Today I cried.
That's not a noteworthy event in most people's lives. I've always been a bit (a lot) of a crier. It seems to be my emotional self's way of responding whenever it is overwhelmed with emotional input, be it happy, sad, frustrated, angry, - it's especially an issue when arguing with a gaslighting boyfriend*. The words 'stop being so sensitive/you're just being crazy' still make my blood pressure jump 20 points instantaneously. But that's a story for another time, and it's not the kind of crying I'm talking about now.
The black dog has been my constant companion for six months now. Bipolar is a hell of a thing to have to deal with when suffering from a degenerative neurological illness. And vice versa. I named said canine hubris after foolishly boasting last year that I had not been seriously depressed since 2009. When I say seriously depressed, I mean the kind that persists for months (years) without an end in sight. The kind where every day, instead of a cute list of what you're thankful for, it's a list of all the reasons you shouldn't commit suicide. It becomes a list of the carefully considered reasons *to* commit suicide and the ways in which you could do it. Then it's a list of the things you have to get in order, the people you need to say goodbye to and the supplies you need to make it happen, depending on your method (plastic bag asphyxia was my go-to - it's how they do it in the psych ward). I came closer than I ever have been to that ultimate end point and it was terrifying. I think about it now with a thrill in my stomach like you would get from missing a fatal car accident by a hair's breadth. Or starting to slip while leaning out too far over a precipitous legde with no guard rail. I guess those are concrete manifestations of coming within spitting distance of self annhiliation. A situation no sane human being would choose to put themselves into. Because when you're that deep into it with the black dog, you don't feel like you have a choice. No longer content to to just dog your heels, you start going where he leads you. And it can lead to some pretty terrifying places. An event horizon of the soul.
People who know me might be surprised to hear how much I struggled these past 6 months. It cost me dearly to put on that mask every day, to pretend (rather poorly at times, I imagine) I was a functional if somewhat highly strung human being. But when no-one was looking, I cried. Every day. Multiple times. I cried with the tapping of a well so deep there was no bottom. An emotional aquifer so vast it subsumes the other parts of you. There is no relief from that kind of psychic pressure. All you feel, all you know, all you are is misery. There is no way out but one. David Foster Wallace sums it so beautifully I could not hope to top it so here it is:
"The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
But today I cried with joy because for the first time in six months, I felt positive about the future. Optimistic. Like I had something to live for after all. I don't even know why, really. Depression is a capricious beast that way. Exhaustion responds well to a few good nights' rest. Iron deficiency you can cure by taking a pill every day. Depression you can do those things too, along with a boatload of therapy - which everyone should do at least once in their lives. But in the moment it can feel like it's not really helping. Until one day you feel a curious lightness in your heart, one that had been rendered foreign and peculiar by its absence. Something you'd almost forgotten the feeling of. It may only be a spark, but when you've been in the dark for so long, any light feels like it illuminates your whole world. More importantly, it lets you see that there is another way out after all. The black dog will still be around - when you have bipolar he'll never truly be gone - but he's not leading me anymore. I can reach the path ahead on my own.
*I say boyfriend because it usually (not always) is. It's a form of minimising and belittling women and telling them their feelings are wrong. It's insidious emotional abuse that the majority of women will face at some point, whether from partner, friend, coworker or family. This article explains it far better than I could ever hope to: Stop Labelling Women 'Crazy'
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