I didn't cry once today. Jan 15, 2014
The depression has lifted almost unnoticed.
What a strange thing it is. The way it comes almost like a virus caught from an invisible source. Impossible to stop from running its course through the body, where it goes is impossible to predict and all we can do is endure it, treat the symptoms while waiting for the end to come.
I haven't seen the end of this depression for many months, years. I thought it was here to stay, forever. I thought it was something I would live with like a disease that never goes away but kills slowly. Very slowly.
I feel the difference. A lightness. Lighter. Not completely gone but lifted. Hovering. I don't feel doomed that it will come back. I am just glad for the clarity in my head. I completed suduko with ease twice. Freaked me out a bit. Then solitaire was a breeze. Boring but nice. Interesting because I felt I could see and that before it was like walking through sludge.
I knew I could think clearly but that something was hindering me, that it wasn't really me. Frustration was constant. Every time I made a stupid mistake at work it would cause me to break out in a sweat because I knew that wasn't me. I'm better than this, I would tell myself. What is going on. Why don't I get this? Why can't I put the pieces together? How could I forget that? How could I miss that? I thought I checked that, twice. I thought I was going crazy. Poor Cindy. I know she thinks I'm just dumb. Some part of the old me is fighting so hard to be seen. I have gotten so frustrated I've cried.
Effortless is the word that comes to mind. Even this typing is easier, smoother, fluid. This is how I think everyone else lives every day. This is how much easier every day is for most people. I always looked at people as they passed by, in the car next to me, in line at the bank or grocery. I wondered what it must be like to be them. To feel normal. To feel at all. Everything was exhausting for me. Everything, even taking a shower.
I remember when it wasn't like that but those memories seem so far away and are small. It isn't just the panic. It's the depression that came from the panic and other things but mostly the panic.
I still am battling these bloody miserable hot flashes. They come and stop me in my tracks. I cannot function until I strip to almost nothing, get some ice water, turn the air or fan on. How they must take their toll on my body, wearing me out. I hear the furnace turn on so it must be cold. All I want to do is turn it off. If I fall asleep after I turned it off and it gets really cold and my body temperatures goes back to normal then I wake up sick and full of mucus, like I have a cold. They reek havoc. Almost unbearable. If I couldn't strip or cool off I feel I could die. And I'm not being dramatic. It would be painful, like torture.
But I didn't cry today.
