I washed my dirty dishes. I vacuumed my dirty floors. I dusted and swept. I made my environment livable again. Neither my depression nor my mangled personal life could hold me back.

My new reality, my restructured life is not fantasy, a cruel joke, or a drug induced dream. It is real. I can face what life can bring, and I can endure. I can rise above. Just me and my dog, my cute little Cordy.

I can live.

Stress: the Little Mind Killer

I haven’t written about my depression for a while, mostly because for a while I was feeling pretty good and felt like I was finally getting a hold on this slippery thing called life. I won’t say I was wrong about that. I now have a job, a dog, and I don’t spend my days staring at walls like I used to.

But life has a way of sending us down roads we never knew existed. Things transpire in life and relationships that we never could have predicted, setting us up for decisions we never thought we would have to make. I’m being vague here because there are some things that are very real and large in my life that I am not quite ready to address publicly. Hell, I don’t even want to address them in my own mind.

I recently made a trip to see my doctor. I’ve been forgetting things lately, but it is less like memory loss and more like aphasia, where you search for a word but can’t find it. I can’t remember the names of everyday objects, and am forced to describe what it is I am trying to say. “You know, that thing you use for eating…it is metal, and has pointy things on the end, you stab with it…” “A fork?” “Yes, that’s it! Can you grab me a fork please?” No, that isn’t an example. That happened. I also forget things that I know I know, facts and details I would never forget. I don’t have a brain tumor or dementia and I’m not on medication that could do this.

Stress is making me lose my mind.

Stress is a constant companion to depression. When I was in my darkest places, stress was pulling the trigger on the gun labeled depression. I didn’t stare at walls and fail to engage with the world through fear or doubt or lack of imagination. It was the stress that each situation presented that kept me powerless and weak. A trip to the grocery store to purchase food became all about how I would walk, how I would pass people in the aisles, what I would say to the cashier. The stress of how to handle each situation mounted until the easiest way to remain calm was to remain at home. I’ve made a career out of avoiding stress.

Now that I have a handle on my past, and have dealt with some of the overwhelming sources of stress in my life, I can now go to the grocery store with little problem (most days). But what they don’t tell you is that knocking down the giants that surround you only allows you to face the demons you couldn’t see.

So, back to the vague things and the stress that is making me lose my mind. After talking with me for a bit, and a consultation, my doctor told me that I am stressed. Stress (barring the appearance of physical symptoms) is what is making me unable to think, to remember, or to recall that a fork is a fork.

Yesterday, I had a meltdown. My stress caused me to regress backwards into black depression, with the accompanying rage and malice. The one clear, rational thought I had was to put my new puppy in her crate so that, if the worst should happen, she wouldn’t be in danger. I would never, in a million years, willingly or consciously hurt an innocent animal, but depression has a way of making a million years a nanosecond under the right conditions. (No, I didn’t hurt her, but she was very sad at being crated for most of the morning while I inexplicably, to her, was only a few feet away, seemingly asleep.) I called into my therapist and left a message for her to contact me. I was barely able to focus the words over the phone, but I knew I needed something extra to get me through the morning. By noon she called back and we talked through what was eating at my brain. “Phil,” she said, “this is normal. I would have worried if you didn’t have some sort of freakout episode.” She proceeded to calmly guide me into a few healthy behaviors and coping strategies. We will have a real meeting soon. After that, I felt a bit better, and I played with my dog for almost an hour (understandably, she had quite a bit of pent up energy).

I still have no idea what to do about what is facing me, what is clawing at my mind. I’ve moved beyond shopping for cookies and milk to larger life issues that were unavailable for processing when I was trapped in dark depression. Now, I have no choice. They stand before me and I have no recourse but to face them, somehow. I cannot go back. Retreat ends in darkness and death, non-metaphorically speaking. But the stress of how to handle what I must handle is luring me back into depression. Things I once enjoyed, I stare at listlessly. I barely eat. I take my dog for short walks. I can’t sleep (which is why, as I type this, it is nearly 0400).

