I opened a new blog post entry as I thought I had found some words. That could help you, that could help me. But I find myself a little lost. What is in my head is darkness, and I am not sure how helpful it can be to share even a shadow of it.
I once again find myself gripped by illness, my struggles, my weaknesses, whatever you want to call it. Everything seems very bleak, I know there are good things, good people, goodness in my life but I can't see it. I know I have an illness and that I am in intense therapy to help me recover. I have a supportive husband and lovely child. But there is a fog over everything. I am instead consumed with the reality created by my thoughts, fed by reactions of my body to the environment, inside and out, as I perceive it. I think therefore I am (too aware).
I realise the negative feedback loop of depression is in play once again, yet I know that this time it is more than that. This time, like everytime, feels different and I know it and yet I don't know it.
Each time I am overwhelmed by sadness, shame, anxiety and anger at myself it feels new. It feels like this is the part of me I missed, what is underneath. And that this interpretation of things, these thoughts, this level of fear is what was always there, there before but was somehow missed. The sunglasses are off. There is another level of despair to survive, another set of facts to try to understand and work out how bad they make me as a human being.
The fact that there are things about myself, my past and present that I can not share reinforce this sense of approaching an internal doom. The things I need to accept about myself seem impossible yet I must accept them in order to move on and change. And not be 'obsessed with my diagnosis' and fixated on myself and on survival.
Each time I survive a depression like this, another layer of myself is peeled off. Another more vulnerable me takes the next tentative steps forwards and tried not to give up. Feeling they have even less chance of rebuilding, less resources with which to do so. Again, no idea which reality is true - that of the endless survivor or that of the endless moaner/apologist. I am doing an intense program of therapy called Dialectical Behavioural Therapy and with medication thrown in the idea is that slowly I can create some sense of a life worth living.
This probably makes no sense (the usual apology) but it is how I see things today. May it be of some use to someone. Know it has helped somewhat to share.
