Tag: fight depression

Lack of direction

diariolottatore2 Comments

My good friend Ardeshir told me he wants to make a move in his life, he is tired of wasting his talent and time. He wants to find a job, find meaning in life. I have a job and have made quite important steps in life since my depression phase. I am probably where he would like himself to be right now. And yet I do feel an emptiness, a lack of direction, which is fueling negative thoughts. I don’t feel confidence in my job at the moment, I have no product to sell, and no clear direction from the leadership. I could do so much, but the company is so undecided on what to do, and so big, that I feel overwhelmed.

Flying is another element of my life which is giving me stress. And yet, I have just re-read my last posts, where I was worried about not passing the theoretical exams, and here I am, I have passed the exams, all of them in fact (including air law!) and now I am worrying about something else. The practice. And I worry about work, and I feel lack of purpose. I have a sex friend with whom I have great sex, and yet I worry about being with him too often, because I am not in love and he is not the one. I might be wasting my time and giving him false hopes. And when will I meet the right person? Will my life be exciting again? Will there be a magic happening in my life, where I will feel excitement? etc etc etc. Just listing my thoughts, I am pissing myself off! So boring. Stop that already.

I have found a psychologist, did 4-5 sessions with him, but ended last week, because I don’t like his technique. He was listening without giving me advice, he was kind of making assumptions of how I feel, without making me feel better. For example, he would say “it is as if nothing makes you happy at this moment, not your job, not your sport activities, not your flying lessons”. Indeed, that’s it. So what now? How do I change this state?

Damn it, I don’t ever want to plunge into the dark place, ever again. Depression was sooooo bad, that I’d rather keep my job, and see how I can make it work. I’d rather go through the uncomfortable feeling that flying brings me right now, than be depressed one more day in my life. I cannot explain it, but the pain you feel when you are depressed is much grander than physical pain. But why am I feeling down again? Why is it hard to clean my room, to organise my next trip, to organise a mega party for my 50th, to simulate a flight around my sofa in the living room, to look for a different job, to make the dishes, when I don’t see the point of all that? How can I see the point and meaning of all this again?

I know I am not well when I start thinking about other people’s lives being better than mine, when I start thinking of leaving everything behind and start traveling, specifically travel on a sail boat. Then I try to picture my long term travel, and I see no happiness because I am jobless, moneyless, and I have no life partner. So I exclude this escape idea from my list, because it wouldn’t bring any long term satisfaction.

If I had 5 millions in my bank account, would I be happy? This is a 5-million-dollar question. Someone please make a wire transfer into my bank account and I’ll tell you.

Not easy, this life. Not easy when you have options. Not easy when you have had a comfortable life in the past. Not easy when you have lost the love of your life out of your own doing. But like the lady said in the Instagram article, the world is neutral, it is me who is giving it a specific color, a good or bad taste, a meaning. At the end of the month I will turn 50, and I should know better.

How to not self-boycott my mind

diariolottatoreLeave a comment

It’s been a year without a therapist that can guide me through difficult moments, and remind me the good mental practices during the difficult moments. I am in the process of finding a therapist, one who speaks English and that I can afford. It’s a longer process than I thought. In the meantime, I do have the tools to detect red alerts when they are coming. And this is a red alert time for me.

My final attempt at passing Principes du Vol (branch 080) is coming up, 13 November, with pre-exams this morning. The self-boycott phase started weeks ago, and I must stop it. Since my last post, when I was already complaining about failing the exam and things going bad from now on, a few good things have happened, which I need to remind myself of. To counterbalance the bad thoughts that want to drag me down with them.

Good thing happened: I traveled to Asia for work, and I discovered two new cities in countries I had never been to. Since I love to travel, this is positive. Another great thing is that we managed to finalise the biggest deal at work, it had to happen before 31 October, and signatures have been digitally initiated yesterday. This is big, and I should not dismiss it as an easy accomplishment, cause it was not (it took almost a year).

