The thing that sucks the most about depression/anxiety/mental illnesses of any kind is that they don't have an end date. It's worse than pregnancy, where the "due date" is such a laughable farce that groups of moms can go on about them for hours (for reals). Coming through a dark time is never quite as awesome as it could be, because even when you know all the coping mechanisms and you have all the strategies, you know that someday it will slip, you'll crack, life will change and throw you that one extra stupid little challenge that you weren't expecting and you'll be back sobbing on the bathroom floor with your personal poison swirling through your mind.

I read this today, from the Bloggess (she is kind of potty-mouthed and a bit crude in other posts, just so you're warned), and it really resonated with me. I'm not in the same place she is, I don't have the same issues, and I can promise you that self-harm is not on my radar at all. I don't consider my personal mental struggles to be that severe compared to a lot of people, but they're enough to make things pretty difficult some days. I've mentioned before that the post-Christmas season is always a struggle for me, whether I'm still a kid and the end of Present Season is just too hard to handle, or the lack of sunlight triggers Seasonal Affective Disorder. This year I'm finding it extra challenging because everything is exacerbated by these wretched pregnancy hormones, and I lost my groove and my giant list of coping mechanisms over the Christmas week. I'm so desperate to avoid a complete breakdown that I want to overhaul my eating AND my exercise AND my schedule AND my project list AND my house AND my social life all at once. Not helpful. But I've never been very good at putting one foot in front of the other; I sprint for a short spurt and then collapse in a heap of cramps.

But in the last few years, I've started to learn to take smaller steps. Running in a non-metaphorical sense helped a lot. I actually miss it right now and I'm looking forward to getting back into it once my body is ready postpartum (that gleeful whooping sound you hear is my dad). I know FOR A FACT that eating sugar, especially in candy and other high-processed forms, triggers anxiety for me, but that it's really difficult for me to cut back once I've been slacking. All my "challenges" (I'm running out of euphemisms here) have been around long enough that I can remind myself that the bad times pass and I can get out of bad habits. It's just that sometimes, like in January, the work involved seems too great and I feel trapped between misery and a mountain and I fall apart.

The deal with this stuff is that it's always in flux and always changing. I felt like the world was ending last night and this morning, but then the day was great. Then this evening I tried to do yoga but I'm pretty sure I have to give it up - it's just too painful this time around. I can't come up with a way to wrap this up nicely - I've been trying all afternoon and evening. I guess that's reflective of how it is. Depression never wraps up nicely with a "healed" label. It just hangs around, sometimes in the background, and sometimes it's the only thing in the picture. So there you are.