Depression for me is like a deep sea dive. I start out with my toes on the edge of my world. It’s a perfect day…you know that day – the birds are singing, the sun is shining and the promise of hope that anything can happen. I point my fingers to the sky and launch into the most beautiful, perfect dive. Olympic judges would stand-up to show my perfect ten score card and the crowd would go wild!
Into the cool water I dive and down I go. I can’t hear the birds anymore and I’m totally unaware of the little things that make me happy and the perfect day and the perfect dive starts slipping away.
Another fathom…it’s getting darker, the sunshine that was visible not so long ago is now fading and it’s getting cold, and the walls are closing in.
Another fathom…it’s nearly dark, it’s freezing cold, no light at all. The promise and hope that was once held so dear, has long ago slipped through my fingers and is lost.
Another fathom…crash! I hit bottom, I can’t hear, I can’t see, I can’t move – depression has got it’s hooks in and there I lie curled up in a foetal position wondering ‘how did this happen to me’.
My depression is like a tactical assault – sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch. I don’t want to see myself, you or the rest of the world. The smells I once loved and triggered my happy hormones are gone. Anyone offering me words of encouragement, their words fall on deaf ears. Touch – don’t you dare touch me! I will implode into a thousand pieces and never see the light of day again.
My personal favorite and my own worst enemy is taste. All I want is to eat my own body weight in white chocolate. Seriously! I will savage my way through the fridge from the worst of the worst, and when anything remotely bad for me is eaten, then into the pantry I dive. Right there is the nasty cherry-on-top. Bang. Up goes my weight another four or five kilos.
Now at 50 years old, I have been dealing with depression for decades. Sometimes better and sometimes worse. So apart from the usual helpers, Psychiatrists, Psychologists and pills, I have a few of my own little helpers to get me through the day.
Dragging yourself up from the depths of hell is no easy feat. Your whole life is in chaos and the light of day seems to burn as dimly as a candle that has just about burnt through its wax. When the candle has its few last flickers, it leaves you a trail of whitish-gray smoke.
BE KIND TO YOURSELF.
This simple statement has made such a difference to my life. Even when we are depressed we still paint on a smile and let everyone think we’re just fine, while internally we are empty and a shell of our former self.
Acknowledge to yourself that it is ok to be down. Stop beating yourself up. I feel that once you stop fighting it and can acknowledge, ‘I am aware that I am depressed’, it’s then and only then that you can start doing something about it.
Your life is in total turmoil, everything is wrong, I don’t know where to start. Make yourself a list of the issues negatively affecting your life, such as relationships, work and any other great turmoil. Lay them out on a different page each, buy yourself a favorite colored highlighter pen, then treat your problems like onions. Work at one layer a day.
Now don’t think that you have to do a layer of each list every day. If all you can do is one layer on one list today, guess what? You are already strapped into your Mt Everest climbing boots and you have crossed off one layer before you know it. So your layers of lists all of a sudden have a pretty pink highlight-lines through them.
Slowly but surely, those lists will turn more and more pink and the beauty of the more and more pink is that you are gaining your life back. You start to realize if the wheels fall of the truck again, guess what? Pull out that pink list and all of a sudden YOU realize you have done it before. Guess what? Now you know you can do it again!
I have been hating myself, but no more. I took a good long hard look in the mirror and decided instead of hating myself, which has been my way for the last 50 years, I am doing a complete 180° turn. The next 50 years I am going to like myself.
Guess what? I do like myself!
This old girl is OK. Look what she has survived. She has been knocked down so many times, but just like the Terminator, I regenerated myself and crawled, dragged, struggled every step of the way.
But I keep GETTING UP.
I am my own Warrior, just like in the Game of Warcraft, I designed myself from top to toe. One day at a time, one fight at a time. My autistic friend made and named me “Deewarien”. How little did he know that he had hit the nail right on the head!
So get your inner Warrior on boys and girls, and let’s start slaying dragons…
Be kind to yourself,
Love Big Fat Dewarien Dee
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