Crashing

After writing about the level people with Dysthymia live with on a daily basis, sometimes we, like everyone, crash. I can't speak for all people with Dysthymia or with depression, I can only speak from and for my experience. From what I read, my crashes are different the people with depression, but it also has some commonality too. And when I change course to begin to feel better, and find my level again is also different and similar.

My crashes are a slow spiral. They start weeks, sometimes months and even occasionally years before, with a small event. I describe it as going down a long, windy, slow downhill grade. You don't notice it at first but after awhile you see something doesn't feel the same, doesn't feel normal. It's usually followed by a loss of the small things I like to do and small changes in how I express myself in the world.

I've learned after living with my Dysthymia all these years to follow the symptoms. Not the symptoms themselves, they're just hints and clues to the real feelings. Something set it off long before, something I didn't originally notice but made me feel angry at myself. It can be something I did, like a dumb mistake we all make, or something someone else did, like an extreme unnecessary criticism or lost opportunity.

Sometimes I know what happens and can interrupt the spiral and find a solution I can live with and return to normal. This is often rare for me. Most of my episodes spiral down into the valley. Like going down hill, sometimes there isn't much to do until I have the bottom level I'm resting at. I have to know where bottom is and that I'm there. Most of the time I can then see what to do to improve and start back up the hill.

But occasionally, bottom isn't bottom. The long slow spiral takes a different turn, very similar, I think, to anyone's severe depression or double depression with Dysthymia. It's like suddenly finding yourself after a long slow decent at the edge of a canyon, so deep and dark you can't see the bottom. And there are those times without realizing it, you find yourself falling. You can't seem to stop.

This is double depression for people with Dysthymia, a sudden change into the abyss to the very foundation of your existence. The problem is that it's hard to get help when you're falling, you're not focusing on help but on trying to understand what's going on, and why your world is shrinking. As the saying goes with Kafka's mouse between the trap and the cat, "Alas,... the world is growing narrower every day."

Instead of fighting the fall, I've learned to keep falling. It changes your perspective. Falling causes you so see differently, so I watch what's happening and what I'm thinking. Strange? Not really, because sometimes in moments there are insights into one's very being and existence and into the why. The why behind my falling. And when I find bottom, I sit there and ponder the world around me.

With me, while it's dark, sometimes so dark I can't see the light looking up, only more darkness, not unlike a deepsea diver who goes so deep and dark they lose all sense of direction. They can find up until they pay attention, follow the clues. There often is a calmness and quietness when I sit on the bottom. The difference with mine is that I know I'm sitting there, or most of the time. Twice I didn't.

It's what I think happens with people and suicide. In the darkness, with it's own calm and quiet, you find peace. And you want it to go on forever than face the world you fell through. That's hard for others to understand that sense of reality. It truly is a been there done that experience. It's the mental version of standing on Mt. Everest, you can't describe your world at that moment and no one can understand it.

And so twice I've felt the warmth of the darkness, but twice I decided it wasn't a forever thing, for me. I sat there feeling that world. You are down to the very last crux of your being, and the final decision to stay in this world or not. And actually, what few know, it's harder to stay. You see the up isn't fun or easy, and the alternative often is the lessor of evils.

Because the up always takes a lot of effort and a long time. And even when you feel you're back to normal, you aren't. For normal doesn't exist except as a temporary and tentative state you can only hope for. It's why is easier to fall back into the abyss, to the warmth and quiet of the darkness, and contemplate the same question again.

But I haven't, and I'm still in this world.