In which I begin hunting demons

 Note: I am fine right now. These are memories, not current events.

Content warning: depression, suicide, self-harm 

Today is Friday, January 28, 2022 and this year is the 11th year I have grappled with a rather severe mental illness that almost took my life. 

Rather, I almost took my life just to end the pain. But it didn’t happen and I am still here, even though the pain continues. Fine…this is what I am. I accept it. I just don’t want it to rule my life anymore. I want to find all those demons, look them in the face, and laugh. Dark humor makes a lot of people in The Cult of Happy very uncomfortable, but for me, dark humor is the most life affirming humor there is. Dark humor means you have faced your demons, you have laughed in their faces, and you have survived. 

I have a condition called Persistent Depressive Disorder, also known as dysthymia. Basically, my default mood is depressed. Picture a line from -10 to +10; Zero is neutral–not happy but not sad, positive 10 is the happiest you can ever be and  minus 10 is suicide attempt. 

I need to point out that “happy” is not the same as “joy”. I don’t know happy, but I know joy. These are brief moments, fleeting but all the more precious in their brevity. What is joy? A cool breeze on a hot day. The scent of lilacs in spring. A hot beverage at just the perfect temperature to drink. Feeling a cat’s body rumbling as they purr. A lick from a friendly dog. The smell of band-aids. The smell of old books and new leather shoes. Joy is everywhere but it is a diamond in the rough. You have to know what to look for and you have to recognize when you see it. And like a precious gem, you have to grab for it while you can but it may not be there the next time. So, I don’t know happy, but I have joy. And as long as I can find joy at least once a day, there is hope. 

On my chart, minus 8 is obsessive suicide ideation, minus 9 is active planning, and minus 10 ia an actual attempt. Last night, I lay in bed thinking about how to write this and how to describe the graph, and I realized I have the negative numbers pretty well identified, but I don’t know how to label the positive numbers. If zero is neutral, what is plus one? Plus three? Plus seven? I don’t know what “happy” feels like. I can only label the positive numbers by what I am able to do, not by how I feel.

I wasn’t even diagnosed until my mid-20s, although I definitely had mood disorders as a child. I was the weird kid in class, the one whose mother dressed them funny. Not necessarily a frightening type of weird, just a kind of quirky, odd kid. Yet, I still managed to make it to a reasonable fruitful adulthood. I graduated from university, found a career job before I even graduated, had a sweet and nice boyfriend who became a sweet and nice husband. I also had two suicide attempts and more episodes of self-harm than I can count. The scars are all over my body, like a runestone summarizing the story of my journey through life.