Yesterday drained me. It’s been tough to get the wheels turning today. There’s a part of my soul that is weighed down beneath the waves as they collapse on the beachhead and another is soaring majestically above, an eagle riding the warm updrafts of summer air never needing to flap it’s wings. Maybe this afternoon or maybe 3 days from now, those two parts will meet in the whitecaps and spray that lives in between. It’s hard looking at that and not worrying about it, for living only in the past and the future is how my mind wants to exist.
Never in the now, enjoying the moment, simply existing in the world around me.
My days are filled with regret and joy from past experiences. I try to relive the good times in the past, reminiscing the same moments over and over in my mind but the regrets soon push them out and the pain I have felt and caused others takes over. Shame, absolute shame, overwhelms me and the feeling of worthlessness soon follows. The loss of self esteem reminds me of more mistakes of the past. Some call it an avalanche, starting small and growing until it reaches bottom but I see mine differently.
A young maiden sitting in a barn spins wool into yarn. She peddles and peddles turning a lump of unformed hair into tiny, strong strands that begin to accumulate. NO matter how long she spins, and how hard she works, there is always more wool to work on until eventually she can work no more. The yarn lies upon her like a knotted net and the more she struggles to escape, the more knots are formed and the tighter the hold on her becomes. The pressure on her increases and soon her limbs become numb as the blood supply is cut off to them, until she struggles no more.
Weighed down under the water crashing above, we exist in a net of emotion that restricts us from escaping. It’s the net we created ourselves and worked hard on to make it strong. We were told that these emotions we have each day are not to be shown to the rest of the world, best to keep them inside and not upset those around us. It’s what we were taught from a young age and we got very good at it.
Too good.
Now we don’t know how to live in a life where these emotions are allowed and welcomed by those around us. Many others wish we could put the genie back in the bottle and live our lives the way we were, the way they know how we will act. Many want us to stay within the net and it’s hard not to do as they say for the emotions we are letting out frighten us far more than they could ever realize.
At this I start worrying. What will I say next? When’s the next time I’m going to loose control? Will the people around me try and understand? Will they care? Do they want me to say the truth, what I feel, what I think, what I’m afraid of, who I will hurt next, how much they mean to me, how little I mean to myself…
This is the low me. This is being stuck. This is the me that writes these words. This is the me that wishes even one person could ever understand what it’s like to be me while knowing that the closest anyone will ever get is an understanding of what it’s like to be themselves and how it relates to me. I can see another person with depression and understand how low they get and the pain they feel but I will never understand what it feels like for them. As much as I try to let others in, it is a futile effort because there simply aren’t words on this planet to explain it, even a little.
I look up towards the surface of the water and through the distortion I peer into the sky and I see the other part of me gliding above, carefree and seeing my life from a point of perspective. It is from here that I find pieces of clarity and happiness. I can step outside of my tumultuous existence and see the beauty of the world around me and the love shared between people I care about. I can soar from cloud to cloud, from thought to thought and emotion to emotion without being weighed down by them.
But this is also the place of carelessness and giving up. It is the place that I can exist within completely alone. It is the cold, dark bedroom or the corner booth in the coffee shop with headphones on as I tune out everything around me. It is the place I go to leave all emotion behind choosing simply to not care. This is the place where clouds of emotion obscure your vision.
This place seems full of contentment but is just as dangerous as the depths of the water below. This is the place where clouds of emotion obscure your vision and those clouds build and build until you don’t see the blue sky anymore.
Self-care can be the first thing to fall away. Avoidance of doctors, dentists, exercise, healthy eating, sleep patterns and hygiene are simply unimportant when you exist in this place. The freedom that comes with riding the air currents and not working to stay adrift comes at a price, for eventually the warm rising air will cool, and suddenly there is nothing holding you in the air.
Sure, you still have the wings but you don’t know how to use them. You don’t trust them. The muscles have atrophied. From the heights you rose to there is only one way left to go and gravity is all to eager to bring you back to the surface of life that you have been avoiding for so many years. As you begin to fall you see far below the water’s surface, that you have avoided for so long, rushing towards you like a blacktop parking lot. You will do anything to avoid hitting that surface so you begin to grasp at the air, looking to find anything to slow your fall.
This is fall back to reality I dreaded for so many years and I too would have done anything to avoid it. I turned to alcohol to push away the fear and nub my body for the impending impact. I shed my life of as much emotional weight as I could, pushing away friends and family as quickly as I could. The ground of reality still accelerated towards me and I shed even more weight but this time discarding them for good. Lifelong friends were cut completely from my life. I left my job of over 20 years. I even began to give away my possessions for they no longer held any meaning to me. The last things I tried to cut free were my family and then my life itself, and I almost succeeded.
The past 24 hours have separated the two parts of my life once again, although not nearly to the extent that they once were. Right now my family is out spending time together at the mall before my brother, his wife and children go back home but I sit in a pitch black bedroom, still in bed with only the light of this computer keeping me from allowing the numbness to come back once again. At the same time, if I close my eyes I can think of yesterday at my uncle’s memorial and feel the soaring perspective again. He was a man that loved to find excuses to bring his extended family once again for a day of laughs and love. Even after passing he did it once again.
Surviving depression isn’t about being happy all of the time or embracing the emotions that weigh us down or being carefree or careless. It’s about riding the waves of the surface, letting the emotions come and go, and letting the thoughts go in and go out. It’s about having a place you want to be and swimming to get there. Sometimes the waves help you and sometimes you have to fight into them. Sometimes you even have to let go and allow the waves to take you back to shore so you can reevaluate and start again.
As you are swimming you can open your eyes and see the seabed below and know what it’s like to crawl among the crabs and starfish, in a life of nearly pure darkness. You can also turn over, allowing the blue sky to wash over you while the clouds of emotion that once were once blocking your view serve only as contrast to the clarity you can now see from a better perspective.
Rational Ramblings 