About a week ago my depression started getting pretty bad again. Many things have probably contributed: being sick, being sick again on top of being sick, being stressed about moving, being stressed about everything, and just life's wear and tear in general.
Talking more openly about my specific battle with depression has made me more aware of it. It's almost like an outer body experience. I can hear myself saying negative and almost always irrational things, and at the same time there is a part of me, floating around somewhere going, "That's depression! Just tell it to piss off!" A lot of times that will work, but this week I've just let myself sink deeper and deeper into negativity.
Tonight while I talked to Diego I said something to the effect of, "I guess I've just been kidding myself for the last several months thinking I could be happy. This is who I really am."
Almost immediately I questioned what I had said (or actually, typed, since Diego and I were chatting online). It sounded very definite and final. Am I really just a severely depressed person who is occasionally happy? Or am I a generally happy person who struggles with depression?
I thought of one of my favorite kid movies, Madagascar, and Marty the Zebra's soul searching question, "I'm ten years old. My life is half over and I don't even know if I'm black with white stripes or white with black stripes!"
It's a little paradoxical, because when I am in that mode of depression where no rational person or thought can penetrate my bubble of negativity, I AM a depressed person that can sometimes fight off my depression, and fool everyone into thinking that I am happy. But when I am happy and that fog of depression is not clouding my intellect, I know that I struggle with depression, but it does not define me.
The truth is, depression will probably never completely leave me in this mortal life. I will always grapple with that question, "Am I black with white stripes or white with black stripes?" Maybe there is no answer. Maybe I am both.
Maybe the key is to stop trying to define myself in black and white and see myself rather in the array of colors that I am.
I am a music loving, Spanish speaking, cookie eating girl (woman, I guess I have to be a woman now that I'm technically in my "late" 20s). I am a wife to the most attractive Peruvian man on the planet. I am the mother of the most adorable little girl. I am opinionated and I can be loud. I am a clown--I love to make other people laugh. I'm an aspiring author who has no idea when my first book will be done. I arrange concerts and musical numbers and choreograph dances...in my head. Someday they will become a reality. I dream of starting my own school in Peru to teach English while using theater and music. I am a daughter of God, who loves me, and I love Him!
That's me. Those are my colors. Forget black and white.
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