Living A Lie

 Greetings my faithful followers and welcome to another episode of "Shelly is probably losing her mind." Buckle up, please keep your arms and legs inside the car at all times, settle back and hold on tight. Would you like a pair of 3-D glasses?

This week (hell probably longer than that) has been a struggle for me. My mind has raced while my body has refused to move. I've not been able to gather my thoughts so writing has been all but non-existent. I've found that I've had to force myself to get up and move, force myself to plan and prepare dinner for my family, force myself to do my job. I've had to force myself to care, to care at all about anybody and anything.

Depression. Most of the time I move through life without a hint of it showing, to the point that you might not know I'm affected by it. I live and do day-to-day things by normal standards. I talk to family and friends as if nothing is wrong. I laugh, joke and carry on, enjoying the craziness of this thing called life. Those closest to me rarely see what is going on beneath the surface and it can be exhausting keeping up this bullshit charade. I do it anyway.

But every once in a while it becomes too much and I find all I want to do is retreat. Leaving the house is difficult, sometimes next to impossible. (I called in sick to work this week so that I didn't have to drive all the way to Dover.) Doing my job (which all things considered is a breeze) becomes a miserable, almost impossible task. Caring for my home and family can be a horrendous uphill climb and physical struggle. During these times I find myself crawling through life, putting in the barest minimum and hoping that I can somehow make it through the darkness of the tunnel to the pinpoint of light waiting on the other end.

As I said, this has been one of those weeks for me. Most of the time I can use music or my writing to close the world out, to suppress the darkness, to keep a fingertip hold to my sanity. Not this week. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't seem to make a break-through. I spent hours sitting at my kitchen table staring off into space. I spent an enormous amount of time laying around in bed wishing I had the energy to get up and move. It has been miserable.

Please don't ask me what I have to be depressed about. Depression doesn't work that way. With depression, you can be flying along enjoying the breeze as it ruffles your feathers, banking your wings as the sun glistens down on you, and then out of nowhere, the strength in your body disappears and you find you are in a nose-dive unable to pull up to gliding level. At that point, all you can do is hold on tight and pray for the best.

So how am I today? Better. I forced myself to go for a walk yesterday evening and even though part of me would have preferred to have done it by myself, earbuds in and shutting out the world around me, I was not alone. Maybe that is the most important thing to remember when these dark times hit - I, we, are not alone.

I didn't bring you laughs today like I love to do, but hopefully, I brought you a reminder that you needed.

No matter what, I'm here.

As always...

Much love from me to you!

Shelly (a/k/a Dawn Love)