Wednesday, May 4, 2011

I'll break these chains...

I can barely keep my eyes open. I've been so, so tired lately... which is odd, because I've been getting way more sleep than usual. Maybe it's because I'm getting more sleep. I don't know. All I know is that my bags have bags, my eyes hurt, I have a massive headache, I'm physically and mentally weak and I just want to curl up somewhere and sleep for a hundred years, until the world's natural gas dries up and I get to sit on my roof and watch the world crumble at the edges and then implode.

I'm going to get a little personal today, so hang in there.

It seems like I've always had clinical depression, even though I wasn't officially diagnosed with it until I was 10-11. I've never gone through an entire school year without getting sent to the counselor at least once. I was dumped in therapist's armchair where I sat there, watching as the lady with the clipboard tried to coax my feelings out of me.

For me, there's a difference between having clinical depression, and being in a depression. Twice, I've slipped away into a pit of darkness with no one to lean on but my own demons. It's an awful, awful place and I hope that I never have to visit it again. No. I have to. It's an inevitability that I have to face it again. I dread it. 

I won't say that agnosticism destroyed me. I won't say that Christianity put a blindfold over me. I won't say Paganism saved me. Those are all just phases of my life, and Paganism is a new one. Labeling myself as an Eclectic Wiccan felt right, like the words I repeated to myself had power. "I am Pagan. I am Wiccan." The Irish and Lithuanian blood roared in my veins the first time I listened to a Wiccan chant. It was right. It was my history. It was my path.

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that darkness isn't where evil dwells. Evil dwells in fear. If I face my fears, I may never have to slip into my pit again. When I face it, I will carry a lantern with me and demand to know its secrets.

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