See, my mind works in a way that one negative though feeds on another one to justify itself. It’s what my old therapist used to describe with “fascination for dissatisfaction”. My mind (like my mom’s) scans very fast through all the thoughts that could be negative in my mind, and binds them all up like grapes; this way the little negative thoughts become an army of negativity, which then justifies my miserable self. Ah…… great tactic! I should tell Macchiavelli about this one!

These days I am seeing a pattern going on that fuels this grape-like construction. My brain is finding a way to justify my failing at flying. If I fail 080 this fourth time, I have to repeat the whole theory, about 9 exams I already passed. There is no way I am going to do that. The thing is, I am not sure I’ll pass, I am studying a lot, a lot more than for other branches, but there are always questions in the multiple choice tests that I can’t answer correctly. This is a subject that I find difficult to digest. The whole aerodynamic laws, the lift and drag, the Bernoulli principle, air flux, Newton, Archimede. The whole lot. I am intelligent, but I am not a scientific mind, I am more into feeling and intuition, talking and speaking to a public, making podcasts and listen to people’s stories. When it gets to formulas, I go with intuition rather than with calculation.

So, here’s what I have been thinking these days: if I fail it will be bad for me, company is paying for the lessons, it is important for my job, if I fail I won’t be continuing the pilot licence, I will not become a pilot, if I fail at negotiating my salary with HR next week it will add to the failure of the PPL, plus I find the whole electrical subject difficult, and that’s my line of work, all of the eggs I put in this basket will fail all at once, and I will be miserable again, I have no partner, I can’t find true love, winter is here, days are dark and cold, less sunshine, what if my parents die this year or next, I will be weak for all this to endure. Etc etc. That’s my self-boycott process. Result: I get in a really bad mood, I wake up in the middle of the night, my heart burns. No advancement there.

So, I say it here, with the diary as my witness: I will endeavor to chase away all negative thoughts that want to grape up in me in the next weeks to come. I will be strong and will rely on my intelligent self to see the strong woman and not fuel the weak one that wants to come out (I mean, I have thoughts of being homeless again! can you imagine?). This is a difficult time of the year, where weather and season put a layer on top of the regular thoughts. But as that woman said in her video, the world is neutral. We tone it positive or negative with our own thoughts. So, stop being negative. I will pass the exam and will continue the PPL.

There’s no way I am going to fail my flight license.

diariolottatoreLeave a comment

Yesterday I was very down, I failed for the third time the theoretical exam “Flight Principles”. The morning had started badly with a nasty call at work. Bad mood set right there at 9am. My exam was at 13h15. I didn’t feel it, despite I prepared. The thing is that I prepared based on the QPPL app questions. But the Office Fédéral de l’Aviation Civile puts other questions out. For the third time I made one mistake too much. You are supposed to pass 75%, which is 9 questions out of 12. I made 4 mistakes. Till the last moment I had the fourth question right. It was the section of a body that makes the resistance in an air flow, not the surface. I had clicked on “section” and then the doubt came. I switched to “surface”. For one wrong click I have the stress of having to pass my last chance, if I fail the fourth time, I have to redo the whole theory (13 exams). No chance I’ll do that.

The negative thoughts are so good at piling up. One negative thought is enough to fuel all others. In my head right now, I have this: a pile of negative thoughts, a scenario of a black future: no more ideal job, no more flight lessons, winter coming, no more sex friend…. Pile on pile on pile.

The good thoughts are being stacked elsewhere, where it doesn’t matter. I received the Swiss citizenship, I am flying to Japan and Korean this week, I will give two speeches at a Japanese conference, I am having a good time at water-polo, I have a new co-locataire for the house who is very nice, the weather in Geneva has been spectacular, sunny and warm to this day, my parents are alive, my nephew just turned 30 and my brother 56. I started interviewing candidate therapists to coach me in winter. Life is good.

And yet it could all go wrong. Hell no. I won’t allow it, for God’s sake.

