Major depression, such a pain in the ass. Seriously.

It's been a few months since I wrote this post; its been sitting in my draft folder while I worked up the courage to hit the 'Publish' button.

One day I saw myself in my mind's eye. My mouth was opening and stretching into a grotesque cavern. The skin on my face peeled and contorted as the pain grew so that I couldn't maintain a mask. This was a face that was screaming, and there was no sound. It dawned on me with an impossible terror that this nightmare face was not in my mind's eye. This was me, standing barefoot in front of a bathroom mirror. The face so terrifying it churned vomit in my belly was my own face. My real face. Absently, I think that I am finally seeing my depression. That whatever consciousness which was seeing this gruesome face was me, and the real face reflected was finally the beast tangible. There. Right there, that is what is hurting me. That thing right in front of me, a thing which is somehow me and not me.

 "One day you wake up afraid you are going to live." -Elizabeth Wurtzel

That is what happened to me. From the onset of my suicidal ideation problems, when I was 9 or 10 or 11, I believed I would die before or around age 21. I don't know why that age specifically, like why do people believe in Santa? When 21 came to pass, the reality of the never-ending storm took hold of me in a vice grip. This was never going to end. My depression would never have the kindness to let me die of it. I would not develop inoperable brain cancer. I would not be mercifully crushed in a car accident, or shot on a midnight walk. I was going to live. Live and suffer for years. The thing inside me would tear and claw and I would bleed and bleed, but never die.

I choose to believe that there may someday be a day when I am cured, but to protect myself, I don't count on it.

The truth is that I am prepared to fight indefinitely. At some point I stopped letting thoughts of suicide be at all forbidden. I then did my best to really look at what I believed about life and living. I weighed what I thought and believed and I chose to fight the depression & the suicidal ideation and to do my best to live as long and as full of a life as I possibly could. The power of making that choice is the power I have harnessed for my life going forward. That is the power I return to when I feel the expanding cavern of depression in my abdomen. It is my foundation for the life I build from now onward.

Look, I get that this is uncomfortable to read. I'm not sorry for sharing it, though (or at least I'm trying not to be)
. See, since the onset of my depression when I was but a wee lass, I have always been hiding all of my symptoms with a feverish passion. Part of trying to heal myself is trying not to be afraid to share what I'm going through, even if its pants-poopingly scary. I read somewhere that an obstacle to overcoming Depression is that we "get good at" being depressed, and hiding is how I do that. So in an effort to overcome yet another aspect of this damn irritating illness, I'm writing a little of what I feel here.

Oh and don't worry, I have an appointment to see a therapist in a few days, and I've been seeing someone else for med management stuff. So at this point I don't intervention-style need help, I'm just tired of being silent about my illness. I'm tired of the pressure to say nothing.