Remission from Depression

When did the torture stop?

How different I feel than a decade ago. My mind was in constant anguish, a fiery anguish I myself kept lit for many years. I feel so different now. The torture I put myself through, the constant barrage of negative thoughts I spoon-fed to my psyche no longer plagues me today. I no longer feel that my life is a waste. But I am a realist, so in essence I still do, but I don’t seem to care about it anymore. I almost revel that my supposed punishment for a life wasted is not what I expected. What happened? Why did I stop berating myself? When did it shift? How did I stop the torture?

Was it when I looked around and found that the things that were supposed to go wrong didn’t? Was it when I realized that who I really was had become known finally and totally, and I still found acceptance? Was it when after living almost a half century I realize that my self-loathing was a fantasy? No. It was real enough, but why did it change? What happened to those thoughts? What happened to the hate?

Was it because I was becoming older? My anguish tempered because I no longer felt I had to compete. Were my hormones changing relieving me of my mental pain?

Was it that I still had love and will always have love from my man? Yes, that helped so much. I love him for waiting it out with me.

At one time I loathed him for it, for his apparent shortsightedness, for his unceasing gestures to soothe me, for his total lack of judgment in this need of his for such a girl, his weakness. My self-centered loathing did not deter him. Maybe his complete acceptance was really the example, the lesson I had to learn. Was that when I stopped the torture?

My soul and mind are taking a break. They are finally taking a few cleansing breaths, deeply inhaling while they can.

I think I can say that I’m in remission.

Are there dark clouds on the horizon of my mind? I can’t see any, at least not of my own making. I don’t feel any either. The knowledge was certain a decade before that they would be there again, dark clouds signaling the approach of a tsunami that would hit shore with a deafening crash and awash my brain with mayhem. But now I don’t feel any doom.

With fifty years behind me, the scale of life is tipping. My experiences are tallied and the scale tips more on heaven than in hell. In truth, my life overall has been pretty good. My life as an adult has been better, so much more than that of my youth. There is a distance now from my youth and my thinking processes of that time.

As an adult I am a different version of myself, at least it is different. I can live with different.