The Clouds Have Come.

I look outside my window right now and I see grayness. It's ugly. It's mid-September and I am guessing that fall has come to Whidbey. That would be great if I were in Colorado. I love the fall in Colorado. The leaves turn and it's still relatively warm and the air smells like fall. On Whidbey, when the fall comes, it just smells wet and looks dirty. Whidbey fall is my least favorite Whidbey season. It also means that I probably need to up my dosage of Zoloft. I don't do well in the Washington winter. My first winter here was the lowest trench of depression that I have ever experienced. It was truly awful and I am not eager to repeat it again.

Ironically, on this thankful Thursday, it is the clouds and the ugly (both outside of my house and inside of me) that I am thankful for. At this time last year, two years ago, and three years ago I was completely unaware of it. It was consuming me. I was not showering, I lived in sweats, I would go weeks without leaving my home, I was dangerous to myself and my family. Today, even though I feel it, I am safe from it. I am aware of it and am addressing it. I confront it head-on every time I swallow a Zoloft and every time I run.

I have been having a pretty crappy day and I was really close to coming home and taking a nap. I wanted to crawl in bed and make the day go away. But today, I made the active, conscious choice to stay awake. I made the choice to sit down and blog and then do homework. The conversation that I had with myself went something like this:

Dark Molly: Today sucks. If I nap, it will be over sooner.
Rational Molly: No, if you nap today you will feel worse.
Dark Molly: But it would be so much easier.
Rational Molly: It's a bad habit to start napping on the cloudy days. The cloudy days are going to become more frequent, you should start facing the cloudy days and not hibernating.

I'm so, unbelievably glad that I have come to a place in life where I can talk myself out of my depression related behaviors. I even passed up on buying a cookie at the coffee shop, because I knew I would be stress-eating. Mental health is winning.