The pain stopped but didn’t

Old adage: ” I never knew how much pain I was in until it stopped.”

S O   T R U E

I’m aware of how blissfully peaceful I feel most of the time now. So much so that when bipolar depression swatted me with an ugly stick, I was confounded. Here’s the haps…

La-de-dah, living life and things and doing stuff and feeling peaceful to the point of insufferable smugness. BAP. Attempting to do stuff, pushing through, failing to be able to push through, playing hidden object games for 4 hours straight, overwhelming guilt and self-recrimination – to begin with. Aka Depression. With a heapin helpin of ignorance on the side.

Happily the latter description only lasted a few days before it occurred to me that I was depressed. When I announced it to my husband, he gave me that, “I could have told you that but didn’t want to feel your teeth ripping my throat out” look that we’ve all seen.

Happily (???) I’d forgotten how devastating (in that horrid dull throb kind of way) it feels like to be in full-blown depression. It used to just be more of the same. Depression used to register as it’s own unique hell but that was when life was always a dull throb of pain with spiky-spikes in horridity. Why nitpick?

Happily I’m smoothed out enough in my day to day life (read pithy and endearingly self-deprecating smug confession above) that, when depression hit, it floored me because it was ODD.

Now, here’s the haps….

I’m depressed but it doesn’t really matter. Not like ‘doesn’t matter’ as a symptom of being depressed. It doesn’t matter because I have patience, kindness and tools. I’m kicking in self-love and acceptance. I’m tapping my resources – like actively avoiding behaviors and situations that exacerbate the depression. Like resting a lot and taking things in teeny, tiny flea-bite-sized chunks. Miraculously, my self-esteem is shaping up again because those teeny tiny bites add up beautifully.

It will pass. Let’s see how long it takes. In the meantime, I’m playing a game of how long I can remain untethered to hidden object games on my iPad as an avoidance and numbing mechanism. You know. Like you do.