Yesterday and today, I was feeling like shit, self-commiserating, poor me I can’t get an exam right, damn me, I can’t get an exam right, and work sucks, everyone is so inefficient, people unhappy about my pushing too much, yara yara yara. What the f**k. I stop it right there. I want to take this opportunity to stop and reflect on the reaction in my guts, on the irritating and revolting feeling I feel in the stomach, and how to revert this sense of pins and needles in my head, that come from being disappointed, angry, sad, frustrated all at once.

Meditation is still not my thing, too calm for my mind. But I can listen to some ted talks and put my mind at peace for a while. I found a podcast about therapy. I hope I find a good therapist who can accompany me during winter time. Winter is coming and I feel I am not prepared this time. Red flag, red alert.

Will got married

diariolottatoreLeave a comment

The love of my life got married.

The descent to the “inferi” (see Dante Alighieri) for me started when I was still together with Will. Over the years I had eroded slowly but surely the confidence I had in me. Feeling invincible up to my studies, when I entered the job market the fight began. Fight to find a job, and fight to find what would make me happy, professionally. Love was always an important part of my life as a young woman; I never had just “fun” with boys, it was always a serious relationship. Starting with the first love, met him at the beach at 16, dated two years, then the German boyfriend at 20, met in Australia at my first big overseas trip during university; we were together for 7 years; then to Will at 28, stayed together 14 years, until I messed up. Today, 7 years later, I think that my professional life and the way I handled my relationships were the two main factors that brought me to depression.

Psychology sessions helped extrapolate the knots I had tangled myself in; it was not overnight; it took a couple of years. The first sessions I remember I was crying a lot, I could not stop, I was a mess and could not see the light at the end of the tunnel. Then it got better; I learned that I am attracted to dissatisfaction, meaning that I am looking for the things that go wrong in my life, and linger on them (like my mom); I also realised that I give (lose) myself too much in a relationship, not in the everyday life, but in the big choices. For example, the German boyfriend asked me to go to Germany and I did (the country was an awful experience for me) , the Canadian boyfriend asked me to leave Switzerland cause he didn’t like it, and I did. Back then, it was not a forced decision, I felt like I wanted to leave Switzerland, and trust me, it was amazing to travel around the world with the love of my life. But, in hindsight, I should have insisted to keep our status in Switzerland so we could go back one day, instead of leaving the safe life for good.

As a matter of fact, when I left Will, it was in Switzerland, where I wanted to go back to. Again, in hindsight, I should have handled this in a much more adult way, I should have not broken up with him for the younger guy, I should have asked for a short break, the time for me to understand what was going on in my life, and maybe we would be still together. Or not. Who knows. There are thousands of scenarios playing in my head, still to date, after 7 years. Leaving Will was the biggest regrettable action I have made in my entire life, but today I wonder if I would have been able to come out of depression with him on my side. If we stayed together, would I be happy today, like I am now? He would have fallen out of love probably, as nobody wants to be with someone crying all day, desperate about everything and broken in pieces. His love was not enough and I could not get back on my feet. I tried to shake the sadness in South Africa, but it had already pierced through my veins like a poison. I was sad in SA, and I brought my sadness to CH. I thought that by leaving the country I would leave my sorrows behind. Wrong! The sorrows follow you diligently. Faithfully. Irrevocably. You are the sorrow and the sorrow is you.

Despite my two-year therapy, and the effort to get rid of Will from my mind, I have always hoped, deep down, to find him again, one day, when we are older, and be together again, explain to him what happened and how; he would understand and we would travel again together around the world, as a retired couple. He would love me like he did before and I would love him back, and better this time. But in 7 years he never accepted to talk to me, he never replied to my 2-3 letters, and I just found out that he got married. Not with me of course, but with the lady he met 6 months after I broke up with him. Comme quoi…

The news shook me when I heard it in the moment; now I know for a fact that my hopes and thoughts of a future with him are futile, vain, useless and absurd. I want this news to accelerate the end of my love for him. Just as he placed me in a remote corner of his heart for good, I want to do the same, and allow myself to find a new big love of my remaining life. Good luck to me.

