Just show up and breathe

To say the past couple months have been difficult is like saying congressfolk aren't playing well with others ---- it's a monumental understatement. It is imperative though, that I keep moving forward, even if it is only by inches. 

I've never actually experienced quicksand, but I remember being fascinated by the thought of it when I was a child. One of my favorite books was "Girl of the Limberlost" and another was "Gone Away Lake" --- both featured quicksand as a terrible menace to unsuspecting children who could be lost forever without a trace. It gave rise to more than one nighmare during those elementary school years.

Now, as I do battle yet again with depression, that's one of the images that arises --- being sucked into darkness and never able to escape. Movies and books have taught my impressionable mind that when someone falls into the quicksand or through the ice, the rescuer must lie flat and hold out a strong stick for the kid to grab onto. Somehow, that's supposed to do the trick, though when I think about it, it doesn't seem likely to work very well.

Right now, I've got people holding out sticks and tossing me lines from several directions. I'm so glad they're there, even when I don't believe it will be effective. From my floundering perspective, the sticks look pretty flimsy and it seems more likely that they'll break off or I'll pull others into the muck with me. Terra firma can be elusive from where I am.

The advantage is that I've been through it before and can even get a leg up on it now that I recognize some of the warnings. Depression seems so trite, so tiresome --- so depressing. Everybody and their grandmother has depression these days. You're not going to see any signs up in the grocery store to raise money for poor Aunt Myrtle who suffers from depression and can't work, even though she probably could use the help. Far better to have something rare and exotic that excites sympathy and dread in other people, than to admit to a condition that almost everybody thinks is actually just a cop-out.

And that, perhaps, is what I'm learning this time around. WHAT-HO! It's actually an illness? A disease? It's not me trying to get away with something? It's not a character flaw or just wimping out on life? What a novel idea.

My knee-jerk response to situations I'm unfamiliar with, has always been to "look it up" --- it's not for nothing that my father sold World Book encyclopedias, and we kids used to have "look it up" challenges. But I've avoided learning about depression; that would make it too real. Now, finally, I've undertaken the look it up challenge, and have checked a tome from the library that will either teach me about depression, or crush my facial features when I fall asleep while reading.

There are things I can do to ameliorate this illness. Things I must do. One of them, it seems, is to say it out loud. When I skirt around it and pretend it's not there, it only gets worse and more shameful. There's an inexorable circularity to that, which can be deadly. 

So this is me, letting the sunshine in. From time to time, I snatch up all the rugs in the house and take them outside and shake the dirt out and then let them hang in the air and sunshine, believing that somehow that will make them fresher. I hope it works the same way for depression.