Everyday in a life of the depressed

One thing about D is that you cannot pretend not to have it when you have it.

Everyday is like a war waged against D. You prepare your army. You train your weapons. You win. Oftentimes, you lose. It's not very easy to train everyday for this. It's always a conscious effort to fight and be better, as what I always say.

Being happy doesn't come so easily. You have to pull it closer to you. And when you have it, you gotta keep it close to you and embrace it while it lasts.

You can always appear cool and calm outside, but inside, there's always that struggle to show all's okay when there's that powerful force pulling you back to a state of desperation, hopelessness, and depression. It seems so easy to be in that state. It seems like you're made for that. It seems like it's home. It's that kind of home that ruins, destroys, and crashes you into pieces.

Pre- anniversary special

In less than a week, I will be celebrating the first year anniversary of the marriage of my body and this pill called Fluoxetine.

I remember the date so well. I remember how July 17, 2012 was written casually on a piece of a prescription paper that doctors use. I remember how the doctor just seemed so calm about her prescription of an anti-depressant to a woman who I had known as someone strong and happy. I remember so well how I wished she would have second or third thoughts on prescribing medicines to me. I remember so well how I wanted her to ask more questions just to make sure she is prescribing the right thing to me. I remember how I shivered and felt utter disbelief on what she told me, it's Clinical Depression.

It's almost a year. It's almost a year that I have been dependent on these pills. It's almost a year of dreaming living my life without these, to feel I can be happy without the help of any pills. It's almost a year of hoping that my family would finally have peace of mind, confident that their daughter, sister, and aunt can get on with her life "normally".

It'll be the first year anniversary. And I'm not looking forward to more years.

Thankfully busy

The last week of June provided me a vague picture of what it will be like for me for the next four months. B-u-s-y. Busy as a bee. Last time I was working, it was only 12 hours contact time with my students a week. This time around, I would have 30 hours of facing my students.

I am both thankful and humbled that I am given this much trust to help form the minds of our young Filipinos.

With this much responsibility and pressure ( "to be fun", as how most of my students put it in their expectations), I feel that I gotta have extra consciousness to take care of myself. So how do I do this? (Well, I haven't really come up with strict rules to live by) . But these are the ones I have been consciously doing:

1. Eat on time. Eat healthy. This one I'm struggling with since I got no cook and I am no cook. And given the sked I have, it doesn't allow me to cook my food.
2. Take regularly fish oil and vitamins every night. Taking these medicines has remarkably made me more energetic and stable. It is weird how I feel so positively different when I am taking these that I started thinking that I have become so dependent on them.
3. Take the other pills at the same time everyday. I do not know what's with the timing of taking meds but it's been doing me good. How? I am not very sure. But I think my body has started to imbibe a system when meds are taken, when I am awake, and when I am sleepy. And that kind of system, the body seems to like it!

These are just really simple ways I do, but I know that these are far from truly living a healthy lifestyle.

Just breathe.

I was rushing to my car after my 3-hour non stop thinking, facilitating, and teaching (minus the run-walks from one building to another) when I realized I hadn't been consciously breathing in and breathing out. I felt that all I was doing was taking in all the demands and needs of the situation that I was in.

As I reached my car and about to open the door, I remembered to breathe.

When I took a breath, I was still in a rush to do it! I told myself, "oh what the city life does to me!"

It was only the second week of classes but I already felt as if I had been working for months already.

As if that's not enough, the heavy traffic, really bad air pollution, reckless drivers, and hotheaded motorists would welcome me on the streets of Metro Manila. I asked myself, "Is this really life?"

I know that there's more to life than this. I know my life isn't designed to just live as if I am a robot programmed to do this, do that. I am a human being. There's something that tells me that in the midst of all these human "doings" I am called to be a human being.

My therapist was saying something when my mind flew somewhere else and felt awe that God has made people like my therapist to "waste" their time and energy just to help those who can't seem to handle their emotions.

