There are times when I find that even thinking about thinking about what I’m feeling is enough to induce a sleep-like coma for an additional three hours of the morning. I could easily get out of bed, as I did for years, around 6am every morning when my brain snaps to attention and begins its daily factoring, searching and planning regimen. I could. I could if I wasn’t so scared of the empty feeling that engulfs me within seconds. A solid core of emptiness with layers of what ifs and insecurities wrapped tightly around and around like the inside of a golf ball.
This week I will go to the doctor and ask for medication. Despite all the bravado and planning ahead in the case of this emergency, I feel like a failure. I’ve managed well for a few years now with meditation, vitamins and supplements. I’ve made it my mantra to be fearless and do the hard thing first as a way of keeping my emotional-self healthy. I’ve made decisions with machete perfection as to what situations I’m willing to walk in to regarding work, family and my social calendar. And now, it seems, that even with all my careful planning and attention to detail, I’ve not taken two steps back but more like a mile. This from the same mind and mouth that recommends to anyone that if medication is needed then grab it with both hands and don’t look back. I’m a hypocrite.
My practical self tells me I will do well to take care of this soon. My reasonable self knows that the thing to do is to call right this minute so that all the time I spend with my kids this week will be as great as it can be. My intellectual self tells me I have not failed and that everyone’s life comes in waves of highs and lows, in seasons of sunny and dark. My clinically depressed self tells me that I am alone, ugly, unlovable, inconsequential, worthless, unworthy of being in the same room with my kids who might get some of my poison on them and that in not secluding my person in a dank, dark place to merely exist until I die I somehow endanger them. By just being alive I endanger them. That the best gift I could ever give them is to disappear from their lives. That voice worked once before and I struggle to keep it at bay.