Progress and Lies
I've learned recently that progress is in the eye of the beholder and fleeting. About the time I feel like I'm making strides toward getting better, I backslide and get angry or sad. Despite the fact that I feel better and I don't wake crying everyday, I still get angry and that is unacceptable. When I face the truth, the truth that I am now a needy, disabled, burden to those I love, I become either extraordinarily sad or destructively angry or both and when it's verbalized to me, the pain goes so deep I get eaten up with self-loathing and lash out. That is not progress, and having “pity parties” ended a long time ago, so don't go there. This is reality.
Depression is really tough. Meds help, of course, but I think I'm a frontal lobotomy with an egg-beater away from being a non-feeling robot. As a writer, I don't know if I even want that but something needs to change in me so everyone else can get back to “normal.” See, the thing is, I can never be “normal” again and because of that, I'm impeding others, certainly not by choice but it is obviously true.
While I don't want to think that all I've been working toward has been pointless, I can't help but feel inadequate when I fail to keep emotions in check. I also wish I could blame an outside influence but the reality is, I'm failing to be a the person I need to be. What I have felt was progress, was me lying to myself and I didn't even know it. Now, I know and can trash everything, all the psychology tools that I thought were helping and try something else. On to Psychologist #6. Maybe the next one will be the magician I need. Damn, that sucks. I really thought the one I'm seeing was helping.
Better yet, I need a time machine.
