Setbacks

I need to write about this, and so I will. If you are friend or family, please know that I do NOT want to talk about it nor do I have any care to hear your advice or opinions.

I am depressed. The last three weeks have found me in a depression as deep as any I have experienced in my life. It is partly situational, partly exhaustion, partly due to injury that is toeing the line between acute and chronic by now. I could complain and whine about everything, but really that just reminds me of everything I have to be depressed about.

I have pulled away from my friends and family, away from facebook except for the occasional comment and sharing of other stuff. I am afraid to actually post a status update because I’m playing the “if you have nothing nice to say, you have nothing to say” card. I do not know what to say that isn’t complaining. It is easier to be a hermit than to invite opinions, advice, or really just plain interaction at all. I have been ignoring my friends because I don’t want to drag them down into my dark place.

In therapy yesterday, I broke down in tears. I had to go back to work afterwards and so I did with my head down and my hair in my face. I looked in the mirror and realized I hadn’t taken a shower in probably a week and a half, and my hair showed it. Yesterday was the first time I admitted that I am depressed again. I have been so excited and proud about my emotional progress with yoga that I didn’t want to acknowledge what was happening despite the fact that it was clear as day. It’s funny, acknowledging my depression was like removing the cork from a barrel of tears and anguish. Tears flow frequently and for little reason.

I’ve missed a month of yoga – not because I don’t want to go, but because I haven’t been able to move even remotely as well as I need to. I have gone to a few yin classes, but even those serve better to show me what I can’t do rather than what I can. I know that there is more than a little correlation between the two, although there is more correlation between the pain and my shitty attitude.

Many times in the last few weeks, I have cursed myself for being weak, for having a crap attitude, for being fat and stupid and ugly and worthless. I have cursed myself for joining the Army and ruining my knees. I have cursed myself for getting OUT of the Army. I have cursed myself for every choice I have made in my entire life that has brought me to where I am.

And yet the one thing I have not cursed myself for is finding yoga.

I can cry myself to sleep, throw tantrums (some of them justified), take everything personally and as an attack, and hate the image that looks back at me from the mirror.

And yet that hour in yoga, I have peace.

Someday, I will have that peace past the door of the studio again. I have faith and I know I will get through this.

But right now? Today? I have to accept that no matter how hard I try to change my perspective and forcibly alter my attitude, I am still going to hate my life. For some good reasons and for some bad ones. It’s a funny thing, though, acceptance – when you can’t accept yourself at all, you also can’t accept how you feel.

No, I’m still not suicidal – that is one lucky thing I have kept safe in my heart. But I sure wish I could stop all this stupid crying.