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So This is What Good Mental Health Feels Like
Cool.
I was depressed for a pretty significant portion of the last decade. Occasionally, I’d manage to swim my way up out of the depths for a bit, float on the surface, and enjoy the sun on my skin. Inevitably, though, the dark waters would reclaim me. Usually when I was alone. Usually at night.
I wasn’t faking it when I smiled for pictures: I really was happy in those moments. Moments with friends and family. Any time I was teaching. Often when I was writing. Climbing into treetops. Dancing. Backyard campfires. Rum and cokes on the beach. Doing adulty things.
It’s not that I haven’t been myself in the last ten years. I have.
I just haven’t been “all” of me.
I’m still not.
And that’s nobody’s fault; not even mine. “I got a condition,” as Marv in Sin City explains. No amount of love and friendship could cure me, though I’m infinitely grateful for those who have been willing providers of both along the way.
But change must come from within.
Even in those moments when I was at the surface, I wasn’t mentally healthy. Present, sure, but not “in good standing”. I was still in open water, trying not to sink. I know that now. I know that because back then, I could never see more than a few months…