In this day and age, many people in my country still find counseling and visits to psychiatrist as something extreme - like you must be mad or you must be too weak that you can't handle yourself.

Even in my own circle, I cannot just open up to them about these things for they seem still sensitive about this issue.

But whatever and however people and society view this reality, I am thankful and really amazed that there are people who are blessed to help those who can't help themselves, helping them become productive and reach their maximum potential.

There are foundations and websites that have also made me feel less alone. They have been generous with kind and encouraging words that remind me to continue choosing happiness and choosing life.

Check out their websites:

ngf-hope.org
Antonosmena.mapuafamily.com

It is one (or two or three) of those days.

The past few weeks had been filled with too much glee from my recent academic accomplishment that I found myself too happy that I actually socialized with friends and colleagues. You would even find me with my head held up high. Suddenly, I felt I was back with the old happy lady me! But at the back of my mind, I was also wondering until when this happy disposition would last. 

Then the day I was hoping not to ever arrive, came. 

I just suddenly felt so low that I withdrew from happily communicating with my friend. He even thought I was mad at him. I just didn't want to talk to anyone. So I did what I would usually do during these times, lie on my bed and cover myself with my blanket. I just stayed there hoping I would fall asleep. But my mind was too hyperactive to even try sleeping. That moment, I felt so desperate. I badly wanted that feeling of so down to go away. I wanted to hide in my closet. But my friend told me not to and he just gave me a reassuring hug. 

The next morning, it was still like that. I was too down to stand up from my bed and start my day right by moving fast so I could prepare for what I had to do. That feeling of so low was so strong that I could n't seem to control it and just snap out of it. I couldn't help it, I hid in my closet. I felt oddly better. In that quick moment (for it was getting too hot) I was there, I felt secure. I felt I was being hugged by this non-living thing. But that feeling of security quickly vanished. Oh Lord, please help me snap out of this ugly feeling. I thought of going to a park and just walk around there alone. I had to keep my mind off from horrid thoughts. Before I could even leave for a walk to the park, I found myself pushing my feet to go out and find some strange company in the nearest mall.

I had lunch while eavesdropping to some Chinese dudes talking about I don't know what. Eavesdropping even if I didn't understand totally entertained me even for a while. After that satisfying lunch, I knew I wasn't still feeling absolutely out from that ugly feeling I was trying to shoo away. The bookstore in the mall, as always, uplifted my mood. The sight of notebooks and pens has always given me such a happy weird feeling. 

In all these things I did, I forget to do one thing: to consciously do something that I know would make me feel better. 

Oh man. I do recognize that this is just probably of those times in anyone's life. But how come I couldn't seem to EASILY snap out of this? How come it would seem so easy for others to just be okay (even if not totally happy)?

Oh I forget, I haven't been conscientiously taking my pills. I need them. I need them now. But I hope and pray I would not need them forever. 

(And as I take my pills, how come I have to take these just to help myself? How come happiness has become so financially costly?)

do you hear them speak?

It is just but any ordinary opening of classes. New faces. Old faces. Familiar emotions of  excitement, anxiety, hope, and even despair.

But one thing has spoken to me today - that soul present in each and every one of us yearning for something to happen. That something only our soul knows.

Over lunch, I heard it speak through the voices of different women.

I heard it speak when a new mother was saying how much she wanted her baby boy to be healthy even if it would cost her so much.

I heard it speak through a mom wishing her son would find a job in a foreign country and get back with his ex-girlfriend.

I heard it speak through a mother of a 13-year old high school boy and a 7-year old boy diagnosed with ADD wishing she would not get pregnant any time soon.

I heard it speak through a young woman in her late 20's hoping her man, who's of her age, would ask her to marry very soon.

They are all women. Women of different ages but with the same yearning - that yearning for some good thing to happen.

But isn't it something we all silently shout everyday? It's that same yearning that chooses no gender, age, race, or culture.

I heard my soul speak. I can't hear it. Oh I know, I hear it... it's yearning to be heard.