My Secret Life

This post is related to the previous one, I swear. Trying to write this led to the other one. Because this is the lie I live: that the me you see when I show up for a meeting or post on Facebook had to overcome all this inner-doubt and tiring inner war just to get out the door or jot down two coherent sentences without screaming "Oh my god, would you shoot me in the face because my mind is driving me crazy?!

Someone recently shared that they were told to "snap out" of their depression. This is so frustrating and heartbreaking to hear. Frustrating, because it's impossible. Heartbreaking, because someone who loves you should know that already. Maybe you have heard that when an anorexic looks in the mirror, their mind fools them into seeing a fat person, no matter how dangerously skinny they become. Depression is somewhat like this - your own mind deceives and lies to you. How exactly does one "snap out" of that? You don't. With therapy, coaching, and constant self vigilance, you can try to combat the lies with rational thinking. But an inner dialog of rational thought trying to overcome constant self-destructive, self-loathing lies very quickly becomes exhausting. You know the television gag where a person has an angel sitting on one shoulder and a devil on the other? Imagine that going on in your head 24/7, every day of your life without pause. But there is no angel or devil costumes to tell one side from the other. The voice of your depression and the voice of your rational side sound exactly the same. Constantly questioning whether your doubts are valid or imaginary gets so tiring that you quickly slip into old habits: it's just easier to believe the lies. But once you give in, your rational voice just gets quieter and quieter until it almost disappears completely.

There is nothing quite as surreal as a rational thought popping into your head that challenges your current trend of thinking, and realizing to yourself this is a familiar line of thinking, how did I forget this? The standard lies of depression happen daily: I don't have enough energy to take a shower, I don't need to get out of the house today, I can't possibly do anything social today. Remembering the truth, that showering and leaving the house and socializing actually make you feel better, is one of the easier set of depression's lies to work yourself out of. The flipside being that it's pretty easy to let yourself slide because you'll always have tomorrow to make up for what you decided you didn't want to do today.

The more profound, deep, or vague lines of thought are much harder to combat because they're that much harder to notice what's happening. Questioning your self-worth, doubting people's love for you, dwelling on the past... these are the dangerous thoughts. They are insidious, sneaky, ever present, and yet difficult to see for what they are: lies.

For me, my "easy" battles are with the mundane decisions of life: do I really have to get out of bed today?; do I really need a shower?; what would be the quickest and easiest way to alleviate my hunger, healthy eating be damned?; do I really have to get dressed?; which of these phone calls/emails/meetings can I put off until tomorrow?; how can I get out of this lunch with my friend?; will it be ok if I watch TV for another hour instead of reading to my kid?; 15 more minutes of mind-numbing internet time won't hurt me, right? Maybe they are easier because they require immediate decision making? Who knows? But being so mundane, something that has to be decided over and over again every day, it's just so easy to make the wrong choice.

My difficult battles are hard to even put a finger on, let alone fully realize them or share them with someone else. The month of November was very difficult for me because of all the Facebook sharing of things that people were thankful for: my inner monologue's response to each and every post was "that's swell for you, but my life sucks ass and I'm not thankful for anything." It took half the month for me to even realize that this line of thinking wasn't rational, and it was a huge step backwards in my mindset from my growth over the past few years. I am still trying to figure out why my brain is stuck on "bitter", when just a year ago I was convinced I was the luckiest person alive.

Another difficult fight I only just put a name on yesterday: my hope has disappeared. I think this is probably connected to my addiction to bitterness. But it's one thing to quietly think to myself how unthankful I am, and another to look at my daughter and have nothing but fear for her future. Attending my neice's graduation made me remember my own, and I spent the entire day puzzling out how I could have felt so much excitment and hope for the future at my own graduation, and such an absence for my neice's future. Throughout my pregnancy, there was this trepidation in the back of my mind, afraid of the world I would be bringing my daughter into. These fears haven't been alleviated.

I should feel hope. R74 was approved by the voters in Washington state just last month, and legal gay marriages have started in this state just days ago. But the fight for rights has worn me down, and the opposition just sucked the hope right out of me. It occurred to me yesterday that coming out of the closet allowed hate to come out too. A century ago, did the average American spend even a minute of their lives contemplating gay rights, civil rights, or Christian bias? When my mother was born, what percentage of Americans even knew what Islam was? There was never a "very special episode" of Leave It To Beaver about coming out of the closet, equal rights, abortion, single mothers, or even Judaism. That phenomenon started in the 80s with Different Strokes and Family Ties, right? America didn't start taking off the blinders until the 80s? The Vietnam war and the civil rights movement were just grudgingly rolled into the fold by America, so happy not to talk about it any more when they were over. But none of this stuff is ever going to be over. Hell, is it even ever going to be fully accepted?

There are less hate crimes, less gay bashings, less racism in America, surely. But you know the problem I have with that? The word "less". Are we ever going to live in a world without hate?

We opened some kind of Pandora's box with the civil rights movement and AIDS and the fight for equality. Because suddenly these things were up for debate. As if equal rights for everyone should be debated, really? Are we really happier now that people like Rush Limbaugh can spew filth about gays and feminists on the airways in the quest for equality? Why does demanding your rights always lead to this tremendous, painful, dangerous backlash? It's enough to make a person want to slink back quietly into the closet and forget we ever opened our mouth.

My daughter is going to grow up in an America where white people aren't going to be the dominant race for much longer, where gay marriage is legal, where publicly celebrating non-Christian faith is commonplace, where reason and science are favored over tradition and superstition and ignorance. But she will also inherit an America that believes airing hatred on television is a form of fairness, where school districts try to call Creationism science, where laws are passed demanding public schools not cast Islam in a favorable light, where legal gay marriages aren't recognized by the entire country or the IRS or even your local hospital, where the science of global warming faces a public smear campaign because people are more afraid of losing money than losing the polar ice caps and breathable air.

Where does my reasonable fear for my daughter end and the irrational lies of my depression begin? I just don't know any more. I know I'm supposed to have hope, that we are moving on to a better future. But the current now is such a minefield of hatred and lies and danger, I just don't know how to keep hope in my heart.

How am I supposed to fight my bitterness in light of such heavy concerns?