To keep it short and sweet (and because my writing prowess/energy/EVERYTHING is at its lowest ebb): I have depression. I'm on antidepressants, and most of the time they keep me on an even keel, but today was what I refer to as one of my Bad Days. They don't happen very often (thank GOD), but when they do, it's killer. It's like the depression has come back all over again full force and there's not a damn thing I can do to stop it. I can't even distract myself or try to make myself feel better because all interest in everything has completely evaporated. I have no joy, no happiness, no hope. Luckily this feeling doesn't seem to last any longer than a day or two and it's generally tied to my period (thanks, hormones!) so I can sort of predict it and prepare. But that still doesn't make it any easier.
I'm on the tail end of one of those days now. Earlier I thought reading about someone else's battle with depression might help, so for that reason I picked up my library copy of Tracy Thompson's memoir The Beast: A Reckoning with Depression. Recognizing myself in bits of it helped me feel less alone and thus a little better (a minor miracle on days like today). This reminded me that I had also read an article on CNN ages ago about how people with depression should go public about it to help end the stigma and help others feel less isolated in their struggles.
So that's part of what I'd like to do with this blog over time. Chronicle my good days and my bad days so that others (and myself!) can see it's not all bad days all the time. And maybe someone in the throes of one of their own Bad Days will come across this blog and feel what Thompson described:
...In that moment, as simplistic as it sounded, he had offered me a fragment of that thing I craved: connection. I had only wanted it from people on the other side of the glass. Now it was as if out of dozens of people trapped with me inside that glass cage, one had stopped, turned to me, and said, "I am caught too...."
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