Zio Roberto is gone

diariolottatoreLeave a comment

He is my only uncle. My mom’s brother. She has no other siblings; my father is a lonely child. Roberto had some health issues, and my mom went to visit him in early summer, sensing that it was the last time she would see him. My mom has always had this acute sense for medical diagnosis. She just knows what people suffer from and how to cure them. In Zio Roberto’s case, there was nothing else to do.

Zio Roberto died yesterday and I am on the train to Firenze, for tomorrow’s funerals. We have been in contact over the years, but he was not a close uncle. He had his life in Tuscany with his family (my cousin) and my mom had her life in Rome, with her family (me). They come from Sicily, which they left in their twenties.

Despite the timid relationship I had with my uncle, I am sad. I feel I am using his death to justify being sad, as if I were giving myself the permission to take a couple of days of sad-me, just like when I was depressed. It’s not quite the same (thank god), but I have been feeling down, feeling empathy for my cousin, who has lost 3 family members in 3 years (brother, mother and now father), just feeling sad and down, quoi. I didn’t feel like doing anything constructive yesterday, so I took the day off and went to see a friend and watch a movie at the cinema (Oppenheimer, 3h).

I am sorry for my uncle, I am looking back at happy moments with him and his family, and I feel sad because these days are over. I am kind of searching for excuses to be sad. I am truly sad, but I am not pulling my hair off my head out of despair. I am sad but I am ok. My cousin is really sad, and I feel for her, deeply. I do because I put myself in her shoes.

What makes me teerish is the thought of soon being at my cousin’s place. Soon my own parents will be gone, maybe one by one, maybe both together, who knows. The thought of losing them is unbearable and I wonder if I am preparing myself to that moment, by being sad today. Getting ready so that my baskets will still be full, despite the sadness. Cause the most important thing in my life is to not fall into depression again. Baskets full, self confident, sad yes but with perspective, detachment, cause I have to rely on myself and no one else. I have recently been missing being with someone, for exactly these reasons: I would like someone to hold my hand when I am feeling blue, I would like to write him notes of how I feel, and receive words of comfort. But I feel that missing this sensation is misleading, as I would end up relying on someone else for my own comforting and emotional relief. Sad then yes, but not for long, and keeping myself abreast.

Tomorrow will be a sad day. But I will be strong for my cousin.

The Privileged Club of the Depressed

diariolottatoreLeave a comment

I was listening to a podcast from the guys at “And the rest is History” about the Freemasons, the international order that was very popular in the 1800s and was established for mutual help and fellowship. One of its characteristics, besides for being quite secretive, was the ceremonial habit. One of the rituals to become a member, so it appears, was a painful ritual, where you would have to endure something terrible, inflicted by your fellows; so terrible and painful that it would remind you that death is a serious business.

The depressed people go through something terrible too, and when I was driving home listening to the hour-long podcast, I thought that the depressed would make a great exclusive, privileged club of modern times. Privileged is a word I choose not out of lack of better words, but because I do think that being “touched” by depression in one’s life, gives us the privilege of seeing the world in a different way. When we get out of it eventually, the world and the others do not look or feel the same to us. At least this is my experience.

It took me three years to be depression-free, give or take. The path was excruciating, the worst feeling of my life, if I hadn’t loved life so much I would have taken concrete steps towards embracing death. It was that bad. The feeling of depression is one that goes way deep down your soul, your body, your heart, your brain, your guts. When you are in the middle of it, in your deepest, deepest moments, you think you will never get out. “How could I ever be happy again?” I thought, “How long do I still have to live and endure this?” I thought. I saw my life eternally turning in the void, eternally condemned to live like that, without hope and with lots of emotional pain. Like in the Gironi of Dante’s Hell.

