I tried everything to fight my way out of it, and sometimes I thought I was winning. I kept telling myself:
If I could only get x, y or z accomplished, THEN I'll feel better...
It's just this dang (cloudy, rainy, snowy) weather. A little sunshine and I'll be back to myself
I'm just homesick, a couple days in Ruddles Mills and I'll be fine.
I just need to go to church regularly instead of hit and miss
I just need to lose some weight and quit smoking, then I'll get my confidence back..
I just need to focus on my job and get good at it again...
I'm really a praise hound, I just need some praise from someone...
And then, the more recent, the best one...
If only Deat were here...
Do I have a right to be depressed? Sure. My husband died a bit over a year and a half ago, and with him every plan I had for my life, and most of the parameters for my decision-making. Sure, I probably should still be a bit lost, a bit depressed.
But it's more than that. I've been battling depression since before he died... actually since before he got sick, since before B.B. was born... since before B.B. was even imagined. Even if Deat had never become sick, that damn "yuck feeling" would still be there running in the background like one of the myriad of processes in the background on my PC... not outwardly visible but sucking the power out just the same. For all my guessing and researching I wasn't recognizing what it was, so I wasn't counteracting it properly.
I like to think I'm a damn good actress. I like to think I hid it well. I like to think very few people suspected. I know there are some very dear friends of mine that I've had fooled (
I did a pretty good job of hiding it from myself for a long time. Yeah, yeah... Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. Shleprock says I'm one of the cheeriest optimists he knows. And I am a cheery optimist... but even the optimism has only gone so far. That sadness, that anxiety just kept coming back.
So this past summer I started giving in to it... I didn't call my friends so much. I spent more and more time alone. "Maybe if I get this one little project on the house done the blues will go away... but I don't feel like working on the project today... I'll play on my computer just a little while longer, THEN I'll tend to the things I've been procrastinating on. Oooops, I've wasted the whole day...time to go get the girls, put on the smile."
I kept thinking if I had set goals and accomplished them, THAT would make me feel better... the only problem was, I couldn't think of anything attainable that I wanted badly enough to work for it. I just haven't "wanted" anything... another symptom in itself.
I stopped fixing my hair, I stopped wearing makeup. It was an effort, an accomplishment, just to get a shower. I stopped answering the phone. I did what I had to do for the girls... but very little beyond that. I had a excuse for any and all of the symptoms. I found a multitude of excuses to stay home even though I had things out there in the world I needed to do. I'd started finding excuses to stay in my room anytime the girls weren't home.
So that's why I went to the Mills this past weekend. I desperately needed someone to "see" it. It had to be someone (in this case, several someones)"safe". Since there's a pretty strong history of depression in my family, I knew they would recognize it and call me on it. And they did.
I listed to my sister all the things I'd (done/been trying to do) to make it better... she answered "Oh, yeah, so how's that workin' for ya?" (Um, it hasn't been?)I've shunned medication for depression for over 5 years now, convinced that I should be able to overcome these feelings without it. (And how's that workin' for ya?)
I started on the road back to L-town with a list of things she told me to do... one of the main ones being find a really thorough mental-health professional to find the best medical and therapeutic treatment for this. As I drove, I started imagining what life would be like without this weight (figurative and physical) slowing my steps. It was a really nice picture... and for the first time in a long time, I have a REAL goal that makes me smile to think of what will come with it.
I'm going to fight this, with real weapons this time, and I am going to feel better.
And then, I really will be able to be the best Kelly I can be. I remember her. Without this weight, I know she's a pretty damn good one.
