Emerging from my latest episode of Severe Depression...


I am now embarking on my journey of expressing myself through the written word.  I have long made notes and made a half hearted attempt at writing a journal.  Depression has it's own clever
way of making me want to write my thoughts and then of wadding up my pages and pitching them because I don't want anyone else to read about the horrors unfolding in my head.  Hence, an incomplete and disjointed account of nothing.

I remember being 5 years old and I remember exactly where I was standing and what I was wearing at the time.  My mother was ironing bed linens in the living room.  I asked her how long it would be until I could move away from home.  She explained that it would be another 13 years until I would graduate from high school and then I would be old enough to move out as well.  I can still feel my heart sinking to my knees in despair.  Wondering how I could possibly hold on that long.  Even at such a young age, I knew that I had lived 5 years and 13 years was over twice that long and I still had a so long to hold on...my mother could have easily said it would be 1 million years until I could leave because to a child either amounts of time would seem insurmountable. When you are 5 years old and cannot fathom being able to survive for that long, something is terribly wrong in your life.  I have zero doubt that this was my very first understanding of depression because I vividly remember wanting to die, or at the very least wishing I had never been born.

I am now going on 56 years old and this latest bout of depression has been, by far, the darkest period of time I have ever had and the most personally concerning.  I have had very clear thoughts of suicide this time including where I would hang myself and an idea that stocking up on my antidepressants and some pain pills we have in the house would be a good idea.  I have been this far down before several times.  However, this time a sense of peace and calm kept entering into it and that has never happened before.  A feeling like..."I can end this pain at any time and it's ok."  A feeling of giving myself permission to not go on if it's so unbearable as to just give up at any given time without feeling like a failure.  That is a new twist on wanting out of it for me.  I never, ever would have imagined no longer being afraid to give up, I should say I would not have imagined not being overcome with guilt and shame for Guilt and Shame are my self imposed monikers and I certainly have worn them well.