V

Apathy. 
Apathy, apathy, apathy...
I first heard this word in high school at some point. It took some time to wrap my brain around it then. It was a word I think only people who have experienced major depression can fully grasp. A depression that leaves you completely void, and having only a feeling of apathy to fill you (or not fill you). It's how I've felt for a couple of months now – eight weeks of this void, of apathy. Though this underlying peace is always there. That is something I cannot lose, and I lean on such while the void comes to rid me of life, and fill me with apathy.

A mental illness. Society has deemed I have a mental illness, and have had one for sixteen years. It's so cleverly called "Double Depression"– dysthymia, a chronic mild depression, with episodic major depressive episodes. To date I have had four major depressive episodes. The last one ending in a failed suicide attempt, and a stint in a mental hospital. It has made life difficult,  but I am honored to have been even given a shot at life. 

It was five years or so, give or take, when I started to wake up spiritually. Then a year or so, give or take, I started to wake up socially. This is the first "bout" of major depression I have experience while awake/enlightened. It has been quite odd. Like I mentioned before I am still in touch with the peace which I have found inside myself.  I had never had peace before when I relied on the religion of Christianity. Before I would become so unhuman it was literally frightening – to myself and any loved ones. Now, I am in control,  not the depression itself. In the past the depression took over, and I was no more. I have somehow retained myself in this episode. I believe it is because I actually have found myself, and once you've done such you can no longer be overtaken by your mind, or your mental illnesses. I sense the void, I have ceased to feel, the apathy is present, but I am still here. I can't find the drive to do much, but at least I have the desire to breathe, before I couldn't find even the drive to even do that. I don't want to die, and that is something to say for me during such a stint of heavy depression. Again, this is odd, but a very good odd.

This a proving to be something of a learning experience. I really want to be back to normal self. I want the drive to learn, to meditate, to exist on more than a survival instinct. I want the normal me back. I want to want to eat. I want to do more than sleep. Though I do fight the sleep as best I can. I will find then way through. It has been eight weeks, and my hope is that because I haven't fed it like I did before that it will loose momentum, and leave me sooner than usual. The last major episode lasted a year or so. I believe I will also start working towards eradicating it myself – something I never did before, something I never had the drive to do before.

I'm growing up. It's weird, to actually catch yourself maturing. Really, it's weird. I wish I'd have been at this point 15 years ago, but I am grateful that I am here now at least. Some never get to this point, and suffer their entire life, and even die as a result. I will be here, be now, and rise above.

Namaste,
Haley