Watching the Tide

It's like watching a tidal wave race toward the shore and your feet are stuck in the sand...heavy, like a concrete blocks. You want to run away from it, find shelter and safety, but all you can do is stand there and wait, knowing it's going to hit, and hurt, and swallow you. The best you can do is try to remember to hold your nose and not to panic.

That's what depression feels like for me. Sometimes I don't see it coming, it just hits like a speeding car into a brick wall...but other times, like right now, the storm brews and the winds increase and I can see the waves getting higher and higher until suddenly that huge, disastrous wave comes barrelling towards me. I am about to be hit. Hard. Depression is rearing it's ugly head to me and I am bracing for the assault. I can feel my defenses gearing up, my emotions retreating and pulling away, the walls going up to try and protect myself in some ridiculously desperate way. Tears well up, and I suck them back, refusing to be weak and let them go. Knowing this does more harm than good...but it has been my defense mechanism since I was a child.

Oddly enough a book put me over the edge. I have been struggling for months with issues I have discussed here, and some I never discuss with anyone...but I bought The Heroin Diaries by Nikki Sixx after listening to his band rock out in St. Louis a week ago. Reading his struggle with depression and addiction and the anger and abandonment he felt from his childhood seemed to stir up some really really dark things inside me. Things I hate to face. Things I refuse to acknowledge. Things I think I pretend didn't really happen to me.

I have always felt that good literature stirs up your emotions, gets you out of your comfort zone...I never expected to put this rock and roll diary in that category...but I am a mess at the moment. White Oleander did this to me as well....forced me to deal with some shit I've swallowed down and tucked away somewhere deep in my soul. Common sense would tell me that I need therapy to learn to deal with my past, perhaps the waves of depression would subside a bit....but then there is my brain telling me I can't deal with it and can't dredge it all up again. I fear that doing that would end my sanity. For good. Maybe I am insane, who fucking knows.....

I'll be back when I am feeling better...or if I feel worse...who knows. Sometimes writing helps. Sometimes there are no words. But the crash is coming, I can feel it. This will be a bad week.