Enemy

Depression, I fear you. You have brought me low. Many times you have driven me to despair, gripped by a cold, wrenching fear from my gut to my spine. I fear you more than death, there is an ending in death but there seems no hope in your ever ending. To put depression to an end one must regain one’s will, for in depression one’s entire will is taken up in just surviving, there is no will left for living.
I fear your spells of anger, the ones where I am so near the edge, the edge of madness and violence. I fear you most of all. Even a hint of you is fearful for I know you can grow quickly, fed by my fear and lifelong attitudes
Perhaps I will never be completely free from you but if I can learn what makes you grow and stay and thrive maybe I can diminish you to a place where the drugs will make you seem to go away. As it is they only seem to take the edge off. I’m still depressed, I’m still scared, anxious. And sometimes I just can’t take it anymore and I’m walking up the hill outside my house screaming ultimatums at God about help and healing... and it helps. I feel better, the next day is easier. I thank God for one good day and manage to struggle through one more week.
I always look to the weekend to be healing but too often it feels just like the rest of the week there’s just not the demands on my time, not as many tasks to do. I still feel anxious, depressed, despair is not far away, I’m just not pushed, there is less stress... in some ways. Sundays are the worst and the best day. I seem to often have attacks of anxiety and near psychosis on sundays. Though they can take a couple of hours in coming these attacks are mercifully short in their intense stage and afterwards I generally feel quite good. As though I’ve conquered some demon from out of the depths of my mind. But depression, you are still my enemy. I fear you more than death.

I have learned that anger suppressed feeds my depression. I realized recently I still have much suppressed anger towards my first wife. She abused me in every possible way, used me up, drove me mad, and let me go when I was of no more use. I loved her, something in me still does. Perhaps that is why I sometimes feel I could actually harm her, something I didn't do when we were together. I have prayed often recently to be able to forgive her, It is slowly being granted but not until I began to express the anger in bold black letters on my sketch pad and computer. Long diatribes of violence, painfully drawn out of my heart in tears. I am spent. I ask my God is that enough? I get the sense it is not. The only thing I can thank her for is she drove me trembling and broken to the feet of Christ at the same time she drove me mad. I escaped to Christ, He was palpably near as I slipped into psychosis, a calm gentle presence nearby or within as reality shifted toward evil. He was with me, keeping the essential me intact even as my personality splintered, spun, and cried so desperately for freedom for the captives that I was chained. I cling to Him now. Still. Always. Whenever my grip upon Him is loosened and I slip, my life loses balance and meaning. I sink.
She was pathologically jealous. Every blink of my eye was punished as a look at another woman. Every emotion I expressed was chastised as wrong. When I expressed no emotion I was cold and heartless and "dead". I was allowed no friends, no family, no money. She demanded absolute fidelity and truth on her terms, terms shifting and impossible to meet. I can say quite literally I could do nothing right and things I had nothing to do with were judged to be my fault, evidently on some supernatural plane. She herself was free from all restrictions. She lied easily, more often than she told the truth. small lies and grand, involved schemes of interconnecting lies. Every day we fought, she attacked in blunt or subtle ways but consistantly punishing me for imagined evils. Once or twice a month there would be the exceptionally cruel battles that would eventually drive me out into the night to walk for hours and sleep in hallways or laundramats. She would seek me out never letting me go, but letting me rest a bit when I had been gone a day or two. She would be kind for a bit. SHe feared losing me. I was her support as well as her foil and target. I looked good next to her. She often threatened suicide should I leave. Somehow I loved her. She was exempt from her demands of absolute fidelity as she was often unfaithful. She had at least three abortions. This does not count the time, early on when she had me acquire money for one and then used the money to pay rent. I doubt any of the pregnancies were from my loins.
In the end she entered into the New Age and channeled the spirits that drove me over the edge. That is another tale. The anger seems to be dissipating a bit. Writing helps.