As anyone prone to mental disorder and depression knows, there are days when it’s all you can do to get out of bed in the morning. The pain in your emotional space travels to every muscle, every bone and everywhere on the skin. Why bother?
These moments used to give me cravings for dark, quiet rooms with a bed or couch, where I could binge eat, smoke, drink and sleep — in that order.
In the grip of depression, it can be hard not to go back there. But I can’t let depression do that to me anymore. So there’s only one thing left to do.
Show up.
Mood music:
Show up for my wife and kids.
Show up for work.
Show up for meetings and appointments.
No matter how dreadful I feel.
I need to show up for everything — the good and the bad.
I can stumble over my addictive impulses and overwork myself until I’m burnt to a crisp. But every time I show up, the demons lose.
Showing up is a road back to equilibrium, as crooked and unpredictable as that road might be.
Showing up means you can be a blessing to people without trying to blindly please everyone.
To sum it up:
Your demons will hate you for it.
Those who matter will love you for it.
Do all the things.
In the sixth grade I was presented a very simple choice. I could find that last thing the sneering people beating me daily wanted me to do or believe, or I could stop trying entirely and just do what I wanted and maybe they’d finally kill me. Suicide wasn’t an option, can’t get into Heaven that way. I’d already tried so many ways to get killed by doing dangerous things (closed eyes riding my bike on the shoulder of a busy road, …) but was certain that God would see through that kind of lie and I’d burn in Hell.
It has been literally addictive ever since, just doing things. Whether “against my own wishes,” as you describe in your piece, or anyone else’s. The reward, relief and thrill and the expansion of boundaries, of turning into it is my drug of choice.
Granny Weatherwax is once given the choice between turning into the light or the darkness. She chooses wisely and faces the darkness, because that is the way out