cw: self-harm
I am not new to depression. I am not new to having bouts of uncontrollably negative thoughts and feelings that significantly impact my life. I've chronicled a number of them in my writings over the years.
Yet: Depression is not me; I am not my depression.
It is a sickness I have. I'll fight it. Ignore it. Walk it off, sleep it off, some coping mechanism springs forth and delivers relief. I've not ever taken medication for it. Officially.
At Black Rock City, I took a lot of acid. Like, a lot. My brain got picked apart and reassembled in a real-time pseudosimulation. I explored what seemed like a world without consequences, where rules are problems to be solved. Atop the hood of an art car, I had given serious consideration to attempting to evade the very real consequences of suicide.
I still don't know why. My thoughts pick at it like a bleeding scab. My mortality is there, I remember. Its really important to remember that.
I am so, so tired of having to fight it. And ignore it. And walk it off, sleep it of, think it off. I am deserving of a better life where I don't need to fight to manage the darkness that clouds my thoughts and reduces all feelings to that of a lead cloak.
I am still not my depression. It can stand alone from me. Be treated alone from me. Eliminated alone from me. Leaving just me.
I have never taken an anti-psychotic medication and that is about to change. Despite the struggle to maintain a presence, I've completed the appropriate american healthcare funding ritual with success; this time with four agencies routing messages to each other through me like the mutual in an estranged poly family.
This was devastating for me today. The godawful mess it takes to hold myself together and not scream at the faithful public-private partnership worker performs on the other end for ailments beyond either of our control. An appointment for a psychiatric evaluation was scheduled.
I don't know when I was new to depression. I can remember feeling elation, jubilation, the absolute maddness of love. Passion for my work. Depression lies to me and tells me that I'll never feel those things again, that its all hopeless, and there's only one route of escape from this nightmare.
Don't believe a word it says. Depression lies to me. It maintains an iron-clad grip on my psyche. It isn't me. This isn't me. A bad version with bugs and problems that infects everything around her.
There's a better version me to be found underneath this lead cloak. And I am excited to meet her.