On the escalator, going up

I had this incredible weekend.

On Friday night I had Christmas drinks with two of my best friends whom I've had since high school. We had a box of bon bons which we opened all of: we each wore multiple hats and told the awful jokes and became protective of our hard won trinkets. We hung out with my dogs and told stories and compared our anti-depressant dreams (well one of my friends and I did, while the other I'm sure was thinking 'How did my two best friends turn into such crazy people?'). Anti-depressant dreams are extremely screwed up. Last week I dreamed that I'd been knocked into the ocean by two boys who were riding a couch down a slope into it. I was fine but my iPhone was broken. A couple of nights ago my dream had Marvel heroes in it.

On Saturday night, I hung out with two of my best friends. They're going to do guest posts on this blog as they too have depression or something like it. It's so liberating to hang out with people who understand what I'm going through and who can immediately relate to many topics that I bring up. I saw my lovely boyfriend on Sunday and while in Canberra on Monday, I ran into one of my Canberra friends randomly and saw another for lunch at an incredible chocolate cafe.

It was on Monday morning, however, that things seemed not so right. My past four months have been distinguisable by this foggy haze that's sat on the top of my mind. It's connected, somehow, to my internal monologue that listens intently to what's going on in my body, providing commentary on my interactions with others ('She seemed mad when she said that. I made her mad' or 'Why did she sigh so angrily? Is she angry? Why is she always angry near me?'). But this Monday morning the fog had lifted. I stopped feeling completely numb. I don't know why.

I've been on anti-depressants for about four months now so maybe they finally kicked in. It could be that I faced some demons this past weekend so they were lifted from my depression base (the thing that I draw from to continue my bad feelings). You would think I'd be happy. But I freaked out. I thought, 'I can't be cured. I've just started a blog. I've settled in at home again. If I'm cured this means there's nothing stopping me from moving back to Sydney and I don't want that.' Basically it seems as though I feel like I have no control in my life and my depression was removing anything that needed action. I stopped answering the phone, going out, reading my emails, checking my facebook. If I'm cured, it means I have no excuses anymore.

Obviously I'm not cured. Obviously if my anti-depressants have chosen to kick in (a few days before Christmas - what serendipitous timing!) they have done so without the issues I've been working on being properly solved. But I need to solve those issues, otherwise there's more of a chance of my depression kicking back in again.

I chatted to some people about it (I'm yet to see my counsellor) and I thought maybe I shifted from Severe depression to Mild depression. Or maybe it's just the Christmas cheer and I'll go back to feeling terrible in the New Year. I'm comfortable in my sadness, it removes responsibility from me and I've had to look after myself for the past three and a half years.

In the past when I've felt happy it's been a volatile feeling - as though I'm at the top of a rollercoaster that's about to plunge, or riding a wave that might throw me off. I don't feel that volatility now.

I will definitely keep posting on this blog - if I didn't need anti-depressants, I wouldn't be on them. Which means I'm probably still depressed. It's important for me to be depressed because it creates a point of difference and gives me a genuine excuse for screwing things up. It's heartening to think, 'Well if I'd realised at the start of first year that I was depressed, maybe I could have received help and made better uni grades during the rest of my degree.' I just don't know.