For me the cruelest thing about depression is how I feel like I can't trust myself. I learned early on in treatment that the thing I most want to do at any given point in time generally the last thing in the world I should be doing. I'm constantly distrusting my own motives in everything I do. When I want to take a day to relax at home or go to bed early, I worry I'm being avoident. When I want to stay up late or go out, I worry I'm too "up". When I want to eat, I question if I'm hungry or if I'm just trying to fill a void. When I don't feel like eating I force myself to eat on a schedule so I make sure to get food in my system. It's like being trapped in a body being run by the spirit of a particularly strong-willed child who always does the opposite of what needs doing. It's frustrating as hell.
This weekend alone I had to force myself to get out of the house and go to a party when all I wanted to do was stay home and play on the computer. I had to force myself to make a cake and work on an art project and clean instead of letting myself sit in front of the television. I had to force myself to eat, and then force myself to stop eating when I was beyond over-full. I had to use my sleep medication for the first time in almost two months to make myself get some sleep, then two days later I had to fight to not sleep all day. Yesterday I made the unwise choice of taking the same medication during the day when I could feel myself flying up, up, and away and friends were commenting that I was talking too fast and seemed really wired. That caused such a fabulous crash that I spent the rest of the day at the hospital instead of going into work.
Right now I don't feel like I recognize myself at all. I feel like I'm watching my life and the world around me on a movie screen, and I'm not really a part of it. My stand-in is filling in for me while I just hang out in the background, sort of not caring if I get my part back or not.
I know it will pass. Likely it will pass very soon, as it often does. But the same way I know it will pass, I also know it will come back. And that? Really fucking sucks.
I know this sounds hopeless and morose right now. If I were to write about this same subject tomorrow morning or next week or next month it could have an entirely different feel. Maybe I'd be making sarcastic jokes about the checklists I keep in my phone to motivate myself to do basic life things like flossing and doing chores. Maybe I'd be laughing at how I whine at myself inside my head, throwing spectacular temper tantrums over the littlest things. But today it appears morose is the only thing on the menu.
But at least I still remember that this too, shall pass.
