Remember, It’s the Depression. All the Depression.

It’s all the depression. Everything. Every last thought, every last emotion, it’s all the depression’s fault. 

This is what I learned this weekend. It’s been a rough summer/year/life. I feel like a broken record complaining about my life, and the shitty-to-me but often-not-so-shitty-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things events that seem to plague it. I’ve been in a pretty severe depression this month, so severe that it may just be my worst ever. It’s brought me to the point of believing, whole-heartedly, that my precious novel, my last shot at doing something with my life, is dead and thus I am emotionally and cognitively dead with it. I am nothing. “I am nothing” is the thought that keeps playing over and over in my head, like that goddamned broken record that is depression. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt more hopeless, mostly because I feel I’ve lost everything that is myself. For years, the writing was all I had left, the writing was my last chance ticket to making something of my life. Then I lost the writing in May. And in August I lost the will and belief that I could get it back. Without it, I feel I am nothing, incapable of doing anything in life, of being anything. A lot of this was triggered by my having appendicitis a month ago today. After I got out of the hospital, I couldn’t do any housework, and the depression attacked this “I can’t” like a cruel opportunist. The writing was gone, my ability to be a just-a-housewife, was gone. I was nothing. And even though I am now almost capable of doing all the housework again, the belief remains powerful. 

But Saturday I had an awakening prompted by a medication change. I felt better on Saturday and realized something: it’s all the depression. My lack of an appendix, and all the other crap that’s happened to me this summer, is not the reason why I believe I am nothing. It’s the depression. Solely, only, the depression. The depression has been telling me my novel is dead, my writing is dead and that I am nothing, and will never be anything again. Nothing that happened to me made those beliefs true. I’m a month out of the hospital and at no point was I ever, really incapable of writing this summer. The depression blocked the writing, nothing else, nothing more. And I have my strength back, I have my ability to keep up with the housework, cook a meal for my husband back. The depression may tell me I don’t, and if I’m in it, bad, I will believe it. But it’s just the depression talking, convincing, brain washing me. 

So I ask you, if you’re life sucks or if you feel you suck, do you really? Or is it the depression’s fault, again? Try, try to remind yourself, it’s not the truth, it is what the depression is telling you. Remember that depression lies to you, masterfully. 

I need to remember this, going forward, in the low points, and there are still very, deeply low points, that the beliefs in the low points are beliefs, not facts, and they are brought on by my disease, not the events of my life. It’s all the depression’s fault, not mine, nor anyone else’s. It’s the depression that I have to learn to fight against again to be able to recover from this most severe bought with it. It’s time to halt the broken record and put on a fresh new one.