For most people, stress is what makes a hard day hard, a challenging week challenging, or a situation unpleasant. For those of us among the depressed, stress is the little thing obliterating our mind.

Right now, I don’t know what to do except to return to bed and try to sleep. Short term, I need to work as hard as I can for solutions and a way to move beyond stress, because no one can live under this much stress and tell the tale for very long.

That I am able to articulate all this is a measure of how far I’ve come. I hope through this you understand a little bit what dealing with depression is all about. It isn’t the momentary blues most people talk about: it is a constant life battle.

Tears of a Lost Sheep

“What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?” Luke 15, the Bible

“I’m the sheep that got lost, Madre.” – Creasy, Man on Fire

“Then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire, shut up in my bones; I am weary of holding it in, and I cannot endure it.” Jeremiah 20:9, the Bible

Sometimes I hate being me. Specifically, I’m a writer. This is not something I chose, that I ever wanted to be, that I ever looked for in my life. I wanted to play baseball. But, I’d have been a writer anyway. I can’t help it. I went to school, I’ve developed and honed my skill at writing. But no matter what I cannot stop. Things burn in my brain, and wind their way round and round my cranium, shouting at me. I can’t quiet them, I can’t shut them up, and I can’t ignore them for long. They must be let out.

So I write.

I say this to apologize for what I am about to say. It isn’t completely fair or nice, but I can no longer hold it in. I do not claim to be right, or without blame, but this is what I cannot keep silent about.

Ever since a madman walked into a school and murdered children, I haven’t been quite right. I tried to make sense of a senseless act. What kind of person, disturbed or otherwise, misconstrues a threat out of something completely harmless? Even animals tend not to attack when they are not threatened, or in need. But madness happens.

And then, as always happens, the murdering psycho is endlessly discussed, and analyzed, and researched. And then, before that is finished, the debate turns, as it should, to us, the survivors, we who stood by, even if we were given no choice, and watched it happen. What could we have done? we ask ourselves. How could we have stopped this? we wonder. Why could we not save our children? These questions burn most intensely in the minds of those who lost their sons, their daughters, their sisters, their brothers, their friends. Even people like me, who live hundreds of miles away and will never meet anyone associated with this tragedy can’t help but ask the questions. After all, my niece attends school. My sister visits movie theaters. My mother walks down the street.

Finally, the discussion gets muted into something political. The rage and the sadness turns societal. We blame, we turn on each other, we shout, and everyone concocts their own foolproof plan and clamors for it to be heard. This is only natural. We want to do something. Every single moment of every single day, people die. Right now, as I type, people are dying. Why don’t I feel outrage, sadness, why don’t I call for something to be done?

First, I accept it as a natural part of life. The human condition: 100% fatal in every single verifiable case. Second, it isn’t being thrust into my face. Most days, I don’t see death. I don’t feel it. I live in the false comfort that it has slunk off into the night and won’t come back. Until it does.

Then I want to beat it back into the night.

All of this is completely natural.

In a way, we are all still dealing with our grief. Our personal grief, our social grief, our national grief, our human grief. Therefore, I don’t condemn. I don’t blame, and I don’t seek to pass judgment. A person in pain, a person in mourning is not accountable for the outpouring of grief. They can’t be. It isn’t like they can stop it. Emotion is real, emotion is overwhelming, and emotion is valid.

What comes after the emotion, the grief, and the time to mourn the dead is the part I want to address. No, the part that I can’t help but address. I wish I could stop typing, but it isn’t that easy. Be angry at me if you must.

I lost my faith. I once was a Christian, walking down the straight and narrow path towards heaven, following in the footsteps of Christ. That is no longer my reality. I don’t necessarily live or act any different than I did, but I am less certain about truths I once held dear. And that is my cross to bear, my own particular road to hell if I am wrong and my childhood was right and if it is about right and wrong and not about something else. So don’t make the mistake of believing that I don’t know what I am saying or that I didn’t once believe as you might right now.

