I've been at home now for a year. No miraculous changes have taken place, and learning to be satisfied with that has been a difficult task for me. I expected a drastic makeover of my entire life- body, home, business. I frankly expected to become a totally different person. Yet here I am, still me. Having been so goal-oriented, so to-do-list crazy at my job for SO very long, it's been weird staying at home and just being. It was last April that I spent those few but long days and nights in a hospital bed with needles stuck in me and wires attached to every naked surface, constantly being awakened to have an orderly roll me off to yet another machine, another test. It was the beginning of May when I settled down into my new life as the happy homemaker. One year, but it seems like so much longer. In some ways I feel as though I haven't made as much progress as I had hoped- especially with my weight loss efforts. But in other ways, I'm miles beyond that point in my life from last April. I feel so much better, I feel so much lighter. I am feeling things other than hate and anger and blackness. Occasionally I even like myself.
I don't have a clear path on what I want to do with my life. Some days it's enough to just be able to function. The days when chronic pain makes it damn near impossible to even sit in a chair comfortably, heck I am ecstatic if my main accomplishment is unloading the dishwasher that morning. The days when my depression is overwhelming, I can only get lost in a good book and count the hours down, hoping that tomorrow will be better. Some days it is, some days it isn't. But that's my life, that's life for a lot of people. I am not unique in that aspect. Dealing with it, accepting it, is getting easier for me as time goes by. I don't have to fight the depression, wearing myself out. I don't have to turn every day into a battle and drown in anger. Depression is a wave, and I'm finally learning to surf! It's been so much better, being able to tell myself it's just one day, maybe two, but it doesn't undo all the good days, the great days, the magical moments I get to spend with J.
The days of wanting to cease to exist, just to escape the pain of both my body and my soul, seem to be finally over. I don't feel that way anymore. I don't get behind the wheel and want to crash my car into a pole. The pain is temporary, the sad feelings are fleeting and momentary and they WILL be gone eventually. I know they will return, but I don't sit around feeling anxious anymore about when that next brick wall will come tumbling down over me, burying me in the dark and heaviness that is my depression. It does suck, depression. But there are things in my life that are stronger, there are things in my life that I love and want to experience fully. A year ago, depression controlled every waking second of my life, it had a rope tight around my neck and pulled me around wherever it felt like dragging me, places I didn't want to go. Pretty soon I started digging in my heels and it became a tug-of-war match, and I said no way. Now the depression is the shadow behind me- it's always there, even on sunny days, but I'm in the lead and in charge and it can only trail quietly after me. I never forget it's there, but I don't always have to look at it.
My life and my moods will always go up and down, and although that's true with everyone else out there, those of us with severe depression understand that our roller coaster ride is just a little more scary than the rest of the world. Having the year "off" has made me realize that the depression is inside me, it's part of me, it IS me. A stressful job, asshole friends, traffic, weather, diet, menopause, chronic pain, all play a part in how I feel, but they aren't the cause of it, and nothing is ever going to make the depression go away completely. True, I'm not on medication, and maybe that would make those bad days more bearable, but I'm okay with feeling the bad days lately. I understand a bad day, even an awful day when I can't see the light and it just hurts to be awake, is still okay and I'm still alive and I still have J, my family, my home, my precious kitties. Bad days just make the good days taste even sweeter.
Perhaps over this past year I haven't accomplished much in the way of career or finances or diet or DIY home projects. But maybe that will come, going forward, now that my emotional burdens have lessened. The fact that I feel so much better these days, is in itself a major goal, a self-remodeling project. And tomorrow or next week, whenever a really horrible day greets me- and it will, it's always coming- I know it won't get the best of me. I know I won't let it turn into a bad week, or a bad month. I will gather up a paperback, a big glass of iced coffee, my horde of fuzzy babies, and I'll soak in the sunshine on the back deck for awhile, listening to the crows and squirrels all chattering in the trees, and let that bright yellow heat burn away the black pain.
Last year we went to J's late grandmother's old home- his parents still own the property and it's been untouched except for routine yard work. We dug up several of her azaleas and brought them on a 300 mile ride back to our yard. J's father said we were wasting our time, we were transplanting them too late in the year, it was too hot, they wouldn't survive. But we did it anyhow, J said his grandfather had planted the azaleas long ago when he was still alive, and his grandmother had continued to nurture them all those many years after his passing. And I sit here right now looking out the office window, and I can see the big pink and white flowers around the mailbox out at the street. They did survive- being uprooted, being transplanted at the wrong time of their life cycle- and they are quite alive and full of color, full of renewal and green life and the best things in this world. They are my metaphor for today.
MISS GEE
(J putting up a bird feeder for his granny on a Mother's Day several years ago- and the azaleas we eventually brought home to our yard to remember her by.)
