This Too Shall Pass

When I was young, the girl scouts & brownies had a daddy daughter dance every year. One year I got really sick and I couldn't go. I was so upset. And my dad brought me home a Precious Moments figure of a little boy holding a heat that was all broken and bandaged back together and it said " this too shall pass" Been wondering if that should be my next tat.

Heartbreak

I am angry, and I know I should be, hell I have every right to be. But sometimes when its quiet, and late at night, I remember what brought me there in the first place, and I cry. I cry for what was. I cry for what might have been. I cry for what will never be. It makes it harder, but out allows my heart not to harden, so maybe some day i will be brave enough to share it again.

I Am

HURT

      Broken

                                                                                                   empty

                                               sad
               

              lost

USED

`````````````````unappreciated

UNLOVED

unattractive


unhappy
                                                   BROKEN HEARTED
ANGRY
ashamed

         HYSTERICAL

overwhelmed

                           STUPID

lonely
             

ripped apart

crazy

raw

weak
Forgotten

losingthestars

“She cried a little, but only inside, because long ago she had decided she didn’t like crying because if you ever started to cry it seemed as if there was so much to cry about you almost couldn’t stop, and she didn’t like that at all.” 

  Lost in My Mind>

The Black Dog

Damn you black dog, damn you
You killer of of hope
You stripper of self confidence
You suffocater of joy
You eroder of spirit
You destroyer of ambition
You avalanche of sadness
You enabler of defeat
You shader of light
You devourer of energy
You tourcherer souls

Like a Little Girl

Suddenly the flood gates broke and I began saying the things I've been holding back for months. My father responds with the stuff he's been holding back. Suddenly I'm 10 years old again and I'm sobbing. I feel myself get light headed and the words begin to choke me again. I hear him and respond in my head, but all that comes out is tears. A constant flow of tears and my head spins. I occasionally try to defend myself or make him understand, but mostly I just cry. I feel trapped, and little. I am thankful when he ends it and says he is leaving. I wanted to stop arguing, stop hurting each other much before that, but again the words just stuck there. They swirl through my head at such a rate that I can hardly make sense of them, but they never escape my lips. As he leave I feel myself crumble. Once shin feeling like I have failed them. Feeling like I have failed me. Like I have just plain failed. I cry harder. I am still 10 years old, I feel disloyal, dishonest and cowardly. What I want most, is what every sad little girl wants. I want someone to scoop me up, wrap me in warmth, and make me feel safe. I look around and find no one there. Now I have failed and it has left me alone, unloved, and crying like a child while I wait for someone to come rescue me. But I am not a child, and knowing this makes me feel even more like I am not ok. Like there MUST be something wrong with me. Why am I crying like a child? Why am I sitting there alone in a dark store? Why am I so unlovable that I deserve to be sitting there alone when I have a husband, parents, and children, a family? What on Earth is wrong with me? What have I done that makes it so hard for someone to be compassionate toward me?

These feelings and questions overwhelm me, and by the time my husband arrives, I am beyond needy. I am a little girl, sitting in the dark, alone, scared, and feeling unimportant, unloved. He does not see this little girl though. The one who is scared and alone. What he sees is a grown woman who he expects to know and understand that he loves her. So the girl is once again alone, feeling like she is unlovable, unsafe, unimportant.

I tell the little girl. I love her. I hear her, and she gets quiet. But I know she is still inside of me. Still full of self doubt, and fear, and blame. She is still scared and lonely, just praying and waiting for someone to wrap her in warmth and safety.

Storm Clouds

While sometimes my depression sneaks up from behind and grabs hold of me with a cold, hard grip, sometimes I can see it coming long before it is full blown. Like a dark storm looming on the horizon, each cool breeze blowing it closer.

My last few weeks have been good, not in a mood sense, but in the sense that things are slowly turning around for me. I got a job, not just any job, but a job I am really excited about and that I think I will be really good at. My daughter and I chose a new pet. It's a bunny named Easter. She is friendly, funny, and low maintenance (at least compared to, say... a puppy). I took a week long vacation. Just me and one of my closest friends spending lots of time catching up, eating yummy food, having some drinks, and having all the conversations we have been saving up for each other. I had a parent teacher conference, and my child is doing really well in school, her whole class is ahead of where her teacher has ever been, in part because she had no snow days this year, but that's ok I can pretend. All of these things should make me happy, and truly they do. Yet...clouds. I see the joy in the moments around me and I feel almost robbed by my disorder, because I can not always rejoice in them.

