Tag: depression

Mental Health · Relationships

Soften

Ruby Pipes38 Comments

“soft landing” © ankakay, 2009. CC BY 2.0.
I packed up my things at the coffee shop, rationing breaths. Used words sparingly. I’d reached the edge.

Kissed Mason and threw an, “I love you,” over my shoulder as I charged down the steps. Picked up momentum as I headed across the street, back toward our apartment. Counted cracks in the sidewalk, steps. Watched my feet dodge in and out of my line of vision. Held my breath. Clamored through the front door, made it to the elevator, lost it.

An hour later he opened the door and found me still laying on the floor. Catatonic. Dropped his bag and draped himself over me. I immediately started sobbing again.

That’s the world we’ve been living in.

As a writer, I felt I should be able to find words for it. The hot anger, the senseless desperation, the hopelessness. The ever-resurfacing frustration with the person I seem to be. Instead, I looked across the bathroom floor at my wonderful husband, eyes big and mascara-stained. I said, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

Each word crashed in the space between us and I collapsed on top of them. Curled into his chest, clawed for air, for stability. He tilted my head up toward his, eyebrows bearing down and voice tight around the edges, “You can. You’re okay. It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

All folded in on myself and rendered immobile, I clung onto his t-shirt. Slowed my breathing.

I don’t know how to believe him.

But his arms pinned mine to my sides and he rocked me. And I knew he believed himself. And that’s enough for now.

Mental Health · Personal Development

Dopamine

Ruby Pipes33 Comments

"The journey is the reward" © Nishanth Jois, 2012. CC BY 2.0.
“The journey is the reward” © Nishanth Jois, 2012. CC BY 2.0.
Faith. It’s all going to come down to faith, isn’t it? Establishing belief that if I work hard on the things that matter I will see improvement.

Noticeable difference.

Faith. Even when it seems like I know better, I don’t. Forgetting every time I felt like I gave my all and got burned anyway. It doesn’t have to be that way.

I am not finite. There is no “all”. No matter how empty, how hopeless, how beaten down I feel. I can always get up again. There is always something I haven’t used yet.

It’s easy to feel I’ve been doing everything I can my entire life. Easy to assume that if any of it were going to make a difference it would have by now. Harder to learn to see the difference between fighting and learning. It’s never been about how hard I can punch, only how quick I can dodge it.

Divert. Disperse. Learn a different tactic.

Don’t try to stop the river. Rivers always find a way. At some point, the dam breaks, and you’re worse off than you were in the beginning. You must be gentle. Coax it. Day by day.

We don’t need elaborate gestures. Don’t need fireworks that draw our eyes up, then fade out into nothing. We need constant pressure. And I know that’s harder.

Harder because there are no grand ceremonies. No celebrations or finish lines. We just trudge forward and hope we’re doing better than we were.

Faith. Understanding that growth, that improvement, has always been gradual and near invisible. Only observable by looking back. By remembering where we were a month, a year, a decade ago.

This is not a fight. It is a slow and steady climb. And yes, it’s easy to feel like Sisyphus. But the boulder isn’t rolling down. We never go all the way back to the bottom again.

All the work is always counting. We will continue to push our limits and surprise ourselves. It’s okay to take a moment and throw some confetti.