How do you stop one day from being like the next? One moment at a time is about all I can cope with right now. When Alicia or friends ask me what I have planned for the day ahead, that is one of those moments when the darkness floods in. I am caught in the possibility of setting out a plan that in all likelihood I will not achieve. When you ask me about the future, even the next hour, I have to look my propensity for failure in the eye, I don't have the courage to do that. If you do ask me about a moment other than the one I am in right now, chances are that I won't answer. It will be as if I don't hear you. But there is little point repeating the question. I can't hear you. It's my way of protecting myself.
So from one moment to the next I measure out the day in tiny little achievable parts. Whilst this has the advantage of protecting me from failure, it does not then follow that I am instead succeeding. In fact this leads to days without showering or dressing or even leaving my bed. I have for company my own tortured mind which is not in all honesty a very good friend to me at the moment. So rather than be with it I push it aside when I can, by writing here, talking to Alicia or getting in touch with you. That way I still belong, and depression doesn't succeed in casting me out altogether.
Alicia is buckling. She is carrying my weight and her own. It is really difficult for her. She is seemingly without choice. The cards I've been dealt make her a loser too... that can't be fair or easy to reconcile. She cried a little again this morning. The love that I feel for her is the same love that makes it unbearable to watch what this illness is doing to her. I can't watch.
So there is depression on the inside, eating me from within, and outside I have to witness the people I love being ripped apart by it, knowing I am the cause. I'm not suicidal, but how is that not the most attractive solution for everybody? I have to believe again this will pass. That is the only thing that makes my decision to live make any sense.
I know exactly what you are talking about. And it seems that the days go by in slow motion but the weeks and months just disappear. I am doing better now but I still have that. Its hard to move.
ReplyDeleteAmbyland I really sorry you know this too. I wouldn't wish it on anybody. I'm finding I can pick up in the evening and perhapse be more myself, getting involved in what is happening in our household. By contrast, at other times I lack any resilience or motivation or passion or joy for anything and just sort of rot away. I guess by the evening there is perhase less to fail at. Or that all the brain whirling keeps me tired and caged for most but not all of the day. Is that similar to your experience and would you mind telling me if there was anything you found helpful to break from it?
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