To be honest, at least it's my perception, the depression is easing up, but the anxiety is almost always there. I realized recently that I have always been anxious. From the time I was a small child to now. Sometimes it helps to drive me, spur me into action and get a lot accomplished. Other times I'm paralyzed with in action, while wave after wave of anxiety washes over me, like the ocean beating against the rocks, not gently lapping the beach, it's a beating, it is fierce and relentless. At these times I feel the darkness of depression creeping closer...
Either way, it is living with fear. Sometimes it causes me to make poor decisions, other times it helps me to strive to overcome, but just when I think I'm managing it, I get another attack.
It keeps me awake, when I badly need to sleep, because sleep deprivation makes it worse and I know this so I desperately try to shut off the negative thoughts flooding my brain and I try to force myself to sleep. To escape the fear. But it won't let me escape into sleep. So I'll read, watch shows, sometimes this woks for a short time. Other times the attack is too strong, the thoughts too pervasive.
Last night I felt one coming on, I tried to relax, took a bath. Tried to watch a show that I usually find funny but couldn't focus on the words. I finally lay in the dark wishing my tired mind and body to just shut down. But I was too late, I can always feel an attack coming, sometimes I can delay it but I've never been able to stop it. Alone at night is the most vulnerable time, at these times I usually fight the feeling, I tell my self to relax, to go to sleep. I pray and veg and negotiate anything to make it stop. But last night I decided to stop fighting it. I decided to lay in bed and let the thoughts poor through me with out correction, comment or subtext. I decided to just feel the waves wash over me, because it made it worse to fight. So I didn't, I just floated on the stormy sea of my fears and eventually, exhausted I fell into a restless sleep.
Today the storm has past, I'm tired, but no longer panicking. I need to get some things done while I still can function.
I don't really tell people that I have anxiety and depression. I want to believe that I'm managing it, I'm not depressed, not anymore. But it's there, like a beast prowling the perimeter of my mind, it's always there, ready to sneak up and drag me back down. But it's currently held at bay.
The anxiety is almost always present, I say that because on rare occasions il have a really great day. I'll have a good nights sleep, and I'll have an anxiety free day. I get things done, I can ponder decisions with a haze of fear affecting my perception. It's amazing, and I start to think that I don't have a problem. And I don't. For that one glorious day.
It was a breakthrough for me, to not fight. To just allow the anxiety to have its say, I got to sleep faster than normal, the fact that I did sleep, was an accomplishment. So no I didn't rest, my dreams simply took the fight into my subconscious and I dreamed I was helping people to run away from oppression or I was saving children from abuse, or reuniting families, but I slept. So yes, I'm tired and I have a headache but for now I'm relatively calm. It's time to move on with the day.
