KMF: My Airplane Mask.

Lately something has been happening to me that I feel I should talk about since I’ve been refusing to acknowledge it.

For the last couple of months I have been in an odd state of depression.

I say ‘odd state’ because I don’t think I need to be medicated, it’s not that bad, I consider this a bit of winter hibernation.

For me, this depression snuck up on me. I was getting grouchier, sullener, I was getting restless, while simultaneously not wanting to get out of bed for no particular reason. I was shutting down and closing myself off from people all because of one thing:

Snow. I feel like I’m being buried over here for months. Cut off from the world. And soon my insides matched the outside.

However, as much as “the winter blues” have gotten to me this year, I think it’s been something more than that.

I am a single 28 year old, living with my family, I work in a job that I love, and I see my friends on a semi-regular basis. (The perfect amount for an introvert.)

None of these things had been completely bothering me, not on their own and not as a group, sure, I had days where it felt snowballed and that nothing was going to change ever and I was always going to be in a perpetual state of waiting for something to happen to me in this tiny town where nothing of great significance ever happens to me.

Unless you count leaving.

This past week I went to see a palm reader for fun and she immediately saw in my hands that I had been depressed in the last few months.

Lady, how could you see something in my hands that I didn’t notice for months?

When I finally told my best friend the other day, not out of a call for help, but out of a ‘Hey, this is going on so here’s what I’m going to do about it because I refuse to let myself sink’, she said to me “I didn’t even realize.”

Well how could you when I didn’t either?

The palm reader also told me that the way I set my hands down means I’m an extremely private person. Therefore, no one would know unless I told them.

Which a few weeks before I saw her I talked to my little sister about it.

The funny thing is, I still don’t feel like how people describe being depressed.

I was down, but not out. I can still see the light at the end of the tunnel, I can still pick up books and read them and enjoy them, I can still play with my baby cousin and be happy.

But there is a steady thrum of stress happening to me and a certain anxiety to be moving coupled by the bigger emotion of staying put.

Something was holding me down.

The palm reader also mentioned that several people in my life are emotional vampires which is why I’ve been sick so much and that I had a serious situation involving my immune system recently. Hello being in the hospital for intense case of bronchitis where my lung was super inflamed and hurt like a motherfucker and felt like I popped out a rib. She told me that with this amount of people sucking my life energy all the time it’s no wonder that I can’t lose weight or get a hold on what I want to do with my own life.

I’m too busy trying to please other people.

Which, if you’ve met me, you’re laughing hysterically because I’m a mouthy son of a bitch who will tell you where to stick your expectations of what I SHOULD be doing or SHOULD be acting like or SHOULD be wearing, etc, etc.

The problem is, she’s not wrong. In a way, I do try to people please because I hate confrontation and I hate disappointing the people who are important to me.

And THAT’S where I realized where my frustration and depression was stemming from.

Other people’s expectations of what I should be like and how I was treating myself because I’m not like them and not doing what they think I should be doing.

I’m different. (Which she also pointed out. Why are the lines of my hands betraying my secrets?)

She told me there is a serious bully in my life. And I’m sure she read what I already knew but she had the tact to not say who it was. But I’ll tell you because it’s a big deal.

Me.

And if I was a separate person from myself who talked to me the way that I do in my head than I wouldn’t be that persons friend. I would tell them that I don’t need that sort of bashing in my life and that they need to figure out what is going on because they are so harsh that I think they have a problem. What’s wrong with their self esteem that they need to pick on another human being like that? What are you suppose to do when that person is yourself?

For months, nothing. I went through the motions of looking and acting like I normally would. Not realizing what was building.

I should have. I should’ve known the minute that I started to not want to go to work. I absolutely fucking love my job. I get to hang with my cousins all day and those kids are the funniest kids and so cute.

And if you had seen the way that the baby had a meltdown when he realized I wasn’t going with them on vacation than you would’ve been like “Yes. This is a love filled job and life.”

The fact that I stopped writing Keep Moving Forwards and that my posts have been willy nilly was another red light. And that I haven’t been writing in general. I couldn’t even force myself to really go through the routine of writing for you guys to give anyone a sense of hope or inspiration because I lost mine.

I lost my airplane mask so there was no hope to help anyone else put theirs on.

So. Even though I’m not a case for a doctor visit and it sounds as though I’m denying a serious situation, I’m really not. This is me acknowledging what is happening and trying to find the toe hold to get back up.

This is what is happening to me. And this mild depression could be happening to you. Or if you are completely unlucky as some of my friends have been, you are worse off than me in this circle jerk of unhappy thoughts and non-movement.

What are we supposed to do then? Keep going around? No.

Talk. Talk it out, talk to someone, anyone, if you feel like your family or friends can’t handle listening to you anymore, do not shut yourself out, off, or up. Call a helpline, call your doctor, call a therapist, call someone. If you feel like you can’t do that, journal. Who can help you more than anyone? Yourself. That’s who. You are in charge of your own life and the one person who needs to take care of you is you. So journal, write a song, bake a cake, call a friend, paint, knit, sew, take a walk, just move. Get up. Because if you get up that’s the first big important thing you can do for yourself. Just getting up is half the battle.

And if you can’t get up?

Know that even if you are an emotional vampire, I’ll still listen until and after it makes me sick.

Write to me if you need a pal who won’t judge or tell you what you want to hear. I’ll call it like I see it while also not being a super peppy cheerleader even though I’ll be rooting for you.

Email me at: derangedlibrarian@gmail.com

Keep moving forward.