The perfect recipe

Just feel the need to write tonight.  I've been having a bout of depression this past week, which for me consists of emotional numbness and inability to get excited about anything, with intermittent unprompted waves of despair and whipped cream on top.

I do have a history of this but something in me has changed over the last few years.  Before, when I would experience these feelings, I would think that it was hopeless and might not ever end.  I really considered doing bad things to myself at times either to relieve the pain or to just feel something, anything.  But now when I experience these feelings, I know that they will go away, and the more I focus on the relief I know is coming, the faster it passes.  Sometimes it's only a few hours and sometimes it's a month or more.  But I know it will pass and it always does.

I try to analyze what may have triggered this.  There are many factors - genetics, for one.  I have this on both sides of my family.  Hormones, for another...

And then there's grief.  

Losing a family member or close friend is a loss the depths of which one keeps on discovering in different ways as time passes.  Every season without them, every holiday, every life event that they should have been a part of, their absence is felt.  The insignificant details of everyday life become significant.  Parts of yourself you took for granted - you go looking for them, and they appear to be...just missing.  

The pain is cruelly sharp when it sneaks up on you.  For example, someone asked me where my family lives, and I said my sister lives in California and my parents and my brother are in Idaho.  Brother, singular.  I'd never said that before.  I hate that I said it.  That I referred to my family without mentioning both brothers.  I hate it so much.  

Then I met a man recently at a networking event who was about his age.  He was shaping up to be somewhat of a career role model for me, which is something I had been missing since my brother passed.  But before long I began to realize that he had romantic interest in me.  He asked me on a date, which I politely turned down, and he's been giving me the cold shoulder ever since.  It's the loss of: as an adult single woman, your brothers are the only male companions you have that you don't ever have to worry about those kind of things with.  They just love you for the person you are, not as a potential. 

And then there's trauma.  A deceptive encounter, a triggering environment, a perceived failure.  The catalyst for the downward spiral.  The perfect recipe.

I feel raw and exposed, on the verge of tears, avoiding eye contact with people for fear of losing my composure, crying alone in my office at work with the door shut. I told my employee I didn't care how the project turned out.  He replied, "I'll care for both of us."  I nearly broke down, but instead I just laughed it off like a joke. 

But it will pass.  It's been six days.  It won't be long now and the sun will break through the clouds.  Then reality will be visible again.  When reality isn't visible, I must think of it often, reciting to myself the things I know to be true, just beyond the clouds.  I lack nothing.  I'm free. I can't let myself forget my real self.  I'm a precious unique person.  I have a future.  I'm an important part of humanity.  I can't forget what it's like to experience joy, or that joy is a part of me sleeping deep within somewhere.  Soon to awaken.  Soon.

If anyone is reading this, don't forget who you are.  Precious, loved, worthy, free.  Don't ever forget.