Time for Brutal Honesty

***I'm sorry I forgot all about writing about San Fran. I've been a smidge busy and also a smidge disconnected. I'll get back to that...eventually! But I have a few more serious things I need to say first.***

I cried myself to sleep the other day.

Let me reassure you that nothing bad happened to me. I had a typical day, full of playing Internet Spades and cleaning and eating and watching the Olympics. From the outside, it’s hard to see how a bunch of little things pushed me over the edge emotions-wise. It’s not life itself, but my perception of it, that depresses me so much.

It’s weird how that works. Cognitively, I know how good I have it. I want to be very clear that I’m not complaining about the circumstances of my life. I am well aware how much privilege I have, in almost every aspect. I get that.

But emotionally, I’m miserable. Not all of the time, and probably not whenever anyone else has seen. I like to think that I have a really solid mask up when I need to hide my emotional state. Also, it’s a lot easier to feel happy around people that I love, even the ones that I just like :). But at home, by myself, it’s not as easy to be positive about things. I tend to focus on the future, which seems so far away, and it’s hard to enjoy the moment.

 

 I feel the need to interrupt the seriousness with a lovely song.

Especially because the two things that I have always wanted most – my dream job/non-profit and my family – feel like they’re getting pushed further from the present. I’m still just checking off the steps as I inch closer to those goals. Ever since I can remember; well, probably since about 7^th grade. First, it was 2 years to high school. Then it was 4 more years to college. Then it was 2 years that turned into 3 to get done with college. Now it will be at least 2 years until I [hopefully] will be leaving the country as a Peace Corps volunteer.

[I also, naively, thought that I would get married super young. Clearly, that is not about to happen. And really, I'm totally okay with that, it's just so different from what I thought I wanted.]

All this waiting just tires me out. In retrospect, it wasn’t all that long or all that bad, but in the present, it feels like it’s taking forever. There’s always another step I have to take, another delay, another requirement of living in American society. And I have enough trouble tolerating this society without the added burden of depression.

I figure I could get diagnosed with mild depression, but I don’t know for sure. Some days I feel really crippled – it’s hard to get out of bed, it’s hard to get anything done, it’s hard to care. These don’t happen often when I’m busy and have things to distract my over-active mind. Other times, the mean side of my brain yells at me and tells me to quit whining, I'm just always looking to have a pity party focused on me, that I don't deserve to be super insanely happy. Then the nice side points out that that’s really making a case for the opposite point of view and they just go back and forth and give me a headache.

I don’t know why now is the time I feel compelled to share this with the world. I just…as I was lying in bed trying to sleep, I started composing this. Then I typed it up the next day, but I just couldn't post it. I guess I needed a day where I felt really great about things before I could talk about the not-so-great stuff. It’s a part of me, part of my story, part of my life. I don’t necessarily give a lot of thought to it. I don’t talk about it, except occasionally with my sister, who always knows how to make me laugh. I’m not looking for an intervention or sympathy or anything. It's one obstacle out of many, and certainly is not among the most insurmountable [for me].

But it's something that I've always hidden before, and I shouldn't have to want to, because it's not a curse or a disability or what have you. It's some shoddy wiring in my brain, that's all.

Or something like that. I am not one for explaining complicated medical things very well.