There’s no point to this, I just needed to write for myself.
I wish I could take a break, as we all probably do. I don’t mean two weeks on the beach in Cancun or the Mayan Riviera. Although that would be nice, I agree. I mean just escaping this body and the ills of pain and depression for a while. Sleep would help, and would at least give me some time to just not think.
A break from a mind always in overdrive. but can’t rely on alcohol to turn it off. Yeah that may have worked, sometimes, but the side effects were worse than the depression, fed the disease.
I had to take a break from writing. I haven’t been posting simply because my body, with all its aches and pains, was dictating the mood. When you’re in so much pain and constantly nauseated it’s difficult to concentrate, and as such my writing goes out the window.
I wrote in my last post about my plan to do nothing for a while as my eye healed up from cataract and in doing so spent the week binge watching Ozark, a good distraction.
There’s a scene where one of the lead actors, Wendy Byrde, is discussing chronic depression with the wife of a Missouri state senator who had just committed suicide. She goes on about her brother who had suffered chronic manic depression his whole life and how when growing up she always thought him to be weak, a plague on her family, someone who should just get over it.
Then she suffered a miscarriage and fell into a period of severe depression, where she described it as causing deep pain from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet. Depression affects every nook and cranny in your soul.
I don’t know if the actress, Laura Linney, has ever suffered from depression, or the script writer has, but her description of the disease was the most eloquent I have ever heard. It was so well put and so real it made me cry. I cry easily remember, but this hit home, and hit hard.. This is what depression is, this is what it does.
I truly believe no one can “get this” unless they’ve been through it. But when someone says they are suffering from depression you have to accept that they are in terrible pain and “getting over it” impossible to do. I certainly can’t simply get over mine and move on., even though I try and try again. That’s where I need a break, something that will close the door to depression long enough for me to breathe.
Add to the fact that my final eye surgery didn’t go as planned. Although the cloudiness is gone after the damaged lens was replaced with a plastic one, everything is now warped. It appears the retina was so damaged that the images I see are warped, skewed badly, and constantly shifting. Letters of any size are a blur, some split in half or only partially visible. Faces on the television look like Picasso paintings, elongated and at times grotesque.
I no longer have straight lines in my life. Windows look like hourglasses, the boards in the wood floor bend and twist. This changes as I move my head or the eyes move from place to place.
My left eye is trying to compensate, and by the middl of the day is so tired it can’t focus either. The only solution I can think of is to keep my right eye closed, or wear an eye patch. Great.
I can’t go through the retinal surgery again, I’m still recovering from the first one.
Today I’m alright though, at least the constant nausea is gone and the pain diminished. I slept a solid 7 hours once I got the restless legs under control. I can work through the depression today, put it on the windowsill while I try to function.
So instead of a much needed break, I have to shake my head and try to laugh, try to smile, and move on the best I can.
With one eye open.