1-1-13 Telling it how it is.

In keeping with the one resolution I will make this year which is to live more fearlessly, I am going to post today.  This keeps my resolution because ordinarily I would not post today. I would not post today, because I am really, really depressed and nobody wants to read about that. But since I’m endeavouring to live a more authentic life, I’m going to tell you all about that.

I had a terrible New Year’s Eve. It couldn’t have sucked more. I was invited to a nice party with nice people, but at about 5pm without warning, depression started creeping in curling insidiously around me. I went through the motions of getting ready for the party.  But by 7pm I was curled up in a fetal position in bed. I told myself I would just have a little rest, I’d feel better by the time it was time to go. But I didn’t feel better. I felt worse, and worse and worse. By 8pm I knew there was no way that I could go to that party, with those nice people…I just couldn’t. I did not have the energy to smile and pretend to be ok.  And I couldn’t think of anything worse than being “that girl” at the party who sits mournfully in a corner alone waiting for people to ask her what the matter is…. Ugh. Everyone hates that girl.  Especially at a New Year’s Eve party.

My little girl who was all dressed up, in a cute glittery skirt, her beautiful blonde hair brushed away from her excited, glowing face came into my room.  “Mommy?! Aren’t you coming to the party?” I told her I had a headache. I did in fact have a headache. I had a headache from the horrible, disgusting internal struggle that is depression. My head throbbed from the non-stop, pounding, unrelenting chatter inside my head when I am battling the creeping onset of depression.  He face fell. “But mommy! You have to come!” I told her that she would have plenty of fun without me, she didn’t hang out with me when I was there and she wouldn’t miss me at all, she’d be playing with the other kids.  She started to cry, “I don’t want to go without you” she said.  My heart broke. I was ruining this holiday for my family. I was creating a traumatic memory for my child.  But there was nothing I could do. I was in the grip. That’s the worst part. When you desperately want to get out of the grip. You know you are hurting people, you are hurting the people you love best in the world and the internal struggle to stop doing that is immense. But you are paralyzed. You.just.can’t. snap.out.of.it.

These are the emotions I expected to feel on New Year’s Eve: hopeful, excited, grateful, loving, loved, warm, embraced, magnanimous, generous, purposeful, reflective.
These are the emotions I felt on New Year’s Eve (and continued to feel on New Year’s day): hopeless, depressed, bitter, cold, abandoned, excluded, lonely, small, selfish, angry,regretful and frustrated. So frustrated.

Today I managed to drag myself out of the house but only as far as the car as I watched my children sled down the sledding hill. I sat immobilized in the van as I watched my adorable cherubic toddler sliding down the hill with her father. My face was not frozen in a smile it was frozen in a stoic stare. I watched the scene out there, happy, energetic children, my faithful, kind, long suffering husband, cheerful, functional parents with their children, and I felt dead inside. My family and the scene outside may as well have been existing in a snow globe. It all looked so beautiful and perfect and I desperately wanted to be a part of it all,  but I was separated from it. Both literally and figuratively. I was on the outside looking in. I imagined that this is what it would feel like to be dead, to be a ghost watching their loved ones go on without them. To ache with everything that was in me to be with them, to hold them, to laugh with them. But to feel held back by something that I couldn’t escape, some unseen yet overwhelmingly powerful force.

The worst of it is fading now…which is why I can type this.  I will be OK.  I have some friends who care and “get”  it, I have family who may not get it but care. I am blessed. But I’m pushing “post” on this one, because this, this is depression. It is ugly, it is horrible. It knows no season. It doesn’t care that it it is New Year’s Day or Eve. It doesn’t care that this is supposed to be the day that I start fresh and hopeful that I had all sorts of cheerful plans for this day. It doesn’t give a single damn that I have beautiful children who cry because I can’t join them at a party, a sweet husband whose heart breaks when we do this..yet again. A precious baby whose days of sitting on an adorable little sled are numbered. It doesn’t care. This is depression.  It doesn’t let me end this post with a nice little flourish, a pretty little bow, a rallying cry. It just is.  It’s a bitch.

If you know someone with depression, please know this. They are more frustrated by it than you are. They are not just wallowing. They need you to show them that you care even if they push you away, even if they ignore your calls or don’t answer the door when you come by. They need you tell them that you love them, even if they act cold and petulant and petty toward you. They don’t need you to tell them how blessed they are, how much worse their life could be and how they should snap out of it. They know that. They know that only too well, and it makes them feel 100% worse to be reminded. And they would give anything to “snap out of it”. 

They need to know that you will not give up on them and that depression is what they have, not who they are.

I hope that 2013 is treating you gently so far and it if is not, strength my friend. Things will get better. It’s hard to believe it, it’s impossible to feel it, but from experience I know it. Things will get better. xo

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