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There is a day-and-night difference to me between depression that falls like the sun does at nightfall and depression that falls away.  One of my several so-called clinical diagnosis is “reoccurring major depression.”  There is never any mania with this kind of depression.  But the fact that it is “reoccurring” means that I am fortunate enough to have the worst of the depression fall away in time — until next time.

I have to find my gratitude where it comes to me.  While I never am depression-free except on the rarest occasions, at least my chronic depression is “minor” rather than “major.”  Life is nothing if not relative!

I tend to notice subtle shifts in how I react to how I feel as they appear in the language of my thoughts.  “I feel depressed” (sad) is not as scary to me as are the words I hear now:  “I AM depressed.”  The difference between these descriptive phrases alerts me to the fact that once the “I AM depressed” words appear I am in need of serious work to find my way through to the other side.

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What sends anyone from “tumult” into “plummet” is intensely personal.  I recognize that my thoughts and feelings have been tumultuous for weeks heading into months.  I know I have very real needs that are not being met yet I have no clear – or even at this point possible – way to make changes at this time. 

My inner self is always called upon to keep me upright but it is the nature of how longterm severe traumatic abuse affected my physiological development during the first 18 years of my life that has left me rarely, rarely at ease.  I have to work very hard on every level to ever feel simply OK.

I am used to this.  Yet every time the major depression threatens to swallow me whole I have to search for the iron will of my survival instincts.  Nobody can do this work for me.

I force myself to do everything I do right now.  My “conditions” are completely “medication resistant.”  What happened to me in the first place was too complicated and caused so many complicated changes within my developing body that I am always left with only one solution:  What can I do to help myself?

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 I force myself to do my 45 minute daily walk, to make and drink my green vegetable juice, to take my vitamins.  (Oops!  I better go do that now.)  I take a total of 21 pills of 14 different supplements daily.  I am even juicing organic carrot tops now and have added quinoa, spelt noodles and organic stewed tomatoes to my diet.  I am making progress through my pH Miracle dietary changes in my effort to help my body be able to heal itself.

Today I found and added the clear words, “I am fine.  I feel wonderful.” into my thought patterns whenever I detect conscious negative thoughts.  I force myself to pick up gardening scissors to trim dead flowers off of at least one rose-bush.  I force myself to find a rag, wet it, and wash at least part of my kitchen floor.

I can finish nothing right now except perhaps this post.  Success in accomplishment for me right now is simply IN THE DOING of whatever I can force myself to do.  I feel as though I am in a body moving under the weight of a very deep sea.  Everything about life right now takes my concentrated effort.  This is tiring.

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I do not care what “they” say about depression.  I believe it always comes from a sad and breaking heart.  It is only a loving gentleness that can tend such a vulnerability in anyone’s soul.  Everyone I love lives over a thousand miles away from me.  And it even was my recent travel to see some of those people that so sunk my heart at returning home — alone.

I long ago left behind the silly notion that anyone or anything outside of my own self awareness, initiative and action can help me through those times when my depression falls from being minor to being major.  In the meantime I have to look for, notice and value every little piece of life that is beautiful to me.  I have to work to add something to that beauty in any and every way that I can.

These depressions as they began very early in my childhood in response to horrific abuse are deeply about the crumbling of my hope, and without hope I become so very, very, very sad.  So sad!  At those times being alive in the physical world feels like a trap.  I struggle.  I pray.

When I am up enough I go where there are people but most human interactions exhaust rather than feed me right now.  My healing always seems to require quiet (very typical for PTSD and dissociative healing). 

I am naming a malaise that I know came to me directly from exposure to unremitting horrors of traumatic infant and child abuse.  This is all very difficult to live with, to cope with or to change.  The reprieves do come.  I wait for them while I work for them in any way that I can.

It helps me to write about this here.  It helps me to not feel so terribly alone.  Thank you for reading.  Thank you.

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