On The Rise

About The Pit. The Pit is what I choose to call my depression*. It usually starts out with the blues. When I get the blues I try to maintain any bit of 'happy' I can hold onto. It is a sort of desperation, and I think the anxiety caused by the desperation might make the slope more slippery. It is not fast, but it is an increadibly steady descent as I succumb more and more to the gravitational pull of The Pit.



I have learned about myself that my name is extraordinarily well suited to me and I have even started to wonder if it had/has an effect on who I am. Trieste in Italian means Melancholy, the definition of which is "A feeling of thoughtful sadness", SERIOUSLY!?! Seriously. Is there a word that means Self Actualized? because . . . I'm thinking of changing my name if there is.



I have known for a while, but it never hit so close to home as recently, that I take things very, very personally. I am sensitive. I am easily hurt. I accept guilt when it's thrust on me by others and I create a lot of it for myself. I get angry quickly too. I was recently told by a woman that "You don't seem like you get your feathers ruffled easily. I feel really calm and comfortable around you, and I think I could tell you anything." That calm, comfortable, tell me anything part will be great if I decide to see this 'become a therapist' thing to the end . . . the feather thing? I'm glad I appear that way outwardly. This skin? Penetrable.



I am truly afraid of not being good enough. The voice of the critic, the voice of insecurity in my head says things like: What if you aren't a good enough writer? What if you aren't a good enough student to earn a Doctorate? What if you aren't a good enough employee? What if you aren't a good enough friend? Why do you have to dominate conversations? Why did you have to eat that whole thing? Why can't you just control what you eat? Why are you so lazy? If you would just go to the gym! If you would just blahblahblahblahblahblah What if you aren't good enough at blahblahblahblahblah? All the time. The logical conclusion to all that chatter in my mind to my mind is that I'm not good enough. Not healthy, not skinny, not pretty, not likeable, certainly not someone people can love or want around, not friendly, not a good listener. It scares me to think about clicking "Publish Post" with this all out in the open like it is. But this whole section reminds me of the point. . . .



I let little things creep in and bite me. I try to ignore it. So it starts to gnaw at me. Once it starts to gnaw, I just let it eat at me. Before I know it I'm in a deep, dark, frozen hole in the ground. The sun doesn't shine on it. Nobody even walks close enough to it that they might notice the sad, frozen girl down there.



Today, and a few single times over the last few weeks, I've noticed a new place. It's not in the depths of The Pit, but it's not on the rim or safely away from The Pit either. It's like The Pit is suddenly less deep, and it's not so dark anymore . . . I don't think I have ever experienced the ascent gradually enough to get comfortable in a place like this and look around. It's always been one extreme or another.



I can clearly see the options:

I can dig in, let it take me again and keep me longer.

Or, I can keep looking for more information about myself while I'm in here.





Because it's not ABOUT happy or not happy lately. It's about all the questions I haven't been asking myself. The next one is: Why is my greatest insecurity about not being good enough?

I like this piece of artwork. It has the same buried in the Earth feeling that I get from The Pit, but with more hope . . . (I really struggle with this aspect of writing because I want to explain what I see so the reader understands that I see 'human growth' in this image and mention that you know . . . that's totally the idea I was going for. My worry would be that instead of seeing the hope I'm starting to feel, they would misinterpret why I chose to use this image and see the pit instead of the way out. . . . but I think Stephen King was right when he said: "Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s." Maybe next time I'll just say nothing at all, and if the reader doesn't get it, it doesn't really mean anything to me it's really just too bad for them that they don't catch my drift . . . this picture looks like the way out to me) Again, I wish I knew who to credit with it's creation.


*I refuse to admit to suffering a chemical imbalance called depression, but I would be lying if I didn't say I got depressed, and what else do you call it? I know, it's sort of dysfunctional.