I woke up at 3am from a fitful sleep. I was tossing and turning, having a stream of bad dreams that I’m now having trouble remembering. I decided after a few minutes of lying awake, that today would just be one of those days where I didn’t go back to sleep. I went downstairs to brew my coffee early, and since I’m on a social media strike, scrolling Tik Tok for hours was not an option. I finished the book I started reading over the weekend (Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney is a great mystery/thriller if you’re looking for a good fiction book to read). I even started reading another. I showered, got ready for the day. And now I’m here, writing, as my son wakes up to get ready for the day.
As I was getting ready, I was thinking how sometimes this happens to me. These mornings where I just can’t seem to get back to sleep. How they usually seem to come right after a bout of depression, where my bed seems like the only place I want to be. Where I feel I can sleep endlessly. I never really gave much thought to my mental state before my breakdown. I just tried to cope the best I knew how. I masked with substances silently, functioned very well. I’ve always been very disciplined. I chalk that up to not having anything to fall back on. I always tend to put blame on my ups and downs in relation to my trauma, but this morning I wondered what it would be like if I had a supportive family. Maybe I’m an enigma of my very own, I don’t quite fit any of the categories. Because when your need to survive falls on your shoulders alone you acquire a certain skill set.
Regardless, my family doesn’t believe in mental illness. I once told my mom in my teenage years I was depressed and she screamed at me. Told me to get over it. But really inside I was having these terrible thoughts. Maybe in reality for many years I’ve been drowning them out. So now that I’m sober, and I’ve been sober for a couple years, I keep going through these ebbs and flows of depression and then great happiness. The lows are low, the highs are high. Nothing in my external reality changes, it’s just my chemical makeup that seemingly changes overnight.
I like to tell myself that I’ll get to the other side of this. That the lows are there because I’m healing, that one day I won’t feel them anymore. That I’ll be consistent. At peace. And it’s not like when the lows are there I can’t do anything, the discipline I have allows me to continue to accomplish everything. I work every day, I take care of myself, my son. I clean. I even do the things I enjoy when I’m down. The only way I can think of to describe it is like a rain cloud comes over me, then all of a sudden the sun is shining. I can tolerate the rain, it is familiar in a dark, heavy way. But when the sunshine appears again it’s like a sweet relief that washes over me.
I’m learning how to cope with myself. I’m sure some would say, “Why not get on medication? You don’t have to feel like that.” The thing is I’ve been numbing all my life. In certain ways, dodging feeling by switching out my addictions. Now I’m noticing when I start to rely on something that’s maybe not so good for me. Even if it’s something as seemingly benign as social media. I don’t want to take medications to make me “normal”. I want to feel who I am, I want to be able to cope with my darkness. I want to learn how to soothe myself. I want to master my emotions. If it’s possible only time will tell.
The Girl Without A Face 