My second depressive episode came about nine years after the first one. If I had to guess, I would also say it lasted about nine times longer. I did not do a good job of tracking the time periods for either of them; I was too busy wishing them gone.
The trigger was pretty clear, and embarrassing: a boy didn't like me.
Of course it was more complicated than that.
Really, I was not that into Reed. I talked to him once because I ended up in a situation where I was worried about being rude if I did not make some conversation with him, but he was nice, and that was good to know. I still made a point of periodically going on dates with guys from church back then.
(Specifying "guys from church" is important, but we are not getting into that today.)
The date went well, and then after the date went well, and I suddenly started to have hope that this could be the one. Usually the dates weren't that fun, or things were weird after, or we talked about his feelings for someone else and then he married her. I was always fine with midwifing that along, because I wasn't that invested in anyone; it's just what you were supposed to do. Honestly, even in my early 30s I was not feeling concerns about being an old maid or my biological clock. Maybe there was a part of me that knew.
Hope, though, positive feedback, was so rare, that it made everything different. That lesson learned at 14 -- that if a boy acts like he likes you, it's a joke -- maybe that wasn't true.
Except he did not like me. It had been true. No one could love me.
Pandora's box was known for holding all of the world's troubles and evils, but it held hope too, and once they were let out, there was also the hope for overcoming them.
I had survived by shoving all of my pain and fear into a box. I was skilled at compartmentalization, and that is how I survived. I don't even know that I had stored my hope near my pain, but hope being dashed ripped the container apart, and I was never going to be able to put the lid back on the box.
Which, technically was not the best way to be. This was ultimately part of healing, but the path was at least eight months of crying.
I was still remarkably functional. You can always blame red eyes on allergies. I am not positive whether anyone believed that excuse, but again, if you are getting your work done and paying bills, that takes a lot of pressure off. I was functional enough for that.
I was also miserable, and I did not want to live. I was not suicidal, but if something could have killed me... but first if I could have gotten some many saved up and be debt-free so everyone else would be okay... Depression did not kill my overinflated sense of responsibility, but it did use it as fuel.
One day I was walking to catch the bus. I had worked, then hopped a bus to the gym and worked out, and I was heading home. I was still so responsible and trying so hard, and still completely despondent.
I realized that if I had not gotten over it yet, I was not going to get over it on my own. That night I poured everything out in prayer. I did not feel anything then, but the next morning I realized that the pain was gone.
Back to that persistent question of whether I could have healed sooner; could I have prayed sooner?
Maybe some, but in retrospect, I had stored up years' worth (17, I assume) of procrastinated pain. I think I did need to go through a lot of tears before I was ready to even have the thought.
If I needed to have that time of crying, did the prayer matter? I believe it did. I know how I felt, and that mattered.
Should I have started medication instead, earlier on? That is a trickier question, and I will probably spend more time on that with the third depressive spell.
I had gotten some grief out. It possibly could have been more productive, maybe if I had been guiding it out instead of it flooding out on its own. It was not a perfect process.
There was one other important result: there was a part of me that now understood that my being unlovable was a lie. Even though Jason, Matt, and Steve treated me like a joke, and garbage, and even though Reed had not loved me, somehow those things had nothing to do with my value or what I deserved or what was possible.
I say a part of me, because I still didn't understand how it worked. Clearly, no one had loved me, and I had lived long enough that someone should have by then, right?
Knowing something intellectually is not the same as feeling it, or having habits that demonstrate it. Still, somehow, I now knew it was a lie, and I had not before.
And it is possible that a lie that I myself told had been an obstacle to healing.
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