The lost days
In the past my strategy for dealing with a low was quite simple. Take the drugs, take to bed and take comfort in the fantasy world of the morbid Harry Potter and his long-suffering pals.
By the time I noticed the low I was usually so far gone that I didn’t have the energy to fight it by any other means than sheer escapism. I think that even if I had had the energy to fight I had no idea of how.
Although my most recent depression rendered me a mere ghost of myself for seven weeks, it was only for seven weeks. In the past I have lost months of my life to this damned illness and to think that maybe this time it was what I did that helped the medication along gives me great hope because it means that maybe I can manage it.
Maybe it means that I won’t always succumb to the dark clouds and maybe I do now understand what my dad was talking about all those years and all those lows ago when he said, “Darling you have to fight it. You have to because every day that you don’t is a day that you’ve lost.”
I don’t want to lose any more days.
Signs of recovery; a clearing in the cloud
I could spend this whole post telling you about how bad the last few months have been. I could tell you about one of the most crushing lows of my life so far, a low that saw me isolate myself from the friends that I love, the job that I feel priveleged to have ever been given and the project I was so determined to complete.
It can wait however for another day. This is the first time since February, maybe even longer that I have felt like myself. It is selfish and unprofessional I know to have offered no explanation for my sudden silence over the last few months and for this I do apologise and I will explain all in full. Just not right now.
Today is a day for jubilation. After months of misery, messed up mood, flat shoes and a flat face today I am smiling. I smile at simple normal every day things like ladybirds and bumble bees. A beautiful happy woman passes me by and rather than silently sob at the fact that once upon a long time ago I knew how to smile, I smile back at her and just feel glad that there is some sunshine in my day.
The Psych told me that I would be feeling better this week but I doubted him and that night spent hours on the bathroom floor toying with the idea of ending it all. Just days ago I was having dark suicidal thoughts and yet today I cannot imagine ever having wanted my life to end.
There is a possibility that today is just a fluke and that tomorrow I will wake up with the cloud coming down again, but today I can’t contemplate it. I have to believe that this truly is the start of me getting better and that I can return to my life and to the pen once again.
