I’ve realized in the past two or three years that I have a tell as to when the soul-sucking part of depression is coming home – I start thinking about men not my husband. Not in a ‘running away!’ sort of way, just… ohai, X or Y are cute and we really do have so much in common and wouldn’t’ve been lovely if we had ever been an item, etc? While it’s not anathema to think thoughts of other people outside of my marriage, it does concern me. I’m a one-person woman, and that goes for what’s in my head as well. When I start getting squishy thinking about someone else… that’s when I know to brace myself for a period of bad. It’s my brain trying to destroy me with cheerfulness first. When I shoot that down, it will start fixating on something stupid, like my husband not doing something incredibly minute (which means he doesn’t love me), or that someone in my family over here is picking on me and that I am stranded here and oh god I cannot escape… when it’s usually me and my anxiety driving me so far past the point of reason that there is no room for logic and sense.

Lots of fun, eh?

Still, I know these tells and signs now. I am medicated, so I’ll win… hopefully. I really don’t know. I’ll have to take it as it comes like everything else, and hope that I know enough now to stop myself before I feed the internal troll. That’s a hard battle to win, as it’s very damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Even if you DO manage to stop a destructive cycle, you’re left just as weak and worn out (if not more); it sometimes feels easy to give in to the ‘inevitable’. And to be fair, sometimes giving in and going into full-blown depressive self-destruction mode DOES get it over and done with faster than a day or two of feeling slightly off-balance, wary of the next intrusion or attack upon a compromised mental health position. I’ve heard it said that if you can regularly win the skirmishes, it will win you the battle in the end because you’ll successfully reprogram yourself around those things. It will be interesting to confirm the veracity of that, but that’s definitely going to take a lot of inner strength (which isn’t exactly at its highest when in a depressive phase).

Anyhoos, off to flop on the floor and take some deep breaths. That’s usually good for something!

<3