But little by little, with looots and looots of effort,and over a loooong period of time, the daily improvements, the daily routines, the psychological support from my therapist, plus sport, work, family, etc, set me free from depression, and today I see pink color, pastel blue, turquoise, marine green, ocean blu, rosa antico, pastures of endless fields, oceans of blue marine that make me happy. I am happy, and satisfied. And I see the world in a different way. Like in the Matrix, I am on the other side, a side that only a few know, a few privileged who have been depressed once, and are now free from depression enjoying every bit of life, every heartbeat, every breath, as it was the last. Because we were that close to our last breath, we were so close to death, dancing with it every day for days weeks years.

This is me today. I am happy, I am free, I am me.

The duration of happiness

diariolottatoreLeave a comment

I have been meaning to write for quite some time. I even took notes to not forget what I want to say.

The main thought I have been having is this: I need to find a new psychotherapist. I have set this as a goal for early 2023, because I find that I must not lower the guard while I am feeling good and happy and positive.

Second thought is: how long does happiness last, and why do I fear that happiness is doomed to last less long than sadness. It is all in the head, and the heart, so we decide how long we want it to last. Having been depressed in my recent years, even if at various degrees (mainly mild, then hard for 2 full years), I am wary of betting on the longevity of happiness.

Another thought in the last weeks has been this: I have caught myself being aggressive and overreacting when things are done to me wrongly, or let’s say when I feel someone is doing something wrong to me. If I want to imagine this visually, I feel skyscrapers of happiness and skyscrapers of anger and sadness. Plus, this sadness takes me away from the outside world: when I am angry, I don’t want to see anyone, I close myself in my room and watch a movie to calm down. I recognise some patterns of when I was depressed. Red alarm, red alarm! Hence, the thought number one: I must find a psychotherapist asap.

With the psychotherapist I used to externalise my own thoughts to another human being, who would listen, digest, and throw back some thoughts, comments, notes at me that would help me carry on and fight the depression. Without this confrontation of thoughts, I am missing an important pedagogical aspect of my fight against depression. I feel as if depression had left me a goodbye “gift”, a poisonous one at that: anger and verbal aggression against anyone or anything that threatens my so long fought after well being.

It has happened that I have burst in tears in the past 8 weeks – I don’t know, maybe 3-4 times, it was tears of rage, when I have been feeling attacked when someone expresses their opinion. It is sooo annoying that this is my immediate, unfiltered reaction. Last episode was this very week: I have worked at an aviation expo that was very good but also very tiring (4 hours sleep per night), with big emotions (excitement of deals to come, negotiations well handled, a keynote speech given to a professional male-only audience); then comes this company townhall about reorganisation, and it is announced that my boss will change job, but I am not in his organisational chart yet. I got so furious, I started crying while listening to the Teams meeting, and I felt injustice, no appreciation of my work, and even greater injustice for the salary level I have been enduring for the past 4 years, while waiting for my company to adapt my salary. Year after year, I have been doing really well, I have been enjoying my work a lot, I am exploring this new amazing industry, I am showing unprecedented results, but I am not paid as much as my male colleagues, and this drives me insane. Not only because of the injustice in itself, but because I feel I haven’t played all my cards well, so I blame myself even more, in this story.

Cutting a long story short, I find myself extremely vulnerable to jumps of moods, I feel I need to find a psychotherapist right now, possibly in English and online, and I need to find a way to spread happiness throughout a long period of time. When I am happy I am thinking: why and how long still will I be happy for, as if the default version of my life should be worry, sadness and stress. invece no! Also, I must be careful about my state of happiness. Now it’s easy cause all baskets are full. What will happen when/if some are emptied by life?

PS: Alain de Botton gave a speech on depression and the difference with sadness. I find it enlightening.

Scrap notes

its not all about me, its not that if someone gives me a weird look, its because i did something wrong. its probably them who are not certain about something. same thing with me.

