Reflections. (Guess I'm not quite done yet for today, heh.)

I've been thinking a lot lately about how I used to be. When the worst of the depression was haunting me, and in truth I find that I don't even remember anymore, the person that I used to be. This is probably, most likely, a good thing, because from the people who knew me then... they tell me that I was... well, not easy to live with is a kind term. A bitch, maybe is what they mean to say, heh. But.. I find that I remember very little of that time at all.

All that I can remember is that I know that all I wanted was to die. That I honestly felt the world closing in on me, choking me, suffocating me. Just to breathe was to hurt. It was a feeling that I cannot describe more than that.

I don't remember being able to work, or to get out of bed a lot of the time. I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't think beyond making it a second, a minute at a time.

I do remember the mental hospital. I remember the ward. That was the beginning of waking up for me, but even that didn't fully snap me out of it. I was on drugs that I never should have been on, at the wrong dosages and at the wrong times. Paxil made me dead inside. I could function, but not at a level where I would care. The Buspirone helped greatly with the anxiety and took that away, but it wasn't until I got put on this combination that I'm on now... that I started to feel better.

And today?

I hesitate to say that I'm better, still. Because I've been here before, you know. I've been in a position where I thought I was okay, where I thought that the depression was gone... and the next day, week, month, I'd have an attack so crushing that I'd despair all over again. It's a rollercoaster, a cruel one.

But I do feel that I'm in a better place now. I'm able to handle situations now that would have had me in broken, screaming sobs even a year ago. This job in itself proves that I'm better, because how many people do you know that could deal with a thousand angry, just-as-depressed-as-you-are people a day? And not only deal with the job, but ride it to the point where you get a promotion barely a year later?

Yes. I think it's safe to say that I'm better now. But I still live in a world of fear that one of these days the drugs will stop working. That I'll go back to being in that glass box where I used to watch the world from outside, and yearn to be a part of it but couldn't be because the edges of that box were cutting into my throat. That's how I felt for a long, long time. Maybe for my whole life.

I'm reminded of the song "Blackbird" by the Beatles.



Ignore the video itself... but listen to the lyrics. That's so where I really am now in my life. I'm scared.. but I'm learning to live again. That's where I am.

Thanks for listening to me ramble.