To the Other Side?

I think I may have had a breakthrough. Today as I was driving Annabelle home from swim lessons (see the "Today I" section of this blog for more!), I found myself thinking about the future and seeing possibilities. It has been a long time since I was able to be hopeful without any negativity. That sounds worse than I think I mean it to, or maybe it just was that bad. I am not sure. But for the first time in a long time I thought about how I wanted to go back to school and how I was going to do it and got excited about it. Not once did I think as I have been for so long: "How will I ever do it?" "My photos suck anyway." "There is no way I can do it." "Who will watch Annabelle?" "What's the point?" It was like, suddenly, things were possible again.

It was a moment. A little one, but a moment of hope nonetheless.

So I just have to keep going. But, for the first time in -- wow -- years, maybe, I actually feel like it might be possible to vanquish depression. And that, in and of itself, is progress.

That's Progress!

Well, it's been a long-quick week if that makes sense. Looking back it seems like forever ago that it was Monday, yet it feels like it was just yesterday. I accomplished quite a bit this week. Annabelle really liked Gymboree. She was very good at most of the activities that the kids were supposed to do, but she seemed kind of overwhelmed by the other children. You see, Annabelle has really only been with me, her Daddy and her grandparents her entire life. She doesn't know any other kids except Gigi and Carlo's little Gavin -- and he is a bitty baby. So seeing a bunch of kids her age was rather overwhelming for her, I think.

She ran around and squealed and really enjoyed the whole experience. It actually made me want to cry. Seeing what an amazing person she is becoming. And how she problem solves. And how she is so determined to do it all by herself.

From a battling-depression point of view, I am glad I got out and just did it. I tried really hard not to let myself go through those negative thought patterns that always want to come up when I am with strangers. (e.g. "Are they looking at me?" "Do they think I am stupid? Ugly? Fat? Whatever?") I just thought to myself: "You are Annabelle's mom and she loves you." That made a huge difference.

All of that probably sounds really lame, but so be it. I can't control what you think of me. I used to think I could. I am slowly (oh-so-very-slowly) coming to the realization that I can only control what I think of me. Whether I want you to or not, you will make a judgement of me. And nothing I can do is going to stop you. So why worry about it. Right?

Anyway, that's it from here. Big weekend. Gavin gets baptized! Yay!

Did I Really Graduate?

In an earlier post I shared my battle with Depression. The other half of the battle is severe anxiety. Now, I decided a long time ago that if I had a choice: Depression or anxiety, I'd take anxiety and be cured of depression. Over the years, neither has really been solved or that hard worked for. I just worked myself to death and ran on the treadmill til I couldn't think anymore. Those were my solutions. Solutions that very often worked, though their effects were fleeting.

So now that I am locked in battle with Depression, some of the methods I am using are exacerbating my problems with panic and anxiety. It's really frustrating. When I am like this -- high anxiety -- the bad dreams come. I have several recurring dreams in which I 1.) can't find something (usually a classroom) 2.) find out I didn't actually graduate from high school and have to go back (and then can't find the classroom!) or 3.) that I am lost somewhere.

I hadn't had these dreams in about a year and a half. Now they are back. I wake up every morning drenched in sweat, heart racing thinking I missed a big test or that I have to go back to high school. I'm left with a very unsettled feeling the entire morning.

But the battle must continue. I've read that one strategy is, when awake, to plan what you will do when you can't find the classroom or have to go back to high school or whatever. Strategize the solution so when you dream it, you won't panic or get anxious. You will know what to do. And, in theory, go on to have a mundane dream.

I am really rambling aren't I?

People often ask me why I post these things here. It is more for me than anything. Admitting it. Getting out these fears and truths about myself is freeing. It's part of my work toward accepting me for who I am. Instead of hiding the fact that I am battling with this, maybe my struggle will help someone else along the way. It can be a very lonely road.

Anyway, again I say, wish me bonne chance, because I need it. After all, I didn't actually graduate from college! And I am lost somewhere in Italy, never to find my way home. Ha ha!

