Okay. Well, the gist of the post that was eaten by WordPress was about my most recent descent into depression, and my struggles with mental illness and being a functional human being in this crazy world we live in. I’m going to dust myself off and try again (try again), because I think it’s still beneficial to try and put these feelings into words. 

I struggle with depression, which manifests in many different ways that I am becoming more acutely aware of as I try to meander my way through life as a semi-competent adult human being. 

It is so much more than simply ‘being sad sometimes’. It is… A fog, a haze, something like Hamlet’s ‘trappings and the suits of woe’, a heavy coat that weighs you down both mentally and physically. It is exhausting, to labour under this weight for every day of your life, and any reprieve seems fleeting and ephemeral at best. Depression sours every victory and poisons the mind in ways that twist a person into a shadow of themselves, and in my moments of clarity, of medication and manic upswings, I find myself unable to recognize the person and the thoughts that seem so prevalent in my deep depression.

This schism of personality is both stark and alarming.

Admitting to this kind of personal failing in such a public manner is a daunting task. Which is kind of funny, since the litany of blogs I’ve kept before this one, mostly in my teenage years, very freely discussed these thoughts, albeit without much of a clinical lens. There’s something less judgemental about a moody teen writing self-absorbed blog posts about the pains of adolescence versus an adult acknowledging their continued setbacks and attempts to succeed in spite of this fundamental detriment. As a teen, this sort of sometimes sadness is seen as a right of passage, a trick of overactive hormones on the developing brain. For these feelings to continue into adulthood seems almost shameful, an inability to cast off the self-indulgent navel-gazing of one’s teenage years. 

Another strange correlation that seems borne of this depressive descent is the crippling lack of self-confidence, or just an overwhelming sense of self-doubt. Just as my teenage self seemed able to publish a litany of mindless dialogues with little regard to their tone or impact, my current self pours over the words I write and finds most of them wanting. I leave skeletons of drafts, half-finished thoughts, and other remains of work left undone or un-started. A once therapeutic exercise, something I once took a middling amount of pride in, I find myself unable to consummate. 

And it just makes me hate myself even more. 

So I try this. An attempt to make my way back to a better version of myself. A healthier version of myself. A return to words, and to have the courage to both write them, and share them.

Now let’s see if WordPress eats this post too.