One thing that I began to see, and read, and hear much of in the wake of our dear children’s death was shouting about gun control. I’ve heard it my whole life. Ever since Columbine. That doesn’t surprise or bother me. If someone gets bitten by a dog, it is the dog that suffers, regardless of any circumstance, though that is hardly a fair metaphor. But I don’t hold guns responsible for acts of violence done by them. A gun is just an object in space, without will or desire. A gun never can or will act on its own.

Humans act. All to often: using guns.

And in this debate, I hear people talking about banning guns. About keeping guns. About hammers, cars, baseball bats, and Amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America.

I hear Christians shouting that we should be allowed to “keep and bear arms”. That I can no longer abide. It burns me up and sets my heart on fire. I weep, and I wail, and there is no one to listen.

WHY? Did not Jesus himself, in the face of angry mob which had gathered to murder him, say to the man defending him with a sword “whosoever lives by the sword shall die by the sword?” I have seen, my whole life, a country and a people that lives and dies by the sword. It is, without sarcasm or ridicule, the American Way. A cursory study of the history of America proves that we won our independence with guns, we shred our nation apart with guns, we lost millions in European wars by guns, we stopped Hitler with guns, we fought a pointless and for too long conflict in Vietnam because we could not put our guns aside, and not so very long ago a man with a gun ended the lives of innocent children. We are living and dying by the sword.

To anyone who names themself Christian, and yet calls for continued existence and ownership of guns: how can you? Are we not to live by faith, by love, peaceably with all men? Do you imagine that the only reason Christ refused to fight back in the garden was because he was destined to die? Do you think that if God Himself came to live among us for no particular reason at all, he would have fought for his life?

The cowardly and despicable National Rifle Association has said that “the only thing that stops a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun”. What utter folly. What sheer, willful stupidity. Have we forgotten Tiananmen Square? Have we forgotten that a man, a man whose name we do not even know, stopped a battalion of tanks with nothing but his body. Actually, his hands were full. But not of guns. Of shopping bags. A gun is far from the only thing that will stop a bad man. In fact, in most cases I know of, guns actually prove fairly ineffective at stopping bad things. Guns are nowhere near the best way to stop a bad man.

Love. Understanding. Respect. A determination to stop at nothing to avoid violence. These are the things that will stop bad men. I am not some hippy, nor a person who is naive. I know that not every madman can be reasoned with, can be hugged into inaction, or can be understood. But I do know that trying is the first, best thing.

By clamoring for your right to own a gun, to bear a gun, you are demonstrating a general refusal to believe an alternative exists. “My gun will protect me” is the most foolish lie I’ve ever heard someone believe. “My gun will make us safe” is an insidious lie I am sick of hearing. Our insistence on arming ourselves is what is killing us. Our guns are what are killing us. Guns were designed and ever intended to do one thing and one thing only: kill. Guns were not designed to kill animals. We were killing animals just fine. What we couldn’t do was penetrate armor. Animals don’t wear armor. People do. Wearing armor, generally, gives a person a better chance at surviving combat. A gun makes most armor ineffective. Guns were devised to kill people. That is their only reason for being created and existing.

Christian, how can you say that a gun is something you must be allowed to own, and bear? It may be American, but it is not Christian.

Jesus died to prove that death is the best final resort in the face of unreasonable violence. Love your enemy so completely that you let them kill you if they must.

I’m sorry. I no longer have the proper credentials to say this to many who call themselves Christians and expect to be heard. For the rest us who don’t identify with an ancient Jew, let me say that love is still the best option. You don’t have to believe the Bible to know that, because I know that, and there is much about the Bible I find hard to believe. I am not perfect, I do not have many facts, nor do I have a loud, persuasive voice.

