It's really going to be okay. I feel a peace that I haven't felt in weeks. Maybe I'm in a more fragile state than I would like, but I don't have to try so hard to be "better," because I need to take my time, I can take my time (there are worlds enough, and time), and if I want to learn to manage the depression rightly, I can't do a slapdash job with it. There's stuff to work on, sure, and things to figure out, but that gets to be exciting and good, not angsty and horrible.
I think the depression gets bad when I feel trapped. So I need to work on getting, and figure out how to get, unstuck. My job right now is to do that, and to come to peace. It's pretty bad right now, but it won't always be that way, and Jeff (my therapist) said a lot of things today that put me in a place of good perspective on myself. He says I'm extremely unique, that I can't be put into a box or fit into a glove, and that that's both wonderful and horrible -- horrible, I said, because I will be so seldom understood and will always feel lonely, however liked; horrible, he said (after nodding in agreement with my statement), because a lot of the conventional techniques for depression management won't work for me.
He noted that I know how to allow myself to let myself go completely into the sadness (because sometimes I revel in the sadness), and he said it with a positive tone in his voice, so I knew he was noting a strength and not voicing a concern. "The million dollar question," he said, "is, How good are you at getting yourself back out of it?"
I thought for a minute. "Pretty good, I think," I said. "I mean, I've done it alone for years -- since I was a teenager -- and I've always pulled myself out of it okay."
"Good," he said.
So yeah -- I don't feel as if everything is sunshine and buttercups and bunny rabbits and cheeping songbirds. It's not okay in that regard. But it's okay in that my perspective got snapped back into place. I'm not a horrible person, I'm not crazy, and I generally handle these things pretty well. So I got knocked back on my ass; so I'm really, really different from almost everybody else (this makes me appreciate all the more the people that do understand me; there are so few of them); so I'm really self-aware and articulate and clever about managing how other people see the things I want them to see because of how carefully and precisely I word the things I say, which can make it easy for me to layer my communication with horseshit that other people believe if I'm not careful in that regard; so I'm tired and lonely and unique and have to come up with equally unique ways to handle this affliction I've been saddled with since childhood. I've made it this far; I've swum against the current well out of reach of the waterfall, and it's okay for a little while if I just kick back onto my back and float with the current and catch my breath. That's not the same thing as giving up, and it's not the same thing as drowning. And if I'm going to be here, like it or not, I may as well find things to enjoy about the scenery (I've always been good at that, too).
I haven't arrived, or anything; I'm not likely to for a long, long time, if ever. But this is still a good place to be. (And much better than yesterday.)
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