If only it was really like answering the door bell, or a knock at the door. Then you’d know that someone or something had arrived. Or like checking your e-mail inbox – there you can see the new things that have come since you last checked. It’s easy to see what’s there now that wasn’t before.

But it isn’t that easy…

When depression comes calling at your house, it’s more like a slow creeping in through the cracks.  It isn’t easy to identify in the midst of its gradual arrival. Maybe there is something not quite ‘right’, but nothing seems particularly ‘wrong’ either. Taking inventory, you can’t put your finger on it and say, “Oh, this is here now and wasn’t before.”

If only it was that easy…

Unfortunately, depression rarely tap dances on the door step to announce its arrival. It doesn’t send up flares to pinpoint its location, or even properly introduce itself when it shows up, either. It just kind of slowly ‘shows up’.

Some things going on in the last few months of my life haven’t been easy. In fact, some of them have been down right awful. That’s enough to get anyone a bit ‘down’. When I already seem to have a tendency toward depression, the long series of unfortunate events was enough to throw me off kilter.

I’m now feeling like I’m on the first upward steps out of a mild bout of depression.

And I can only say that now, after weeks and months of things not being ‘quite right’ but not being able to pin it down to say exactly what wasn’t quite right, except to say that MANY things in life weren’t quite right, and that was of no help. While in transition between one ministry position and the next, while starting a new business, while trying to process through all that brought us to this place, all the external turmoil only  mirrored what was going on inside of me. OF COURSE there would be stress – anyone in my shoes would have felt the same way – it was (and still is in some ways) a very stressful time. That outside stress compounded my internal struggles.

depressed | © skaletto | stock.xchng

Of course, while not even trying to ‘cover’ anything up, I still looked mostly OK on the outside. Probably, my friends would have been able to identify that I was ‘unsettled’ and not as peaceful as usual, and rightfully so, with all that was unsettled in our lives in general. Nobody, least of all me, would have said I was depressed.

But everything on the inside was wrong… life sucked and it must have been my fault. If only I’d done this better. If only I kept up with that better. I SHOULD be taking more care with this. I SHOULD NOT feel this way about that. If we’re in this situation, it’s because of this thing I did (or didn’t do). If things aren’t getting better, it’s because I’m not helping enough, praying enough, faithful enough… On. and on. and on. and on…

Things outside of me confirmed my internal feelings as well.

My Sweetie was invited to go to an event, a spiritual event, and I wasn’t invited to go with him. This was affirmation to me that something was wrong with me spiritually – I was too immature or too far away from God or just not good enough to get to go.

Fellow bloggers were achieving new levels of success and being greeted with new partnerships and sponsorships, and I was excited for them and still able to celebrate with them, but all the while I was writing my heart out, following their examples with reaching out and being available, and I was getting nowhere. This was proof to me that my writing was mediocre, my blog was so-so, and I’d never make it anywhere in the field because I was already trying my hardest with nothing to show for it.

I felt strongly about the direction that my Sweetie ought to have been taking with job search, and carefully expressed those thoughts, and he seemed to continue down the course he had already plotted without taking my feelings or thoughts into consideration. This was confirmation that I was off-base in my thinking about what we should be doing, and out of touch with him and his heart.

Many attempts have been made by me to try to organize things better in our home, and to organize our efforts as a family with housework and other things that need to be done, but this summer those things severely fell apart AGAIN. This was indication to me that I was indeed useless and powerless in my efforts to train and coordinate the children, inept and incapable in my household organization skills, and a terrible mom and wife.

Nobody ever questioned my spiritual maturity or my faith, no one ever insinuated that I was disconnected from my husband, and not one person ever said I was a bad parent or spouse. But all those messages, and MANY others like them, were being communicated to me on a daily, even hourly basis, from inside my head, from the depths of my very being, and were constantly confirmed by those outside influences.

It all made sense to me, too. In fact, it seemed crystal clear to me. What was going on had to be my fault. There simply was no other explanation. So I needed to work harder, do things better, and be more kind and gentle and graceful and forgiving and patient and…

… and it wasn’t getting any better, and I just couldn’t keep doing it.

It was through SEVERAL conversations that finally it started to be apparent that I was once again dealing with depression.

One of my dear friends, Tara, was instrumental in that. There are a couple of small groups of good friends that I allowed myself to vent a bit with, to rant and rage about things, and to share my frustration with.  Tara kept saying, “I think you’re being too hard on yourself.” Those words made absolutely NO sense to me at first. How could I be too hard on myself? If I was any easier on myself, nothing was going to get better. But coupled with other conversations, those words started to at least make me wonder why she would say that. And that helped me to see outside of myself a bit.

My husband was also important in this realization. In one conversation, through my crying, spluttering, sobbing, and halting explanation of how things sucked and how it was my fault, my Sweetie said he had no idea where I came up with any of that.  It wasn’t how he perceived the situation at all, and none of what I was explaining was possible or rational. It was THAT thought that got my attention: I was being irrational, and I didn’t know why. I needed to find out what was causing me to do that.

