Tunnel

Everything has to have a beginning, right?

At some point you reach an age and think, “I literally cannot remember a time I wasn’t like this. Have I always been this way? What happened to me?”

I honestly do not remember having any mental health issues before the age of 9 or 10. I also can’t remember a whole lot of my life during that period of childhood so it is hard for me to say.

Now that I am approaching 30 this year, I have started wondering why I am the way that I am. Was it circumstantial/environmental depression that started or was it biological all along?

I’m starting to believe it is both. Biologically, I know my mom struggled with depression and my paternal grandmother was bipolar, schizophrenic, and just had a lot of brain chemical imbalances. I know that makes me predisposed, but that also doesn’t guarantee anything either. I have the same mother and gradmother that my siblings have. Yet, I seem to have always been the one who struggled the most mentally.

Circumstantially, my siblings also went through the same huge event that I did; my dad’s infidelity leading to my parent’s divorce. However, I think I was the one who was at the most perfect age to have it hit me differently than it did the others. That is not to say it didn’t affect them at all, it just seems to have hit me the hardest out of the 4 of us. It is something I still struggle with to this day (not the fact that my parents aren’t together, but just how everything happened). My siblings all seemed to have gotten over it pretty quickly, so why does my brain choose to dwell?

Ever since the divorce, the depression just grew and grew. So much so, that I don’t know what it is like not to have it anymore. Then ontop of that I have had anger, anxiety, and paranoia issues added to it as time went on.

I wonder if I will ever reach a point in my life where I don’t struggle with these things anymore.

Granted, I do have good days where it doesn’t seem to get in the way. Yet, it is like there is always a bad one lingering, just waiting to get out. Sometimes, it is many days in a row that are dark. It makes me wonder if I will never have good days again. Though I also remember the saying “this too shall pass”.

For instance, I have been in a dark tunnel for a little over a week now. For seemingly no real reason. I cannot find one singular cause. If a cause cannot be found how does someone fix it? I can’t fix what I don’t know.

I have tried my usual “fixes” and even those have not satisfied the darkness to go away.

It has just been one tiring week. It is exhausting to be in such a tunnel, constantly. I’m mentally so drained and I have no energy for much. It makes me feel like a shitty mom. Granted, yes, the kids are still healthy and alive, but I just feel like I cannot give much.

-Jenn