Welcome to my new blog!

I've been on both sides of the couch and think I can lend something to the conversation about mental health. Telling my own personal experience can, hopefully, give others strength and hope that things can get better. I'll talk about other topics, too, and show what coping skills I use to get myself through, both adaptive and maladaptive.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Monkeys and Cliffs

Just when I think that things are getting better, that my life is in order, that I have proper footing and can breathe a sigh of relief...I have the proverbial rug pulled out from under me.  Depression is a real beast - a monkey on my back - and doesn't ever seem to go away.  It loses weight and carrying it around doesn't bother me nearly as much and then, like now, it gains so much weight that I'm afraid I can't take it anymore and will have to just stop walking. 

Right now, I feel like I'm on a cliffside.  I lost my footing and fell over the edge, but I'm holding onto some old, yet strong, roots.  I am exhausted, but people keep telling me to hold on...that things will get better.  And I am hoping and praying that they are right because a good portion of me wants to just let go.  Just hope someone will catch me. 

It's amazing to me, sometimes, how depression lies to me.  That monkey convinces me, as I try to carry its ass around with me, that I am weak, that I am useless and worthless, and hopeless, and all of the other lesses he can think of.  And he is convincing.  He tells me that people don't care about me and that if they knew the "real me," they'd hate me as much as I hate myself.  He makes me truly believe that I am a burden.  And it is a great deal of work to argue with him because he doesn't seem to lose momentum whatsoever and I just don't have the energy to keep fighting him.  And, yet, I do.  Somehow, I do.

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