last time I saw you

I've struggled with depression on and off, more on that off, since I was a pre-teen. Me and depression, we've been serious "on" since Eli's birth. The extreme stress of that time was a trigger and while I've dealt with the semi-breakdown that followed, sorted out that I am bipolar, for which I am grateful, I find something lurking underneath. Something that keeps me pinned to my couch, doing nothing, feeling incapable of doing anything, often utterly unresponsive to my family. Depression was lurking under all that wreckage, quiet, unnoticed under the drama of all the fires that needed putting out.

So here we are again, face to face, me and the depression I've spent decades trying to process, heal, avoid, and wish away. I've done all the spelunking of my childhood, I've cried out my history, I've written letters of forgiveness, and I've tried working with my inner child. I am tired of it all, tired of going over that history, tired of traipsing through the past to no effect. I complain, I cry it out, I write it out and nothing changes. I thought that's how you were suppose to go about it and while it wasn't working, I was a one trick pony that didn't know what else to do and so tried it again and again.

I've been attracted to a phrase for a while, "cognitive behavioral therapy." I read a blurb about it somewhere years back now and its stuck in my brain. A therapy that's about finding solutions, about dealing with the hear and now and getting to happy and functionality not through dredging but learning new ways to think and do things and then thinking and doing. Radical, it just sounded utterly radical, a different way. But I left it at that, I didn't know how to find someone who did this "cognitive behavioral" thing, didn't know where to find books on it that weren't dry things for professionals, so I left it in a back corner of my mind and went on hammering at the past.

I had a "manic" episode recently, one where I felt an uncontrollable rage that a part of me knew was illogical and out of control but that I felt unable to get a handle on. Manic. And the next time I went to the shrink, I wanted answers. She asks a few questions about my family, literally talks about the weather, pronounces the drug that has "cured" me a wonder, and give me another scrip. That's it. I research and find that bipolars who do drugs and therapy have more complete and lasting recoveries but when I bring this up to her, she poo poos and avoids. I try to tell her about symptoms I am struggling with and she points to my highly functional life for a bipolar and gives me a scrip and invites me out the door. This time I said I need new patterns, new ideas on how I could choose to react to things or think about things when my negative patterns come up and what about cognitive behavioral therapy? No, no, that's only for people with anxiety problems.
I point out the depression that has been revealed beneath the the illness and she agrees that it needs to be addressed, gives me a new drug and sends me out the door.

And then, mired down in the worst of the depression of the last year this past week, a month after that visit, Michael hands me a book that's been sitting on our shelves for years, something he owned before knowing me. I've never mentioned my interest in cognitive behavioral therapy to him, he just gets a feeling he should go dig out this book called, "Feeling Good" and hands it to me saying he's not sure why he's bringing it up, but he wondered if I might want to check out this book? Its been there for years, Michael has struggled up and down with me through this depression for years now. But now, this week, something moves him to hand me this book.

And after years of feeling there was no stone left to turn, that every attempt at processing or healing this depression was just really touching its core, I read the first two chapters of this little old self help book. I've read a lot of them, ever since I was 12. This one happens to be the first I've ever read by a doctor that practices cognitive behavioral therapy. And I laugh out loud reading, giddy - "that's me! Yes, exactly, that's what I do! That's what I feel!" and I see these oppressive thought patterns in a new way, a way that feels fresh, disarming, fog-lifting. I keep exclaiming out loud as I read, and there is no one awake to hear me. Yes! And he says, "thoughts lead to emotions, not the other way around" and I've heard this before but he shows examples of how it works that make me feel like he's been wandering around in my brain and for the first time *ever*, really truly *ever*, I am seeing how I think and most exhilarating of all, some other ways I might think. Oh gods, another way, thank you!

And in that one sitting, little tiny beginnings of clear sky begin to show, today. There's something filling me I haven't felt in so long, hope. I'd given up on ever finding a way to live without fighting through paralysis every day, through panic and certainty of my own worthlessness no matter what anyone else said. And he's one of the first signs of change - I am proud. I look at what I've made of my life despite having to brave terrible fear, anxiety, boulders of hopelessness and I hear myself saying, "wow, look what you have done."

I've said I have depression issues all along, but I didn't really know what that meant until something pointed out which parts of me I'd just given up as permanently defective and painful were actually the depression, not me. And that it is possible for me to find a new way to think? I am ready to give it my best shot, I just needed the tools. Spirit, thank you for bringing this screwdriver to my hands just when I was the time was right, I am ready to take down some cages.