Some Days I Dance ~ Becca

I’ll be honest.
Mental Illness scares the Crap out of me.
Scares me into a panicked paralysis of fear.
The stories you hear.
Voices.
Personality change.
Lack of control.
NO control.
Often no prediction. It seems to touch whoever, whenever,   
no control.

I have depression.
Mental illness scares the Crap out of me.
It took me a long time to say I have depression.
I don’t want it to define me in peoples’ eyes. But sometimes it does define my life. For two years it impacted every single minute of every single day. Then sometimes I could go several minutes without breathing depression. Then I would occasionally get a string of hours. I remember the first weekend I felt like depression had not been a part of that weekend! It is still part of my weekly and usually daily life.

It still scares the Crap out of me.
Sensing that darkness creeping on the edge.
Trying to keep it closed out tight.    
Lurking.
No control.

It is the single most impactful thing in my life.
It is the thing I am most proud of – living, getting to the end of the day while I have depression.
It is also still the thing I am most ashamed of.
Why?

Depression often lurks at the edges of me.
Of my mind.
Of my hope.
Of my day.
I’m scared of falling into that abyss again.
That vacuum of emptiness.
No warning.
No control.

Some days I push it back.
I didn’t used to be able to do this.
I don’t know why I can now.
I am grateful that I can.
I am scared that one day I won’t be able to again.

Some golden days I even forget for a bit that depression has marked my life, become part of my life, embedded itself into my life.

Most days I am learning to dance with it.
Dance with my depression.
My neighbour said that. 
I like that.
I am learning this.
What is dancing with my depression?
I’m not sure.
I am learning this.
It includes silver linings and growth.
It includes laughing in the face of it, at some of the worst of it. At the ridiculousness of it.
It involves lifting up my head. Looking depression in the face. Looking myself in the eyes. And breathing. And sometimes, more than I could ever have thought, it means laughing at this disease that has emptied me of me, Changed everything in me and yes, even given me much; stripped bare and rebuilt.

Some days I pretend, 
some days I push, 
some days I’m engulfed 
and some days… I dance.