I'm Still Here

I’m here. Still.

Which isn’t significant for a normal October the ninth, but it’s a significant day to me.

You see, two years ago and a few hours later from now, I sat sobbing in my truck, wracked with emotional and mental pain, and decided to clear out my shop, put my truck inside, close the door with it running and take one of those forever naps.

It was so dark that day, despite the warm weather and clear skies. There was no light left that I could find, no happiness I could touch. The exhaustion and anxiety had ground me into dust and I was ready to be done.

If I’m writing this and you’re reading it, I think it’s obvious that, in the end, I didn’t. My life was spared by one stark thought—if I did what I planned to do, nobody would check on the dogs for days. (And basically if you ever think I give too much to my dogs, well---suck it, Trebek, I owe them my life.) When I realized that, I chose to go inside, have a nap, and if I still felt like dying later, I’d revisit. Instead I chose to give myself comfort, snacks, and people who supported me. I didn’t tell them, that night, what I’d almost done, but let their love wash over me and let myself be calm in their presence.

I don’t talk about it too much because…well, it’s hard all around. It’s hard to say. It’s hard to hear. I think it’s worthwhile though, in case someone out there needs to hear that there is life after, and that it’s possible, if they find themselves on a similar precipice, to step back. A small step. For any reason.

For me, because it wasn’t fair for the dogs to suffer and starve because I was hurting.

That wasn’t my only brush with such ideation, but it was the closest to acting I’ve ever gotten. And it was a wake-up call that I was pretending to be so much better than what I was admitting. After confessing to my therapist, we ramped up my therapy schedule. I tried being more honest with people and myself about what I needed. I started walking through the fire instead of standing in it and resenting the burn.

I keep October 9th in my head and try to honor what has happened since then. Where I am now compared to then. In the past two years I’ve changed everything. I sold my business and physically, if not entirely, removed myself from a work environment that was unhealthy for me. I got divorced. I explored a handful of cities and picked a new one to call home.

I bought a house. I moved across the country. I proved to myself that I could make the changes I needed to, even if it terrified me. Even if it still terrifies me.

It’s a bittersweet anniversary to say the least. That day was horrible. Today, however—I’m Okay. Okay isn’t Great, but it’s a world apart from that all-consuming darkness. I can manage Okay. I can function with Okay.

I still have panic attacks, but I know I’m not dying. I still have waves of depression and loneliness, but I can differentiate *right now* feelings versus universal truths and forever feelings. The lies from my brain, the fits of pique from my anxiety—I can survive those, and I can do it without wanting to die.

Things aren’t perfect, but they’re a world better than they were.

So I’m going to figure out how to be kind to myself today. I’m going to let myself feel all the things that come with a day like this one. I’m going to celebrate how far I’ve come, and have grace for the me of two years ago, and love that person with all my heart. I resent that I lost so many years to my fear, to my insecurities, to my anxiety, but that doesn’t mean I can’t honor the steps I’ve taken to finally put myself and my happiness first.

Young me, who knew what she wanted and still dreamed, would be proud of what I’ve done over the past two years.

And, at the end of it all, I’ll eat cake, for there is no true celebration without cake.

November 2019 Letter to Myself

I’ve been having trouble writing and my mind was racing one morning, so I wrote down what was in my mind instead. It helped me express what I was struggling with, and helped my therapist figure out which directions we needed to head. I sat on it for a while but like I said in yesterday’s post, other people talking about their struggles inspired me to seek my own help and if I can do that for at least one other person, it’s worth it.

I have trouble labeling myself as depressed, as somebody with depression. I don’t know why. It feels false, it makes me feel like a phony. I’ve never self-injured I don’t think, I’ve never been unable to get out of bed for a week.

Then again, sometimes I do just want to lay down on the floor and cease existing. Sometimes it takes every last ounce of anger and pushing to get myself to get up and keep going another day. A lot of days I feel like what I’m doing is all just busy work, it doesn’t matter, and I can’t see the point in continuing.

Not suicidal-ly. More like, why am I working so hard and exhausting myself for nothing that matters.

A lot of days, I feel flat and emptied out. I can’t read. I can’t write. I can’t do anything but stare at my phone until it’s time to go to sleep.

I see the things that are slipping around me. The bathrooms in the house are atrocious. Not unsanitary, but the sinks haven’t been scrubbed in months, the floors unwashed, the ledges dusty.
I feel like my whole house is like that. It’s slipping. My boundless energy has flagged and now I get home and do nothing. It’s all I can do to stay awake through dinner and go to bed.
My houseplants go unwatered. I haven’t watered the lawn in over a month. I don’t want people to come over because I’m ashamed of the state my house is in.