But I do have a voice. And as an American, there is a First Amendment which gives me the right to use my voice. I chose to use my voice in place of a gun. I will always believe that a voice, a word, is the most powerful force in the universe. Does not even the Bible teach us the power of the Word of God? Words can be used to stop a madman from ever getting to the point of violence. Words can be used to stop armies from deploying for battle. Words can stop bad things from happening. And even if that is for one more moment, one more hour, one more day, is that not worth the salvation of blood? How cowardly must you be to weary of talking, of hearing another talk, so that you seek the most effective means of silencing their voice forever? Is not murder the ultimate violation of America’s First Amendment.

Also, seeing as how I am allowed to speak up, and I can’t keep quiet, though I wish desperately I could and avoid the inevitable arguments or counterpoints that may follow, I simply refuse to remain silent. To that end, you are certainly welcome to disagree. I am not hypocritical. You are allowed to speak. I am allowed to think you are wrong. Use your words. As God once said, “come now, let us reason together”.

Let us reason that an object which exists only to kill, unlike a baseball bat, is a bad thing, and the worst option for conflict resolution.

Right now, I feel pain every single time a person who claims to follow the Prince of Peace calls oh so loudly for a weapon of destruction to be theirs. This is part of why I lost my way. I couldn’t reconcile a lifestyle with what I knew to be true, or what an ancient book seemed to say in other parts of it that aren’t so nice. For all I know, Jesus was a rebel against God Himself, a God who calls ancient Israel’s King David, a mass butcherer, a man after his own heart. I didn’t know, I still don’t know, and so I stepped away to be true to what I did know. I lost my own way to better follow my conscience.

I’ve said what I had to say. I apologize it took so long. If you made it this far, thanks for listening.

Perhaps now I can rest. I so long for rest. And Peace.

One

What can one man do? Can one person change the world?

As I woke this morning in the wake of the 57th presidential election in the United States of America, I saw two broad reactions: fear and joy. Many among my family and friends are genuinely afraid of what our president will do to our country. At the same time, many of my friends (fewer of my family) are genuinely excited for what our president will do for our country.

I’ve not been alive that long, and in my life I’ve only paid close attention to the most recent election cycles. In all, I don’t think I’ve seen such extremes of emotions as I have following this election. Maybe it is because, really for the first time, this election has been most broadly covered not just by the news media, but my the vastly larger social media. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and every other social media web site that I can think of has exploded with photos, quips, blurbs, posts, and opinions of every kind. (Indeed, I am now blogging about the experience). I’ve read the thoughts of those around the country, and around the world, as people have discussed the next president of the United States.

Certainly never before have I been personally aware of the global implications of one election.

In my lifetime the world has become an increasingly tiny place. Globalization and world wide connections went from largely non-existent to commonplace. When I was a kid, I could talk on the telephone mounted on the wall to my grandmother in Ohio. Today, I can type on the telephone that fits into my pocket with room to spare to anyone in the world, or even the few people who orbit the world from the International Space Station. I receive live updates from a robot that is rolling along the surface of Mars. For a kid who loaded up the very first LEGO and Star Wars websites on a very slow modem, that is nothing short of incredible.

It is no wonder, then, that so many are invested in the politics of one nation.

Beyond the interest, beyond the investment, beyond the curiosity, I see real, raw emotions. People are crying, hurting, grieving, cheering, shouting, laughing. Some believe that real progress has come, others feel that the apocalypse is nigh. How can that be? How can the election of one man, and the non-election of another (whom many people had never heard of a year ago) cause such emotion?

I think because now, more than ever, one small voice can change the world. One person can impact everyone. Recently several dictatorships have crumbled, several countries saw revolutions of freedom, and in at least one of those revolutions, social media facilitated that revolution. Instead of one Paul Revere there were hundreds, and instead of one route and one man shouting, there were hundreds of avenues of communication and hundreds of voices shouting.

But each of those voices is one of many, and unless you are looking for them, tuned in to them, you might not ever hear them. Now, more than ever, the person who controls the loudest, widest megaphone is still heard over all the rest. More people hear the President of the United States than any single voice on Twitter.

