Baby Steps

I recently met up with someone a little after 9am, and she asked if I usually got up that early. When I said yes, I have to get up each morning before 8am so as not to spend the whole day laying in bed, she asked if I'd struggled with depression for a long time.

Her question really made me think. Have I always been depressed? Yes. I remember when I was three getting up from the sandbox in our backyard and going into my room to be by myself. Eventually my mother came looking for me (probably when she looked out and saw all the other kids but me) and asked why I wasn't playing with everybody. At the time I was too young to articulate what I was feeling but if I hadn't been, I would have told her that I looked around at the other kids playing and just felt like shit compared to them. I didn't feel like I deserved to be allowed to play with them. That feeling made me want to cry. Between not wanting to cry in front of friends and not feeling comfortable, I left. Of course at three, I couldn't explain that to my mother, so I just said I didn't know.

But I never considered myself to be struggling with depression. Maybe because there's always been my own personal black cloud of doom, I have just accepted it as a part of me, a part of my personality.

I couldn't get that comment out of my head though, and in thinking about it I realized that I definitely fight being depressed. That's exactly why I make sure to get up no later than 8am every morning, get dressed right away, open my blinds and make my bed. All so I won't spend the whole day laying in bed watching tv in the dark. It doesn't make me giddy to face the day, but it's a step in the right direction. At least by doing all that, if somebody asks if I want to get together, I'm not thinking "that would be TOO MUCH EFFORT to shower and get dressed" because it's already done.

Baby steps.