I havent felt like doing sport the whole week. thats an alarm sign for me. plus I am about to get my period. that must be it. i am in a bad mood, last 24h its been like that

Pain and discipline for my happiness

diariolottatoreLeave a comment

I am happy these days. Things are going well. I moved to the new house. It’s gorgeous. I am playing water-polo, I am doing spinning at the gym, I am studying for my private pilot exams and I am getting ready to my first solo flight. Work is going well too. So, all in all, great times.

When I was spinning this morning, I was thinking about the pain that I feel while doing the physical effort, and how much this gives me motivation. My body feels great after a workout. Same thing with water-polo: there is not only the physical pain of suffering during the training, but also the coaching time; the authority of the coach, the discipline; the orders, in a way, comfort me. They make me feel kind of safe. It’s not easy to explain, but I find that an environment of school, like learning waterpolo, learning to fly in a classroom, it all brings me back to the comfort time I had back when I was little, when life was good and free of worries. And now that I think, sports was a big part of my youth. The pain and the discipline of those days, be it at school, at sports or at home (with my dad being quite authoritarian) make me feel good. These are elements I am familiar with, and I associate good times related to those years of my life.

Yes, studying was tough, doing competitive sport was hard, receiving instructions from the coach was tough sometimes, but it was what I was used to. And it makes me feel good today. I realise today that I have picked activities that give me a similar amount of pain and discipline as when I was 14, 18 or 20. This makes me think of what Alain de Botton said about love and marriage. In the article “why you will marry the wrong person” he says that “what we really seek is familiarity — which may well complicate any plans we might have had for happiness. We are looking to recreate, within our adult relationships, the feelings we knew so well in childhood”. You can check out the article here. In my case, I was looking for pain and discipline in very specific environments. By reproducing these, I have been able to re-create a space that feels familiar, in a good way. I am filling the baskets with lots of eggs that give me plenty of goodness.

So great to think back to only 2 years ago, when I was still depressed and on medication, and looking at today, with a good life and a stronger self. Pain and Discipline: be welcome. Love: I welcome you too, whenever you decide to knock at my door (’cause I ain’t doing Tinder!).

With hope.

Laura

2023 Anti-Depression Resolutions

diariolottatoreLeave a comment

Welcome 2023! In italy 23 is a great number, all Italians know it when they play Tombola (Bingo). 23 is the lucky number. So let’s make 2023 our lucky number.

And yet luck doesn’t have much to do with happiness. Yes, it can help big time, but I say I want to make my own happiness, by keeping in track with all the work I have done in the past 3 years. Work that goes towards one goal: ending depression.

I have written down my projects for 2023. They are short to long term projects, I keep the page open on my desk, and remind myself of doing something every day towards those goals. There are 13 lines in the list at the moment. Projects range from keeping good fitness level to finishing my pilot licence, renting out my car, find public funding for my podcast, move to my new home, get the Swiss citizenship, find a kitehouse. Some projects are big and will require more than a year, some are easy, some are imminent.

People around me ask me how I can do so many things… first I don’t have kids, second I am not depressed anymore, and that’s awesome! Spirit is high, I have plenty of energy, I am being careful of what I eat, I weigh my mental efforts, and when I feel I get too overwhelmed, I stop doing what is negatively taking energy from me, and I do something I like, such as sport, walk, watch a video. I reward myself instead of penalising myself with some stupid thought (“you can’t do this assignment, you idiot”).

Being back in Switzerland after the Xmas break isn’t easy, I admit. I need to stay focused on what is important, so that I don’t get distressed by the lousy weather, or the lack of friends on any given day. I consciously make an effort to be vigilant about my moves. Because I know how hard it is to be depressed, and how difficult and long it is to come out of it. So, being vigilant and making extra positive steps is paramount to my wellbeing. That is why I have started a new project, called kitehouse. I want to find a great spot in Europe where I can buy a place I can call my kitehouse. A windy spot where I can kitesurf. My own place. A place where I can go often when I am older and retired. I never thought of investing. It’s a good time to do so.

