remembering old memories

You know when something happens to you that you'd prefer not to remember so you stuff it away into that drawer in your brain in the very back? You know the one, the one that you don't ever open and cobwebs grow over it and then you find that you can get to a place where you can just pretend it never happened?

Until.....until someone talks to you about the very subject of those memories you were trying to pretend never happened. Then suddenly not only does the drawer open but all of it's contents spill over into every other drawer in your brain. The ones that are full of happy things, the ones that you utilize every single day, the ones that are supposed to be safe.

Well, as I'm standing in the hallway with my fingers on the doorknob of depression and reaching for the doorknob to the handle across the hall to where wellness is, but it's just too far away to reach it. All I can do is look longingly at it and pray that each day, each therapy session, each pill will bring me closer to it. While I'm standing here though, someone walked by and whispered things in my ears about those memories and suddenly my whole hand is on the depression doorknob, not just my fingers anymore. All the goodness in my life is full of this suffocating slime that is coating everything, I keep wiping it off and trying to make go away, but in the quiet moments I find it oozes right back in and fills up all the gaps, all the corners.

These are new things to work through in therapy of course and I know that I will eventually let go of it all just like I've done with the things before this. In the mean time though it's and up hill battle.

I hate that I'm going this because it all sucks, but I love that I have a story, a testimony and eventually God will use it all for His glory. I'm a visual person, and I have to paint, sketch, write to move things around in my head to help them make sense, to try to see the whole picture. Because of this, I've started the very beginnings of a memoir. I'm not sure I'm healthy enough right now to make any real go of it, but I've started plunking away at some "highlights". No clue if anything will come of it but it just might be part of this journey.

Who Am I?

Finally the worst of the side effects of the meds have subsided. Still have the jittery feelings, and am more tired than usual. Those are side effects I can live with.

Now comes what seems to be the hardest part of this recovery, trying to find who I am. I just can't seem to figure me out. There are things that I used to enjoy, things I was okay with. Now though I find that these same things now make me uncomfortable and I'm not okay with it.

Things that I felt were inherently part of who I am. All my life I've loved people, enjoy social activities, I've always been a very trusting people person. Now suddenly I find myself shying away from those types of things, I'm not real comfortable with it and I'd rather stay home than go anywhere.

Also I worked a couple days a week and then filled my days off with appointments and coffee/lunch dates, now I'm finding that if I have something on my calendar 3 days in a row I get overwhelmed. This particular thing makes me feel like a loser. My husband goes to work 5 days a week and it's not uncommon for him to work from home on his evenings and weekends, he does work around the house and still has time for #adventureswithjerry. If I have say, a doctors appointment on Monday, work Queen Bee on Tuesday and have to go grocery shopping on Wednesday, I find myself in this useless funk and anything I have the rest of the week takes every ounce of energy I can muster up. I usually find myself in tears the rest of the week. I'm only 48 years old, how can this be?

So this is what I'm working on, if these are part of the new me, that's okay I guess, I can learn to work with it, it's just all weird and confusing to me right now. I'm trying to go through and define who I am, through artwork and lists. It's hard to define ME without using words like, Mom or Wife or Sister, these are who I am to others, I need to get to the core of ME. I'm thinking this might take some time so I'm trying to be patient with myself, just hope everyone else can be patient with me too.