Postcard from the edge

The thing about being depressed is that mostly I'm fine until I'm not and then I'm in the bottom of the well and everything is dark except up there, where everyone else is.  On the days when I'm fine my depression is almost something I could love because out here, living on the edge of oblivion, the world is so beautiful and my emotions are the whole rainbow and then the colours that don't exist like octarine too.  I write better like this, I understand my kids better like this, I feel everything more acutely like this... I am a different person like this.  Unfortunately, a somewhat fragile person and that's the part I hate.

Today is one of those days.  I am stressed out and exhausted after driving to Queensland and back with two small children in a week.  I am emotionally strung out thanks to the events of that week.  I feel so thin I'm sure I'm transparent.  It's the perfect environment for a trip to the bottom of the well.  And here we are.  I have a tendency to write when I'm out of the well.  To share when I have clarity and distance.  But I'm never brave enough to write from my misery.  Or at least, not brave enough to share.

But recent events and experiences indicate that what is required in my life is bravery.  So here goes - a postcard from the bottom of the well to those of you at the cocktail party of normalcy at the top.

I hate everything about myself and the way I feel at the moment.  I hate feeling vulnerable, I hate second guessing everything I say and do, I hate being paranoid about my relationships with people, I hate being stuck inside my skin and wanting to just crawl out of it and AWAY.  I hate wishing I could just curl up and die somewhere unnoticed.

There is a filter of negative that suffuses everything I look at, even my logic.  I know I'm the sort of person who will hold anyone while they cry and soothe them.  I know I've done that for the most random of people.  I know the extraordinary lengths I've gone to to cheer up those nearest and dearest to me in their darkest hours.  I know that I've laid myself bare and told people everything I feel for them, even when it hurt to do it, so they would understand that what they are is something special in a world of ordinary.

You'd think, given all of that, that I'd cut myself some slack and lean on some of those people I've been there for when I feel like this.  But then there's the pervading paranoia ready to undermine everything.

In the back of my head, where the logic is, I know that I'm a positive force in the lives of many people.  And I know that I'm loved for all that I am.  But here in the bottom of the well I am absolutely certain that if I go to the people I need the most and I'm honest with what it is I need they'll laugh and tell me to harden up or pull up the big girl panties and then I'll die inside, smile while I cry and agree with them.

Which is why when I feel like this, I choose instead to disconnect from everyone and everything, to not write, to not tell you how much I need you and how ugly it is inside my head.  Chances are three days from now, given enough sleep and exercise, I'll have dug myself out of it and I'll be back to posting stupid crap on Facebook.  And no one need ever know how much I hated myself and how much I wished I was dead or how much I needed them right here on the edge where the world is beautiful and bright but inside me is as black as midnight in the grave.