It seems like I should be well beyond these prompt thingies, but what I’ve always found is that I am never beyond my ability to investigate.  I always learn something about me that I’d forgotten or ignored.  I always figure out something that needs to be in the front of my mind not just an after thought.

While I work on phase two of the new Vizionz project and wait to make an announcement Tuesday I figure this will pass a little time and give me that push that I need to make some other moves.

I won’t promise that you will like it.  I do promise to be me while I am doing it, which if I allow my ego to motivate me is why you are here in the first place.

Day 1 – 30 Days of Truth

Something you hate about yourself

I hate being depressed.  It reaches out like fog and touches everything around me.  It seems like most days depression has been my longest relationship, my ride or die, my constant companion.

I hate it.  I have good days and bad but the underneath it all remains depression.  It’s one of those things that I can admit, even if admission does not always equal action.  I do the things I am supposed to do to manage it, but it remains still.  There are moments when it is heavier, there are times when it is crippling.

I grew up in a family that didn’t allow you to be depressed, even if they were a contributing cause to that depression.  Black women don’t have time for this – you are a strong Black woman like the rest of us.  Depression was of the devil and we were good Christian women.  I wasn’t allowed the luxury of expressing depression.  Being denied that luxury also meant that I was not allowed the treatment to manage depression.

I remember being in therapy as a young child.  Bonnie decided it was a good idea since I kept running away from home and had too much of a fascination with burning her house down.  In hindsight I was attempting to destroy that which was destroying me.  Even then I was depressed.  It began when my father was kept out of my life and kept rolling up to my sexual trauma.

10 year olds should not be depressed.  Their only concern should be the word problems their math teachers give them for homework.

The next time I was in front of a head doctor it was high school. It was at an inpatient facility.  Bonnie was more annoyed at the time she would miss from work to come to family therapy than the fact that he daughter attempted suicide. Priorities right?

The third time was not the charm.  I came back from my trip to LA no richer than when I arrived, and realizing that my attachment to The Man was stifling my ability to breathe – figuratively. I sought out psychological assistance because I was a mother now, and that dark place where depression kept me was not a place I could raise  a child.

I left the doctor’s office never to return because I wanted help, not a lesson on alcoholism.  I wasn’t an alcoholic, I was a woman who was depressed.

It would take 3 more therapists over the years for me to get to this point.  The place where I can walk into the therapists office and do the work that needs to be done.  It’s not simple.  I unearth some shit every week that makes me wonder how the fuck I am still existing.  Depression protected me in a sense.  It numbed me so deep that it allowed me to stand despite what was happening to me.  It was time for the depression to lift though, I was ready for it – almost.

I know that I still depressed.  I can look at my surroundings and see it.  I can look at my behaviors and see it.  I am studying how to treat others with the condition.  I can open up a text book and read all of the pretty words that lead to treatment.  I take pills that won’t allow me to sink as deeply as I know is possible.  I am still depressed. I still hate it.

 

I hate that about myself.  That like my right arm depression is a part of me.

 

 

Aphrodite Brown