Any title will do…..it’s depression, after all!

I was so excited about blogging. I’m not sure why. I guess I felt it was going to give me an opportunity to really tell the tale of being a therapist who struggles with her own mental illness. Yep. That was the idea. It was an interesting idea. Then came the reality. I had to sit down and write. I was supposed to write when tired and in pain from my fibro. I was supposed to write when depression took away my interest in actually reaching my goals.

I move in and out of more depressed states. If you read the current DSM, it would qualify as “Atypical Depression.” It’s a depression where mood is a bit more dependent on circumstances. I have been in the deeper depressions, ones where nothing mattered. Now, I am in this “atypical” thing. I have moments when I’m doing something fun that I can actually feel the fun, the joy. But……there’s always a “but.”

Too often, just under the surface, lies that knowledge that the “real feelings,” the depression, will be back soon, very soon, within hours usually. My therapist pointed out that it might be worse for me because I do have the intellect and the knowledge that it’s just right there, just around the next corner. Inevitable. I have had times free of depression, but it has been many, many years. There was a time when I could feel joy without a whisper hidden within it of something more somber, more bleak. That was another, long ago, time.

It has become complicated by having fibromyalgia. I don’t want to push myself because I fear the repercussions of a fibro flare. I worry that I’ll make myself sicker for longer. Lately, I’ve decided to push it a bit more, just because I want to have moments, at least, when the depression dips below awareness. I pay for it. I have days like the last two where my body just hurt and I slept. I didn’t do anything much other than work on a costume and watch some TV. I didn’t wash the dogs or even walk them. I didn’t catch up on any of the work I need to do or take on even the smallest project at home. I didn’t connect with family or friends. I stayed to myself, and slept. I worried about all the things I needed to do, but I couldn’t even remember them all. My brain was tired and out of sorts.

But, for a moment, I had fun. There might have even been a sliver of time when that whisper of the depression hiding in my brain was silenced. It’s there; it’s hidden in my brain. It’s a part of how my brain works, or doesn’t work. It’s there, in the organ itself. Depression is the brain not working correctly, and it is something that, over time, actually changes the brain itself. Science has revealed that lovely fact of late. Depression actually causes brain damage of a sort.

I wonder if there is a way out for me, a way to be healthier in mind and body, a way to live more fully. For now, I’ll risk the moments. I’ll push to the point of frenzy, the point where mind and body forget the whispering inside. I know that there is often a price, that my body cannot always go where my brain needs it to go. There might be a price, where I lose days to sleep and pain in order to have moments of actual enjoyment. I may give up progress on longer term goals just because I have to have a moment of something as simple as “fun.” Life feels too hopeless without sneaking in a bit of it here and there.

I can’t write worth crap today. The brain is not there for it, at least not today. I know it will rebound, at least a bit. I know there will be times when words flow and resonate with the hearts of others. I only hope that there can be relief from the depression, from it’s ravages on my mind and my life, my time and my body.

I long to live. To really life. I will it with all my being. And, then I nap. It’s all I can do. Long.

Related articles

• Understanding Atypical Depression (everydayhealth.com)
• Relax Already: Get Out of Your Brain (fitsugar.com)

~ by Janice Holladay on September 19, 2011.