March 3rd.

I'd written a post a few weeks ago that was so worrisome to some family members that I took it down. I was talking about how I needed help, that I was constantly feeling like I was going to die, terrified. I thought about death - my death - constantly. If I had a pain in my toe, a mark on my fingernail - and yes, that back pain - my thoughts would spiral and I'd find myself doing one of two things: crying, weeping uncontrollably, in the shower, in the car, on the couch, anywhere. And it wasn't a relief to be crying, a welcome dump of pain that had been trapped. It was a constant cry, something I've never experienced before. The other constancy related to that feeling of terror. A pit would remain in my stomach almost to the point I was used to it being there. Maybe I've always been a little anxious. So maybe that seemed normal. But no crazy thought went ignored or dismissed. It sat, it festered, it putrified. Long story short, I hit my worst point in all of this. And I know, I know, I keep noting this. But really. This was the bottom. I hope.

And why I felt so outraged, or rather--so indignant about how I was feeling--was that it made no sense to be feeling this out of control at this stage. Hadn't I been dealing with this like a healthy, cognizant, self-aware person? Didn't I have a leg up on this? I took yoga, I got massages, I did Reiki, I talked to my social worker, I visited my other therapist, I swam, I sat in the hot tub before work, I stretched, I had alone time, I read, I walked with Mike, I ran with Mike, I laid with Lily, I distracted myself with work, I published a book on Amazon. And to varying degrees these things worked, they allayed my fears for a time, but what really pissed me off was it kept coming back. I was fucking depressed. And some people suffer from bouts of depression and this I do not envy. But this is new to me. And I experienced it for about 5 weeks, and I'm still kind of climbing out of it, or I think I am, because my back isn't hurting as much and I am no longer crying all the time.

I don't want to talk about this much more, but felt I needed to throw it out there, for someone, anyone, to understand.  And what I didn't understand--and those on the outside may say, um, DUH - was that I can't control or even at times mitigate one iota of this experience. It's here to screw me it's here to teach me and it's here to stay, to some degree, until time and hopefully health salves the real shitty parts of it, and until I can look back with some detachedness and distance and say, holy shit. I'm so much happier now.

And compared to 5 weeks ago, I am. And hopefully, with what I now anticipate as not being an even curve upwards, but rather a jagged line pushing me down and then up, I'll continue to get better.