better
Woo, I feel as though I've been to Hell and back.
It's truly terrifying the dark places the mind can go and not expect to come back. I'm always surprised at how I crumble between November and March. It never fails. My mom told me that every year in mid-February I would suddenly come down with some horrible sickness and be unable to go to school. Every year. The "sickness" now is some horrible depression which seems to turn around just as suddenly. My dad also told me that his mother was same way, sitting around the home despondent and hopeless. Thank God March is coming....I hate this feeling of having to tread lightly. I'm so grateful for the many things that have helped me to come out of this:
1. Tom, for going out of his way to run to my side and stay with me throughout the worst moments
2. Animals like Paco, Ella, and Rosco
3. my group at PH, particularly Tim, whom I felt a connection with
4. Jem's new album and Santagold
5. photography
6. going with Tom on a walk with Rosco
7. chocolate!
8. my therapist
9. my caseload finally filling up again
10. Valentines Day night with Chuck, Becky, and Malindi
11. good friends like Heather and Claudia
12. my family, especially my brothers
13. myself, for finally deciding to make good decisions to get out of this
14. Norah Vincent and her book Voluntary Madness:
We tend to think of happiness (and by happiness I also mean health of overall well-being) as a gift, and sometimes it is, a pure gratituity. But most of the time it comes about because you've done the work, prepared the ground to allow it in or tended to it carefully once it has arrived. You have to practice happiness the way you practice the piano, commit to it the way you commit to going to the gym. You don't do it most of the time because it feels good to do it. You do it because it feels good to have done it...it is the prerequisite for feeling good. Happiness is not a reward, it's a consequence. You have to work at it everyday. If the question is, what's the point? The answer is, Just do it. Doing it is the point. Don't think, Do..... Giving my brain something to occupy it tends to keep it from obsessing so much about my failtures, or about impending disasters. I believe this to be true of all of us. Our brains are hungry, in constant need of stimulation, and when we don't feed them enough, they turn on us and begin to cannabalize themselves for nourishment, much the way our bodies consume our own muscle and fat when we starve them. If I don't feed myself, I feed on myself. It's all of a piece. Together, the pieces bring about the whole, and the sense of wholeness that is essential to staving off depression. The pieces and the bringing about are mine. It is up to me to tend to my wholeness. I do it or I don't. That's it. Sometimes I do well and sometimes I do poorly, but the point is, I do. The success or failure is my own. You never "arrive." You want to be happy? You want to be well? Move. Get on with it. That's the prescription.