Losing Winter

One of the worst things I've come to realize about depression is feeling as though you have lost some integral part of yourself in the process of getting where you've ended up.  In trying to regain some sense of normality, happiness, and peace of mind, I constantly find frustration in the fact that even when some of my torment is relieved, I feel this intense sense of emptiness, like I am always going to be half of a person, instead of the full self I once was.

I think back to the last time I was truly happy with myself--around July--and the person I was then seems so far away compared to who I am now.  In many ways that person is a stranger to me, I don't know her, and I don't know how to get back to her.  I can't get back to her, because she existed in a time in which I did not carry the title of this disorder.  I was not a girl who has a breakdown in July, or even in September.  Now I am.

In some ways I think the label of "clinical depression" has replaced those important parts of me, filled those places where happiness once dwelled, once has the potential to dwell.  When introducing myself, either in real life or online, I find that trying to leave my depression, my diagnosis, at the door is all but impossible.  I may very well have better luck trying to leave my arm at the door when entering a room, than trying to un-associate my depression with myself.

It bothers me that things have come to this.  It absolutely horrifies me that I cannot go back to being the happy girl I was once.  Accepting that depression is going to be part of me for the rest of my life is hard for me to accept, even if I know it's true.  The uncertainty, the intense belief I have that I will always be a shell of myself, however, is worse.

All I know is more than nearly anything (because there is one thing that tops this wish) I want to be a whole, complete person.  I don't think that I ever will be.