Wet Metaphors

I've been treading water for almost two years now.

And I'm sinking. My head's still above water, but my limbs are so tired they're just about numb, no longer even burning with the effort.

But it isn't my physical exhaustion that's making me sink. My soul is tired. My heart and my soul just can't do it anymore. They're so heavy and they're weighing my body down and now I'm swallowing saltwater with every wave that passes over my head.

So now before I start to drown, I'm once again going to ask for help.

I'm a very proud person. I am a person who always expected to be able to swim because I've weathered so many storms, but the storms have passed and there's an eerie calm and it's this that I was not made to sail.

I've switched sea analogies midway through. I do that sometimes. Ken once told me I'm like a Tamarian. I think that's probably true.

I cannot sail with no wind. The waves are tiny and gentle, but I am succumbing to each one like a tidal wave.

I have capsized. I am clinging to the wreckage.

So it's time to ask for help to build a new boat, or at least a viable raft, before I really need it.

Analogies. Am I right? Analogies.

What I mean to say is, it's high time I started therapy again. So I suppose that is what I'll do. The past two weeks have gone from signals of potential danger right into the danger itself far more rapidly than I had anticipated and now here I am.

Again.

I hate asking for help.

I think maybe Chad's metaphor* wasn't perfect. I think I have bootstraps. I know I have bootstraps. But the depression tells me I don't. And I believe it. I can't see them and I can't feel them and I can't find them. But I know they exist because, dammit, I've used them before and I know I can use them again if I can just find them!

Well, I'm going to enlist a therapist to help me locate them. To help me get a grip on them. To help me build the muscle to pull myself up.

I was pretty adamant previously about returning to my old therapist because I liked her a lot, but also because I wouldn't have to explain my extremely complicated history of trauma, which takes about three therapy sessions just to cover the timeline. But she's up at Lincoln Center and that's a long way from Brooklyn. It was very convenient when I was attending Circle, but it's about an hour of travel from my apartment. And I also feel anxiety about even just calling her back up because of the way I kind of flaked out (although it was a big scheduling issue) and disappeared. Which I have a habit of doing.

So I think I'm gonna start new and hope they're not terrible. And just deal with the time it's going to take to catch them up on the Series of Unfortunate Events that has been my life so far. It also helps that the place recommended to me is supposed to be pretty low-cost. That helps massively with the guilt.

Thank you to everyone who talked to me after my last blog post and offered me their phone numbers and shoulders for crying on. I considered calling each and every one of you today, but the fact is that I don't feel right taking your valuable time with my totally preventable dip into depression. So I'm gonna pay a stranger to do it. I think it's better for everyone this way.

Don't worry; if I really need to talk, I won't hesitate to call.

But I'm mostly fine. And for everything else, there are whole professions of people out there who specialize in this sort of thing.

In other news, the place that was recommended to me is acronym'd ICP. When you Google it?

Insane Clown Posse.

* "People who have boot straps probably like to hear about boot straps. Depressed people don't have boot straps. That's what depression is. Not having boot straps."


* Addendum: As it turns out, this new place is at Columbus Circle, so that's hardly better, but at least I can take the B all the way there.

* Addendumum: Isn't it strange that this is almost the exact date in 2009 at which I made this decision last time? I wonder what it is about October/November.