Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?

Guilty.

I've been told by my therapist that I shouldn't be.  I shouldn't feel guilty.  I shouldn't be ashamed.  But I am.  He tells me that sometimes life is shitty.  Sometimes it is shitty, and other times it can be great.  He tells me that I did not ask for all of this to happen, that I could not have prevented it.  But couldn't I have?  Couldn't I have gotten help sooner?  Couldn't I have reached out to the people who told me to reach out to them if I was feeling suicidal instead of reaching into the cabinet for bottles of pills?  I can't help but feel guilty, can't help but be ashamed. 

Blame has to fall somewhere.  It certainly can not fall on anyone but me.  No one else could have stopped it but me, yet I failed to do it.  I failed to see it coming.  In a demented game of chicken, I blinked.  I closed my eyes to the fact I was spiraling out of control.  It was normal.  It was what life had become.

It's a funny thing this depression, I know it is an illness.  A chemical imbalance in the brain.  A lack of serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine, endorphins.  All tangible things.  Depression is not much different than diabetes if you think about it.  Your body stops producing a substance that is needed for your body to work properly.  Insulin in the case of diabetes.  So we both take medicine to help.  We both try and keep a disease from getting worse, to keep from letting it take over, keep from letting the disease win.  In the end that is what it boils down to.  Depression can put up a mean fight, and in the end, it can win out.  There is no debating that.  Every 13 minutes and 42 seconds someone commits suicide and 90% of those people had a diagnosable and treatable mental illness.  Some sought help in their war, others did not.  This is reality.  A cold, harsh, bitter reality that needs attention.  Allies are hard to come by for us waging war.  It is hard for us to trust other people with our secrets, our shortcomings.  If you were to turn away, if you were to pull away, if you were to disappear it is another lost battle in a lifetime of losses.  So we back away.  If we never put ourselves out there, we won't be rejected.  The possibility of acceptance is so small it is not worth the risk of rejection and it's feeling of failure.

So we lock ourselves away.  Physically and mentally.  Physically we confine ourselves.  We seclude from others to not disappoint them, to not risk failure, and to not make things worse for others.  Mentally we do the same.  We get stuck inside our own mind because we don't want to venture out into the realm of possibility for fear of defeat.  We keep our thoughts to ourselves because we know they are not normal.  In turn, we aren't normal.  We don't belong anywhere.  We don't fit in.  We take pills to make ourselves not feel anymore.  The pills are designed to help us feel better, to squelch the sadness and despair.  But they don't just block sadness.  They can block other emotions and other feelings.  They can block joy, happiness, the things we need.  Instead of feeling better, we feel callous and detached.  Unmotivated to get out of the house and out of bed.  So they give you other medications to take on top of those to try and help.

Steering away from all that, I have noticed an increase in my pain levels.  My lower back, my legs, ankles, feet.  Most of the time now they hurt.  Especially at night and early morning.  I brought this up to my therapist and I will bring it up to my psychiatrist when I see him, but the therapist wants me to go see my family doc about it.  To get another set of eyeballs on me to see if it is caused by the depression or by something else.  I kind of hope it is just depression, not sure I could handle some other medical mystery right now.

I received a little feedback about my last post and the way men are perceived.  I guess I should go into that a little more.  As a man, society and history have told me I have to be the breadwinner, the solid-as-a-rock figure, the one who does not let things get to him.  I should put on a smile and grin through the pain.  Pain, after all, is just weakness leaving the body.  And we can't have weakness.  Stereotypically men are strong, stoic beasts with a lack of emotion.  When a man goes against that stereotype, when he is vulnerable and fragile, he is just weak.  A wuss.  A pansy.  A broken down shell of a man.  A man can not be that way.  Women have a lot of the same stereotypes put on them.  The woman can be emotional, and is often portrayed that way, but they too are seen as inferior if they crack under the pressure.  They are drama-queens or just seeking attention.  They've got baggage or issues.

I've got baggage.  I've got issues.  I've got baggage stacked up on a sky cap's cart dating back to childhood.  I'm pretty sure my first bag came along with my diaper bag.  My issues fill up a magazine rack like a lifetime collection of National Geographic.  I can't let my baggage keep me from getting to where I need to go.  That much checked luggage would cost a fortune.  I need to downsize.  Get rid of some baggage and board the plane with a carry-on.  I need to get a digital subscription of my issues and get rid of the racks of magazines that tell the stories of my downfalls and fall downs.  I don't know how to do it, but I have to.  If I don't the racks will overfill and topple over me or the baggage cart will tip over and crush me under it's weight.  So I have to go through my things and pack light.  Clean out the cobwebs in the closet of my mind.   Now if I could just get motivated to find my duster and hard-sided carry-on bag.