Garden of Daisies

Waking up like it has all been a bad dream

March 28th, 2007

So what do you do when you wake up from a depression to discover that you are in fact rather unhappy with your life?

You wake up and you realize that you are out of shape, underachieving academically, without employment and have a life absolutely devoid of extra-curricular activity.

What happened to the little girl who showed so much promise? What happened to the precocious teen who had dreams of making a positive difference in the world?

Every good idea, or exciting job, or interesting volunteer work I have become involved in I have given up on, quit, or abandonned. I have lost track of all the interesting academic ideas I swear I use to have. I could not even add 2.50 to a pizza bill of 18.96 tonight because my brain is actually melting from a lack of use.

I try yoga but my body cannot handle that kind of honesty with itself right now. I try prayer but I am stuck in the athiest vaccuum of the secular west where I cannot get my mind invested in a deity but cannot commit my heart to a religious tradition without one.

Last year when I started getting sick I knew something was wrong because everything in my life was right so I should not have been feeling so sick. A year and a half later I am starting to understand how this illness must have gradually morphed itself into a chronic depression for my mother. You try losing 4 months of every year. Watch what happens. Have the same sad tear-filled conversations with your friends over and over again and watch them lose the ability to listen anymore. (Or worse yet sit on the recieving end of their stories without the ability to process them.) Watch what that does to you. Watch your faith in yourself disappear.

Or worse yet wake up and discover that it slipped away in the night.

And then cry.

For the first time in months real tears. Real big sobs not just the hollow moans of depression.

Entry Filed under: Seasonal Affective Disorder, Psychology, My life