On escaping the dark well of depression…
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I spent nearly five years in the pit this time. Five, long, dark, years.
That’s what depression is like for me. Like looking up at life from the bottom of a dry well. The little circle of light above so very far away. The ground beneath my feet falling away. The only way out, the only way to survive, is to keep crawling up.
Depression has been part of life almost as long as I’ve been alive. Though it’s usually just this low key hum, that can be ignored with enough distractions. Distractions are key.
The illness has been a part of my life as long as I can remember too. I would skip school just to sleep. I was just so tired all the time. So damn tired. The pain didn’t come until later. The vomiting after that. Then the vertigo. So many falls for no reason. With the progression, came the endless parade of pills the doctors said would make it better, but most only made it worse.
Adding in the homeless situation and the many losses I had to face in a short span of time. It was a lot. I suppose all factors combined, the nervous breakdown only made sense.
It’s strange watching your own mind break. You feel it slipping, and you desperately try to stop it. But you slip, and you slip a little more, and then you just sort of give in and go with the slide.
Then you get stuck…
I’m better now, maybe not 100% but definitely 75%. But I did finally make it to the top of the well again. I do sort of feel like I am still straddling the edge of the well sometimes. One foot on solid ground, one foot dangling over the abyss, but I’ll take it.
Hell, yeah, I’ll take it.
I keep to myself mostly. It’s peaceful, and it helps. I spend a lot of time on my juggling prop business, and teaching kids to juggle. It helps so much.
It takes a fair amount of work to maintain that balance at the moment. Sometimes I still start to slide, and the darkness sets in for a few days here and there but I steady myself again pretty quickly.
It has been hard for me to talk about it. It’s been hard for me to really put it into words. It’s still really hard for me to feel safe being honest about these things.
For a long time I wanted to get back to being the person I used to be. I have finally accepted that person is gone. Some major shit happened, and there is no coming back from some things.
There’s just accepting and moving on.