My feelings. Again.

Friday and Saturday were this lovely little era where things weren't perfect, but they were survivable -- I could push through, work around the depression, and (merciful heavens!) have fun. Friends, sunshine, adorable children, pancakes first thing in the morning. And I got to feeling like, yeah, okay. I can do this. This isn't so bad.

And 36 hours later, it's like I've run smack dab into a wet bed sheet.

I would like to be able to get my bearings a little bit, to be in a state that's not an extreme. I would like to get a night of sleep that doesn't involve me stumbling around trying to find cake or staring at my ceiling until four in the morning. I'm tired. Even when I'm in this state, I can drag myself out and around. I went miniature golfing with my father today (shut up) and was practically asleep in the car on the way back. I'm the whirring light-up children's toy that drains down batteries too quickly. Five minutes of fun, then total shut down.

We're right around the time now when things started to go south last summer. Logically, I can speak to the progress that's been made since then (proper diagnosis, good doctors, steps toward the right combination of medication). But it feels exactly the same. I'm still trapped in it, still stuck in my bed with my stale sheets and comfort food.

I call all this -- everything falling under the umbrella of what I'm struggling with now -- "my feelings." Again, logically I can state categorically that this is a disease, just one that happens to impact the way my brain functions rather than, say, the way my body produces insulin. And again, the logic of the situation is VASTLY different from the way the situation feels. I feel like I'm failing on some level, not yanking myself up by my bootstraps hard enough.

I would like to be able to write about it the way I want to. Living a story I can't put down on paper is an alien experience. The best I can manage are little fragments scribbled on Post-It notes or typed into emails or texts I send to myself. And at the same time, I want desperately to have a different story to tell.