I’m not gonna lie.  I am super depressed.  It hits me most in the mornings and evening when I have no distractions.  I am weary and dead-inside.  I struggle to get out of bed and function.  I can’t make simple decisions, like what to wear.  I am overwhelmed.  The evenings are barely better.  I feel hollow and empty and try to convince myself that brushing my teeth is a good idea.  I put on my pajamas and crawl into bed…My mind slowly drifts across the day (not in an obsessive/anxiety sort of way) and I wish I was dead and intrusive thoughts break into my quietness and then I fall asleep.

Daytime is better.  We are so busy here and there is really no way to be disengaged.  I do the work I need to do, I smile at my peers and the support staff, I deflect my sadness with humor.  I am not faking it too well though.  When I am distracted from the busy-ness, my affect changes.  I know this, because I have had a few people approach me in such moments and ask if I am okay.  Mostly, I say that I am just tired.  To some, I have said I am depressed.  Feeling depressed is run-of-the-mill here, so it is an honest answer, but sort of meaningless.  I have not told anyone how depressed I am.  Or that I am struggling to maintain function and to not cry all the time.  (Although, crying is run-of-the-mill as well…so it wouldn’t look any different than any other day.)

I even can tell you why I am depressed.  Last week, Kyla had my write a trauma narrative from when I was 4.  It has stirred up lots of stuff.  She had me read her the narrative and I omitted stuff from it when I read it, which I told her.  She gave me the assignment of highlighting the omitted stuff before the next session.  And I didn’t do it.  She reassigned it.  I didn’t do it. She reassigned it on Monday.  And I did it. And I added to the narrative and I hunted down something I had written and given to the AT in May.  And I hate all of it.  So, the depression has settled around me, like a tarry blanket.  I feel broken and sad and like I am being swallowed into a dark hole.  It’s no wonder that I am tired all the time, I am working hard to maintain my day affect.

So, here I am.  Depressed.

The depression makes me not want to eat.  Supposedly, I am going to be moved to Level 2 today, giving me more autonomy with my meals. I have been waiting for this “promotion,” but right now, I feel like the timing is poor and I will struggle to do what I need to do with my meals.  I have already thought of 101 ways to get around eating what I am supposed to when I am moved to Level 2.  I am frustrated that I think this way, frustrated that I might use the autonomy to work the system.  Disappointed that I can’t shake the ED thinking.

I just don’t know.  I have therapy at 11 this morning.  I am supposed to read the damn narrative again.  But I won’t.  I feel stubborn about it.  Or scared…I guess really, I feel scared and so I want to put up every wall  I can to not have to read it.  However, I may get around it because there are a few things that I actually do need to discuss with Kyla that are not the narrative, but that are becoming pressing issues.  Mind you, she can spot distraction behavior a mile away, so I don’t know what I will be able to get away with, but I do have some other things to talk about that are totally legit.