I'm good at being sad. I'm good at hating myself. I'm good at pushing people away, keeping a wall up around myself or scaring people off. I'm good at crying out for help as I suffer over the pain I ultimately inflict on myself. I know this version of me all too well. I've had a good deal of practice.
Right now I am in transition. I'm better enough to make attempts but weak enough to be easily beaten down. And I'm not good at much of this. I think that social might be where it shows the most... I don't know how to interact with people normally, and I keep feeling like I should just retreat back into a little cocoon, but of course that's not how I learn.
I don't know who I am, because I've lived too long under the influence of depression. I'm finally tearing "stupid depressive" away from how I identify myself, which is good, but it also leaves a void. And so many of my other self-descriptions are infected by related thinking. I have this creative drive but I suck at arts and always will. I think I move well and have some potential in dance except, ha, being a dancer doesn't work when you're a blob. I definitely have some writing potential yeah right, how much you want to bet that no one gets what I'm doing when I think I'm being clever?
So I'm lost, and scared, and confused, and so easily made to feel like I should just give up and let myself fall back to what I know because I'm failing anyway. And this sounds like I'm whining, but this recognition is hopeful to me.
Because I feel this crappy precisely because I'm progressing. I'm changing into something I don't know. I have every reason to think that ultimately this is a good thing. And I'll get the skills as I go, in learning to be a happy, social, artistic person. All those things that have atrophied in my depressive state, they'll get better. Like starting to walk again after being on bed rest, or something, there's a phase of weakness being more obvious when you first start working on it again.
I'll be okay.
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