Mamarati

Depression.

I haven’t talked about it in a long time, right?

I haven’t been there in a long time.

I talk about it like it’s a destination. A place I once visited.

“Oh, depression. Yeah, I remember that place. I think I have some pictures in a box somewhere.”

Like a vacation.

But it wasn’t so much a place as it was…

?

Not me. When I was depressed, I was not me. Which is really strange to think about. Because for most of my life I was depressed. Which means that for most of my life, I was not myself.

And so much of what I did during those years, was… also not me. I mean, it was the me that everyone around me knew. But there was so much going on underneath that nobody really knew about. There were so many thoughts inside my head that were just… so black. So dark. So disturbing. So desperate. So painful.

And now, I can hardly even remember the pain. But I know it was there. Because I do have pictures in a box somewhere. All the words I used to spill forth here in this space… I have that.

And like the snapshots you take on vacation, a story is told… but it’s not the whole story. Just a glimpse of what was going on. Just a moment in time. And who knows what all the other moments were like?

It’s so odd for me now to read some of those words. I read them and I think… Was that really me? Did I really reach that point? Was I really that sad? It’s like reading a stranger’s words.

Like I said — I can hardly remember the pain now.

It reminds me of childbirth. How tremendous is that pain? How overpowering? Those out of control moments… I had moments during childbirth where I wanted to give up. I had moments during childbirth where I wanted to get up and leave and not go through with what my body had every intention of going through. I had moments of feeling like a madwoman. Insanity. Wrestling with my mind and my body. Screaming at the top of my lungs. Intense focus and then I’d completely lose it. I would feel a rush of power within me like I could destroy the entire world with my bare hands. And then it would be gone and I would be cowering like a frightened animal.

And then one last push…

And you don’t feel it any more after that one last push. The pain is gone. You’re in control once again, calm yet excited. Exhuasted yet renewed. And look what you did.

I feel like… all my life up to a point was an incubation period. A gestation of myself. And then I had a long, hard labor. And a very difficult transition. And every step of the way was some complication in the process. Posterior? Oh sure. Low heart rate? Absolutely. Too many drugs slowing things down? Most definitely.

I think that my transition started in about 2000. After my adoptive mom died. After giving birth to Alex. Leaving my job. Dealing with my brother and sister and all that crisis. My dress rehearsal wedding finally ending. The pseudorelationship with Chris being revealed for what it really was. Making realizations about my family. My Friends. Myself. It was like a clash between all the things I engaged in to try to be normal and all the things I couldn’t control that completely weren’t normal. It was like a Claritin commercial:

You know the part where it’s all foggy and then the fog lifts and everything is so crystal clear and vivid? That’s what it’s like.

And I think that my one last push happened about the time I decided that against all the odds, I was going to press on and stop wallowing in unhappiness. It was about 2003. And I decided that even when sad days were to come, I was still going to just let it be a sad day and not be a sad year. Or a sad life. I was not going to hold onto the familiarity of sadness. I was not going to take comfort in the darkness just because it was the only thing I knew. I was not going to let it be like the allegory of the cave or something.

And so that brings me to this year.

During this year, the year I finally decided to follow my dream of becoming a librarian. The year I decided to turn it all around and come clean with myself… The year I decided to really get the fuck on with my life… all these things happen. All these bad things. Surgeries and allergies and everything I know about food being turned on end and falls of ladders and funguseses people moving away and friends turning away from me and difficulty and trauma and drama and deaths and illnesses and family and relationships and difficulties and irritations and politics with public schools and barriers and realizations and feeling like shit and bedrest and falling behind with work, with school, with life…

And so much more.

And yet here I am. Me. Being myself. Struggling to deal with it, but dealing with it. Finding some of it very difficult, but managing.

And I’m not unhappy. And I’m not depressed. And I do not wish to die or to escape or to end it all if I could only make the pain go away.

I have always been a survivor. People who know me say this. But it means so much more to me now. I am in the midst of all this stuff and I am not just surviving. As if surviving was ever really *a choice* or something. But I am here in the middle of it all and I am happy.

Tired, bitchy, whiny. Sure, I can be that way. But that’s just a snapshot of this vacation. Wanting to die? Yes, there was a time. But again, just a snapshot. Just a thought.

There are hundreds of rolls of this trip that haven’t been developed yet… and they tell a different story. A much happier one. One that is real.