God only knows

Today I’m working really hard on blame and believing that it’s not my fault.

One of the most difficult things I find when dealing with depression is that it doesn’t take much to let the monster rage through my head. It’s the little things that make me feel so tired and worthless. For example, I just realized that I forgot to mail out an important form to my employers about authorizing a background check. This isn’t a big deal. I’ll mail it out tomorrow and everything will be fine. Yet it’s made me feel like I am truly incompetent and that maybe I’d be better off without the job anyway. All because this form was in the wrong pile of papers.

There are thousands of these moments through the day, each with an opportunity to be equally damaging. Is it any wonder that depression makes it so difficult to get through the day? It’s been found that those suffering from depression have a skewed sense of proportion about the importance of things and I’m certainly feeling that today.

I realize that the reason I’m having such a difficult day is because I forgot to take my meds this morning. At least I have a reason, but it would be so nice not to have to deal with it at all.

Depression and Blame

Today has been one of those days where I feel the need to apologize to people, even though I have no reason to do so. I don’t know if anyone else has days like these, but they come to me every so often. My conversations with people don’t feel quite right, I don’t finish what work I need to do, whatever the cause, it’s a day where I want to say I’m sorry, that I never mean any intentional harm.

I’ve found that blame and depression go hand in hand. When I started having long strings of bad days, blame sat in the corner, making itself comfortable until it became part of my normal day and I didn’t even feel its presence anymore. It wasn’t until last semester that I realized it was still around. I remember I was sitting at my desk writing in my paper journal before break. I wasn’t writing anything specific, just whatever came to mind and what came out of the pen was “This isn’t my fault.” It was followed by a long moment of relief. It had never occurred to me before that this wasn’t somehow my fault for not trying harder, or not shaking it off.

I’ve been through therapy, a dbt group, my pediatrician and am now trying medication. My parents know, my closest friends know, I spent two years with two different counselors in the university counseling center. No one has ever told me that it wasn’t my fault. There is a list of best things to say to a depressed friend and I really think that “This isn’t your fault” needs to be added to it.

So for anyone who comes across this and has spent one second too long with blame hanging around like it owns the place, whether you’re depressed, or you self harm, or you’re suicidal or you feel dull and dim for weeks or if you live your days in five minute periods because you can’t handle anything more:

It isn’t your fault.