"Awakenings"

For six months now, I have been incredibly blessed, having experienced the precious gift of sanity, a reprieve from a life-long battle with depression and anxiety. I had never known what it felt like to be able to start a day without suffering from paralyzing fear and the darkness of the soul - depression and mania, a condition finally diagnosed accurately as Bi-Polar II. For me, each day felt like a life and death battle, coping with depression and the opposite pole of mania (extreme anxiety and compulsive never ending thoughts racing through my head). Trapped inside a mind that seemed hell-bent on destroying me, mental illness wore me down ever so slowly, one sick thought at a time, robbing me of hope and eventually the will to live.

As far as I was concerned, this gift of sanity was nothing less than a miracle. I had never, in my life, experienced such freedom. Each morning was a fresh beginning filled with endless possibilities. Hope had returned and I was filled with immense gratitude. Inspiration and even more importantly, desire, returned as my mind was filled with ideas for new art works and books to write, projects upon projects of things I actually wanted to do. I identified with a character in a movie I'd seen, 'Awakenings' - whereas a comatose patient (Robert De Niro) miraculously came alive, after 40 years in a coma, after being given an experimental drug. He was like a kid in a candy factory - so excited about being alive, literally experiencing life for the first time. The patient had been a young boy when he became sick and fell into a coma. I too, was a young boy when I first started suffering from depression.

I got busy creating a new life for myself, all the while stuffing hidden fears that this was too good to be true, and that the darkness would return all to similar to the true story depicted in 'Awakenings' when the patient eventually fell back into a full coma when the new experimental drug stopped working. My greatest fears had been realized. The darkness has returned. There is a kind of madness that overtakes you when you watch yourself falling back into a cold darkness, knowing full well where you are going, yet being unable to stop it. This is where anger and rage boil over, all to no avail.


Evil.

I cannot think of a more all-inclusive word to describe depression, specifically Bi-Polar depression. This disease viciously attacks from the inside out, slowly destroying you in all ways; mind, body and spirit.

Depression, in and of itself, is bearable, for me. It can even be somewhat comforting as relief comes from self-imposed isolation, going deep within the darkest recesses of my mind. In the grips of depression, everything in life moves slowly ... thoughts, actions, even breathing. It actually hurts to breathe as if it requires a deliberate forced effort. Each day starts with a dark choking fog of fear, fear of making it through the day, avoiding contact with anyone that could threaten your delicate balance of sanity. By the end of the day, when I can safely hide, alone, I am usually totally exhausted, utterly spent from a day of lying, pretending that all is well to avoid the pain of well meaning prodding and an endless list of suggestions that only help to overwhelm an already overwhelmed mind. Depression would be manageable, if it weren't for the mania, and mania is a whole different threat.