Depression has been has been a dark cloud, a black beast forever hovering just off my left shoulder.  A burden never acknowledge, never faced, never dealt with.

I had a trapdoor, painted a lovely shade of green, in my mind.  There I `ssed anything that required me to face my emotions.  First I could simply lift the door and drop a potential bomb out of sight, out of mind. My daily routine could continue.  As the weeks, then days rolled by the turbulence made just gripping the embedded trap door ring increasingly difficult.  Life did not continue so effortlessly; little pieces began to fall out of my grasp, building even more emotion I could not dealt with. A point would come, approaching this trapdoor caused my heart and chest to freeze. Cramming more under the door became impossible.  My body began to panick.  Arthritis and muscle spasms would bring my life to near stop. Headaches caused me to miss much of what I was seeing: feeling I was apart, only observing my life through badly aligned lenses.

At this point I would throw myself into frantic activity.  Doing that I thought I should be doing.  Struggling to keep up with what needed doing. Always striving to  keep track of all those loose threads… never saying no, never resting, never understanding, just desperation.  Perfectionism held me back from even starting the simplest things. Staying up all night to finish a project seemed sensible.  And, always, the darkness closing in.

In the end, it would be a simple thing: new task, a broken object, something slipping out of my control. Scarily, it could even be non-existent… a straw made from my misconstrued view. The stress of holding it all in resulted in an explosion.  I would collapse and cry for hours, unable to explain what was wrong. (Telling those around you that a trapdoor in your mind couldn’t take the strain any longer and… mmm, not an option!) The buried emotions could no longer be contained. The blackness, with stabbing accuracy brought every hurt, every stupid thing, every bad decision, every slight, every failure back with such clarity, I relieved every moment.

I would crash, with varying degrees of depression.  I could sleep three days, rising only to keep the “living” looked after.  Sweeping up the mess and madly reviewing my minute by minute routines was my attempt at regaining control.  Facing the underlying cause of my reactions, was not an option. Neither was councelling, or medication, I didn’t need that.  And on I went.

This cycle has been the underpinning of my entire life. Not pretty to contemplate and hard for me to acknowledge, let alone face.  Letting life spin out of control and succumbing to depression, made me feel ashamed.  Strength and courage should have been enough for me to take control and bring into reality the live of my dreams.  All I had to do was pick myself up, and try harder.

Thinking about it now, much of my direction came from a desperation to succeed at something, to find friendship and be a good friend, and always, always, the desire to create.  Yet, never measuring up, never quite making it, nor finding power to forgive myself, all this wrapped around fevered activity … or full stop.

Over the past year I have been trying to look deeper, to face my feelings, and above all forgive myself. I thought about writing a bit here, making it visible, open. There might be a word or two here that could help another… the fear of seeing it outside of my head is about to blow the trapdoor! But I will try, with love and forgiveness to order the process.