Maybe it's the weather and I just need to invest in one of those ridiculous sunlight therapy lamp things. (But have you seen the instructions for those things? The ones you have to follow exactly or you might as well just throw them out the window?)
Maybe it's some sort of spiritual thing, and I just don't love Jesus enough. (Is there a depressed person's version of the Prayer of Jabez, some magic supernatural God-controlling silver bullet for emotion?)
Maybe it's because I'm ashamed of all my wasted potential and I just need a time machine to travel back in time in order to tell my defiant and idealistic 19 year old self to choose a reasonable college major.
Maybe it's solely physical and I just need to start taking all the medication.
Or maybe I'm just going through some sort of lovely third-of-my-life crisis, wherein I revisit the angst of my teen years. Maybe I just need to blast Nirvana, lock myself in my room, write dark poetry and hate my parents. Maybe.
Or maybe I'm still experiencing post-traumatic symptoms from almost losing my youngest child some seven years ago. Maybe I need therapy. Or again, all the drugs.
Whatever the cause(s) (let's just go ahead and decide it's because I'm a highly-sensitive genius, because I definitely favor that theory), I regularly find myself balled up on the floor, overwhelmed by life and just...sad.
Yeah, I know it seems ridiculous. My life is nice enough. There are people out there with real struggles who aren't angst-ridden basket-cases. I know. I hate myself for being this way. For inflicting it on other people. But then I wonder how many people actually know? How many people see all that sadness and anxiety, and hopelessness that is raging just below the surface. I wonder if maybe I smile just enough and function just enough to hide all of this emotional nonsense from the people around me.
And I wonder if I'm not the only one.
A while back, I wrote this. And then I buried it. Because no one wants to hear me whine. But here's the deal. It's honest. And I hate burying honest things. I highly doubt it's healthy. This is my life. Every single day, mostly. For no apparent reason. It just is:
The morning before the afternoon that everyone found out that Robin Williams committed suicide I spent in bed murmuring the repeated mantra, "I wish I weren't. I wish I weren't. I wish I weren't." This has been my mantra for weeks. Months. "I wish I weren't. I wish I weren't." Not a death wish, exactly. Not a plan for suicide. And please, understand this. Not selfish. Not trying to escape pain or sadness or hopelessness. Just depression, plain and simple. That cold, dull ache. That utterly heavy nothingness. And the gnawing, relentless belief that the world would be better if I would just stop burdening it with myself. That my children would be better if they had a functional, happy, wholesome mother who could do ordinary mother things like, say, fold laundry, wash dishes and brush hair without curling up into an overwhelmed fetal heap and weeping. If I could just somehow free them from the weeping mother, and leave them to some bubbly, busybody, maternal type who didn't go into existential crisis every single time she gardened, that would be a gift to them and to the world, right?
Depression is insidious. It gets a stranglehold on brains that move too quickly. That think too much. Nerves that feel too readily and with too much intensity. Chemicals that are so precariously imbalanced and that play with such reckless abandon on body and emotions. And depression doesn't let you stand detached and identify it for what it is. It lets you, no, makes you blame yourself. I am too weak. I am too melodramatic. I am too privileged and expect too much from life. I don't try hard enough. I am lazy. I am unmotivated. I don't care about my kids.
And so I try to do all the things everyone is always telling me to do to fix it. (People are oh, so helpful). I answer my phone even when it hurts (and when I can't because my fingers are made of lead and I panic and throw that terrifying intrusion across the room and curl up in a ball and hide from it, I make the very difficult effort to call back later). I leave my house. Every day. I try not to spend all of my free time in bed crying. I play with my kids, appreciate, and enjoy them. I list in my head the things I'm grateful for. Say prayers of gratitude. I eat as well as I can. Get out and do things. Smile. I try so hard to make the mantra, "I am glad that I am," instead of "I wish I weren't." But even when I succeed, "I am glad that I am" reverberates with "I wish I weren't." It's the obvious lie. No matter how many times I cheerfully tell myself that I am telling the truth, this little cognitive trick will not conquer the darkness.
I hate myself, the trajectory of my life (how did I fail to waste any and all potential I might have had?), my hatred of myself and my life, I resent other people for being successful and happy. I am tired, self-loathing, and...
...and in conclusion, I'm going to go ahead and get that high-maintenance light therapy lamp, therapy, angry poetry journal, and of course, all the drugs.
(This is not a cry for help (no worries, I plan to remain very much alive). This is not an attempt to get attention (not a fan of attention). This is definitely not an invitation for advice. This is just me trying to figure out, trying to articulate, why I can't sit through a prayer or a sermon with the message "you are loved," or "you are worth something" without feeling it as a full-on assault of everything I am. Why I can't hear "you are okay" without singing "shutupshutupshutupshutup" in my head. Maybe one day I will figure it out. In the mean time, the best I can do is not lie about it being otherwise.)