Bonne chance

As most of my three readers know, I am still battling depression. It's something that I have to work hard every day to overcome. The depressed me tries to stop the happy me from doing what she wants to do. This week, I waged an all-out war on this vicious foe. I decided I was just going to think of depression as "Depression," with a capital "D." A force that is working hard against me. When it pushes, I have to push back harder. And it is hard.

Sometimes I think I am being punished for my awful remarks about depressed people in the past. (Things like, "Why don't they just get over it?" and "What's their problem?") Now I can really see and understand what, I daresay, most people don't. Because it seems like is should be just that simple: Change your mind, get over it. Right? I have found that it simply doesn't work that way (alas!).

But back to my strategy. This week I began the battle. Starting Monday with Anna and I visiting the library, then Target; and, later, dinner out with Andy. I often find it so easy to just say, "nevermind, let's just stay in." I told Andy he has to start making me do it. Like be the man and say: "We are doing this. Period." And he did.

Tuesdays Annabelle is with her Mimi. (Mimi is a Godsend, by the way. By watching Annabelle for those few hours every week, she is helping me in my battle.)

Wednesday, Annabelle and I met Auntie Gigi and Gavin to sign up for weekly Mommy and Me swim lessons. Then we all had lunch.

Thursday, we met Daddy at the doctor's office for shots.

Today we went to Gymboree and signed up for another weekly class, then had some chicken for lunch.

In short, every day we were out and about doing something. Depression is weird. It's like a veil that shrouds everything you do. Dulling your senses and throttling any enjoyment in everyday things. I am so sick of letting Depression run my life. So I've decided I just have to go, go, go, lest it put its steel-toed boot back on my throat. I think that was my unconscious strategy in the past. I need to do it again -- only this time, consciously.

I can't let Big "D" win any longer.

Counterpoint

I am sorry about my last post. Seems it triggered a great deal of worry. For that, I am apologizing. Not for the post itself. Honestly, I feel that way a lot more often than I ever let on, so, really it's nothing new. I think Kerber captured me nearly perfectly in her comments. My sage friend wrote the following:

I adore both the Kool-Aid drinking, [air popped] popcorn-eating, old-TV- show-watching, depressed woman who won't leave her room; as much as I love my bubbly laughing friend!

A sad portrait? Perhaps. Nevertheless, she's right on the money. I am alternately a very upbeat, giggly, outgoing person and a shy, retreating, anxiety-ridden hermit (who just so happens to love Nick at Nite).

So, I titled this post "Counterpoint" because I am going to make a list of things -- free association style -- that make me happy:

• Annabelle's laugh and the way she smiles at me in the morning when she first sees me.
  
• Friends who badger me into attending Panhellenic meetings with them, thereby forcing the hermit to come out and play.
  
• Dr. Pepper-flavored Jelly Bellys.
  
• My sister.
  
• Taking a long drive while listening to music at a very unreasonable volume.
  
• "Office Space."
  
• Knowing my husband will be in town soon.
  
• Having parents and in-laws who love me: Hermit or Bubbly
  
• XM Radio.
  
• Lying in Andre's arms at 4 a.m. listening to Annabelle babble.
  
• Swimming pools.
  
• Knowing I have friends who know the bubbly Neen.
  
• The following poem, which a friend wrote for me:
  
  
  To know a Neen
  Is a wonderful thing.
  To know a Neen
  Makes me laugh and sing.
  
  
  
• Rush's Hold Your Fire.
  
• Pretty much anything with Chris Farley in it.
  
• Lipgloss!
  
• Every novel by Ivan Turgenev.
  
• Crisp autumn nights.
  
• Talking all-night on the phone with a good friend even though we're 35 and just saw each other yesterday.
  
• Driving through the middle of nowhere Texas and smelling barbecue.
  
• Sam and Frodo's unfailing friendship.
  
• Hockey and all that entails (goalie masks, power plays, fighting, slap shots, goal horns, the other team's penalties, short-handed goals, Marian Hossa, hat tricks, Andre in his hockey jerseys, cold arenas, the Zamboni, break aways, 5-on-3s, penalty shots, changing on the fly, the red light, feisty goalies, shootouts, Darcy Tucker, hip checks, etc.)
  
