On Stepping Back Into Life

It takes a long time to recover from extended periods of black depression. It’s common to think of suicide like an on/off switch-the battle is over once you stop thinking about killing yourself. That’s not true, it’s just another incarnation of the dreaded recovery myth.

If you’re depressed for a year or more, you have effectively rewired your brain. Most of us don’t emerge from that a bundle of bad emotions, we come out numb. Maybe we don’t actively fantasize about suicide anymore, but that doesn’t mean we’ve taken up the cause of life, either. I’ve been in remission for 18 months, and it’s still hard. I’m still surprised by what I lost and what it takes to get those things back.

Recovery is a process of stepping back into life, over and over again. This looks different for everyone. I remember the first time I realized it was getting better, about 16 months ago. It was two months after ending a long-failed relationship and six months after deciding I needed to stop medication if I was going to have a fighting chance. I had been deeply, suicidally depressed for nearly three years. One morning I went into the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and I was there! I’m not sure how to explain it better. My thoughts had been so fogged, my brain and body so disconnected, that I wasn’t experiencing any sense of self-recognition. I remember crying from joy. I didn’t even realize that was gone, but it came back. Other things could come back too.

Since then there have been many of these steps-catching myself daydreaming about the future, feeling some small sense of accomplishment, realizing I had an entire day when I didn’t think about suicide, seeing color and beauty, identifying the emotion “happy” again, reaching out instead of withdrawing when things turn sour.

These aren’t magic moments that just happen because you aren’t depressed. They’re exercises. When we’re in recovery we’re teaching ourselves how to be happy again, how to enjoy life. It’s the other side of the equation. We didn’t become suicidal overnight and we won’t get out of it like that either. Just like when we were at our worst, most people won’t identify with our struggles. Even as we rebuild our social lives, it’s rare we find people who can support us through this process.

The breakthroughs inevitably come with drawbacks. If you open yourself up to happiness you also open yourself up to sadness. If you enjoy a beautiful place, then you must confront the ugliness of another. The world is simple in gray. Recovery is a process of adding contrast back into life. When I’m depressed, I do everything I can to shut out complexity, so bringing that back in comes with a lot of vulnerability.

After a while there may be bigger achievements-a great job, a new house, falling in love, a baby, etc. These things bring purpose into life, and I think a lot of us are shocked at how badly that can mess up our emotions. It’s extremely common to have a minor depressive relapse when everything seems to be going right. I think part of that is simply because we’re still in strength-training mode. Even though we want to experience all the good we can, there’s a rebound effect. If we can take that in stride as an acute symptom of long-term recovery, we should be able to get through it.

Philosophically I think there’s another issue. To give up suicidality as a worldview means giving up a certain familiarity and comfort with death. We’ve laughed at how scared other people are of death. It’s just ceasing to exist, what do you care? But when we have something we want, something we love, and we allow people to love us, suddenly we’re those idiots. If I care about anything deeply then I also care about dying.

I’m in a very good place in my recovery. I am on the precipice of breaking through the self-care embargo. I feel a desire to get healthier and take better care of my body so that it lasts, and I haven’t felt like that in a long time, maybe ever. It’s scaring the hell out of me.

The excitement and joy that came with a very positive June washed back out like a wave, and for the last week I’ve been sinking under the depression line. One nice thing about having a rapid-cycling mood disorder is that I can watch the change happen. If I can watch it, I can recognize it.

I knew I was going under because overnight my mind went from sharp to foggy. Over a day or two my demeanor went from expansive to internalized. Tension in my back and shoulders turned into pain in my chest and abdomen. Though nothing in my life really changed much, my perception of the people around me did a 180. I didn’t recognize important people in my life, I started getting paranoid about people’s motivations, I started catastrophizing about how much they were going to hurt me.

I became intensely afraid that the depression wouldn’t pass. That’s an emergent feature of depression when you’re in recovery. The more you’ve built the more you have to lose. The higher you’ve gotten the farther you have to fall. The fear of it getting worse is the worst part now. Extended depression is its own kind of trauma, and it can haunt you for a long time.

Dangerously, after about a week I start to believe the darkness (after all, it’s still baked in there while the new better-functioning me is still in beta). Depressed me thinks that other happy, hopeful (though in no way manic or dishonest) woman is a fool. She’s been naive, stupid, and blind. Why can’t she see that everyone is using her, that no matter what she does she will fail, that she is irreparably broken? WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS?

I’m lucky that I can still recognize this internal voice. Well, it’s not luck, it’s years of therapy and introspection, and my reward is an extremely high degree of self-awareness. I’ve said it many times and I’ll keep saying it-therapy or self-help alone won’t fix you, but they can give you tools to understand yourself better. I step in holes all the time, but I’m not stumbling around blindly anymore. If I can still recognize that voice as a scared part of me and not the “Truth” it doesn’t have the power to blow up my life.

At a certain point you’re going to have to decide whether to let go of the death cult or not. Pull that one foot out of the grave and put it on solid ground. It’s a revolutionary act. Us professional depressives aren’t choosing life because we’re naïve or stupid or blind. We know exactly how ugly and scary and delicate life can be. We choose it because once you’ve shed the desire to die the bravest thing to do is commit whole-heartedly to whatever comes next.

Will it hurt? Yes.

Will it be scary? Yes

Will is still be lonely at times? Of course.

Will it be worth it? Yes, at least you’ll be stronger, but you’ll probably get some joy out of it too. Remember when you never thought you’d feel joy again? It’s the best drug on the planet, and it’s out there, just waiting for us.

We can do this.