I'm Depressed

And I probably have been for a while. I think it's been my baseline, the truth of it buried under the loudness of anxiety and panic attacks. The quietness of it, shadowed by the loudness that is me.

This isn't the ferocious depression of my youth, the all-consuming, gnawing depression that screamed its destructive lies at me which told me that the only way I'd ever be loved was if I were dead, that the only way to escape the constant abuse from my mother was the final escape. As you can tell, I did survive that and I did escape her, but I don't think I ever escaped that specific demon; I think it called itself trauma and buried itself deep inside me.

I'm writing this from bed at 7:30pm on a Monday, fresh on the tails of a total meltdown. I wish I could take this to my therapist, I've been going over what I'd say to her in my mind, but I can't afford to right now. Can't afford the astronomical out of pocket expense. So I think I'll just say here what I want to say to her. It won't be coherent, but the urgency of saying something is pressing on my heart.

This depression is from trauma. It is. It's trauma response.  It's Complex PTSD. I know that. That means that I've had profound happiness over the years, and even recently, but it also means that in quiet moments, which left alone with my thoughts, it comes out and gnaws at me, but also in moments where I feel  exhausted or trapped or out of control or just plain unhappy. Unhappiness is normal, but in me, it can often lead to panic and that panic is totally scary, but also masks the darker feelings, that depressive response.

I had a rough day today. I'm doing someone else's job, and I frankly hate it because the work is tedious and awful and not what I signed up for. And then after I'd done like 7 hours of work, I discovered I'd done it all wrong and had to start all over. That was bad enough on its own. That would make anyone frustrated and mad and irritable. Then I got on the road, my new commute to my new house, and traffic was quite literally double what it normally is. I tried to make the best of it. I put on an audibook I like and tried to enjoy one of my favorite views of downtown while the sun set (usually something I enjoy) while I crept across a bridge at 1 inch per hour, and then I thought, what if I just drove off this bridge?

Spoiler: I didn't. And I didn't really want to. I just wondered. I wondered what would happen. I followed the steps of it in my mind. Would I crash against the barrier and just wreck my car? I wasn't going very fast. It probably wouldn't damage anything but my insurance premium. But what if I went over? What if I landed in water? Would it be freezing? I didn't feel like swimming in a freezing river in my clothes while escaping a sinking Prius. Probably not worth it. 

I thought all of that. And then I had another half an hour of driving to get home. At which point, I slogged into my house, whined a little, got into a hot shower (something else that makes me happy), and broke down.

It feels both good and bad to break down. It feels great to finally feel. But it also sucks. It's painful, physically. My head hurts now, and I'm nauseated. My nose is stuffed up and my body aches. But melting down feels necessary, inevitable even. Like my body and brain are done with my bullshit compartmentalization and are forcing me to deal with it.

But it's hard. Really hard.

It's easier to slog on, keeping the trauma at my side, like Peter Pan's shadow. It wants to escape, but it's part of me.

Then my husband was trying to help but my trauma response told me that he was mad, mad at me for being me, for being this wild, broken, unpredictable thing that can't manage and cope and then I go to that place that tells me he deserves someone else, someone who doesn't live with Complex PTSD and anxiety and depression and then I melt down again.

He doesn't feel that way of course, at least I hope not, I remind myself, because even though I know it's trauma response, I can't quite ever throw away the possibility that I'm unworthy.

And for all my bluster about empowerment, I don't stand up for myself, even to myself. I'm a people pleaser. I'm that abused kid trying to appease my abuser, and that goes for my trauma too. I try to stand up to it, but I can't always do that.

And then I beat myself up more for beating myself up, because that's the biggest lesson my therapist imparts: don't beat yourself up for beating yourself up. Then you're doing your abuser's job for them. In this case, my abuser is the depression. So I know I'm helping it out when I spin out in a cycle of self-abuse, but that's the well-worn groove my brain likes to take. Breaking those grooves, those trauma responses, takes immense effort and life-long work and I am sometimes, oftentimes, too tired to fight it.

I am so very tired. I don't feel like I'm at a point of giving up, but I am fantasizing about a nice coma. No lasting brain damage or anything, if that's okay, but I'd like to sleep for a few weeks. It seems really quiet in a coma. Nobody telling you what to do or how to be, the nobody in this scenario being my brain of course. But I bet it doesn't work that way at all. I bet comas are noisy AF. I bet my brain wouldn't shut up and I'd wake up from a month-long panic attack.

Anyway, I'm not sure how to end this, except to say that writing does help and that I'll be relatively okay for now. Just admitting it feels sort of good. And I've survived thus far.