Depressed

I may not be a clinician, but as the person who occupies my mind, heart, and body (and who has mental health training), I feel qualified to call it: I am depressed.

I did good, those first few months of COVID upheaval. We were all cozy in our quarantine bubble doing puzzles and baking biscuits and buzzed on breaking news alerts. I didn’t have any of the stressors some friends were experiencing, like isolation, or having sick loved ones, or being a working parent suddenly thrust into a dysfunctional and impossible work-parenting-school “life balance”, or being in the midst of a divorce. All things considered, life was good.

But somewhere in June, somewhere in between Americans being in denial about the virus and Americans being in denial about racism, I began the drift into depressionville. It began as anger, which comes easily to me, especially in the 2020 dumpster-fire trifecta of racism + Trump + pandemic. As long as I don’t stay and simmer for too long there, I actually think anger is a healthy and productive feeling. I often think that people aren’t angry enough about the state of things in our country. As a wise bumper sticker once said, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” Well, in June, I was paying attention bigly and my pain was coming through as anger. BIGLY.

Anger is exhausting and unsustainable (for me), so eventually it downgraded to a quieter apathy and then despair, compounded by the isolation of COVID life. Also, Jay went back to work and back to the hustle of house projects, so it’s just me and kids most days. Some days it feels like all I do is break up their fights, clean up their spills, and read article after article about how the world is falling apart. And then I feel anger again, anger at people who are acting as if we’re not in the midst of a pandemic OR a racial reckoning, or worse, who seem ignorant to or unaffected by the deep suffering all around us. The limits of rugged individualism are in full view. Americans love to beat their chests about individual rights and liberties but seem inept about social responsibility. We do not live as islands; our individual actions have direct consequences for those around us. This is an exhausting time to care about other human beings. And it is a hard time to take care of human beings, especially myself.

I am actively trying to find a therapist but it turns out everyone else is, too, so that’s proving to be trickier than I thought. In addition, I’m trying to remember who I am and the things/tools that have always made me feel most alive. The short list includes reading, writing, and kundalini yoga, so I am doing my best to get back into some practices that feel familiar and grounding.

After a long struggle with audiobooks, I think I’m finally finding my groove with that format. It’s kind of changed my life and made me feel like a reader again. Having kids killed the reader in me but audiobooks have brought me back to life. And the more I surround myself with words and language and literature and stories, the more I feel the writer in me being resurrected, too, which has brought me back to this dusty old blog.

I tend to be a realist who leans towards optimism and hope. These days I feel like a realist who can only see what’s real right in this moment and what’s real in history. I cannot see a path out that is compatible with optimism or hope. All I see is denial of history, denial of science, racism, ignorance, individualism, and so much pain. And some days I just wallow in that shit. That is not who I am. But right now, that is who I am. That is how I’m showing up in the world. That is how I’m parenting. I am exhausted, withdrawn, on edge, angry, sad, hopeless. Every single day.

But then, during a zombie social media scroll, I saw this post from Rebecca Solnit and I was brought to my knees and reminded of who I am.

“Howard Zinn said, “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places – and there are so many – where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Indeed. That is who I am. That is the version of myself I am trying to find. And so I will keep reading, keep writing, keep coming to the mat, and keep trying to find a therapist. Because Howard Zinn was right: the future is determined by our current moments, and maybe living with hope, despite it all, is a courageous victory.