And now quotes like this no longer feel like these unattainable wishes but instead feel like a call that I can answer.
Since starting on this new anti-depressant, I feel… capable.
For the first time, I think maybe ever, I feel what people have told me about myself for my whole life: that I am someone who creates stuff out of thin air, that I get an idea and then I act on it, that I walk into visions.
I never believed those words, or more accurately, I felt like a fraud who was pulling wool over the eyes of the speakers. Like, if they only knew all the things I was NOT doing, all the hours wasted in self-doubt and self-hatred, all the time spent thinking but not doing, all the days paralyzed in my bed or on the couch or staring off into space.
Even at my most productive, I never ever felt productive.
I felt embattled.
How could people not see that I was suffocating and drowning and that I was barely surviving, much less thriving? I would think this not in judgment of them but in judgment of myself. How could I pull off FOOLING so many?
Because you see, no matter how much I might have managed to do, there was one thing that I was doing 24/7, and because my brain has been like this for so long, I no longer saw this thing as unusual or “extra.”
I was fighting for my life. Fighting for every square inch of it. Fighting every second of every day.
I was fighting, as I’ve mentioned before, the Asshole in My Brain, and that Asshole was a NINJA.
I was convinced simultaneously that I was ill AND that my brain was normal, therefore this internal fight was normal and why couldn’t I get my shit together!? (Try untying THAT knot. It has everything to do with shaming my own spirit rather than acknowledging my biology.)
I was so used to living like this that I didn’t notice the energy it took. I would judge myself for not getting enough done from day to day, not noticing this huge thing I was accomplishing every single day — not defeating the Asshole outright, but winning each day’s battles so that I could live to fight again.
Back to this idea then that I wasn’t ever accomplishing what I knew I COULD deep down: perhaps, um, it was because I was using most of my fuel, most of my energy, for this war.
I was exhausted before I got out of bed.
I was done before I started on the lists of things that mattered to me.
This is the part of depression that those who don’t suffer can’t understand or see. It’s the part that is invisible to everyone around us because we might appear somewhat functional, but it’s also dangerously invisible to the person suffering, so no matter what we do or don’t do, we’re damned… by ourselves as ineffective, weak, soft-willed, disappointing.
This is the underbelly of an extreme cultural belief in self-sufficiency added to a multi-billion dollar industry called self-help.
Why can’t I fix myself? becomes part of the Asshole’s arsenal, really a nuclear-level weapon, which leads to a cycle of shame that leaves us attempting to hide our illness even more vigorously. Asshole wins.
And each day looks like this: I’m exhausted and so very close to the edge but somehow I function at a bare minimum level. It’s enough for people to remind me of “all the good work I do” when I say I am suffering from a crisis of meaning and purpose. Their cheering only adds to Assholes bullets of “see? they believe in you…but you’re nothing… you can’t even finish your basic to-do list… you can’t even ((insert the thing you want the most here))…” Shame. More shame. More hiding. Not getting the help you need because this is obviously not a “real illness” but something wrong with your character so I dive deeper into spiritual practices and exercise and wonder why the things I do help others but not me…
Rinse and repeat ad nauseam for the next couple of decades.
Somehow… SOMEHOW… I listened to my husband and got the help I’ve needed all along.
It’s taken until today for me to notice my increased energy.
Huh… isn’t that funny? No longer fighting an Asshole 24/7 means I have energy for other stuff.
It’s taken until today for me to notice that those spiritual practices weren’t a waste except for the fact that my brain was TOO TIRED to take it all in and that’s why I couldn’t seem to remember, couldn’t seem to keep doing it all, couldn’t seem to “ever freaking learn.”
Because now? My brain chemistry is being altered for the better and I can feel the power of that.
I can feel what “normal” really is and it’s NOT a daily battle for one’s life. It’s a sort of battling for a better life, for more art, for more love and friendship… but that’s not a battling of an asshole… that’s a battling for all that’s good and right and wonderful and beautiful in this world and that sort of battle feeds energy right back into us, invigorates us with meaning and purpose, and has us ready to get out of bed each day, grateful to be doing just that.