I think things are turning around.

Where have we heard that before?

Not much has changed on the face of things. I still wake to intrusive and unpleasant thoughts, and what a joy that is. I’m still fragile – everything set’s me off.

But there’s been a disturbance in the force, and it’s good. I hate telling people things are starting to improve. I get the impression that they expect to see me operating at a ten at any moment when what’s changed is more accurately described as a move from minus six to minus five.

I’ll take it.

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My theme for June is boundaries. I’ve lectured my subconscious about waking up happy and with a clean slate but it seems disinclined to listen. It does what it wills, so I’ve been waking up to thoughts about my estrangement from my stepdaughter every day again.

She’s ghosted me twice recently on top of the perma-ghost, this in response to my request that she pick up the last of her things. She got in touch a week-ish after each time and blamed someone or something else before suggesting a reschedule. This last time she also offered to sit down and apologize for maybe making a mistake with the year plus of ghosting, before explaining to me again all the reasons why she was angry and I was a horrible person.

She didn’t say the latter explicitly this time, but I heard about it the last I held a boundary firm with her.

She’s very unhappy about my decision to not simply ignore her behaviour and let it go without a discussion and accounting. I understand her confusion – I’ve been a doormat most of my life.

I’m also still angry and hurt and not, I think, ready to talk. People seeking apologies often want to do them on their timeline. I find that no longer works for me. What good is letting someone apologize when you’re not ready to hear or receive?

See? Parents are imperfect people too. That does make this harder. As a parent, one wants to accommodate one’s children always, even when they’re in the wrong.

But I’m fragile and not up for a nasty fight. My skin’s paper-thin. The slightest challenge or obstacle can lead to disaster at this stage of recovery. I need slow and soft as I shift away from this depressive episode and work on building back up my mental reinforcements.

Conflict with my daughter would set me off, and impede my recovery.

I’d also be mean. That’s what it looks like when I’m depressed and feeling attacked and trapped. I would lash out without the guard on my tongue that stability confers.

I’m nasty when I’m depressed – my behaviour lacks brakes. This is another reason I isolate. I don’t like to cause harm.

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I think we’ll aim for a return to baseline by the end of summer. The end of July even. All hail the changes. Depression makes your life small and then tries to keep it that way. ^[i] It tries to convince you to wait until you feel better to do things, but this is a lie. Better comes with the doing.

The negative self-talk about what will obviously be feeble and failing efforts is just icing. Depression has an unkind sense of humour and miles-deep determination to hang around.

I have other plans.

I’m starting to flex my going-out muscles. Out’s an important part of recovering, along with doing. Especially important is re-acquiring the repetitive doing like daily showers, brushing the teeth, vacuuming, and the lawn. Depression makes you give up the minutiae that is life.

Though I mostly held the line on making the bed and washing my face. At least once a day. The face, not the bed. If you’re making your bed several times a day, you might have other problems.

I went beyond my preferred geographical borders the other day. I went to a thrift store two towns over, a forty-five-minute drive away from home. That’s a big deal when I’ve been limited by my depression to a handful of comfortable locations for the last little bit. One grocery, one gas station, WalMart and my local thrift store (there are two I frequent).

Five spaces I’m comfortable inhabiting in the world (six with home) is a short list. Note the lack of eating establishments. So, the trip to Port Moody was a win. Plus, I like to drive. I miss it when I’m feeling agoraphobic – though I’m going to have to miss it more often since gas companies are determined to price gouge.

I had big plans to take a walk in the park near my house on the return trip – nature gets challenging for me as well – but my brain was done by the time I passed by.

It was hard to give myself grace with that decision. I get impatient with myself. I want out of this misery. I want to be back at base camp already.

I don’t, however, want to do the work again. I’m tired of the cycle. It keeps getting harder. Each depressive episode is that much worse to come back from. The motivation weakens with repetition as well.

One solution is to prevent the sink. Medications help, but not falling remains tricky – I only realize I’m on my way to the bottom when I’m a third of the way down, beyond most of the ladders.  

I keep remembering an advertisement that played somewhere or other when I was young – a minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips. It’s probably still around.

Setting aside all that’s wrong, eating disordered, and sexist with that phrase – why do you have to be thin, be thin to have value, do what it takes to get thin, you won’t get a man if you’re not thin (that’s not a narrative aimed at cis men, they don’t tie men’s weight and fitness level to attractiveness in the sexual marketplace to the same degree though that’s changing. They’re an untapped financial market and self-improvement is big business. All hail pathologies for capitalism) – the sentiment therein reminds me somewhat of the realities of depressive episodes; the tumble takes but a minute, while the trip back feels like a lifetime. ^[ii]

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[i] I often refer to myself in the third person. I usually edit it out of essays, but I decided to leave some this time to discuss. It’s a common behaviour in people dealing with anxiety, and my depressive episode brought along an amplified comorbidity for kicks. Anxiety’s presence throughout this crash, however, is now one of the reasons I know things are calming down. The symptoms of anxiety are easing, to the point that I’m finding the rescue benzos irritating rather enticing, so off to the lockbox they go. I’m still using marijuana again more than I’d like, but baby steps. It also occurs more easily when my tendency to dissociate is lit.

It also shows up in victims of CSA.

[ii] I felt like writing a long, nested sentence.

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