Last week, the dark clouds broke and the rain started to pour down. I spent one full night just sobbing, literally sobbing and wanting to just give up and hide under my blankets for awhile. I am "high functioning" clinically depressed, meaning it has been years since I was so far down that I could not get out of bed, or go to work but weeks of going through the motions, walking around like a shell of a person while trying to figure out how to pay all my bills, trying to make a Easter memories, perfect birthdays, impress perspective bosses, smiling through uncomfortable, or flat out crappy, moments at work and with my mother. I end up taking on so much for other people, more than what they would ever ask of me, and yet no one can help lessen the weight of my own moods and worries. It sometimes feels unfair and it all caught up with me at once. I suddenly felt tired, tired of trying, tired of not being good enough, tired of fighting so hard to change the path I am on, tired of pretending that I am alright all the time, but most of all tired of day to day ups and downs of living with an anxiety and mood disorder. Why am I so damn tired all the time? Emotionally, physically, and mentally exhausted ALL. THE. TIME!!! Some days it feels like such a heavy weight to carry around, and I wish it could be lifted off for just a little while and I could have a break. I don't expect life to be easy, and I believe everyone has their cross to bare. I just want a time where I DON'T have to be strong, I DON'T have to struggle, I DON'T have to put "my best foot forward".

There was a time when I struggled with the idea of being labeled as metally ill. I believed it was situational, or some how temporary. Now, now I struggle with how permanent it is. I try to wrap my head around the idea that it is "ok" to feel this way, or that this is something that I will have to deal with for the rest of my life. I try to make sense of how I can not stop the moods, or the dark clouds and rain from coming, even when I see them on the horizon. All I can do is seek shelter, hunker down, and remind myself that I will survive the storm.

I Am Not Adrift, I Am Floating

I have been thrown around like a small boat a drift on the ocean lately. It is hard to live a stable life without a stable foundation. It seems, just as I fight my way up to the surface, and take a deep breath of fresh air, then the next wave crashes down and pushes me under again. At first it was very overwhelming. I was frantically trying to regain control, gasping for each breath. Trying to break the force of the wave, at least slightly, before it hit. But after awhile, I became tired, defeated by the endlessness of the waving ocean. Feeling like it was pointless to fight, pointless to try. Like the ocean was just to vast for me make it to shore. My emotions, depression and anxiety were at a peak, heightened even more by a falling out with a close friend, and then an incredibly emotional encounter with my mother. As I made my way into deeper waters, and the waves were more like wakes, I began to look around search for a direction. My tendency, at times like this, is to grasp at straws trying to find any, and every, way out of the situation. I go into panic mode and try whatever might make me feel less nervous, less afraid, less depressed. This time, though, I am not sure why (maybe because it has never worked before) I didn't do that. I began to look inside myself for the answer. I meditate on words of strength and faith. I have begun to float, calmly, just allowing myself to rise and fall with the waves. It was horrifying. I tend to be a person likes to have a direction, a destination, even if I fall short of reaching it. "Patience" a close friend preached to me. "Patience" he says, over and over, and amazingly I listen. The water seems to level out, and my world seems filled with signs to trust in God, trust in the universe, trust in myself. I am struggling to make peace with that trust. I struggle to not try and grab the ores and row my little boat in any direction just to feel movement. Amazing, suddenly, I realize I am not adrift, but in actually, I am able to row in any direction I choose. I am no longer held captive by the whim of the weather, or a chartered course. I can just float, until I figure out where I want to go, and that will be alright. Patience, and I just might be surprised at the direction that my little boat heads in, but whatever path I choose I will have faith that it is the path I was meant to be on.

Modest Mouse-Float (My new theme song.)

Predator and Prey

