Ultimately, what I have to say is in the title with emphasis on the last part.
Back in November, I had a family emergency and I let go of all of my normal coping mechanisms. Because singular focus was necessary, no matter how much that annoyed my family.
And then December came. I was seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I COULD GET BACK. EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE. But nope.
My friend died. Horrifically. In the kind of way you only read about in the papers. This was not supposed to happen to someone I love.
And then I did something I never should have done: I judged my grief. I gave myself a couple of days to grieve and decided I should be normal again. The problem was that I wasn’t normal again. I was a mess. I didn’t want to be anywhere. Leaving my house wasn’t something I really wanted to do.
It happened right before Christmas and was over my head during a time when most were jolly. Then the actual holiday came. Some minor slight happened and I normally would have brushed it off to celebrate. Instead, the minor slight grew, and as I found myself riding in a car to my in-laws, I just unbuckled my seatbelt and got out of the car. I walked home. In wedges. In the cold. It wasn’t as far as it could have been, but it was far enough.
When I finally made it inside of my house, I quickly packed up all of my Christmas decorations. I tried, but it wasn’t going to happen and having reminders of the fact that it wasn’t going to happen was only making it worse.
The worst part of this was having my nephew call. I was crying and he tried to help by imparting his 20something wisdom. That kid…
A couple of days later, I went to my friend’s funeral. I saw a college friend and the many families that my friend had created in the places she had lived. It was cathartic. It was everything my friend was and still is. This was when I could close the book on the mourning. Because all of this really belonged to her real family and not me.
Except I still wasn’t there.
Every day, a little reminder of her showed up. Every day, I still didn’t really want to deal with life.
The whole situation was compounded by politics. I was judged for not doing enough. I was sent messages about things I should be doing. And my Facebook newsfeed was filled with the next crisis that I was expected to work myself up over. The more it was coming at me, the more I felt removed from it. I wanted to say, “Please stop.” Instead, I quietly removed a lot of people from my newsfeed and the pleas just seemed to die from my lack of response.
Then I heard the most heinous thing: Taking a mental health break from politics is a privilege.
I know many of you that said this don’t realize how hurtful this actually is to those of us dealing with depression. Taking care of myself is not privilege. Taking care of myself is the only way I can at all function normally. So yes, I took a break from the actions I would take in a normal situation. But I wasn’t in a normal situation.
January started with a horrible cold. Another weight on top of everything else. I was smothered.
I don’t react the way most people do to smothering. I have to dig and keep digging even if that digging seems insane to others. So I sold hats. Over the course of January, I sold 300 hats that I had to crochet. I sold too many hats. But it was a start. And I got working.
February came with a new but familiar symptom: I felt drugged. And this made me finally realize that depression had set in. It took well over a month to realize this. Why? Because in a lot of ways I was completely normal. My day job was going great. My relationship was great. But… I didn’t want to leave the house. I didn’t want to see people. I would do just about anything to be left alone. And maybe I was more than a little irritable. Oh and there was the whole only eating when reminded thing and an uncomfortable amount of soda consumed just so I could function.
This week, I found that I don’t want to make hats. Not even a passing interest in it. But I felt like going out of town and leaving my house. I felt like going to yoga. I felt like drinking more water than soda. I felt like being a person again. And the hats feel like a noose around my neck.
I’ll move through that noose. The good news is that I’m getting back to being me again. I can’t get there 100% yet, and I don’t think it would be healthy to do that. So today, I booked a hotel room. Tomorrow, I’ll do something else. And eventually, the hats will be done, so I can own my life again. It’s just small steps every day. They might get bigger again. They might not. I might be 100% the old me again. I might not. But right now, I want something different than what’s going on and that means I’m ready for whatever is next.
