Liar, liar, pants on fire!
If only it was as easy to recognize a liar as it is someone with their pants on fire.
Depression is a liar, the worst kind because it speaks in your own voice. Like your conscience's evil twin, to borrow a soap opera trope. It leaves just enough truth so that the implausibility of a thought isn't even a spark, let alone a fire that consumes whatever it pleases. Including pants.
For about eighteen years, I've struggled with major/clinical/serious depression. It's much more than sadness. It's death while still being forced to live. I've been medicated, I've gone through counseling, at one point I did an outpatient program. All have been helpful, at least for awhile. But the depression comes back, always softly, usually slowly. The way I think changes with subtleness. By the time I realize it's there, I'm so wrapped in the comfort (odd, I know, but I will get into that) of it I don't want to fight. See, depression is also a seducer. A liar and seducer. I could probably nickname my depression Bill Clinton. Or Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the interest of partisan balance.
It always takes a metaphorical slap to my face to get me concerned about where my head is going. This time, it was the threat of losing my job. So now, I'm armed with new allies, I hope. A new combination of meds I'm hoping will give me energy and raise my mood.
But I need more than that.I need to do more than that. It's a battle I need to wage in words. I need to face down and eradicate the lies I tell myself.
I don't know if this is "it", the time I finally fully embrace the fact that I have an illness or disorder or whatever label it deserves. What I do know is that I said something the other day to my therapist that I haven't even thought in probably five years.
I want to be happy.
I once started to write a story called "Finding the Warrior Within", after a phrase I'd heard in the outpatient therapy program. That's what I need to do.
So, this blog will probably be self-indulgent, self-centered, and self-absorbed. And maybe no one will read it but me and a few friends. That's fine. It's fine even if it's just me. But I hope others do. The more people who don't intimately know Bill Clin...uh, Ahhnold...uh, Depression read about personal experiences with it, the better.
And maybe I'll become well-renowned and they'll make a movie about me like that Julie lady in Julie and Julia. (A movie which I've never seen.) No. I'm not that ambitious.
Of course, that may just be one of the lies Depression told me.
Right?
Coming soon...A lie Depression told me. A big one.
This one: I don't really need to be happy.
Putting into words the things that haunt us is a great way to see things for what they actually are and not what you think they are (if that makes sense). I often will write things out when I'm lost; it helps point me in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteI feel that your new blog will be a wonderful outlet and clarifying process for you. That and you can get some internet love, which is always nice. :)
Wonderful first post, Heather. Thank you for sharing this.
Amanda, thanks so much. I hope that the blog will be that for me and maybe give others an idea of what depression is like. It's so hard to understand, even from the inside. :)
ReplyDeleteI think it's interesting that you mention the disconnect between reality and perception...that's a huge thing in my experience. :)
Thank you for reading! And now, here's hoping I keep it up. :)