Raindrops keep falling......

It has been overcast all day.  And now the sun is getting low in the sky.  Dusk is imminent and there is a glow, a luminescence to the world.  The greyness makes the green of the garden even greener.  But my heart is heavy and it has been for many months now.

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  I have withdrawn into myself and the funny thing is no one has noticed.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.