I Was Going To Tell You This Before (#ADD)
Circling back to my call with my psychiatrist.
At this time it wasn’t like I didn’t know I was depressed/manic. I had gone through all the questions: the wtf? How is this happening again? Why, why me? And all the pleading: Please, please God, no (I’m an Atheist and yet God always comes back into the picture in these moments), just please don’t let Stan back into my life.
But slowly and surely, Stan crept back in.
He was invading my every thought and every orifice until I had to admit that my medication had ‘pooped out’ (this is actually a medical term that is funny – a rare treat). Essentially it means that your body has become resistant to your meds or the combination of your meds, which of course at 48, I had a healthy combination of.
Everything, everywhere, all the time was overwhelming. A bad review, a good review, a new idea, an old idea (was it ethical to use the same wallpaper twice – nail bitter), the state of the world, not finding my underwear. You name it, my brain could attach a very long list as to why any and all of those things could mean that the world was coming to an end. It also meant it was becoming harder and harder just to get out of f’ing bed. Like soooooooo hard. Like being forced to run a marathon with no actual physical preparation (or what I can imagine that would feel like given I would never actually run a marathon – I am not that crazy) (yet;-)).
I didn’t realize how depressed I was until a little ‘blip’ happened.
I knew I was fucking depressed, but who wasn’t? Sometimes it is hard to ‘fit’ depression into life’s daily sprint. You know, the daily sprint that somehow I am still totally confused by, stuck in, but I believe I signed up for, on purpose? The house, the job, the marriage, the three kids, the mortgage, etc.
It’s not like anybody I knew was T-H-R-I-V-I-N-G. Almost three years of pandemic parenting, anxious teenagers with their own mental health issues to cope with, and a ‘I hope she is surviving all this neglect because the other two need so much right now’ third child. Life was hard. Even for the lucky ones (which I constantly remind myself I was), it was just a daily grind until you could finally justify crawling into bed to watch Netflix and stare at your wallpaper behind your TV (hot tip: don’t be afraid to hang things on wallpaper).
I had hoped a lifetime of mental health management had given me something called ‘insight’. And yet … here I was again. Right into it. The thought … this thought that just would NOT leave my brain. Every free moment of my brain is sinking right into this … this beautiful, simple, increasingly comforting thought: What if I could just get hit by a bus?
Not just any bus.
It had to be an older model City of Ottawa bus.
It had to be at night.
It had to be just the right timing.
It had to be going fast enough.
It had to be empty.
With a wide flat front.
Did I mention going fast enough?
And I just knew,
Just knew,
If it was fast enough,
Maybe complete oblivion was possible.
