I have depression and I have learned how to deal with it by acknowledging I have it and that it will never go away. This does not mean I spend my life in the doldrums, weepy eternally on the inside with despair and negativity towards everyone else. I have good days. I have great months. I have really shitty weeks sometimes.
The way it works for me is depression is like another soul. I can feel the presence of this entity. She sometimes hangs around in the background and I just try to ignore her. I acknowledge that she is there, I respect her, though I do not care for her visits. She never tells me how long she’s staying. She never has a plan to work through. She makes things mentally difficult and I feel like I don’t have a choice. She literally steps in and takes over the controls. It can feel violating. When depression is ready to step from lingering to my left, I absorb her and its like I am viewing the world through my eyes and I can access what is going on mentally that she is going through but I don’t know why.
I spend a lot of the time in depression now just seeming to walk around in a fog trying to pick up a bunch of shattered pieces to make them whole again. And I do so like a concerned mother. While I can ‘see’ what is happening to me emotionally, I literally can’t do anything to overpower it. I have to just let it happen. I have to just end up sobbing in the bathtub for twenty minutes over something that happened earlier that day. I have to do my best to control the massive irritability that comes with it because its exhausting. She sets up camp and I try to help her through whatever she thinks she needs to go through.
I can see her out of the corner of my eye sometimes and I can tell her firmly to go away. It works mostly but its temporary. She’s letting me know she’s coming and with a mutual respectful relationship, she needs to respect my boundaries as well.
I was recently triggered by seeing a former uncles name on facebook supporting his sons recent troubles by offering to ‘come on down there with a baseball bat”. He’s 60+ years talking about beating trashy 30 year olds. It’s small town shit drama from the undereducated and idiotic. So I told cousin not to invite other bullies to the playground because thats just stupid. Then I publicly posted how “if you think children are too young to remember someone who beats the crap out of women, you’d be wrong because children see, hear and remember garbage.” Shut off the app and walked away for two days. When I was a small child this piece of shit used to beat my aunt and my mom. He belongs rotting in jail and as far as I’m concerned it makes me sick to my stomach he calls his sperm donation “son”. Any of his kids. He’s a foul asshole and I was severely triggered by his presence in my world.
I have been feeling very emotional about being alone. I really thought after COVID eased up I’d be out and about and be around people and it has made me realize, people just don’t want to be around me. I take off a day two months in advance to be told three weeks later they have other plans and can I move my day off? That takes two months to plan? I mean I literally have no plans and they know it. I tell them all the time how open I am. I make suggestions for things I want to do with them and then I see them post pics on facebook of them doing the activity, with someone else. When I have a long, bad day at work, I get to walk into my apartment and sit and cry before I have to do all the things I need to do because I have no help.
I am watching literally everyone around me celebrate success and happiness and achievement and I am sitting here just thinking I’m supposed to feel grateful nothing bad is happening to me right now.
And its bullshit.
No one would be able to afford any of these life goals on their own. NONE. I can’t even plan a vacation because I have no one to go with. It’s so awesome watching everyone else get to go on trips and get new cars and take vacations, buy new furniture, have a fucking companion to share and talk to. A coworker and my boss just got engaged as well. Everyone around me gets to be happy. I’m truly happy for them, I am. I don’t want them to have less, I want to know why I have to fight for everything and just pray it doesn’t blow away while trying to tell myself there isn’t something glaringly hideous about me that makes me completely unattractive to others.
Tried the very forward flirting thing, its a no.
It’s always a no.
So I know why depression is here now. I went from being triggered to a piece of shit human to reflecting on how right after that my aunt found a forever love. Someone that supported her and was her partner. Raised her kids and had his own. How even that piece of shit has a companion. Someone who I am sure misguidedly cares for him. Sure, I am very well aware i have friends that love and support me but if you think that is the same or a replacement, you’d be pretty ignorant.
Before I always had that little ray of hope or belief that I would find someone in my future. I was going to be happy alone or with someone regardless but it sure would be nice to have at least one healthy relationship in my life where i wasn’t being controlled. I felt I was an attractive, healthy woman. I don’t see why I should have to settle. My bills are paid by ME.
I have been relearning to trust my instincts over the past two years because the last narcissist really did a number on that realm and I can honesty say, that feeling of hope that I will have another relationship in my life, is non existent. When I reach out my feelers to that area, its just Gone. Not a negative space, just like looking at big empty space. As if that path I had in my life, all the achievements have been unlocked for what I need and the universe just swept away that road. I can look at the space and still define its purpose though.
I have to be ok with this. I don’t have a choice. I can continue to put myself out there and I will hold on to what I feel my value is. I am learning to try to find ways to be satisfied without human companionship but its never a replacement. I now have difficulties imagining a man touching me physically and the word ‘asexual’ has been floating around my head quite a bit more than I would like.
So this time when I noticed depression hanging about, I watched her for a minute and felt irritated because things were going SO well.... but when I broke down sobbing with that overwhelming emotion of being sad and angry and jealous and self pity and no one to turn to,
She listened to me.
She held me.
We cried together and she reminded me that it was ok to feel upset, to feel angry and to feel shit on. All very valid emotions to acknowledge and use to make ourselves better overall.
I knew it was going to be a long difficult weekend for me with my depression but she is a valued friend of mine.
