And today I wake up clearer. Or at least I wake up and get out of bed. My dog is crying at the door and where yesterday she was ignored, today I am dragged out of bed by her dependent whining. She needs me and I need her. I need her so seriously. That is why I got a dog, to help me live with depression. She gets me out of the house when nothing else will.
I can still feel a heaviness hanging on me, like I’m wearing an invisible cloak over my shoulders. It is there, in the tension of my back, pulling me down. Making it easier to sit, not stand. Hopefully by the end of the day I will have shaken it off onto the floor. “Hopefully”… I have hope today! I see it as a tool hanging from my belt, something used to fix everything, but that goes missing often. On good days I wake up to find it sitting right beside my bed, wondering where the hell it was hiding the day before.
I have a whole tool belt of things that always go missing when I need them. Gardening, making music, caring for my dog, cleaning the house, going for a walk, getting a coffee, going opp-shopping, calling a friend, writing to-do lists, listening to favorite songs. All these little routine things that help me to stay floating in the water, that stop me from going under. But when I’m down, I can’t find them, I can’t remember what to look for. God knows we need a mental health first aid kit, full of little things to do to help us out of the water. But it needs to be a magical floating first aid kit that comes and finds you in the deepest waters, or else I wouldn’t be able to see it when I needed it.
Point is, today I got out of bed. Today I made a cup of tea and sat down to write about this. Nothing lasts forever, not even misery.
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