Hibernating Identity

When I look back at myself, I’m not sure I’ve ever had that strong a sense of self. As a teenager, I was so intent on blocking out the problems my family was up against (for new readers, my mother was diagnosed with cancer, fortunately curable, when I was thirteen, which then kicked my Dad into an unrelenting downward spiral of alcoholism and depression), that I focussed all of my energy on applying to medical school, which at the time, seemed like a wonderful escape route. I didn’t give that much time to thinking about who I was, except as a list of extra-curricular and academic achievements that would hopefully convince someone to give me a place at the university of my choice (the day they did, was the best day of my life). My sense of self worth is highly related to my CV, which started in those years of surviving by ticking the boxes I needed to tick in order to stand a chance at medical school – by focussing on that, I could block out all the chaos at home.  According to my counsellor, this is not exactly a good thing.

That sense of busy-ness as a reaction to stress has never left me. I channel a lot of energy into finding tasks to be passionate about to avoid facing up to things that start to hurt when I’m alone. I give myself projects so that by the time I slow and stop, I am so tired that I have not energy left to think about whatever it is that’s on my mind when it’s not racing.   When my depression has meant that I haven’t been able to refocus onto some task, or list, or meeting, all the things I try to avoid rear up and crowd me out; I can’t escape. It sounds so self-centred and self-indulgent, I know, and I think part of that is true; for the last six months, I’ve had to focus on my own health and well-being for the first time, and I don’t like it. I don’t know how to do it.

When I think of depression, I often think of a force that has stole great chunks of my identity and left me with nothing – I’ve lost that endless enthusiasm that  I am well known (and laughed at) for, I’ve lost my ability to concentrate and push things forward, I’ve lost my ability to put my life on hold and just sit with a lonely, elderly person, and care for them. I’ve lost my sense of connection to others, and my thirst to change things I hate about the world we live in. I’ve lost my confidence, and my organisation, and being able to have ten things in my head, on a prioritised list, and know that I’ll remember to do them. I don’t really know who I am, anymore. When I think of myself, the words that come to mind are apathy, negativity, cynacism, callousness. It’s as though someone crept in when I was sleeping and stole all the souvenirs of my life and left me with an empty shelf. It’s like being wiped clean, all evidence whisked away. It’s as though everything positive has gone into hibernation and just will not come out – Spring might be here, but I am still stuck in endless Winter. It’s disorientating and confusing – when this all ends, which parts of me will come back? What will I need to reject to stop this depression returning? If all of my coping mechanisms are actually maladaptive, if I stop them, what will be left? Empty space.

I wish I could say that leaning on my ‘identity as a child of God’, as the Church would say, was enough – that knowing that God knows me, inside-out, from the moment I was conceived to the moment I die, is enough, but in truth, I still feel lost. L, my counsellor, tries to have me do exercises where I list how friends describe me (cannot even explain the cringe-factor these have), and at the moment I just don’t know – this year, I have not been on-the-ball and involved, I haven’t been that caring, that careful, that charismatic. I haven’t been that enthusiastic, or that driven, or that kind. I’ve mostly just been miserable. I’ve mostly just been a shadow who cancels at the last minute when I’m feeling too weepy to do something who, doesn’t complete tasks on time, and is always grumpy and on a short tether, ready to explode at conflict.

In the hardest months, I felt like so much of me had perished, that I was closer to dying completely than living; so much of me was gone, that it was as though all that was left was a shell with a heart that continued to beat, and lungs that continued to breathe. So much had faded, that the world seemed monochrome, and I seemed invisible. Although I’m mostly through that patch now, sometimes it comes back and I wonder if I will ever regain the ground I lost, and stop being someone who’s primary character trait is depression. I wonder if my soul will wrench itself from hibernation and thaw itself out in the sun, and start to heal. I wonder if as I sit and talk with L, if I’ll manage to fill in the vastness and find resolution, or if as the year keeps turning, I’ll just keep fading until there really is nothing left. My Hallelujahs at the moment are pretty cold and pretty broken. This Easter season has been difficult to navigate; I’m feeling so low at the moment and the concept of  achieving normal, let alone eternal life, seems a little beyond me at the moment.

To finish on a more cheery note, I found out today that the libraries in my city have agreed to donate all of their extra stock to my hospital library project indefinitely – including lots of large print, which has been really quite hard to source (and is useful as all the hospital’s we’re targeting are mainly geriatrics). I’m really pleased – we’ve got enough stock that within two weeks, we should be ready to deliver the books and shelving to the hospitals and kick it off properly – so, there is something to be thankful, and positive about.