I have been a stressed little gal all my life. Super charged. Hyper. Active. Hyper-Active.
I have watched, friends, family and colleagues crumble under the pressure of life. I kept going.
I have had 9 of the top 10 life stressors dogging my steps for most of the past 30 years. I kept going.
I have achieved. I have worked. I have dreamed and I have compromised. And I have kept going.
Suddenly I didn't want to keep going. Suddenly I was scared for my sanity. I really was. Suddenly, and for the first time in my life I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to get up the next morning. Suddenly I was sitting in front of the TV at night and feeling my grip slip.
I went to work each day. I worked, I talked, I laughed, I mentored and I sometimes growled. But I always looked the same. Yet I didn't feel the same. Sometimes a panic would grip me and I was terrified that I was going to collapse. I was terrified people would see me collapse. I was terrified. I would go outside and walk up and down the carpark till I had put some oxygen back into my blood and the trembling stopped. Then I went back to being me - the me I have always been and never liked. The martyr.
As I sit here now I know I have pushed all this into the background. I know I am in tenuous control. But I also know that one more disaster in my life right now will implode me. I have withdrawn into myself and the funny thing is no one has noticed. The more troubled I am, the happier my cardboard exterior becomes.
My treatment of my depression is to make myself create. Craft, cooking, writing, chores- yes chores. I set myself little goals each day - and I mean little. I learned the hard way to stop setting impossible goals. Impossible goals unfulfilled fuel the anguish inside. Possible goals chip away at the despair.
So, I have started chipping. Today I resolved to take a nap, do a load of washing - only one - and find the half knitted scarf from last winter and put it next to my armchair. I also resolved not to cook dinner and to stay in my pyjamas all day.
Mission accomplished.
It also helped that I was able to chat to my bestie, Kim Kollert, for a few minutes today on Yahoo. She is in Oregon, USA but when we chat it feels like she is in the room. I miss her.
So, new mission. Blog myself out of this funk.
What I would really like is to hear your stories of a time when the weight of the world was so heavy you almost couldn't breathe.
What I would really like is to know that I am not alone in this. That others have felt the vice grip on their chest, the suffocation of panic and the fear that it will never get better.
I am not going to medicate my way out of it. Not yet. I am going to work my way out of it. Or at least try. I have done it before many times, but it was never this bad, more of a despondency than a depression. A temporary setback rather than a flat out crash.
Well it's time to get out into the garage. The other tactic to overcoming this state of affairs is fitness. Since I have rheumatoid arthritis jogging is out of the question, but I am already developing some major biceps and quads lifting weights - OK, ok little ones. Jeff is lifting 150 kilos in a dead lift. I can lift 50kgs. But I am doing it. It helps the new knee too so that is good.
Well the bench press awaits. You know? Just writing all this has made me feel a little bit better.
Thanks for reading this far........ Bless.
