Depression and digging

I'm not sure what I've shared here, but in my daily life I've been pretty open about my somewhat recent depression diagnosis and experiences with antidepressants. If you know anyone in your real life who struggles with depression give them a hug. What a maddening and misunderstood condition. 

I've tried a couple of medications, some more helpful than others, some with more side effects than others. It took darn near an entire month for my current medication to have any effect, but I am immensely proud of myself for sticking it out. I'm grateful for how helpful it's been since.

As far as I can tell I spent at least six weeks in a complete darkness, without a single positive emotion. It may have been closer to eight weeks. I did not feel any sort of goodness about anything for any length of time. It was not for lack of effort, it is just what depression can be. Even when I received some wonderful news one day and could intellectually say I was happy, I felt no happiness, joy, delight, or even a slight lessening of the pain, darkness, and frustration. That experience was a touchstone for me. Both grief and depression can make you feel awful crazy, but that day I knew it wasn't my doing. It was my brain being a real pain in the heart. 

I've been much more functional for a few weeks now. I make it to meetings. I get out of bed. I respond to work emails. I keep up with most things. Ty and I finished the school year. 

But...

You can't outrun your problems. You can't outwork your problems. It turns out you can't outmedicate your problems either. It's not as obvious as it sounds (especially considering the opiod epidemic in our country). 

I never expected an antidepressant to solve my problems. I hoped it could help me function. I hoped it could help me feel something besides the desperation of depression. It has done that and I'm massively grateful. I FELT hope when I had coffee with a friend this week. I don't take that for granted. 

But I realized the one thing the antidepressant doesn't do is provide any kind of relief to my discontent in life. I don't know why I'm here. Life seems to have very little purpose. I'm bobbing in an ocean, waiting for something to give. 

This is all wrapped up in my extended existential crisis. I joke about my EEC because what else am I going to do? Oh, besides devour articles, books, and podcasts... However, the tug holds fast. What is the point of all this? Why am I here? Why are any of us here? What is true? How am I supposed to keep living? 

There are no answers. Not in a pill or a bottle or a person or a job or a book or a song or an article or an author or a leader or in academia. Even though some of those are good places to look, meaning can be hard to come by. And yet I can't stop digging for answers. 

On doing "better"

I wrote this in February. It's now June. I found it tonight and it still is absolutely true.

"I don't want time to heal me. I want time to set me ugly and knotted with loss of you, marking me. I won't smooth you away." ― China Miéville

"So you're doing better, that's great, huh?"
::cringing:: "Um, yeah, I don't know. I guess. It's complicated."

This conversation has happened probably a dozen hundred times. I know it comes from a place of love, support, and encouragement. There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to be glad with me that I am functioning reasonably well.
Except I don't want to be doing better. I just don't. And I am in good company. (My fellow bereaved moms and I are doing our secret handshake now. Just kidding, we don't have a secret handshake, we just pass the tissues.)
Doing better means I'm farther from Eli emotionally. When I last held him I was shattered. In the days and weeks following I was such a wreck I could hardly leave my house. Any task was overwhelming. To be functioning at life now feels sort of good, but it also reveals how far away I am from the person I was the last time I saw Eli. That is a thorn in my side.
Doing better means I'm farther away from Eli in time. The fact that my pain has not lessened, but become familiar and easier to tuck away means I have had practice in dealing with it. Practice over time. So much time has passed since I was last with Eli. But then I'm really still in the beginning of this journey of survival. It just feels like it's been so long.
Everything is different. I am different. I hate it.
It's good that I'm doing better. But it hurts, too, to be doing better. My brokenness keeps me close to Eli. My brokenness proves to the world he was here; he lived. I'm not just letting that go.
I'm so proud he was mine.