What I think makes depression so blatantly obvious to me is my memory of last year. What makes last year so memorable is the facts that it was the first year after my last and ever-so-memorable 4 month stay at the local state hospital, and the year I will always know as my "year of enlightenment". When I was in the state hospital, I had been put on a new antidepressant, and it apparently worked. I finally won my way out of the hospital and a new life began. My husband and I began marriage counseling and I started up again with my therapist. I seemed more at ease, more productive and felt more normal. (Whatever that is.) I used my camera a lot as (like in that antidepressant commercial) colors seemed more brilliant, details sharper, and I began to notice an inner peace that I had never felt before. Spring seemed to announce its self loudly to me. It was not all a bed of roses. I did have some PTSD episodes that without my therapist's order to not let the crisis team put me in the hospital, I would have been. Not even a crisis bed did I take. However, I kept going. Come the end of summer (August), our SuperActivity went to Baxter State Park for a week in August. It was a time of complete peace and self re-discovery. We hiked hard and enjoyed the complete wildness of everything. We came back in a natural state of highness. A few of us came down hard upon returning home to civilization. I had another PTSD episode that nearly killed me. However, I did not die. I was given another chance. It took me a good two weeks to regain control of myself, but with in the first week, the week I was given another chance, Rowena, my future service dog was born about 20 miles away. Utter joy in November ocurred when my mother helped me purchase Rowena, the charismatic puppy and her "first grandchild". However, perhaps I never fully regained my composure from August's episode. Maybe I did. Winter went a little rougher than last year. Rowena added joy to my days, but in February when she was attacked by the German Shepherd, my PTSD symptoms picked up big time. Things have been tough since then. Colors seem cloudy and days seem to float and fly by without my noticing. Social phobias seemed to be increasing as I am having a hard time getting myself to even take the bus to appointments... especially the one that is near the house where that damn German Shepherd lives. I get emotional drained from riding the bus and running errands. I am tired, and after just returning from this year's SuperActivity, I really see how bad I am. Where is my enthusiasm, my motivation, my creative energy, my inner peace, my outer rainbow? Where did it all go and Why has it gone? What have I done to deserve to lose it all after I had just gotten hold of it? Where is the hope of ever getting better? Where is my purpose? Perhaps if I feel like I have to ask all these questions then I have lost God. Does God only hang out with me if I go to church, do all my callings, and go to all my meetings and pay my tithes? Not the God I know. However, I feel as if blessings are being withheld, but then again, one often has a hard time feeling worthy of a blessing when they are depressed, and also have a hard time feeling blessed while depressed. I want to say that the biggest blessing I have is a dog named Rowena... but then I though of a joke I read on the internet... I think it goes kind of like this: "There's nothing like a dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac who stays up all night wondering if there really is a dog". Okay, God has granted me the gift of humor that never seems to leave me.
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