If you’ve read here lately you know that I’m coming out of one of the longer depressions I’ve ever dealt with and although it’s still up and down I’m having more and more days when I’m myself again. Those days are bright and warm, and coming back is like the first brilliant, life-saving breath after spending too much time underwater. I’m writing this now to remind myself how wonderful it is to breathe and live and feel human, both because I need a reminder for next time depression lies to me and tells me it will never go away, and also because maybe you’re in the hole right now and need a reminder that it will get better.
It will.
And then maybe it will get bad again. The ups and downs are always there for those of us with forever broken brains. But that’s okay because you come back out. The good is worth battling through the bad. It’s so worth the meds and the therapy and the time and effort and the waiting.
There’s a park in my neighborhood that we go to sometimes. There’s a playground at the edge of the park and the swings look out onto a cemetery, which I always thought was both strange and also a bittersweet type of poetry. Small children laughing and playing as funerals pass. Life beginning and ending and ending and beginning all at once in the same small space.
Yesterday I stopped there and the playground was empty so I decided to swing, and I went so high I felt like I was flying. And I flew, in between death and childhood, up and down and up again…in the place where I felt alive again.
And it was beautiful.
All of it.
It was worth it.