Keep swimming. I'm supposed to keep swimming, right?

I know when I last wrote a legit blog post last week I left it kind of on a dark, sad, depressing note. I wish I could tell you things have turned around but I'm a pretty terrible liar so I won't insult you doing that.

Things are really tough. It feels like it comes and goes like waves. Some days I feel really great, I feel like things are really turning around, that maybe it was all just a weird phase and I'm on the road to feeling normal. Everything is good, Penelope is awesome, Matt and I are doing awesome, Olivia and Jackson are being amazing, the pets aren't puking, all is right in the world.

Then there are other days where I know, from the moment I wake up, that it's going to be a bad day. I can't tell anymore if everything is actually bad and awful, if I'm making things be bad and awful with  how I feel, or if it isn't bad or awful and I'm seeing things in the wrong lens. I'm not even sure anymore if the things I see happening are really happening, if I'm exaggerating them, or if I'm losing my mind all together.

I sat down with Matt, twice now, and really laid it all out on the table for him. Everything I feel, everything that I perceive to be real and happening, and I basically just get a blank stare. The logical portion of my brain is telling me his lack of response is not because he doesn't care but because he really has no idea what he should or could be doing. Matt is that person who has zero ability to make anyone feel better because he has no concept of what empathy or sympathy is. None. That's a post for another day, but it leaves me feeling guilty for burdening him with this. It's like telling someone your deepest, darkest, scariest secret and that person can't do a damn thing about it, but they know about it, so it eats away at them, too.

I've reached out to some friends and they are legit worried. I don't want people to be scared, I really don't. I am not a danger to myself or my kids, or even Matt. I really am not. What I am is sad. I'm sad and I feel this crushing cloud of depression over me and I can't get out from under it. I want to, but I'm stuck.

And this is where I have to say how fucking lucky I am to have the friends that I do. I'm not kidding. Earlier this month I got a box of cookies in the mail from a high school friend who thought it would cheer me up because I had mentioned how I didn't have it in me to bake over the holidays. I was so grateful to know that someone is paying attention to me, and in that small moment I didn't feel like I was doing it by myself, if that makes any sense. I had one friend bring us pizza for dinner two weeks ago. This weekend I had a friend bring me pickles and Twix candy bars. I think everyone is really scared at what has happened to me and I want to reassure everyone I'll be OK but some days I just don't know if that's true and again, I'm a terrible liar and I don't think it would be very reassuring.

But I'm trying. I'm trying really hard to be normal and good. I'm eating really well, I'm getting outside even if it's just to walk up and down my sidewalk a few times, I'm doing some light exercise because the thought of anything more makes me unexpectedly emotional. I see my doctor on Friday and she already called me with some medication options, none of which ever worked for me even in the highest doses in the past, so I have this fear she's going to tell me I have no options.

As my one friend said, I'm trying to find rational ways to make my depression a non-issue. I'm trying to find the source of it so I can fix it, and make it all go away. It's like I cannot accept that I have something mentally wrong with me. And god help me, if I hear, "you're a strong person, one of the strongest I know- you'll get through this" one more fucking time, I might punch someone.