Emotional Waterboarding: Comme See, Comme Saw
For me, dealing with anxiety and depression at the same time is like the world’s worst seesaw.
Imagine being on both ends of the seesaw at the same time
One side dips down into a murky pool of anxiety
Then the other side drops into the dark pool of depression
Back and forth
And back and forth
When that gets boring, anxiety and depression like to work together
Sometimes I can get it to land in the middle for a while. It’s not a happy place, exactly — more the absence of acute distressed feelings. Even as I try to catch my breath, I know it is going to tilt one way or another again soon. Keeping the balance in the middle takes every ounce of strength I have, and it’s not a matter of if I’m going to fall again, it’s a matter of when and which direction
Emotional waterboarding
And while I’m trying to balance this see-saw, people keep handing me things to do. And then they suggest that maybe if I just ____ it would help
And all these things have weight.
In the meantime, I’m trying REALLY hard to just avoid falling off the seesaw completely while juggling all these heavy objects and obligations
Oh, and did I mention it’s pouring rain and there are probably sharks in the water?
You might be expecting me to wrap this up with some sort of optimistic frame about liferafts. Or maybe floating. Treading water, at the very least. But no, right now I’m hanging out, fending off the sharks. It’s ok, though. Eventually I will find dry land. Or if not that, then I will at least climb back on the seesaw as the puddles shrink.
I’m just not ready to draw that, yet
