Oh, Yeah, Now I Get It!

So, now that I am slowwwwly moving out from under the big dark cloud and my thoughts have regained the ability to embrace positivity, I can look back over the last few weeks and realize, Oh! I get it now!

It did kind of astonish me how in mid March I was ready to take on the world, and by mid-April was ready to quit it entirely.  Occasionally, people would remind me that life was not completely terrible and pointless, and that usually I was doing just fine.  It helped for a bit, but it was hard to see.

Depression gives you tunnel vision.  It makes you forget about sunlight and good cheer and general happiness.  It saps your energy. You start thinking that the cave is all there is to life.  You start to resent people who seem, you know, happy.  You forget that you matter.  You forget that anything matters.

So looking back, I can see exactly when the spiral started, can see the perfect storm of events almost designed to poke every one of my personal demons and get them all lined up with their pitchforks, can see that my efforts to simply avoid and wait out the hurricane of emotion -fear, sadness, anger- would never get me through that storm.

I probably over share about the depression stuff on this blog, but so many people struggle with this, and it really can be debilitating.  When I am fully me, I am energetic, enthusiastic, attentive, happy, rational, optimistic, and stable.  When the dark cloud takes over, I lose all of that, and life becomes more about wake up, work, sleep, lather, rinse, repeat.

It isn't as bad as it could be, and it certainly doesn't manifest in me the way I have seen it in people I love.  But that is all in hindsight.  In the middle, there isn't a lot of rational thought, just the big dark cloud in the way of everything I love and everything I know I am, and what I believe and hope to achieve.

So, as the sun is coming out again, and I get to remember who I am and the mysterious purpose for which I am alive, I forgive myself for all things I wish I could do differently when the dark cloud hovers, and simply resolve to remember the sunlight if the sky starts to darken again.