Can Barack Obama’s voice carry that much power? Can he, speaking from the Oval Office, change the world? Can one man destroy or exalt a nation?

Only if many other voices join his. One man, one woman, one person, is powerless by themselves. This has been, and always will be, the case.

George Washington could not and did not forge a new nation single handedly. Abraham Lincoln could not and did not keep American one nation by himself. Even Jesus Christ, whom many consider to be the greatest man who ever lived (or lives still), would have been just one of many messiahs who walked Palestine had it not been for the voices of his followers who spread the good news of the man from Galilee to every corner of the globe, who wrote about him while in prison, exile, or under the threat of death. Maybe Jesus was God, that is for each person to decide, but my point is that by choosing to avail himself of the help of humanity, Jesus was every bit as dependent on the joining together of many voices for his message to be heard. How else could billions be swayed by his message of love and faith when, at most, mere hundreds personally witnessed his life and death, and alleged resurrection.

How do we expect that one man, Barack Obama, can destroy or exalt America by himself? Would Mitt Romney have rescued American and put it back on the right path?

The president is one person in one White House. The supreme court justices are nine people. There are 100 men and women in the Senate. The House of Representatives contains 435 voting members. This country has well over 300 million citizens. Obama presides by the consent of the governed. The supreme court judges by the consent of the governed. The senate legislates by the consent of the governed. Representatives represent by the consent of the governed. Five hundred and forty-five people govern a United States of three hundred million people. Every single one of the four hundred and thirty-five are replaceable by any one of the 300 million (eventually).

We are a nation of the people, by the people, for the people.

One man is powerless against the good or evil 300 million people can do. The reality is that no policy of the White House, no law of Capitol Hill, not decision of the Supreme Court can truly govern the heart of one person. George Washington was bound by, and subject to, the laws of the King of England. Laws he ignored to lead a revolution. Jesus was bound by, and subject to, the laws of Moses and the laws of Caesar, many of which he ignored to lead a different sort of revolution.

Fear not, rejoice not, the responsibility to do good and to shape your country is now, and will always be, yours alone every single day. The good book says “To him who knows to do good, and does it not, to him it is wrong” and I do not disagree. Each and every day the will, the desire, and the power to change your life, your family, your nation, and your world is in your hands. Four hundred and thirty-five people in Washington, D.C. cannot ever take that from you, not even the 435th man who lives on Pennsylvania Avenue for another four years.

A great man once said “be the change you want to see” and another great man once said “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Those two non-elected men changed the world despite their governments. Obama can do nothing unless a great many people share his voice. He would be one man shouting into a world of billions. Raise your voice, and do all that you can do for those who live and breathe right next to you. That is how America is made great, that is how the world is changed, and it has nothing to do with who is president of the United States of America.

You can live in fear of what Obama may do. You can live in joy of what Obama can do. But neither is as powerful as living in the knowledge of what you can do.

So only one question remains: what will you do?

What will I do?

Sunshine

My name is Phil, and I am depressed. Well, sort of.

I’ve been writing about my depression off and on for a few months, and I stopped because it seemed like I didn’t have anything more to say. I had hit a bit of a plateau and nothing seemed different or noteworthy. I did my thing every day, some days better than others, not too bad, nor too good. While in therapy, I resolved issues and finally brought to an end sources of mental and emotional pain. But I did not feel better.

I was intellectually happy to be clear of what had tormented me for so long, but resolving conflicts did not bring me emotional happiness. Closure, to be sure, maturity, definitely, and depth. Depth of understanding, and of insight. I felt like I had grown as a person, had emerged from a period of mental confusion, but I wasn’t better.

I longed to feel normal, to be happy, and to grasp the ability to exert power over my will. So I took the only avenue left to me: I did drugs.

