Finding Light In My Darkness

I am not completely new to this world of blogging, but it has been many years, so I am taking this on as a brand new project with a new vision. I would love to say “new me”, it sounds so contemporary and optimistic, but let’s be real here, I am me. I am the me that I have always been. What’s new is that I strive to live my life in the light, in the sunshine and brightness that comes with finding every silver lining, every positive outlook, every single sliver of light that can only be recognized by living with the contrasting darkness.

As far back as I can recall I have always felt a darkness around me. Or perhaps it was more like the darkness was in me. Darkness was me. Darkness was. I never understood or labelled what I felt, but I knew that my feelings mainly fluctuated between morose and flat. Through the years my relationship with the darkness was ever changing, sometimes it was a love affair, I embraced it and identified well with being gloomy. Other times I denied the darkness and I stepped in to a strobe light. Stepping in to that well lit room was such a farce and felt extremely disingenuous. The light was bright, but it wasn’t light from within. It wasn’t my light. It wasn’t me. Eventually there was a clinical name to the “melancholy”, it’s name was depression. From there I became Depression. I was a girl named Depression and I was going to do everything I could to feel better, but only for the moment. Those snippets of tanning salon, artificial sunlight came at high costs. My behavior became more perilous, it was about anything that I could do to feel “good” right now. The light was more of a blinding flash when it was gone I was left with unabashed pitch blackness. I lost my way.

Flash forward to 2008. I just had my youngest daughter and my body was trying to destroy itself. For the first time I was faced with a choice. It was suggested by my OB GYN that I might benefit from an anti-depressant. Oddly enough I had never even considered getting help for the dark. I took the meds and I felt a bit better. Over the next few years I started seeing psychiatrists and I was officially “diagnosed”. I was devastated. It seems so absurd now, but I felt like less of a person because I was clinically depressed. I spent a handful of years on different medications and ended up being over medicated. I felt emotionally dead. I took it upon myself to dump my psychiatrist and cut my medications cold turkey. After the withdrawals I felt pretty good. It lasted 6 months and then the dark smashed in to me with  an intensity I had never known. I was in a relationship and suddenly I disappeared. I didn’t want to be part of a relationship, a family or earth for that matter. Fortunately I had enough wisdom to find a new doctor and get the help I needed.

It’s 2017. I am still supplementing with anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications. Something else has changed. I made a conscious decision to step in to the light and pull from the light within. I don’t want to live in the darkness anymore. I want to live in the light. With light comes shadow and I understand that. I am always going to have a shadow, my shadow might even be bigger than the light in which I stand, but I am learning to love the light. It’s not first nature for me and I often find myself longing for the comfort of that familiar darkness, but at the end of the day, give me light. This is why I blog. To share, purge, express and hopefully help someone on their journey or maybe to better understand someone in their lives who are also named Depression.