I’ve dealt with depression before – I had postpartum depression after the birth of each one of my children, and wasn’t officially diagnosed until my ‘baby’ was almost 3 years old. Once I began treatment, and found the right medication, looking back, I could recognize the ‘fog of depression’ that I experienced after each new baby. I remember being… irrational…. There was that connection. Finally, I wondered if what I was going through NOW might be depression.

depression | © nanita | stock.xchng

This depression wasn’t the deep dark fog that I had gone through before, though. I think my husband would likely have recognized it earlier if it had been that severe again.  No, this time it was a hazy, nebulous dust cloud that settled on everything in me. It was wearing me down, and messing me up, but it wasn’t on the verge of incapacitating me.

It bugged me, and made me not quite myself, but it wasn’t sucking my life completely into darkness… not really….It was just little things…

I didn’t want to take phone calls. Talking on the phone wasn’t my favorite and I didn’t feel like I wanted to be ‘trapped’ on the phone and not know what to say. (Me, not know what to say…!? ha!)

I didn’t want to have anyone over (because my house was crazy and I couldn’t get it back together, and if I did I wouldn’t be able to keep it together because I hadn’t been disciplined enough to train my children and myself to keep it going longer than 2 minutes and it was my fault that the house was in the shape it was in the first place, and if I would help more with the renovation going on downstairs then it would go together quicker and my upstairs would be put back in order sooner, but I couldn’t help much more because I was spending a lot of time on building my new business, and if I only managed my time better I could do both and still have time to pull the house together and help the children to have a fantastic summer with lots of activities, except we had no money to spend and so they would have to be creative family activities that I planned and coordinated without the use of money, and that would take more time and energy, and if only I didn’t need to sleep so much then I could get more done and………………….on and on it would go….)

I didn’t want to read books. Books would require something of me  – either an emotional response that I wasn’t willing or able to give, or some practical application of the information that I wasn’t capable of adding to my already huge lists of ‘must dos’.

I haven’t quilted in months…

None of those things are quite normal for me. But in that season, in that place, them being there seemed very normal and rational to me. I was tired from the emotional stress of things going on. We were all stressed from things going on. These things were resulting from all those other things. At least that’s what I thought.

All those other things going on probably contributed, true. Anyone would be stressed in our situation. Tara reminded me of that many times. She reminded me to give myself a little slack, let myself take time to process, allow myself to be mad without having to fix it right away. And my Sweetie insisted on speaking the truth to me and not letting me continue to believe what he could see were falsehoods about myself. There may have been SOME inkling of truth to some of those thoughts, but that truth quickly got twisted and was useless to me. Filtering through the ‘crap’ back down to the truth was impossible for me… And I needed others to help me sift through the garbage.

As I started to hear Tara’s words, to put the pieces of the puzzle together, to realize that my husband wasn’t seeing things the way I was seeing them, I began to wonder if maybe it wasn’t depression again. I wondered if I might need to increase the dose on my medication, especially as we’re heading into winter with shorter days and less sunshine. I haven’t done that yet, but I may need to do it at some point.

But just being able to say, “I think this is what’s going on” has been very helpful. And to understand many of the deep messages that were helping to contribute to the downward spiral has been a huge piece of the healing puzzle. Being told what’s TRUE, rather than just what I see based on my own presently-twisted perception, has been helpful to stop the decline and start the process of coming back into the light again.

I’m not in the clear yet. I’m not ‘normal’ yet and I’m not yet back to my own usual sense of weirdness. I have more up days than down days now, but the down days are still very difficult. Thankfully, they aren’t anywhere near what the down days were like 6 years ago when I was battling depression after what can only be called a complete breakdown. This depression feels much sneakier, and perhaps that’s how it always starts. Only over time does it rear its ugly head like it did before. Perhaps we’ve nipped it in the bud before it got too far out of hand.

But it’s hard to do anything with it until you’ve identified it.  I couldn’t have told you what was wrong, except for the external stresses, when it all started, and even well into the conversations with those closest to me. It was as if one point a light bulb switched on, and we could finally see it for what it was – depression.

I wish I could explain how we got there, so it could be duplicated. But I don’t think I can. The biggest things were finally realizing that my thoughts were irrational, and fully trusting my husband and his love for me, knowing that he’d speak the truth no matter what, and having a very persistent friend to say things that didn’t always make sense to me but over time began to sink in to help lead to the answers.

Some days it feels like I’m clawing my way out of a hole, and it doesn’t feel as deep as holes I’ve been in before, but no less difficult to get out of than those other holes. Some days I’m almost feeling normal again. Almost, but not quite.

Because things just aren’t normal when you have unwelcome house guests who are difficult to get rid of. But when you can finally call them out by name, they are a bit easier to deal with. The hardest part, perhaps, and the biggest hangup to it all, is that you don’t always know, at least not right away.

It sure would be nice to see who’s knocking, and just not answer the door when depression comes calling.