If You Can't Say Something Nice...

I have not been nearly as active with this blog as I had planned.

I've been having a particularly difficult time the past week or two. My emotions have been all over the place. I ranged from angry to extremely depressed to helpless to all of the above but able to hide it. At this point though, I don't know if I'm still hiding it well or if everyone just chooses to look the other way. I've always hidden things away, whether the pain was physical or mental. I don't like discussing my feelings and being noticed when I am hurting. I feel as though showing it is a sign of weakness even though I encourage others against that form of thinking. Do as I say...

I don't know what to do, when I'm already doing everything I can. I'm taking my medications, I'm engaging when I have to and I'm going to therapy whenever I can. I don't know what else I can do. All I know is it isn't helping.

I feel like things are getting worse rather than better. Beyond the additional stresses lately, I think the denial is wearing off a little at a time.

At first it was denying anything had happened at all. Or sometimes wondering if I had imagined Max's existence all together. It was easy to do with life around me rushing forward as if nothing had happened.

But then the denial reached a new level. How many books, movies and tv shows have you seen with a plot based around a character experiencing something terrible and then waking up the morning before the events happened only to realize that nothing had happened yet. Then the character spends the rest of the day trying to prevent that bad thing from happening... I waited. I told myself each night as I waited for sleep to come that in the morning I would wake up to the sound of my son waking up. I would get to decide whether to go to my doctor's appointment or stay home. I would get a chance to yell and scream and MAKE them install better barriers to the pool as I had asked countless times before. I would do what was right for my family and insist that people listen to me when I warned that he would get out and drown. I would save my son. I would hold him, breathe him in and never ever let go...never leave him again. I would watch him grow. I would be the most annoying mother in the history of the earth and kiss him in front of his friends. I would have my son.

Slowly, I started to doubt. I started to realize that I wasn't in a book and that I couldn't turn back time. I couldn't go back and make people listen to me. I couldn't hold my son again.

The pain started creeping in, the blackness consuming me. The flashbacks, the thoughts...overwhelming...can't see or hear what's right in front of me...can't breathe...can't...can't...can't...can't...can't...don't know how to get out of this black hole...don't want to get out of this hole...

Depression is a very complicated thing. You want it to stop. And at first you just don't how to make it stop but you'd do anything you had to. Then you don't want to bother with doing anything to get better. Eventually you just stop caring, you adjust and just except the pain, let it come and wash over you. Not only do you not know how to make it stop, you don't even care enough to make it stop anyway.

You don't have depression, depression has you. It doesn't come and go, it's just there...always there. It's a living hell.

What can I do when I'm already doing all I can?

See...this is why I don't post here or on facebook anymore. It's too heavy, too dark. If you can't say something nice...

Let see how long I can allow myself to leave this one up.