• Skiing through a deserted glade when someone somewhere else on the mountain cries out in glee.
  
• Sarah.
  
• Dancing With the Stars
  
• Magazines.
  
• My Slava Kozlov card.
  
• Virtual friends.
  
• Three's Company.
  
• Dos Mas (still crazy after all these years!).
  
• Ringing my parents and always hearing the same greeting, "Hi sweet angel."
  

All of the above are gifts from God. I know I have a great deal to be thankful for and I know I shouldn't be depressed. I am working on that...

Probably a Depressing Post

Lots of stuff on my mind and I am not sure how this will turn out, hence the title.

I am in Texas right now. Andre left to go back to Atlanta today and I feel sad. There is no way to explain it, really. Andre and I have been together for so long, it's like I am off balance when he isn't there. It's so cliche, but he's my other half. The PB&J on my bread. My best friend. It makes me sad when we can't be together, even if it is just for a week. Or a day.

His leaving has only compounded the overwhelming sense of depression I've felt lately. I can't put my finger on the reason. I couldn't tell you "why." It's no one thing. I am just feeling really bummed out lately. Kind of hopeless.

Now, don't go getting all worried. I feel like this often, I just don't often write about it. But I have been repeatedly told (and have, on occasion, asserted it myself) that getting things out of your head and on paper (or in cyberspace, as the case may be) can help.

I don't know if it's being back in the place where I once had so much fun. Or missing Andy. Or feeling hot and bloated (thank you Houston humidity for both). Or just being in a general funk.

I look at Annabelle sometimes and think about all the cute things she does. For example, she gives me a big smile every time she sees me. I was rocking her tonight thinking about how happy it makes me to see her smile. Then, in a split second, I was deeply saddened -- almost to the point of despair -- thinking that it won't always be this way. That she won't always smile when she sees me. That someday she will hate me -- like all teens at some point hate their parents. That her sweet smile and bright eyes will be dimmed by the cruelty of this world. It makes me so depressed sometimes I can't stand it.

I don't want her to battle depression like Kelly and I have. I don't want her to know the ugliness, the racism, the look-ism, the greedy, money-hungry awfulness of this world. But she will know it.

That makes me sad.

My Dad's best friend Jerry (RIP) suffered from clinical depression his entire life. He eventually ended his life. I remember how upset my Dad was when he found out. How devastated. And I remember being very angry. Angry that someone would be so selfish and off themselves like that, leaving all their loved ones to suffer. At the time I was a happy, stupid, naive college student and I said some things about people with depression that I now regret.

I used to think depressed people should just get over it. I used to think, "what's their problem?" And boldly state that they should "suck it up and deal."

Then, for whatever reason, I started having issues with depression. I understand now.

Sometimes I think God gave me this burden of depression to wise me up. To show me that I was an idiot kid who had no idea what she was talking about. I know I can't think that way, but sometimes I do. Sometimes I ask "why? Why can't I just flip a switch in my head and get over it? This is stupid!"

I was so naive. Is this my punishment for all the idiotic things I've spouted off about over the years?

I've come to the conclusion that there is no way for a person to comprehend mental illness unless you've gone through it. Because society does not equate depression, for example, to being a medical condition. There is still that stigma attached to it. As if going to therapy is a bad thing. Or something to feel ashamed of.

That feeling is very palpable. I feel it right now. Like I should just hit the "Delete" key and forget I ever wrote this. But, damn it, I am not going to for that very reason. I am not editing. I am not going to let myself feel worse than I already do by imagining what you, my dear reader, must be thinking about me.

If you love me, you will love the depressed me too. If you hate me, you hate me. But, at least you'll hate the real, honest me. Not some "me" that I conjured up for your approval.

OK. I actually do feel better now. Post a comment >>

A Post Script: Happy Songs
See, I told you I needed your list of happy songs. Seriously, I plan to add them all to my iPod. So thanks to Mimi, LeeLee, Kelly, Lila, Kerber, Nana Jan, Andre, Jennifer (of Roswell!) and, of course, the lovely and talented cousin Penny from Ottawa, for all of your suggestions. Have more? Want to add yours? Please, please do...