Sometimes I Feel Really Sad

I guess my anxiety comes from my childhood of never knowing when we’d be moving again, and going to 15 different schools by the time I was ten. As far back as I can remember there wasn’t a day I didn’t wake up scared to death and  nervous with that awful feeling of not having security and structure in my life. I don’t think my parents were ever equipped to be parents, they both seemed troubled by mental illness themselves. My father, at just 12 years old, watched his baby brother get run over and killed by a truck, so I’m sure this haunted him all of his life. His father, my grandfather whom I’d never known, was a bootlegger and my father was a terrible alcoholic in his younger years. My mother was terribly negligent towards me and my siblings and lived all her life in denial, never admitting any wrong doing  and telling herself she was a good mother of all things. She didn’t really do anything to take care of us, nurture us, love us as a mother normally would. As an adult I always had a hard time believing men really loved me when they told me they did. I also found it very difficult to accept gifts and compliments. I made my own structured life and security when I became an adult and it was only then that the anxiety finally went away. I cannot however do anything to make the depression go away that seems to creep up on me whenever I experience a great loss in my life. Depression to me feels like a great big huge dark hole of nothingness. You cannot will it away, you cannot go for a walk and walk it away, you cannot snap out of it. When I experience it, it takes everything away from me in the form of feelings. I can no longer feel joy from what used to so easily bring it, it’s gone, nothing. I can’t make myself get out of bed. I can’t open the blinds. Going to the bathroom is a feat in itself, because you see, there is no will in me to do anything when I am depressed. When I lost my brother a piece of me went with him and the only things that kept me here were my children. I never give up no matter how incredibly bad it gets. It does eventually pass and medication has helped me. I strongly believe life is a very special gift and we are all blessed to be here. It’s always worth riding the storm out when you get to the other side, no matter the rainfall.