Waving the White Flag: This Is Depression

I’ve been here before and I know what it feels like and so I feel more than capable of declaring it, of speaking truth to my experience.

I’m depressed. I’m waving the white flag and calling this what it is. Depression, even temporarily and circumstantial, is, for me, a complete ass.

I thought it was just the post Mom 2.0 blues settling in, but this fog isn’t lifting. My chest feels tight and heavy in a sad sort of way and not in an anxiety sort of way. I’m back on the roller coaster, strapped in for the ride.

Depression is this weird, globby-feeling thing that just zaps my spirit and sucks me into this pit of…emptiness. It’s not despair.

Despair would be something.

Instead there’s just…nothing. I just want to sleep until it passes, but the trouble with that is that if I’m asleep, I won’t know it’s passed. So I have to stay awake, keep fighting, day in and day out, not to feel this way.

And I’m just tired.

I know that suffering is relative. Someone will always have it worse. In fact, someone does. No one takes home the gold in the Pain Olympics. So feeling rotten about where I am right now is just…it feels dumb. I have a good life. My family is healthy. My friends are great.

And yet.

2017 has not been a banner year unless “banner year” has come to mean “tumultuous” and “pile of hot garbage.” There have been highlights, sure. Not dying from a blood clot is among them.

But it’s just…there was so much chaos in the first quarter that I feel like I’m hanging out here waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I keep looking over my shoulder for some other bad thing to happen, only marginally relieved when it isn’t there because what if it’s just hiding? Waiting for that moment when I think it isn’t going to happen to drop out of the sky and crush me?

Overall, I know that my life is still good and happy and positive. There’s so much good it makes feeling how I feel right now even worse, even harder to bear. I feel like I’m not supposed to feel this way, like I’m not allowed to say I’m depressed because how can I be depressed when I have so much good?

(Hi, that’s not how it works. I know that. And if you didn’t know that, now you do. Having good, happy things in your life does not ward off depression like some sort of good vibes talisman you can wave at the Boogeyman to send him back under the bed.)

This all feels a little navel-gazey, I know. I’m not even sure I want to publish this post. I’ve been sitting on it for days now, trying to find the words to unclog myself from this muck.

But I know that throwing this out into the universe gives voice to what I’m experiencing and lets someone else out there who might stumble upon this post (how, I don’t know since it’s not exactly SEO friendly and I don’t care) and realize there’s someone out there who gets it.

There’s someone out there who understands what it’s like to have so much beauty and good and still just…not feel okay. There’s someone out there who knows that not feeling okay right now doesn’t mean you’ll never feel okay again.

I’ll feel okay again.

Until then, I guess I’ll nap.