Anybody who follows me or my writing will have already seen my post back in May about depression.
A lot has happened since then.
I'm writing this because I feel that I am almost back at the start, full circle. I am scared.
As I write to you, it is half past 1 on a monday afternoon and I am in bed. I am in bed because I don't know what else to do. I mean, I have things to do. I continually have a long 'to do list' filled with activities, I can often be found clutching the timetable to pineapple dance studios or gym classes. But I'm not doing anything because I can't seem to find a way to start.
Here I am, back at stage one, all over again. I took my course of anti-depressants. About five months I'd say. And they were great. I felt balanced, energetic (for the most part) and positive about things. It's been a month, maybe two since I stopped and I can feel old habits begin to creep up on me. It doesn't come as a complete surprise to me that I am feeling this way. Over the last few months I have been in and out of doctors surgeries and hospitals for appointments and health scares and I am still in the depths of that, though we're getting somewhere. The stress of it is pulling me down again. Back down to where I feel hopeless and lethargic and pointless and barren. And I know it's not 'me'. I know it's this nasty bug, this virus, we call 'depression', we call 'anxiety'. And I'm scared that it's come along to take hold once more.
I feel like I've let myself down. Like I'm broken. Like I'm selfish and that no one should bother with me. It sounds ridiculous. It is ridiculous.
I've booked an appointment this afternoon to head back to the Doctors and to request to be put back on the pills. I have never felt dependant on them, but now I'm scared that this is becoming my 'way out'. There is NOTHING wrong with taking anti-depressants. Depression is, after all, an illness like any other, a chemical imbalance. So why do I feel like I'm giving up the fight?
You can't always fight. You get tired. I can't fight my own head, my own body. I want to be outside, I want to be dancing, I want to be laughing with my friends, creating, exercising, getting excited with my boyfriend about our new flat, I want to be happy to be alive. I don't want to torture myself anymore. I don't want to be sat here, writing this, feeling like there is nothing to get out of bed for.
So what can I do?
I have wonderful friends, family, loved ones. But if even they can't pull you out of your ever increasing black hole then you have to trust that a doctor and her medicine can. For a few months I felt alive, I felt normal, I felt that I could get out of bed in the morning without fighting off six demons between the duvet and work. So is it a permanent thing? Am I permanently going to require a little help? Many of us do.
I just want to feel stable. I don't want to tip-toe around myself and feel scared that the moment something goes wrong I'm going to catapult full-speed into a crazed pit of despair. I want to look in the mirror and be pleased with what I've achieved in life. Because deep down I'm ecstatic. Behind this curtain of self-doubt and insecurities I am over-the-moon with my life. It's the best life I could wish for and it's everything I want it to be and more than I ever dared imagine. So let me embrace it, let me feel it. Let me live.
