If you're brave enough to fly

So, I’ve been quiet over here again.

Part of it has been the fact that I’ve taken a step back from all social media.  Facebook, especially.  I’m just tired of passive aggressiveness, plain old aggressiveness, and everything meaningful getting lost in a flood of memes, reposts and arguments.

I have been blogging, just in a more private space.  And I had considered taking the blog section on this website down.  I figured it wasn’t really giving me anything.  That I would be better off just spending my time writing.

But then Mur Lafferty posted about why she hasn’t been blogging or podcasting much of late, and it has one reason: depression.

I have a long history of struggling with depression.  I don’t make any secret of that, nor do I see a reason to.  I didn’t choose my genetics or my brain chemistry in that regard.  I do choose what I do about it.

I am currently off medication for depression, something that I am damn proud of.  Frankly, when the depression was really bad, I needed it.  But when things are stable, you know what that medication is (for me, I’m not speaking for anyone else here)?  It’s a crutch.  It’s a way to stay numbed, to not have to deal with normal emotion as well as the depression.

I didn’t really realise that until I came off it.  And I came off because I was sick of the side effects, and I wanted to see how my brain chemistry was now that I’m sleeping well, eating well, exercising and working meaningfully.  And in terms of the overt depression, I’m doing okay.  I do have some mood swings, and I know that my fuse is shorter than when I am medicated.  But in general, everything feels better.  A lot better.

What I hadn’t realised is how engrained some of the thinking styles had gotten.  I did a lot of work with a therapist recently on this (and, as an aside, if you have depression or anxiety and you’re only relying on medication, get yourself to a good therapist Right Now.) and I’m realising that I have a way to go.

Because, you see, like Mur, I wasn’t posting because I figured no one would want to read what I had to say.

The state of the internet feeds into this so much.  We’re all on Facebook, posting bite-sized updates on Twitter.  Few people seem to want to sit down and write real blog posts now, and fewer are commenting, unless there’s something they want to argue.  And I am just as guilty of the not commenting.  There is just so much information being flooded over us every day, and it’s damn hard to find the time and energy to give something meaningful back.

We are all so connected, and yet we’re drifting further apart.  And for some of us, with the black voice of depression whispering to us, we figure that’s how it should be.  That no one would want to hear us anyway, so why bother?

I am bothering.  And I am saying a hearty fuck you to depression and the thinking that leads there.  Because if even one person reads what I write and finds meaning in it, then it’s worth it.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

According to my calendar, I haven’t written properly in almost a fortnight.  Sickness meant that I didn’t have the focus, and depression added to the weight pulling me away from the page.  Today, I feel well enough (with the addition of medication), but a clingy kidlet kept me away from the computer instead.

It feels strange.  To not be writing, though I have been reading.  To be haunted by those days as they pass.  Haunted by all the shoulds: I should be further along in my career, I should be better/stronger/more than I am right now.

Meandering through my books brought me to the biography of Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree Jr, purchased a while ago and languishing unread.  I have been enthralled by her, absolutely fascinated by what made her.  She didn’t start writing seriously until she was much older than I am now, and look at what she produced.  There is still time.

Here is still time.

And the stories, they will come.

Yesterday afternoon, in a break between the unseasonable rain, I walked the land.  I hadn’t been out walking for too long, thanks to sickness, and I’d almost forgotten how much it makes me whole.  I follow a druidic path, and just being out beneath the sky and the trees, the earth beneath my feet feeds everything that makes me.

There are stories in the land, if you only take the time to see them.

Aided by my trusty Atrix, I captured some of them.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.