TGIF

Christ on a bike, I forgot to post a Wordless Wednesday this week.  The easiest post of all.  Well, that's how the week has been.  When putting one foot in front of the other sometimes seems like too much.  It's that old black dog, my friends, hanging around again.

The news of the world is a contributor, for sure.  But the thing with depression is, it doesn't really care what's going on in your world when it shows up.  It comes, unbidden.  And doing something proactive at a time like this (like getting a referral from the doc for a therapist) just seems un-doable.  Of course it's doable.  And I will.  Baby steps.

First step was to come clean with my husband about how I am feeling/thinking.  That was hard.  I don't want to admit how shitty I'm feeling.  It makes it real, you know.  Then I have to actually do something about it, like working some old familiar steps learned time and time again.  Exercises on how to turn the bad thoughts around -- how to challenge the negatives against the reality.  I dug up an old workbook and found treasures inside.  Like this one:  "one foot in the past, one foot in the future, you are pooping on the present."  Ha!  If you could only see the stick figure I drew to illustrate that!

 

My current big gig is that when I'm falling asleep at night, I mentally run through every perceived fuck up I've every committed in my life.  In my sixty years of life.  This makes falling asleep a real challenge.  I console myself with, "you were a teenager -- what did  you know?"  and "we all do things we're ashamed of -- it's called being human."  Yada Yada Yada.  Several glasses of an adult beverage will finally put that mind to sleep, but it's not doing me any good over the long haul.  In fact, it's only making the  problem worse.  This was incredibly difficult to talk to my husband about.  But I did, so there's hope.  And he's no dummy -- he sees the rapidly disappearing bottles of wine and assorted liquors.

There is also hope in the stories of my friends on Facebook, of all places.  Though FB is filled with political landmines that I more often than not skim by these days, it is also a place filled with wonderful vacation stories and photographs, moments of delight with grandchildren or beloved pets, and kitten and puppy videos.  I think it would be great if all FB users could, for one flippin' day, commit to only posting personal posts of love, triumph, progress, and the strength of the human spirit, it would be an actual uplifting experience to log on.  Get that started for me, will  ya?

I know when my daughter posts photos of her children, my heart is joyful.  When others post photos of their children and grand children, my thoughts turn to how beautiful and magical the human experience is.  This is the mindset I want to live in.

Yeah, call me Pollyanna.  I don't care.

Last night I slept, for the first time in a long while, without the assistance of alcohol.  Just the act of telling the secret helped lift the burden of it all.  The insidiousness of depression is that it makes you afraid to talk about it.  Which only makes one go deeper into that whole.  I'm so thankful I have a supportive partner who can listen to me with an open mind.

I write about this crap because it helps.  And it may help someone else.  And those are good enough reasons.

More than good enough.