TheBanyanTree: Still Recovering

[Monique Colver]

Man, depression sucks. Majorly sucks. I’ve had my setbacks, and I’ve had my
moments of pure joy, and I’ve cried at the aloneness of it all, and I’ve
cried with happiness because of everything I do have.

And while I’ve made great progress this these past few months I still have
those pesky issues cropping up now and then, bad songs in my head that spin
around, like I’m circling the drain on my way to nowhere.

Sometimes I feel disconnected, from people mostly, from a rich social life.
I would say I’ve forgotten how to interact with people, but it’s not like I
ever really knew. It’s not as if I have superior social skills that cause
others to seek me out. I have adequate social skills, but I’m not
charismatic, I’m not a leader, I’m not wanted.

That last word just snuck in there when I wasn’t looking, like the
suspicious character hanging around the entrance who waits for someone who
isn’t paying attention to leave the door ajar when they enter. He grabs the
door handle before the door whooshes shut, and he creeps inside, where he
can take whatever he wants, break whatever he wants.

The past being what it is, gone, I like to stay away from it, but in my
treatment I’ve had to face some of the things from my past that I tried to
hide away in the dark corners of my memory, corners that I don’t want to go
into, areas of concentrated pain. These are the things that I need to let
go of, because even though I put them away, they’re still trying to get out
and hurt me. Pain is like that. There isn’t anyone who is familiar with my
past who can or will either confirm nor deny what happened, so it’s pretty
much up to me to and my admittedly inferior memory to recall and dispense
with them.

Or, they will confirm parts of what happened, but then they laugh so much
because, to them, it was funny, it was all a good joke played on me. They
mostly have nothing to do with me anymore though. They want nothing to do
with me, my family of origin, because we have nothing in common, because
I’m too far away, because I’m nothing to them.

I have my friends and my family of choice, and they love me despite who I
am. Mostly.

It’s been a battle this year, an epic battle, similar to the battles many
people face every day. I know there is nothing unique about me, or my
battles, I am just like so many others struggling to come to terms with who
we are and how we got here. Trying to make sense of it.

I’m so tired of talking about myself, but at the moment it’s all I have.
I’m mostly happy these days, mostly on top of things, mostly looking at a
future instead of a past. But. Still.

When I shattered earlier this year, like a piece of fragile glass toppling
off a high shelf, I went looking for glue to put things back together. But
when I tried to put the pieces back together, I found that some of them
didn’t fit. I can’t get all the pieces back like they were before, and
that’s probably a good thing because I was carrying around too much
self-loathing, too much regret. It’s better that I throw some pieces out
and remake something new, something I couldn’t have imagined before.

And that’s where I’m at, and what I’m trying to do. Make something new that
I couldn’t imagine before. It just takes time.