I am a little on the manic-obsessive side this morning. I’ve been up for around four hours, three of which have been spent thinking about, looking at, and engaging in writing. Part of me feels like a floodgate has opened, where I am able to get stuff out of my head that has been festering. Another part of me feels like it’ll never stop coming and I’ll be stuck with all-new festering headstuff. [I'm wondering if I should mention to my psychiatrist this week that the meds don't seem to be taking the edge off of this stuff anymore...]
I have been looking through old journals, editing old poems. And I am horrified to read how depressed I was. I am even more horrified to read how many of my insecurities I expected to be cured by no longer being lonely, and how many of them I am still shadowboxing with.
How hard it is for me to see my self as worthwhile, talented, lovable.
The up-side is that I now have 18 poems to work with, from 1994 to this morning.
The down-side is that I now have 18 poems to work with, from 1994 to this morning and I have no idea what to do with them.
The in-between-side is that if you had asked me last night, I would never have guessed that I had so many poems at all, much less ones I think are salvageable. Hell, a couple of ‘em I think are good, and that’s in the midst of feeling this insecure.
The tough thing is that it’s hard to be depressed, it’s hard to do the work that goes along with trying to get better, and it’s really tough to feel like you’re backsliding. It’s hard to admit that those years you’ve sort of reduced to a series of stories were filled with honest-to-goddess pain and it’s hard to admit that I spent a lot of time in my early twenties writing about wanting to die because I don’t remember being that suicidal.
On one hand, I can see how far I’ve come in the past 12 or so years. On the other, I hope it doesn’t take me another 12 to overcome the insecurities I’ve been carrying for most of my life.
It’s a sobering thing to realize that I’ve spent my entire adult life suffering from depression and I only just started being treated for it. I’m glad I went through this stuff this morning but I now understand why I couldn’t stand reading it before–all of the Confessions of Misery seem melodramatic and overblown until you realize it’s a disease, not a personality weakness.