It is amusing to me to phrase my recovery in those terms because the American “War on Drugs” has given drugs, and some medicines, a bit of a bad name. I’m not sure where we got the idea, as a society, that trying to outlaw and violently eradicate various drugs was a good or effective idea, since the exact same policy didn’t work for alcohol in the 20s. Anyway, my only previous interaction with mind altering drugs was in college when I experimented with kidney stones and their wonderful side effect: oxycodone. Boy, that stuff made me feel great. I’ll admit I went to a few classes high, and for a week or so I had no pain. Then my wonderful girlfriend, who is now my wonderful wife, eradicated my remaining stash. She did that because she realized what I didn’t: oxy may make me feel good, but it wasn’t exactly the best way to achieve that feeling. It may seem as if I am arguing for removing oxy from those who would seek to use it for other purposes than physical pain alleviation, but I’m not really. I could care less if people are getting high, much as I care less that people get drunk, or smoke themselves into cancer. Personal choice shouldn’t be curtailed. What I am saying is that while oxy fixed my symptoms, it didn’t fix my problems and Hannah wanted me to face my problems and get better for real. The end result would be about the same, but one method would be much more effective, permanent, and less annoying for those around me.

In the course of my therapeutic recovery, I was put on some medication. Not being a doctor, I can’t really explain what it does, but having paid attention in health class, I vaguely understand how it works, at least well enough for my own peace of mind. My initial dosage helped, it really did. I didn’t notice much change, but my wife did. I’ve described depression as being in a black room, and trying desperately to reach a door, through which there is light. I also talked about my everyday life as being one in which I am completely aware of my surroundings, of things I want to do, of actions I want to take but being completely unable to make the decision to act upon my wishes. It is a feeling of inertia, of moving through a chest deep pool of syrup. My initial dosage made the syrup knee deep, and made the room a murky light grey. I was better, but barely.

Recently, both my therapist and my doctor recommended increasing the dosage. So I did. And the difference has been remarkable. The very day in which I took the increase, I noticed a huge difference. I was content, even borderline happy. I had the power to exert my will. I saw things to do and I did them. I had complete freedom of movement. I looked around and was no longer in a black room but a light meadow. No longer was I held back by invisible forces; I could move freely. The only drawback with which I had to contend was ordinary, everyday, human laziness.

In other words, I am myself again. The best part is this: all of that was two weeks ago. I’ve waited to write about this new step, this new development because at first it was so strange, so overwhelming, so weird to me that I didn’t trust it. I wasn’t sure what to make of this new reality. It was wonderful and frightening all at the same time. And while, unlike oxy, I was not high, I was happy and energetic. I felt no pain for the first time in a very long time. So I waited to see if it would wear off, if my brain would adjust to the medication and things would simmer back down. So far, they haven’t. These days I get more done in an hour than I used to do in a week. I have made and enacted plans. I am getting my life moving again, simply because now I can.

Sure, I have bad days. But they are normal person bad days. They are bad because bad things happen in them. They are not bad simply because. I have good days that are normal people good days. They are good because nothing bad happens. I delight in little things again. Bleakness isn’t part of my reality.

So I wonder: am I still depressed? Yes. Clinical depression is a medical condition. If I were to stop taking my medication, I would be back in the black room before I knew it. There is a deficiency in my brain, just as there is a deficiency in my cardiovascular system that results in high blood pressure, just like there is a deficiency in my eyes that makes me nearsighted. I offset the other problems through the miracles of modern technology, namely other drugs and contact lenses, so too I offset my depression with medication. Also, I have learned to cope with the emotional trauma that is a part of life. Alcoholics can get treatment for being drunk, but the other part of their continued life as a sober person is the constant coping with the emotional part of alcoholism: the lack of control and the necessitation of constant vigilance. I learned, through my therapist, how to approach and understand emotional stresses so that I no longer allow them to overwhelm me, to take over my feelings, or to bar me from living a full life. I don’t do it perfectly yet, I am still very much at the start of this new journey, but the point is that now I can walk. I can start my journey anew.

I am, as the song goes, “walking on sunshine” and boy, does it feel great!

(read about my depression by searching my blog for the tag “depression“)