NaBloPoMo (depression edition)

Depression creeps up on you. Depression is like someone poisoning your food, a little at a time, so you don't realize you're getting sick, you think you're just having an "off" day. You're tired a lot. Little by little your mind is shutting down. You go numb.

I'm at a point where I don't know and don't care if it's something to do with the medication or my cycle or what. Does it matter why I'm depressed? Is there even a reason? My period could come tomorrow and I might feel completely different about my life. I feel guilty about the fact that I have a loving husband, that I'm healthy, that I have so much, and yet I am unsatisfied. There's another symptom. Guilt. It doesn't really matter. All I know is that I fell asleep in a library chair at school yesterday, after getting 10 hours of sleep the night before because I'd fallen asleep in all my clothes at 10 p.m. And then I remembered.

There was another chair I used to fall asleep in. It was a red chair. It sat in the corner of the room where I used to watch kids at a homeless shelter. That was my first job out of college. I was depressed then. And when the kids had naptime, I would sit in that chair without the energy to do anything else. I would doze to escape my thoughts. Sitting in that library chair yesterday, dozing, not caring what time it was or whether I was late to class, I remembered that I have been here before.

Drinking is one way to ignore depression. To stave it off. There are other ways. Sleeping. Watching TV. Working late. Distractions come in all forms. The thing about drinking is that it's a double edged sword. You can ignore things to a point, and then the floodgates are opened. Once your inhibitions are gone and you start talking, it all comes flooding out. And it's ugly.

Depression thoughts are ugly, as a rule, and I hate them. I hate to look at them. But once you let them out, you have to look at them. Once you share them with someone, they're hard to ignore. And then all you can do is muddle through it. If you're going through hell, keep on moving, right? This isn't hell. But it's an unpleasant place to be.