Sometimes my depression is like a relentless stalker. Lurking somewhere just out of sight, blending in with a blur of faces I pass at the grocery store. I can't see it, but I sense it there, just waiting to pounce. The same way a zebra senses the lioness watching it from behind the tall grass. There is an uneasiliness about me, a constant anxiety about what lies around each corner. I have a greater awareness of every sound, every movement, every person around me. I have a constant need to move, distract myself. It all begins to ware away at me. The tension in me builds until I become so overwhelmed and angry that I begin to show physical signs of anxiety. My hands visibly shake, and I appear tired. I have been trying to out run my own misery for so long that I begin to stumble. I become disorganized, my memory becomes spotty, and my energy level drops. I don't immediately see the changes in myself. I have no sense that I am beginning to make myself more and more vunerible. I am so wrapped up in the fear of the depression coming that I do not realize it is beginning to close in on me. Eventually, worn down by my own efforts to distract myself, the constant worrying about being ok, and the stress of life as a single mom with a crappy job, I am forced by my body to stop and breath. This is the moment, the moment I become the sick zebra who has strayed from the herd. And wham, like a sudden strike to the head it hits me. All at once the anger, the sadness, the anxiety, they become too much, and I go down. Feeling like I have been rendered helpless, I have nothing left to fight back with. Mundane, everyday tasks become more than I am able to muster up the energy or desire to do. Taking care of my child and sleep become my only goals for the day. I feel angry and weak for letting myself get overrun in such a way. That is when the the real damage starts. The recordings begin to play in my head, and with them comes all the memories. The memories of every time in my life that I didn't measure up or every time that I let my depression stalker overtake me. I fill with sadness, embarrassment, and fear. What if this is my whole life? What if I am not as capable as I thought I was? What if I need help? Who will help me? I don't want to be a burden to anyone, nor do I want to admit that I am not capable of keeping a home clean, working full-time, or being the best mom I can be to my little girl. Those are things I should be able to do. Those are things "normal" people do everyday. Why can't I? Why couldn't I just keep running? Why did I let myself get caught by this illness again?

And so it's been for the last few weeks. Constant need to run, distract myself, pretend not to feel the presence of my stalker behind me. Until two very bad days in a row knocked my feet out from under me, and down I came like an injured zebra, and the predator did not hesitate to snap me up in my moment of weakness. Looking back I can see so clearly all the little signs that I was in danger. I wonder if I could have stopped it some how. Cut it off at the pass. For now I sit here, wondering how I am going to get through the week, and even if I do what will happen next. How long will it long will it take to escape my captor? Once freed, how long will I be able to run before it catches up with me again?

One of Those Days...Again

You can tell most people you are having "one of those days", and they will nod sympathetically at you. But anyone who live with a mood disorder, knows this is not a run of the mill, crappy luck, tomorrow will be better kind of a day.  This is a, I had to decide whether to get out of bed kind of a day. The kind of day where you are miserable in your own skin.  The kind of day where you feel the overwhelming urge to cry at any given moment, in public, and somewhat hysterically. The kind of day where you are miserable to be around, and you are ok with that, because it is also the kind of day where most people make you want to kick them (or cry...or both). You don't want to be hugged, even by the people you love. Sometimes even by your own child. You don't want to talk to, or smile at strangers. You don't want to move because it just takes too much freaking energy. The worst part of it all, is that this is one of those kind of days that most people DON'T understand, nor can you explain it. It is not that anything especially bad or upsetting happened. Yeah, everyone has bad days, or bad moods, but this is beyond that. This is misery beyond what most people understand. This is depression. Not depression the mood, but depression the disorder. Which means it maybe truly just be "one of those days" because there was extra stress, or you didn't get enough sleep, or because you've had a hormone shift. OR it could be "one of those days" that settles in and stays for awhile, weeks maybe. The not knowing sometimes makes you even more miserable. Wondering how many of "those days" lie ahead before you begin to feel normal again (whatever that is.) Today was one of those days. God, how I hope tomorrow is a new day.