Excuse me for saying this.
More than once, despite my depression, I have been on the edge of greatness. I have even stepped into the winner’s circle a few times in my life. There is the warmth of that glow and the admiration of the crowd that can get a person almost giddy. And the positive endorphins go wild. Taking the gold is what I am always after. Second place is not winning.
Yet every time I am ready to achieve greatness, I find myself looking for a fallback position.
The strength of my conviction wavers, and I begin to second-guess my right to be here. Someone else is always smarter, faster, more agile, and less afraid of success. If there is one thing that has held me back more than any other, it’s this fear of success.
How can I begin to blame my depression for my actions?
So, here I am back to that question again. Am I not finding consistent success because of my depression, or are my brushes with success causing my depression? Soon I am battling myself to determine which came first, the chicken or the egg. I cannot help but think that the burden of proof is mine.
And I always err on the side of my depression, so I must be guilty.
It must be something I am not doing, or missing, or who knows what. But in the end, I figured out a way to make it my fault and I am out of here. This is not and has never been an answer. Yet, my depression and I have cooked up this strategy as, I assume, a coping strategy of some sort. If I don’t like where I am at or what I am doing, I can choose fight or flight.
But choosing to fight another day is exhausting and often ends unrewardingly.
I can see that this pattern has been a way for me to cope with living in this world. I can move forward, attack the problem, and figure out solutions. From there I can decide how to proceed. Leaving Va and starting with a new company in New Jersey was my way of escaping the present. Or at least, in hindsight, I know there were other paths I could have taken.
After selling my vending business, I could have taken the position that would have kept me in the same house, in the same town. But I justified my decision to move north by setting my sights on the main prize, the General Manager’s position. And slightly more than seven years after starting with the company, I earned the top spot that I had set my sights on.
And then my success began to eat away at me.
“You know, if you can earn this top spot, then you should be able to trade commodities full time.” And so I began to lay the groundwork for my decision to step down. This event turned out to be three years in the future, but it happened as surely as my promotion.
Once again, I was the one who made the decision, I said the words, so I am responsible.
Why do I even bring up my depression in the same sentence as my success and then my giving it away? Could there be a pattern to my depression that influenced my decisions and made it easier for me to get into fight or flight mode? And if so, have I interrupted this pattern by facing my depression?
Some days I say yes, other days I am not so sure.
Facing my depression, calling it by name, was something I hadn’t done in my entire life, some 63 years. So, starting a new program was frightening. There was so much to learn about depression. In addition to situational episodes, it seems I am predisposed to depression through my family tree. And I know that this can be catching, setting up my heirs and their heirs for potential run-ins with depression.
Unless I had not had children, there was no other way to ensure that future generations of my bloodline would not face the same problems with depression and anxiety. But I am thinking about things I never even started today. Or things I gave up on, and did not fight for.
Why am I so close, so often, without claiming the prize?
Or even more importantly, why am I not consistent in keeping the prizes I’ve earned? After 3 years and 2 months, I stepped down from my position as General Manager and became an AGM again. Back as I was before my promotion, I told myself it was no big deal. But it really was. I had spent seven years working diligently to earn that position.
Once I got it, I didn’t know what to do next.
I was the dog that continually chased cars. When I finally caught one, I didn’t know what to do with it. I did not know it at the time, but my depression was already scheming. It knew that I was going to leave my job and would eventually trade commodities for a living. But I was still working to do the very best job I could do at my day job.
And being split on my priorities soon made both situations untenable. So, there I was, back to where I had started. I didn’t even see depression during that time, but I know a big part of my stepping down was surrounded by unhelpful thinking.
During those three years running the show, my building earned the maximum bonus for all measurable categories.
This means that some things were going right. But my depression was making sure I saw it as my only friend and ally. Depression encouraged me to keep secrets that I only shared with it. I purposely pushed away everyone who was there to help. Even people that would have helped, I did not engage with.
Depression and I had this thing going, so I couldn’t share it with anyone.
I had promised my depression I would only share secrets with it. And while this worked for a while, the end was predictable and could have been written long before it happened. I ended up with the short end of the stick. Worse, when it was time to pay the bill, my depression was nowhere to be found. Depression had taken “a southbound, all the way to Georgia, ‘til the train it run out of track.”
And there I was, alone with my thoughts, and a broken promise from my depression.
You would have bet that the next time I ran into depression, I would see it coming. But that was not even close to what happened. I fell directly into the same series of events as the previous time, the time before, and the time before that.
I was pushing the same rock up the same hill, while expecting a different result.
Funny, the end was always the same. And I just swept it off, pushed what was left under a rug, and went whistling down the road, never stopping to look behind. The less I knew about what had happened the better. After all, the future is what’s important, right? So, why should I take even a moment to study what had happened so I could make better decisions the next time? I even fooled myself into thinking no one knew something was amiss.
After all, I was expending major amounts of energy daily to keep my concealed depression going.
Concealed, or high-functioning depression allows me to mask whatever symptoms my depression is inflicting. My stance is that I am OK. I am better than OK. Why would you ask? I am ok, ok? And so, it would go. I had convinced myself I could keep the show going each day until I could get home, Then I could feign some reason that I needed to go to bed early.
In bed, I could be myself.
In bed, the show was over for the day. I could focus on recharging my batteries so I was ready to do it all again tomorrow. This turned out to be a form of self-care, a term that I am still adjusting to.
So, I am saying yes to understanding more of what depression and I are doing.
After my time in 5 East, I have spent my time learning all I can about my depression. Not everyone can say they have been diagnosed with, major depressive disorder with suicidal tendencies. Wow, even just writing that out gives me pause. But here I am wearing the label and drinking the Kool-Aid.
Knowing what I know now, it is easy to start with woulda coulda, shoulda.
But once again, that is just another unhelpful thinking style that gives depression another way to get my attention. After all, I would be much farther along if I had never met depression. So why can’t I get past these whoa is me, type of thoughts? I want to feel all the emotions again.
So, I end up flitting around like a moth to a flame. And I never see that I can just turn the light off. In mindfulness, I can see thoughts without engaging them. I see them as if the thought is floating on a leaf in a stream. Within a few moments, the thought has floated on down the stream and gone around the bend. No engagement, no trying to change the thought or correct my thinking.
The thought is there, I can see it there, and I just let it go.
Maybe I can apply this to my thoughts about stopping activities that are in line with my thoughts. If depression and I had not gone into business together when I was the General Manager, I know things would have been different. If I had not listened to my depression about retiring early, trading commodities or even taking the job that moved us out of state, things would have been different.
Had I taken a different turn, so many positive things may never have happened.
I might not have grandchildren, I would not have two amazing daughters-in-law, and I wouldn’t be trying to keep the squirrels from eating my peaches. As a peer advocate at On Our Own once said, “I promise not to should on myself today.” That seems to be where I am going with this.
I did not begin writing this post as a “pity party.”
So, I’ll stop and get outside for a bit. It looks like the weather is going to be perfect for outdoor work. Maybe I’ll just forget I have depression for a few hours and start getting the garden ready for spring.
