Sometimes things aren't better in the morning
Sometimes things aren’t better in the morning. The opposite of this maxim is one of Colin Powell’s 11 rules that I think about when I am having a depressive episode; that rule being, “It always looks better in the morning.” The other one locked into my brain was simple as well, “Be kind.” But when depression rears its ugly head both those rules get flushed down the crapper. I stop being kind to myself and those around me and, even though I pray for it, sometimes it isn’t better in the morning. It is the one of the worst part of the disease, the ebb and flow of it. It is the daily grind that I imagine those who suffer other traumatic scenarios deal with. As recovering addicts say they live day to day in sobriety. I would agree that depressed people have to live that way to an extent as well. And I don’t want to take away from the overwhelming disease of addiction but we tend to not have a date when we were last depressed. It seems that we are always depressed, it just at different levels. We are full blown, unable to get out of bed, or in remission where everything seems ok but fragile. It is a day by day affair the more I think about it and not simply defined by major depression episodes. There are many smaller hills and mountains that are in between those deserts or valleys of death we have transgressed through. And those are becoming more and more taxing to me.
“I’m still depressed,” is becoming a common phrase in my daily vocabulary as my girlfriend asks how I am doing. Anyone else and the answer is “I’m doing Ok.” It is such a struggle to try and reframe reality and see past the seemingly impenetrable fog when I’m like this. The haze blurs everything but I have gotten so good at being a functional depressant that I could trudge through it as if things were fine so I don’t abdicate the responsibilities I have made previously. But I’m starting to see things starting to slip, old habits forming, and the steady heaviness grow on my soul. I don’t want to socialize, I don’t want to study, I don’t want to clean, and I don’t want to do anything but be depressed. I have been here many times before and I try to take the outlook of waiting out a cold. You just don’t get better overnight and there really isn’t anything you can do but minimize the symptoms. So mornings keep passing and the answer steadily becomes the same. You start wondering how often is this going to happen, how often have I been here before, will this actually end?
Thank God it does but it seems relentless, unavoidable like the flu or chicken pox. But you don’t want anyone to know you’re sick because of the stigma and you don’t want to admit that you have always been sick with this disease. Soon you start isolating yourself because it seems to be our natural instinct when we are going through a depression episode. And it really doesn’t matter what the trigger is, in this case it was doing poorly on the GRE (Graduate Record Exams), what matters is that it is triggered and you have to start the mental marathon of depression. You have to run through it not knowing where the finish line is, just praying and hoping that there is one. Worst of all there is not anyone cheering you on because you have shunned all those people or don’t want them to know you are running through this hazy maze. So this becomes one of the few outlets I have. I can try real exercise which is next to impossible to motivate myself to do, or clean up a little to take my mind off of my current status. But those are momentary reprieves from the exhaustion of the mental marathon. We all know what these mornings and marathons are like as we sit on our islands that we isolate ourselves on trying to stay alive. There are no markers indicating that we are inching closer to that clear finish line, there sometimes doesn’t even seem to be one. One of the few solaces are that we are not alone, even though we can’t see each other running through the fog with us, we are there together trying…