my depression is worn and familiar

[jmtorres]

A couple of weeks ago, I told niqaeli, partly surprised and partly not, that getting out of school for the rest of the semester hadn't cured my depression--but I was not heavy of heart when I said it, for all that it was true. It took me longer to identify this part of it, but what did go away when I called it quits on the school was guilt. It's interesting that guilt is not endemic to the depression, it's a secondary feature: when I fail at school because of my depression, I have guilt. I do not have guilt purely for having depression, I do not feel like a failure as a human being, except when I manage to redefine human being to mean student as apparently occurs some of the time.

So: I have lethargy of spirit and of body, I have insomnia, I have depression. Right now it's just a weight I carry, not a wall I hit. I go to work and eat and anything I do beyond that in any given day counts as a bonus. I maintain.

Comments

[verity]

Same here, yo.

It took me a while to get out of the maintaining, but dropping some of the guilt burden helped a lot.