why do people say “don’t be a pussy” when talking about weakness more like “don’t be a man’s ego” because you know there isn’t nothing more fragile than that
uh
because “pussy” is the shortened form of the word “pusillanimous”, which means “timid, cowardly”
and not the slang word for the female genital region?
does anyone else have those moments where they just fall in love with being alive? like, maybe you’re in art class with soft music and you realize that this peaceful feeling is a part of life that you love and you want to just keep forever, and there are so many other parts of life too that are so wonderful and maybe existing isnt so bad after all
is this what being not depressed is like
no, this is what recovery is like. this is what being depressed is like, and it’s why we stay. because even when we’re sure this is it, this is the last day we can put up with it, this is the last hour, the last second – some part of us remembers these moments, and thinks – what if tomorrow has one of them.
i used to joke i have bad days and worse days. i almost never do well. i feel like i keep barely a nose above the water.
but in those rare, rare, rare seconds where the waves stop for one second and i catch sight of something other than dark, i see it. the way a rose looks after a rain. how my mother smiles when she knows it’s my favorite meal that’s cooking. my best friend looking over his shoulder to flip me off again. the bike i rode at 7 and crashed at 17. a little bug struggling with five little legs – but walking, walking.
recovery isn’t smashing into these moments and realizing it’s finally happened, what those people said is true and it “all gets better”. recovery is remembering those moments and deciding – i want them back. it’s looking for them. sometimes it takes hours. sometimes days. sometimes months without any sight of them. but you look, you search even when you’re too tired to keep your eyes open, because you promised yourself … tomorrow. tomorrow will be the day we find one. a four leaf clover we know is our sign, the rainbow, the wishing well – the way out.
and when you find one, they get easier. four leaf clovers always grow in the same patch, after all. and your eyes get sharper. you figure out what makes any small part of you happy. you figure out that you might not be happy, but it’s good enough to stick around to watch the way oil looks in puddles and how she always cries at new year’s. and it might not be blisteringly, soul-crushingly happy in the way other people seem to feel things – in that mind-numbing wordless joy that shines in them, that glow i’m so envious of, that effortlessness – but it will be like this, just quiet, a moment of rest, of the shouts dimming for a minute, a peace.
it’s easy to say “i’m depressed, i’ll never be happy.” maybe. i hope not, because i’m still looking. and in these moments i’ve rediscovered that i am funny, that i like the color pink, that kittens and puppies never fail me. in these moments i’m still depressed, still me, still fighting an illness that wants to end me. but i’m fighting. i seek these moments in every second i get because i’m here and breathing and after all this i’m going to be pissed if this gets the better of me.
maybe i’ll never figure out how to feel effortless and free. but i know that i feel love when the music is blaring and my hands are out the window and i feel love somewhere on the beach and i feel love watching salamanders wake up in the mornings. it’s not other people’s love, it’s far-off and it’s distant and it might not be “normal”, but it’s goddamn important to me.
i didn’t wake up better. i forced better to come fight me. i’ve been walking towards recovery since i was 19. five years later and no, i’m not cured, but i see a lot more of these moments. or maybe they were always there, and only now am i realizing what i got in front of me.
and when it’s been bad again? when i’m not even breathing? when it’s been months since i felt anything, when the stress is too much and the sky is dark and the moon in me has fallen silent? i say: hang on. tomorrow might be the day we find it. tomorrow might be worth the fight.
the best part about this? eventually, i’m right.
Like, I get that you and a lot of people find this helpful, but I don’t see it. I’ve had so many moments where it feels like I’m getting better and then nothing improves in the long run. I’ve heard of people having one or two depressive episodes and then getting over it, and I’ve heard of people never getting depressive episodes at all, and I’ve heard of people being depressed for more or less their whole lives, but I don’t feel like I ever hear about people being depressed for a decade or more than then finally making lasting, long term progress that makes the struggle worth it.
I do. I’m married to one of them. I know others.
And… Like, even some of the people who are depressed their whole lives are still, on the whole, okay with that. Anhedonia’s a bitch, but sometimes you find a way to derive value from things anyway. I dunno, man.
But I know a fair number of people that I know felt just like you describe feeling for, I dunno, a decade or more, and now they’re happy they made it through that. It happens. Which is no guarantee for you, and… I dunno. People link me to a lot of your posts, and I just want to say, I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong, I don’t think it’s your fault, and I think you deserve better, and I hope you find it.
*waves* seebs’s spouse here. depressed since early childhood. learned to do the thing @inkskinned is talking about in adulthood (after many much much worse coping mechanisms i won’t get into) and kept at it until i got really good at it. and that was it for years – i was depressed, but also sometimes very happy. believe it or not, the two states are not mutually exclusive. i didn’t have the energy to react strongly to good things, and sometimes i had anhedonia to the point where my happiness was very muted, but it was still happiness. i think if you look in the recovery or depression tag on my blog and you go back a ways you can find my posts about that.
and if that was all the better it got, i would’ve stuck it out and been – on the whole – glad to be alive.
but i’d kept trying various meds off and on over the years, and persistence paid off. i found the one that actually worked. it took two weeks to climb out of hades, like orpheus, holding my breath and refusing to look back. two weeks as the medicine worked its molecular magic on my brain chemistry. and then It Happened: a Day Without Depression.
i woke up and looked at the day ahead of me and was curious about what would be in it. i felt awake, i felt alive, i know that’s a cliche and doesn’t convey anything but i really felt like i was the one breathing, you know? finally MY lungs and MY heart and MY blood and bones, not an oubliette where i passed the time befriending rats and sparrows. not every day is like that now, but enough of them are that i’m a lot stronger on the bad days. i’m not so exhausted all the time.
more and more often, i look up at sunlight through leaves, or a firefly lands on my hand, or seebs gives me a big good hug, and i feel that bright upwelling joy that used to be so vanishingly rare.
don’t. give. up.
i swear if i’d lived unmedicated eighty years and only been depression free the last year of my life, it would still be worth it.
just moving along like everyone else 