Re-Emergence

Perhaps it's just been a break to catch my breath. Perhaps memorializing everything in black & white electrons here on this blog meant I had to sort through and deal with everything that's been going on--which I just didn't want to do. Perhaps I've just been lazy.

I don't know.

But here I am, first post in nearly a month. I'm not sure where to begin, but I'll try.

In short, my depression came raging back, despite the SSRI I've been taking. I'm fairly certain it's probably because I just quit running cold turkey. My trip to the Grand Canyon (although a life altering experience) injured my knee making it very difficult to run without pain. Add the insane schedule of my internship, and the thought of a painful gym session was much less than appetizing. Or maybe depression just does that--returns without invitation to steal away joy for no reason at all, to just laugh its evil giggle while I foundered and gasped and struggled.

Regardless the reason, I slipped again into the deep, dark pit of loathing. My wife disengaged because it's easier to get wrapped up in kids and work than deal with an embittered bastard of a husband cloaked in the throes of desolation. My kids were driving me up the wall. Church ceased to salve my soul. My friends disappeared because I was always working or sleeping. Work sucked, but amazingly it just sucked the same amount and actually became relatively tolerable.

The breaking point came the night that I had an extremely vivid dream where I awakened in an unknown place. By the time I pieced things together I realized I had been committed to a mental health facility. As I lay there trying in vain to orient myself, mind befuddled in a medication hangover, my wife appeared in the doorway.

Cheerily she said, "Oh great! Look who's awake!"

My relief in seeing a friendly face was quickly replaced with abject horror over the realization she was there as an employee, not as a wife. She actually worked on the unit.

I was then accused of sleeping with my "hands under the blanket, again", with a knowing shake of the head. She left the room as I lay there trying to understand what that could possibly mean, why it was bad, and how I could prevent myself from putting my hands under the blanket while I slept...

I followed her from my room into the large common area to discover her sitting at a table with the other nurses, chattering away and laughing at some unheard story of levity.

The dream was wrong in so many ways, and couldn't happen in real life, but I cannot even begin to express the vividness of the dream or the feeling of betrayal...

Regardless it galvanized me to action, and I began taking double the dose of my SSRI, and now a couple weeks later, things seem to be smoothing out a bit. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when my 3 month supply is gone in a few weeks rather than a few months.

I need to return to exercising, but I'm finding it difficult to force myself.

Anyway, I'm back. Thanks for all the concern. I hope the next post won't be quite so long in the making.