The Lows

I almost stayed in bed today. Not from physical illness, but from a mental state that left me unprepared to deal with life. But I went to work. I had no reason not to. I wonder when it might be possible to accept taking a sick day because your brain is underwater with…whatever.

I haven’t suffered from a real depression in a while, and mine were pretty mild compared to some folks. I never had to medicate, but I had to change things: make enough time for sleep, eat healthily, not drink alcohol, sometimes stay in bed for a day, exercise or force myself to do something social, knowing that that could often help. If it makes any sense, I did those things like taking medication. A few times it was pretty serious, like wanting to take my life. It stayed abstract, though. It was just an unnameable hurt that I wanted to stop, but there was nothing I could do to make it go away.

Most folks don’t understand that while you can be depressed about something, what I call a “real” depression may or may not have something behind it. It’s like any other illness. Sometimes you’re physically sick because you stayed out too long without the proper rain gear or whatever and got wet and cold, but you can also fall sick just because you were off balance for a few days. I mean, we apparently always have the streptococcus bacteria in our bodies, but it doesn’t always cause strep throat. We got too tired or too down and the strep just took over. Depressions can sometimes just happen. The half full glass becomes half empty.

Today I had to measure which was more likely to make me better. Would it be staying in and resting, or would it be going to work and trying to shake it off? My work day had nothing urgent in it, and no one depended on me. I had a plan to jump into the lake after work, and I decided to test my theory that cold water swimming is an anti-depressor.

It did help, the lake. I think I’m going to bed early, all the same, and make sure I get enough rest. I’m not out of the woods yet, but I might be able to swing this one around without too much problem.

When I left this morning, I put Foro in a place where he was the first thing I saw when I came home. A bit of cuteness never hurts, either!