Originally posted Dec. 10, 2013, at Living Faith. Republished with permission of the author.
My depression is knocking me down this week. The will to do anything is elusive. My sense of worth is shot.
It’s not rational, it just is.
You can’t talk me out of it.
I can’t even talk me out of it.
I’ve had my ups and downs over time and I’ve been on a bit of an upswing lately — feeling good about my writing and podcasting and all that good stuff.
It was in an upswing that I decided to finally start writing for real. I was tired of letting my depression hold me back in life and tell me I wasn’t good enough and didn’t have enough to say. I told my depression to go straight to hell and I was going to do this thing.
But that damned depression is creeping up again.
I mean, there’s the normal-people self-doubt and comparison trap that I get into sometimes and those bring me down, but there’s always something or someone that helps snap me out of those.
But this week — I’ve just been a mess and there’s nothing that can snap me out of it. I’m just a tear-stained, frumpy-clothed mess.
And I hate this part of my story.
I much prefer the part of my story in which I’m the shiny-happy, preaching deaconess.
I’ve heard people criticize social media because of the way that people carefully curate their image — showing only their good sides, posting only the favorable photos, sharing only the triumphant moments.
To be sure, I want you to know about my highs! I want to tell you about my latest podcast that I’m proud of! I want you to see the action shot of me preaching.
But you deserve to know about today and the other days like it. About how I didn’t want to get out of bed. About how I stayed in my pajamas until I got the text that my husband was on his way home for lunch. And about how when my husband got home for lunch he cooked and loaded the dishwasher while I sat in a corner in the kitchen and wept and poured out my tale of woe.
I want to be honest about the whole of this life of mine. I’m the preaching deaconess and the lady who doesn’t want to get up until after noon.
I know my depression isn’t the worst in the world. I did make it out of bed, so that’s something.
And the fact that I’m at this keyboard is because, as I told my journal today, if I can do nothing else, I will write about my damn depression. Because I’m doing this writing thing no matter what.
God knows there is so much more I want — and need — to write about. There’s so much to say I could burst sometimes.
I don’t want to write about my depression, but it is the elephant in the room right now, and it takes too much energy to ignore it. It won’t let me think of anything else right now. So I’m writing about it. Because I’m doing this writing thing.
