If Winter Ends

For the record the title isn't meant to be a pun on my name for once.  Although it could work as one.

Since my breakdown I have only felt okay once.  One single time in what has almost been a month, enough that the low points are just getting lower, and it's impossible to breathe sometimes.

I want someone to reach out, but the only person whose touch I will accept doesn't want me anymore.  The longer my ex and I are broken up the more it seems to leave its marks on me.  We love each other, and it shouldn't have come to this.  The one person I trusted turned my back on me because I messed up.  I just feel like, if the one person who loves me won't stand beside me, why should I try?  I have no one else I trust, and I don't think I can do this alone.

My problem is I have so much trouble connecting with people.  I didn't truly connect with someone until I was seventeen, and it took me two years after they betrayed me to find someone else who I was comfortable with.  I can't wait two more years.  I don't think I can wait two more weeks.  I didn't want to write posts like this on this blog--I wanted it to be more about recovery and introspection than misery and pity, but right now it's like I'm living in a Bright Eyes song:

"I give myself three days to feel better
Or I swear I'll drive right off a fucking cliff
Because if I can't learn to make myself feel better
Then how can I expect anyone else to give a shit?
And I scream for the sunlight or a car to take me anywhere
Just get me past this dead and eternal snow
Because I swear that I am dying, slowly, but it's happening
So if there is a perfect spring that's waiting somewhere
Just take me there and lie to me and say it's going to be all right"

I'm giving myself more than three days, but if things don't get better by the time my anti-depressants should be working fully, I'm either taking my things and going west, or ending things.   I can't take another month like this.

I've tried discussing this with the people at my "Intensive Outpatient Program" but their inpatient program is only for suicide intervention, and they won't help me look for better inpatient programs.  I just don't feel like I can get better in any outpatient program, because it's about trying to get you back into your life, and most days I can't even leave my bed much less think about my life.  I used to be one of those girls who woke up early, got dressed perfectly, did my hair, my makeup and went.  I get out of my pajamas now only for therapy, it's too much of a bother to even put my contacts in.  My therapist says it's good I at least get dressed for therapy, but if that's all I get dressed for I'd hardly call that progress.  I want to switch to a psychologist, someone who can tell me why I act this way and how to prevent it, but it's such a large job to find one.  Therapy is about pushing past, avoiding, getting a life together and getting drugs and ignoring everything you did to hurt the people around you, ignoring the problems that caused the breakdown.

I just can't do this.

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.

How to Live in Holes

Today was about suffering.  Today was desperation, almost-hospitalization, no-hope, all-pain, nervous, uncertain, messed-up, fucked-up misery.

People often liken depression to finding yourself in a hole and needing to get yourself out.  What they don't tell you is depression is not just being in that hole, it's watching as the people you love fill that hole with dirt without knowing it, it's scraping your hands against the sides of that hole, desperate to pull yourself out, but all that's happening is is your nails are being pulled off as you bury your hands against the sides of the hole, as your skin gets raw and eventually you just lay there.  Struggling is too hard.  Getting up is too hard.  So you just curl up and close your eyes and breathe in the grime and dirt and let it choke you.  You let the dirt press against your ribs and chest and crush you.  You realize you can't see the way out, and you don't even remember what the way out looks like anymore, where to find it.

Today was about wanting to die and not finding the energy to even do that.  Today was about realizing you don't even remember what happiness feels like.