Whatever project I choose will have to be useful to my wellbeing and mental stability. I miss love, and feel I need someone to feel fulfilled, but I know that fulfillment must come from within me, as it did when I was younger. Hence I make projects. as many as I want to handle, but not too many, to not overwhelm me. By the way, love is NOT one of the 13 projects. After trying Tinder and Bumble for a couple of months I decided to not waste more time, and not look for love, but let it happen in due time. Meanwhile, I concentrate on my own projects and wellbeing.

One of the resolutions is to find a new therapist who can assist me this year. I had an issue with the cabinet where my psychoanalyst was practising from. Mostly invoicing errors, extra charges, etc. I decided to look for a new therapist, someone who can follow me online. It’s one of the 13 projects of this year. I sometimes feel that I don’t need a therapist anymore, but I am not convinced that this is a good time to let go of this strong ammunition. What if something drastic happens in my life that catches me unprepared?

A great resolution I have from this year is “remote work in a warm place in winter”. I asked my company HR last month if I could work for three months elsewhere next winter, somewhere warm. They’ll think about it. I don’t know how much this project is depending on me, but I will think of something to make it happen. Switzerland is great, but between November and April it sucks! Except for skiing :-).

Let’s see how January goes. I am hopeful.

R.I.P depression (2019-2022)

diariolottatoreLeave a comment

Probably this is the last post for this year. Dear diary, life has been better. I have been good. This year I have learnt to not judge me, to be gentle to myself, to give myself good rewards for to the small achievements during the day. I have stopped the psychiatric medications on 25 June 2022. It was a long process, because I did it very slowly, from February to June, taking less and less pills per week. Depression was officially diagnosed in 2019, and officially ended in 2022.

For once, the death of something is a happy moment! Happy I have been off medication since June, without any sense of depression whatsoever. So good! When I was deep in my sadness, I thought I would never see this day, I thought “how can I walk without my Fluoxetin crutches?”. And then it happens. You do it, it works, and you know it. But: it is not the end of a pain like when you take out an infectious tooth! The pain doesn’t go away from one day to another, and it does require your full effort. It’s a lifelong endeavor, and I am aware of it. If I weren’t, I would be in great danger today: danger of falling into depression again one day. No no no, I know better now, and I know me better. I know my limits, the moments where I can be weak, those moments where I need to work on my happiness.

Being depressed is like coming out of the Matrix: you realise what many people don’t know, you realise how life really is. It’s a blessing in a way, although a very painful blessing. But when you come out of depression, you don’t look at life the same way. I don’t. I don’t take the happy moments for granted anymore. Today I find myself smiling at things or events that in other years I would have dismissed as obvious, given, granted. Oh no, now everything is a great thing, and when I feel a bit blue for any reason (bad day at work, no sport in a while, no boyfriend, or no travel in sight) I shift my internal gaze to something that is working in my life at that very moment. And there are always good things in life, I just need to open my eyes.

A dead depression is not dead forever. Like a Zombie, it can come back to life. This is the tricky part that must keep us vigilant. This is why I will keep seeing a psychotherapist (maybe once every 4-5 weeks) and why I will keep writing this diary. It keeps me focused, it reminds me of how I was feeling 3 years ago, even 2 years ago, even one year ago… It’s been a long process, and I didn’t think it would take so long. I had a minor case of depression, one that required 20mg a day of antidepressant. But I have a friend (my ex boss actually) who is still on 100mg a day or more, and he can’t get over it. He is still in a bad shape, despite his intelligence, nice family and everything. So we must be careful. dead is not dead; like the herpes virus, a depression stays with us and will resurge when we are weak. It is dormant like a Volcano, we must be vigilant. I will.

I wish to all depressed people to heal very soon and to have a blessed Christmas and New Year!

More soon,

Laura