My dance with the constant foe

Depression has been a part of my life for thirty years. It started when I was twenty-three and I nearly lost my sight. After suddenly facing two major operations to restore my vision, I was told to stay in bed for twelve weeks while my eyes healed. When I emerged from that experience, I was a changed person and have dealt with my constant companion, chronic depression, ever since.

I like to put it like this – not an uncommon image: depression is a pit. Sometimes, when things are going well, the pit is somewhere off in the distance, not really all that noticeable but ever-present.

The light will return if only I can hold on long enough!

Then there are times when somehow, the pit has come closer. Suddenly, it is there, right where I can see it – can’t miss it. Can’t figure out how to make it keep its distance; until suddenly, it is by my side – that constant companion now a threatening foe, ready to take the reins.

The light will return if only I can hold on long enough!

And then there are the times, the darkest times, when all the light goes out in the world, when I become the pit and nothing else exists. And only way to survive is to refuse to surrender. To remind myself over and over, with every breath, every beat of my heart, that the pit is a lie. That it is not real, that the light will return if only I can hold on long enough. Hold on…

My brain will be my own again!

For thirty years now, I have danced this dance with my faithful friend, my constant foe. I have tamed this beast again and again; through a marriage destroyed, through PTSD brought on by a year of being stalked by a former “partner”, through 15 years of being a single parent and now, through a different dance – with cancer, with its vicious treatments that always seems to attack my brain as much as the disease they are intended to destroy. For the first time in my life, these meds have made my dance with depression a life and death struggle. These meds make my brain listen to the lies depression tells. These meds make my brain believe that life is not worth living.

My brain will be my own again!

But I am not my brain. I am not my thoughts. I am not the pit. And I refuse to give in to the lies. One day, these cancer treatments will stop. And my brain will be my own again. And I will have held on long enough. On that day, I will wake up and the pit will once again have receded into the distance. And the light will have returned. And I will have won. And I will continue to fight for that day; for light; and for life.

Weak? Not a chance.