I've struggled for quite some time with writing this post - or with whether I should even write it at all. This blog is meant to be fun, after all, and this topic is anything but. The long and the short of it is that, like most people out there, I'm not always happy - sometimes I'm the exact opposite of that. Sometimes it's exhausting to wake up every day and put on my "game face", and I think it's important to say this, to admit it, to have it out in the open. I know that for my part, when I've seen other bloggers post about their struggles with depression, it's been eye-opening. It's made them seem more like real people, far more so than most other things that they post.
I can go months without struggling like this - sometimes years. Wake up, put in my contacts, forget about that time I ramped myself up for lasik and it turned out that I wasn't a candidate. Take my dogs for a run and let my mind go blank, just put one foot in front of the other for two or three miles and let the adrenaline flow through me and heal me. Shower, eat breakfast, drive to work, do my job (admittedly, some days better than others), come home, cook dinner, write or read or watch TV or do a combination of those three things. On the weekends, I sleep late, clean my house, go out with friends. I'm really just a completely normal person, when it comes down to it, and I've never really aspired to be anything but.
I'm lucky, I know this. I have a roof over my head, a good job, great pets, wonderful friends, an amazing husband. I'm healthy, and if I'm not always happy with my body or my weight or whatever, I've accepted that this is who I am and how I look. I've more than accepted it - I've embraced it, especially the past few years.
And I can't even say that all of that isn't enough, because it is - yet it doesn't stop me from getting sucked into these funks. I'm probably even lucky that for most of my life, they've been few and far apart - and, in general, situational.
But sometimes it's overwhelming, sometimes it's
not just situational, and sometimes I break. I can't run away from it any more. Last summer was one of those times, and now again - these past few weeks - it's felt like wave after wave is crashing into me...and far too often I feel like I'm drowning.
You'd never know it to look at me, I'm sure. This is one of the few photos of me taken during the height of my depression last year.
The thing is, if there's one thing I've learned in my 30+ years on this Earth, it's not to take anything - especially myself - too seriously.
Unfortunately, even that fails me sometimes, and now is one of those times. Seriously, taking care of oneself can be tiresome, and right now...I've been bled dry.
Don't get me wrong - I'll be okay. One way or another, I always am. The biggest issue is that I hate admitting that I battle with this. I hate admitting that I'm vulnerable. I hate, hate,
hate with a fucking passion excuse my language, being emotional. At all. When I'm more me, I can listen to my loved ones, make the proper noises and expressions, give advice (which I can't call proper, because I say what I feel needs to be said whether people want to hear it or not). When I'm less me, like right now, I don't even want to talk to people. I don't want to Facebook message or chat, I don't want to text, I don't want to call, I don't want to be
around anyone. It takes too much effort to
care.
But I
do care, and that's the problem. I care about my husband and my marriage. I care about my friends and their problems and their triumphs. I care about my pets and their health and happiness. I care about my weight and about supporting myself and about doing something more than just getting through each day.
So I force myself out of bed in the mornings, even when I don't want to get out of bed. I force myself to put in contacts and harness my dogs and take them for a run. I force myself to shower, because honestly I don't think anyone else wants to smell me after a couple of showerless days, any more than I want to smell myself at that point. I go to work and force myself to be a productive member of society. I go from being cold to being overly emotional to being suddenly and inexplicably on the road to healing.
Who knows what will break me out of it this time - previously, it's been everything from a chat with my mentor on "The Rock" behind the Sunset manager's office at MGM; to a random night spent with an old friend, a night made me reevaluate everything about my life; to hanging out on a balcony on the 20-somethingth floor of the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta, surrounded by a bunch of strangers at the Dragon*Con ABC party.
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| Post-"The Rock" Chat. |
 |
| Post-random-life-reevaluation |
 |
| "Holy crap I can attend a party full of random strangers all by myself and feel a million times better." |
Regardless...something will change, something will happen, and in a week, or a month, or two, three, four months, the way I feel right now will be a distant memory.
Until, of course, the next time it comes to call. There's no way to prepare for it, really - not as it effects me. Sometimes I'm grateful for that, and sometimes I almost wish that constant therapy and/or medication would work for me. But we're all different, and the way we battle things is different, and I suppose that this just has to be my way.
Some days I'm more accepting of that than others. I'm writing this on Tuesday, May 14th, 2013, and this is decidedly
not one of those days.
But tomorrow may be, or perhaps the day after, and
that is what I focus on.
That is what pushes and pulls and at times even
carries me forward.
