Category Archives: depression lies

Is today hard?  It feels hard.  Maybe it’s just me.

Maybe it’s the weather.  Or the stress of Hailey doing her finals and me being overwhelmed with everything.  Today feels like everything is wrong and dusty and too much and not enough.  Today feels like everyone hates everyone else because they feel like they were hated first, even though probably none of this is even real…it’s all just me and my fucked up brain chemistry feeling like everything is about to fall apart.

I know it’s not.  Logically.  Rationally.  I know that things are going well.

My editor sends me a third round of edits and loves what I’d done with the book.  It’s so close to being done and a year ago I thought I’d never finish it.  The bookstore is overwhelming and terrifying and Elizabeth and Victor are on edge with the impossible amount of what still has to be done but realistically this is normal and expected and the incredible support of the book club membership has saved us during these extra months of paying rent and construction on a building that won’t be ready until February or March.

There is far more good than bad but still I feel underwater today…panicky.

I take Hailey to a local university so she can take her finals for her online high school courses.  It’s pass or fail, these seven tests, and it means a half year of work could go up in smoke during a bout of test-taking anxiety and I try not to let my contagious anxiety rub off on her.  While she sits in the room with the proctors I wander the grounds of the convent that started the university.  I walk through the cemetery of women buried 100 years ago under the names they chose as nuns.  Everyone for what seems like a mile is Sister Mary.  Then a Joan of Arc.  The graves from the last 30 years are smaller as the cemetery starts to run out of room.  The bodies are buried three to a grave, one on top of the other.  I wonder if that will be a problem during the resurrection but I suspect if there is a resurrection you’re probably safer with a bunch of tough-ass zombie nuns around to make sure everyone is out.

I say a little prayer asking forgiveness for laughing about zombie nuns in case there is a God, and then I say another one for wondering if there is and then I realize I’ll be there forever asking for forgiveness if I don’t stop and besides, I’ve known a few nuns and former nuns and most of them had a fairly strong sense of humor so it’s probably fine.

I sit on a bench and read about the women here who battled with bishops and cardinals over control of the places they made their own, and about this convent that focused on education and on helping those less fortunate.  I read about how they insisted on integration in their schools long before desegregation began and about the women laying here who struggled in their own ways…who died far too young in many cases…whose stories I can’t research because they are buried under the names of women who came before them…and who were known for their struggles as well.

Something landed on my foot.  A dead butterfly.

Only it wasn’t.  It was hard and beautiful and fragile and in the exact shape of a butterfly or moth.  Like something hand-crafted from the pages of an old book.

And then there was another one.

They were everywhere, suddenly.  These tiny, rustling, not-quite- butterflies that were picked up in the wind.  I followed them to a garden owned by one of the nuns. There were dozens of birdhouses hanging from trees and little fairy-like-houses and finally a climbing vine reaching toward the sun, thick with green clusters of flowery seed pods.

And underneath, dozens of butterflies.  When the seed pods dry up they wither and fall and turn into butterflies, and fly away to begin again….or to land on someone’s foot when they need some sort of distraction….like some sort of sign that everything will be okay in the end.

It will.

For me and for you.  Whether we are fighting a seemingly impossible battle with something real or with the terror in our own heads, it will be okay.  We will fight and we will win and sometimes that victory will simply look like laughing in a graveyard.  The battles last forever.  Longer than we will.  But victories can last just as long.

We are all climbing….looking for the sunshine…blooming wherever we can.  We light up the world if it’s looking. We will not last.  We will wither eventually.  But it’s not the end.  We fly on and leave behind strange and beautiful things that grow anew.  You and me and Hailey and the women beneath my feet and everyone else you know and will ever know.

But right now you are green and beautiful in your own specific way that is unique to you and I’m so glad to know you, even if only through a screen.

And suddenly, somehow, the day feels just a little less hard.

I hope it does for you too.

A few months ago I finally did the TEDx talk that I’d been a nervous wreck worrying about.  I ended up having an actual anxiety attack in the middle of it.  One so bad that I stopped talking and stood in silence for a terrible minute trying to breathe.  I was told that if I really fucked up I could leave the stage and come back and start all over again but I knew at that point that if I walked off I would never go back so I stayed there.  And people were kind and waited with me.  And when it was done I got a standing ovation, which I didn’t really see because I was too busy running away, but Victor said it was amazing.

When they were editing the video they asked if I wanted to leave the anxiety attack in and at first I thought we should because it was a real look at life with mental illness.  And then I remembered how many people, like myself, can fall into a panic attack when they see someone else have a panic attack in that contagious sort of way that broken minds work and so I told them to make their best judgement.  In the end they cut out the awkward minute and I think maybe that’s for the best, although you can tell the changes in my voice from before and after.

