I don't know when the slide started. Maybe I never fully recovered from the death flu I had in February. All I know is that as of April, I was exhausted, bone-deep exhausted without end. I would sleep 12 hours at night, only to need a nap by early afternoon, sometimes two. Nights were spent bent over the keyboard Googling "chronic fatigue syndrome" and "sleep cancer" and "dreadful sleeping curse" without success. Entire days were lost to the bed, where I'd lay, hungry, filthy and with tears running down my face, the muscles in my limbs feeling as heavy as rock. Even Odin knew something was wrong, curling up near my shoulders and using his fur paws to stroke my face.
It's depression, of course, that had flared up and took over in the middle of this raw, cold spring. Knowing that doesn't make it simpler, unfortunately. It's so easy to believe the lie that it's never going to feel better, this is the way life is from now on.
Finally, in May's closing days, I'm feeling better. Maybe even good. There are three major reasons for this:
1. Medication Voodoo
Went to the doctor, told him what was up and he immediately added some Wellbutrin to my good old Lexapro regime. "We can fix this," he said to me, and I wanted to kiss him and weep with relief. Could be placebo effect, but at this point I really do not give a shit.
2. Door County, Wisconsin
JP and I took off last weekend for a 5-day writing and hiking trip. I feel like I'm cheating on my beloved Michigan when I say this, but it was one of the most beautiful, peaceful places I've been.
I mean, seriously.
Surrounded by Lake Michigan and Green Bay, dotted with yellow dandelion blossoms, Trillium and bowing Trout Lilies, I could feel myself growing stronger. Door County has a major Scandinavian population, and it was comforting to know I was covering ground that my grandparents and my father had before me.
3. This Book
http://meghanorourke.net/
Turns out a lot of that depression was also grief and her more dramatic cousin, bereavement. My dad died. I miss him. This is the hardest loss I've ever had to bear and there's no way to know how to navigate it.
Meghan O'Rourke's mother died after a long bout with cancer, so our circumstances are different. But I can't even begin to say how helpful it was to read another daughter's experience with losing a parent. How disruptive and awful it is for months on end.
"In the months that followed my mother's death, I managed to look like a normal person. I walked down the street; I answered my phone; I brushed my teeth, most of the time. But I was not OK. I was in grief. Nothing seemed important. Daily tasks were exhausting. Dishes piled in the sink, knives crusted with strawberry jam. At one point I did not wash my hair or ten days. I felt that I had abruptly arrived at a terrible, insistent truth about the impermanence of the everyday. Restless and heavily sad, I would walk through my quiet Brooklyn neighborhood at night, looking in the windows of houses decorated with Christmas lights and menorahs, and think I could more easily imagine myself floating up into the darkness of the night sky than living in one of those rooms like one of those people. I am a transient in the universe I thought. Why had I not known that this was what life really amounted to?"
So, I'm grateful to her. For putting words to the hell I've been battling and pulling back the curtain a bit on what feels like a lonely and desperate new reality.
Here's to these three things, and to warm summer days that MUST be just around the corner.
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