I listened to a short audiobook called The Burnout Generation and saw myself in its pages, in the inability to stop working even when it comes to my personal life, to getting so low that all I can do is stare at my phone.

I’ve started listening to Furiously Happy, and it upset me even more. Not the book, the book is wonderful and a stark look at anxiety, depression, and surviving. And bad taxidermy.

What upset me, however, was the dawning realization that this might be my new reality. That all the disappointment I felt when I started feeling bad again could be the cycle of the rest of my life. And honestly, has likely been the cycle up until now.

I’ve always had anxiety. I have panic attacks when I go into stores alone and have since I was in middle school. Malls are my personal nightmare and home improvement stores a step behind.

Going new places is the hardest thing I ever do. I stick to the same routes, the same restaurants, the same grocery stores. My anxiety dictates what I can and can’t do, and what days I can do it.

For example, I’ve gone to play soccer twice in another town. The first time, I had to actively push myself every single inch of the freeway to drive up there, to find the right field, to park, to actually put on my cleats. Now, the mere thought of returning is enough to give me panic attacks. Why? Who knows. I sure as hell don’t.

I understand that the depression could be temporary. That it could be a culmination of my fluctuating health and constant anxiety. Or it could be a permanent part of me, a hereditary inability to adequately deal with serotonin, exacerbated by my health issues. Looking back, I feel like I can see the pieces of it that have always existed yet failed to coalesce until now.

I don’t know why this feels like such a hard shift in my personal identity. I don’t tell people because it feels cliché. “Depression? Who doesn’t have depression by this point?” Also, because it feels commonplace and cliché, I worry that something that absorbs so much of my energy and focus and waking hours will be dismissed. I don’t think I could bear it. I feel like I’m scrambling to duct tape my pieces together so I don’t crumble apart and I can’t impress that upon people. I can say “I’m struggling with depression” but they don’t understand.

Depression is like my own personal Mike Meyers, always one step behind, and if I stop being vigilant or dare rest, it’ll catch up to me, raised knives and shrieking music, the works.

 I’m a little more open about my anxiety but only when pushed. “Why did you run ten miles?” “Because physically exhausting myself is the only way to keep my near-crippling anxiety from overtaking me.” “Why didn’t you come to my barbecue?” “Because anxiety won that day and I couldn’t leave the house.”

Absorbing depression into my identity, pointing at that little chunk of myself and identifying it thusly, is proving very hard. Coming from a background of self-blame and unreasonable “personal responsibility” (i.e. what did you do to make that person insult you/creep on you/hurt you,) I feel like I don’t deserve the diagnosis, that it’s my own fault and I just have to work myself out of it, that I’m attention seeking, that I’m a liar, that I’m being dramatic, and on and on. That if I just stop thinking about it and not make it about me, it’ll go away.

Rationally, I know that all those things I just wrote are bullshit and if somebody came to me and said them, I would tell them as much. Unfortunately, that doesn’t translate. Knowing they’re bullshit doesn’t help me internalize the fact.

So I guess this is my letter to myself, as I see the truth in between the lines I’ve written.

I know things get better from here. I know that I’m taking the right steps, and I have a great doctor and therapist on my side. I know that I’m fortunate to have those things, and to have the medications to stop me from crawling any further down into that dark hole.

I know that I have friends that love me, and the world’s most wonderful husband who supports me, hears me, and holds me while I cry over missed social engagements and my own brokenness.

Someday I won’t feel flat. I won’t feel like a bleached dishcloth, wrung out and tossed in the back of the rag cupboard. Someday I’ll enjoy talking to people again, I’ll enjoy seeing friends. Someday I won’t just feel anger as somebody tells me about their day.

But for now, the anger makes me feel alive, because at least I can still feel that.

Until that someday, however, this is my reality, and I’ll celebrate the fact that I’m here. I’m getting better, and doing the right things. I’ll work on absorbing this new title, this new piece of me into my identity, placing it like a tattoo you only want to show certain people.

My name is Kristin, and I have depression.

My name is Kristin, and I have overwhelming anxiety.

My name is Kristin and this doesn’t change who I am, but only defines parts of me that already exist so that I can get better.

My name is Kristin, and this is my depression. I’m doing my best to dress it up in coattails and a bow tie, but it’s a work in progress. Bear with me.