Today the video went live so you can see it for yourself.  It is not polished and pretty.  I say “um” a million times.  I almost cry more than once.  But I’m proud of it.  It’s the best I could do with what I was at the moment and sometimes that has to just be enough.

And if you want to watch it, it’s right here:

Thank you for listening.  And for telling your own stories as you see fit.

I told my shrink today that I think I have to go back on Xanax.  It feels like admitting failure, even though I know it isn’t.  It’s a medication, and one that I need when I’m ill.  And although I know logically that it’s strong to admit you need help and that I believe this without question, it still feels like weakness.

I’m in and out of the haze of mental illness now…in that bleary spot where you can’t trust your own head to judge life.  It’s different for everyone but for me when I’m in a bad place I feel like I haven’t slept since the last time I was mentally well.  I have slept, but the days feel chained together and I feel off, like when you’ve been awake so long things start to feel surreal.

Part of the reason why I think I’m feeling this depression is because of my anxiety.  It’s been a bit out of control lately and the panic that never ends leads to exhaustion and exhaustion to depression in that slippery downhill slopes of my own mind.

I’ll be fine.

I will.

And things are good.  My editor started reading my manuscript and loves what she’s read so far which makes me a puddle of relief.  The bookstore stuff is harder than I thought but hopefully next week the website will be up and I’ll have more news.  The ABA wrote this amazing story about it.  Tonight I have a rehearsal for my TEDx talk and although I’m literally sick with anxiety I feel like it’s important and I have hope that I can do it without crying.

So I will try to quiet the voices in my head that scream so loud that I am alone and that I will fail and that everyone hates me and will realize I am the loser my mind says I am.  And if you are hearing those terrible voices in your own head, know that they are lies.

It’s going to be okay.

You’ll get through this.

So will I.

It’s late, but that’s not a surprise.

It’s always late when this happens.  The business and sunlight and work drive away any time you have to feel too strongly, but eventually the sun goes down and everyone is tucked into bed and you are alone and the only sound is your terrible voice in your head.  And you try to drown it out with the world but the world isn’t enough.

Or it’s too much.

I’m not sure, and somehow that makes it worse.

It would be better if there was a reason.  I check the internet.  Mercury is not in retrograde.  I’m on my meds.  My life is good and I am lucky.  I step outside and see that it’s a full moon and I find some small comfort in this.  I know people say the moon doesn’t affect people, but on nights like these when you want to crawl out of your own skin it’s a comfort to cling to the idea that it’s not really you…that it’s the moon.  Maybe it’s both.

Tomorrow I will feel better.  I will wonder who wrote this strange note.  I will find it silly and feel ridiculous.

But tonight my head is the moon – too full.  Tonight I will lay in my bed wondering if the promise of morning is real.  If I’m stuck in this night forever.

I will wonder, does everyone feel this lost?  Am I the only one who becomes invisible in the night?  A desperate ghost in my own house.  In my own skin.

Tonight is hard, but tomorrow will be better.

I’ll keep telling you that if you keep telling me.

I’m having one of those nights where – against all logic – I find myself feeling small.  Not a good small, like “Aren’t you adorable? I want to put you in my pocket” but that insignificant, unimportant sort of small.  The kind that makes you feel like you’re just dust that could spin out into space, or that the night is so dark that you’ll never be found or remembered.  The kind that makes every personal failing magnified to the point it’s physically painful.  I don’t know where these nights come from but I suspect they come to us all…making us doubt that we exist, that we matter, that we will ever get our shit together.

Maybe some people don’t have nights like these.  Maybe I just say to myself that it’s normal because if it’s not then that niggling sense of failure and fear that floods over me is based on reality.  I know it’s not.  Logically, I know it, but logic doesn’t work well on nights like this.  I go through my mind and count the facts and try to discount the fear and panic.  I fail.  I am small.  But I also succeed sometimes too.  I am important.  I am insignificant.  I am a speck of dust.  I am necessary.  They’re all true.

But on nights like these I push back in the dark and tell myself that tomorrow the sun will shine and this night will be past.  I will have beaten the darkness that seeps into my heart when things shift and rifts appear.  I will have beaten it simply by existing long enough to find the sun again.

I am small.  But if that’s true then so, too, are my fears and doubts.    They seem so large, but they live in me so they can’t be bigger than I am.  I will win.  By sheer volume.  And I’ll keep repeating that to myself until I finally believe it, or until the morning comes.  Whichever comes first.