Tag: growth

Autobiography · Mental Health

Lights

Ruby Pipes14 Comments
“Weißt du, der Raum ist unendlich…” © Daniel Grünfeld, 2013. CC BY-NC 2.0.

The morning after I got my glasses I went for a run. Still dark out, street lamps glowed gentle instead of starring across my field of vision. I listened to my music loud and ran hard, completely lost in my own rhythm. Flow state. Breath fogging up the corners of my glasses every so often and sweat forming behind my ears. Zedd’s vocalist crooned at me, “Something tells me I know nothing at all,” and I believed her.

I climbed the next hill and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the first tree. Drops of water clinging to the tips of every branch, illuminated by the traffic lights. Each twig sparkling. Vibrant. Magical. As close to a religious experience as I’ve ever had. A cross between being high on drugs and being completely in love. Enamored with beauty.

It occurred to me that my blurred vision looked a lot how depression feels. All soft around the edges, out of focus, detached. Like I was never really looking at anything, just the general shape of it. How lucky that vision is something that can be helped with two pieces of plastic and frames. How all I had to do was put them on and see everything different.

But maybe everything doesn’t have to be so simple. Maybe we wouldn’t appreciate it if it were. Maybe other things need to take a little bit more work. Glasses are really just a Band-Aid solution for something broken, aren’t they? And that’s not what I’m looking for out of life.

So I find ways to keep building up my foundation. To keep finding little hints of beauty outside of things that I see. That feeling I get when I realize I haven’t curled up on the floor sobbing in days, maybe weeks. The moments when I’m able to say, “Isn’t it interesting I think that?” when I’m anxious instead of following the thought down its rabbit hole of panic.

Over the phone an old friend asks me hesitantly how I’ve been. That tone people get then they think they’ve just asked a really stupid question. I laugh and tell him, “You know. Not bad. I started taking Prozac a few weeks back and… You know, it’s not like I’m happy, but I don’t want to not exist. And that’s pretty awesome.”

On my run I think about that question. Think about that answer. Think about liking the idea of existing in the world. Staring at that tree, watching sparkle and light dance on what used to look like one flat, unremarkable thing.

Autobiography · Mental Health

Grit

Ruby Pipes18 Comments
"Gravel 2" © Stig Morten Waage, 2008. CC BY-NC 2.0.
“Gravel 2” © Stig Morten Waage, 2008. CC BY-NC 2.0.

I track my footsteps, my water, my food. I have running plans and diet rules and a sleep schedule. Medications to take every morning and night. A handful of vitamins for after breakfast. My whole life is a self-imposed tightrope walk.

Often I try to tell myself that I don’t have a choice in any of this. That I simply have to do everything I do for my health, my mental wellbeing, my sanity. But lately I’ve been reminding myself that every day is a decision. There are rocks beneath me, yes. But laying down on gravel is never beyond the scope of possibility. Deciding to be resilient, deciding to fight back was not the only option I had. That’s the thing I have to remember.

But it’s hard to continue. When every day involves just a little more fight. Just a little bit more commitment. When I want nothing more than to turn off the alarm and stay in bed. It just comes down to a matter of grit. Of deciding to rally the energy and get going, even when I don’t think I can do it. Because there are going to be days when I can’t.

There are going to be days when the depression closes in too tight. When I will have no choice but to cancel the plans and draw the blinds. There will be days I will have to dissolve into the bed sheets. So I must seize any day that is not one of those days. I must close down tight around it and do everything I possibly can. I must continue to remind myself that I am not so fortunate as to have all my days be capable ones.

Even now, when the medication seems to be working and the days are dark, but not desperate, I have to remember that it’s not always going to be like this. Not dwell with the weight of the hopeless days standing over my shoulder, but remember how easy it is to slip back down that hole. Yes, it often comes without warning, but sometimes there are things I can do to avoid it.

Sometimes I can fight it off just a little longer. Sometimes I can say, “No,” and get up and put my running shoes on. Sometimes I can climb into my raincoat and take a walk. Sometimes I can go hug someone I love or take a nap. Sometimes I can fight just a little harder.

And sometimes I can’t. Sometimes there is nothing I can do. Relapses can happen for no reason in particular. Suddenly I just can’t seem to keep my feet under me anymore. And that’s something I have to learn to be okay with, too. I have to remember what I learned last time. Go back and read old journal entries. Think about how much better acquainted I became with myself through that darkness. When there was nothing in the world but me and my own brain sparing.

When I felt completely disconnected from everything outside my own head, what did I learn?

Autobiography · Mental Health

Something New

Ruby Pipes13 Comments
"New York Transit Museum" © Geoff Wilson, 2008. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
“New York Transit Museum” © Geoff Wilson, 2008. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

My new therapist gives me homework. Tells me to notice when I’m triggered and my thoughts try to get away from me. “All you have to do is recognize that it’s ninety-percent old hurt. You don’t have to do anything. Just recognize that you’re reacting to a situation you’re no longer in,” he says. His voice is soothing, but firm. I can imagine him in a lecture hall with hundreds of students nodding their heads and scrawling notes on yellow legal pads. He tells me, “It’s easy to get swept up in it. It’s an instant reaction. But we can start to recognize it for what it is and then we can work to change it.”

I nod my head. At first because I’m intimidated by him and I want to be agreeable, but then because I know he’s right. I can feel myself opening up to him. A flower unfurling its petals. Slowly at first, and then all at once. “I can do that. I can do this,” I tell him. The sweet sigh of realizing that there are things I haven’t tried yet.

He looks at me over the top of his notebook and says, “You know, it’s not just the big traumas that shape us. Sometimes it’s just a steady drip. It works itself into everything you do, really just ingrains itself into you. And no matter how safe you feel later, or how different your environment is, you are always expecting that drip.”

My breath stops and it’s a moment before I’m able to let out a slow shudder. I crack a smile because it’s the only thing that makes sense. “Yeah, I am.”

On the train ride home I repeat a line from a Shane Koyczan poem over and over again. “If you believe with absolute honesty that you’re doing everything you can, do more.”

It is so easy to think that I’m doing everything I possibly can with the tools I have to work with. Simple to assume that I am at my limit. I swear I feel the strain, the edge of breaking. But I wonder if I’m made of stronger stuff than I think.

At night I find myself curled up in bed, my knees to my chest, and the blankets pulled up over my head. “I can’t do this,” I whisper soft into my palms, my cupped hands catching my breath. But it’s just pulling back, not fact. It’s the automatic reaction to being challenged, to having more thrown at me than I think I can handle. But I’m capable of dealing with it. Of taking a breath and recognizing that I’m not threatened in the way I think I am.

In the morning I put on my running clothes and head out into the dark. One foot after another, I let my body go. My mind finally settling into a rhythm. And instead of submitting, instead of telling myself again that this is too hard and I’m never going to get it, all I say is, “Do more. Do more. Do more.”