The Great Depression

The stats on my blog site indicate that the entry which has been the most widely read is the one I wrote on February 18th entitled Depression: The Refiner’s Fire? I can only assume that the title must attract readers because there are so many of us out there who struggle with the problem of depression. So, that being the case, I’ve named tonight’s blog entry accordingly, since it also deals with a recent bit of blackness that consumed me.

 On Monday April 4^th I announced that it was “Day One of a New Year”, and on that day I committed to vigorous forward movement on the path to healing.  And I maintained that commitment unwaveringly right up until Thursday April 21^st.  Seventeen and one half days of forward steps only.  I really thought I had turned a corner once and for all.  In the early afternoon of the 21^st, I felt a strange sensation descending upon my head and settling on my chest.  It felt a lot like the slow onset of a headache in the couple of hours before it turns into a full-blown migraine.  After my father had his second heart attack, I asked him if he felt it coming on, and his answer was that he did not have pain but rather he had a strong feeling of ‘impending doom’.  So to borrow from my father I will say there was a strong sense of impending doom enveloping me. I had a lovely dinner with two dear friends and was distracted from it for a while, but by the time I returned home at 9:00 p.m., I was completely at its mercy.  I called my mother and cancelled my 4-day trip home for Easter, and surrendered to the ‘black dog’ which had been snapping at my heels for hours.

I spent the next three days either crying or sleeping, and wondering, yet again, why my husband could not see past my flaws and shortcomings and recognize me for the good woman I am.  It began to matter all over again that he’d deemed me unfit to be his partner.  My newly acquired “it’s his loss” armour slipped off my shoulders and was replaced with the “why am I not good enough?” straight jacket.  I fell back into thinking that I had to find a way to make him want me, and when that led nowhere I fell back into letting my mind explore the potential implications of giving up the good fight once and for all-  by inviting an aneurism to escort me into the big sleep, (or a cardiac arrest or a run-away blood clot... whatever God saw fit to strike me with).

So I reneged on my deal with my creator.  Earlier this month, on my little altar in the forest, I had placed a stone to mark the surrendering of my belief that I could only be happy if my marriage was restored.  I also placed there some tree bark to represent peeling from my body, the dead skin which had, on occasion, made death seem like a viable pain management option.  Yet here I was on Easter weekend voluntarily picking up those 2 cumbersome weights again after discarding them a couple of weeks earlier. 

It took a lot of crying (and I don’t mean snivelling and dabbing at my nose with a tissue... I mean sobs that were jet-propelled from my chest) and a lot of sleeping, but by Sunday evening I could feel the cloud lifting.

I don’t know why I needed to be re-routed on my path to recovery.  I don’t know what prompted that wave of grief to return and settle in for 3 days, and I don’t know how to prevent it from happening again.  I decided, however, that I ought best to re-release those twin fetters rather than declaring my mission a failure (much like after cheating a little on a diet, there’s no point in feeling so deflated that you eat the entire cake). So here’s what I did.  I went back to my altar Monday evening before sunset and searched the forest floor for two suitable symbols to represent my second surrendering of my marriage and my death wish.

Not far from where I stood, I saw two snails side by side.  I picked them up and relocated them to my altar, knowing that they will have moved on before my next visit to the woods... and thinking that their disappearance would be entirely fitting!