Am I OK yet, you ask. Is this enough? How far do you need to climb before it’s far enough away from depression that you feel comfortable? The distance marked is rarely enough for me because depression comes with a permanent seat on the roundabout of doubt.
It should be so, perhaps. I shouldn’t sweat the small stuff but I should worry that I’ll fall back into the hideous tar pit of depression and not be able to get out again. That should concern me because on the day that it doesn’t I’ll know I’m really nuts. And more to the point, I’ll know I’m in serious danger.
The process of recovery is, itself, a lot about leaving room for doubt. Lately I’ve been leaving a lot of room for error around my medications. Take the meds, don’t take the meds I repeat as I strip never-ending petals off a daisy I hold in my trembling hands.
My head and heart disagree about few things so much as medication. Not that it doesn’t plainly help but only that I want to be stronger, calmer, less prone to anger and less far gone simply by the workings of my self not by the grace of outsourced chemicals pumping through my veins.
I have a lot of room for doubt in my life generally, for that matter. It shows up pretty regularly as partner to my depression. It’s reliable like that, which is good because the process of it isn’t at all reliable. What’s it like not to question everything? I don’t entirely remember - I’m not so innocent as that, you see. Never so good and well that I can look at the world plainly, and not ask the thousand stupid questions that flood my mind.
I have no patience. I strain at that which binds and chaffs against me as I reach for the moon. If only the moon would reach for me. If only things just came to me, and I could trust in that. That the world will provide I am sure. Sure as I can be but I still don’t entirely trust in that because nothing seems reassurance enough when you’ve fallen off the same ledge more than once…
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Depression is that ledge, and the fall is hard and full of more shame than I can describe every single time. I know I will, most likely, be fooled again. No matter what I do. That’s not inevitable, though. It’s just about answers I don’t have yet. It’s the yet that opens up room for doubt. When? By whose clock is all this set?
Everything changes according to its own pace and design. Synthesis and breakdown are the ruling forces of life. I live in hope of the former and in practice of the latter, more often than not. I build castles in the sand, and watch them get washed away at dusk. Depression is my tide, and yet I am determined to build a sandcastle so tall, in what little time I have, that it cannot be completely erased.
Something remains in me even when the tide comes in, something essential that is all still determination and a guide to this game. I will set my compass by that small knot in my core that both worries at me and keeps me steady. That room for doubt is room enough to breathe.
Posted by Catatonic K.
Am I OK yet, you ask. Is this enough? How far do you need to climb before it’s far enough away from depression that you feel comfortable? The distance marked is rarely enough for me because depression comes with a permanent seat on the roundabout of doubt.
It should be so, perhaps. I shouldn’t sweat the small stuff but I should worry that I’ll fall back into the hideous tar pit of depression and not be able to get out again. That should concern me because on the day that it doesn’t I’ll know I’m really nuts. And more to the point, I’ll know I’m in serious danger.
The process of recovery is, itself, a lot about leaving room for doubt. Lately I’ve been leaving a lot of room for error around my medications. Take the meds, don’t take the meds I repeat as I strip never-ending petals off a daisy I hold in my trembling hands.
My head and heart disagree about few things so much as medication. Not that it doesn’t plainly help but only that I want to be stronger, calmer, less prone to anger and less far gone simply by the workings of my self not by the grace of outsourced chemicals pumping through my veins.
I have a lot of room for doubt in my life generally, for that matter. It shows up pretty regularly as partner to my depression. It’s reliable like that, which is good because the process of it isn’t at all reliable. What’s it like not to question everything? I don’t entirely remember - I’m not so innocent as that, you see. Never so good and well that I can look at the world plainly, and not ask the thousand stupid questions that flood my mind.
I have no patience. I strain at that which binds and chaffs against me as I reach for the moon. If only the moon would reach for me. If only things just came to me, and I could trust in that. That the world will provide I am sure. Sure as I can be but I still don’t entirely trust in that because nothing seems reassurance enough when you’ve fallen off the same ledge more than once…
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Depression is that ledge, and the fall is hard and full of more shame than I can describe every single time. I know I will, most likely, be fooled again. No matter what I do. That’s not inevitable, though. It’s just about answers I don’t have yet. It’s the yet that opens up room for doubt. When? By whose clock is all this set?
Everything changes according to its own pace and design. Synthesis and breakdown are the ruling forces of life. I live in hope of the former and in practice of the latter, more often than not. I build castles in the sand, and watch them get washed away at dusk. Depression is my tide, and yet I am determined to build a sandcastle so tall, in what little time I have, that it cannot be completely erased.
Something remains in me even when the tide comes in, something essential that is all still determination and a guide to this game. I will set my compass by that small knot in my core that both worries at me and keeps me steady. That room for doubt is room enough to breathe.