Walk around the wall, don't beat it down

You hold onto sadness because its a security net. Its safety, its familiar, its comforting. Happiness, I told Jan, can be embraced and fulfilled till I'm bursting at the seems. When I'm sad though, happiness is a foreign concept. I forget how to feel happy. Or more accurately  I don't allow myself happiness. Instead, I wallow, I weep, I let everyone come rushing to help me. Just because its easy that way.
When you are happy everyone stops thinking you need help.

Doctor Femi told me that without medication depression will eventually subside after four to six months. But thats four to six months of pain, he told me. I'm starting to believe that it will subside because nobody wants to be sick for that long. Suddenly sick becomes too heavy on the shoulders. Suddenly sick is not what you want to be, and not what you thought it would be. Sick didn't live up to your glorious expectations. Instead it gave you cold reality. Sick has turned you against yourself, made you the number one enemy, when really you are crying out to be the friend. "Sadness and I walked hand in hand for a long time" Jan tells me. "Sadness and I were bestfriends."

I was meant to get the bus into town today to see Jan. I shun my mother for being unorganised and manic, running around frantically shoving things into her bag, cursing herself for leaving it all to the last minute to get ready. Today I did this, which was unfortunate as it made me late, and made my anxiety worse about going into town. My mum dropped me off. I should have just faced my fears and gotten on the bus. When I left Jan though, I came on the bus home.
As I sat in the waiting room, I had a moment of realisation. I thought about the Maudsley Hospital and how they had written a review of my assessment. I need to get a copy of that, I thought, so that when I am older I can read it. Another thought then popped into my head. Its time to let it go. All of this sadness needs to be shown the door. This thought startled me. Am I ready? Can I let go? Do I even know how?
Jan and I had a deep discussion today. She asked about my dreams, and my sleeping pattern. I told her about my recurring nightmare I have, where I am trapped in a world covered in sandstone, where council buildings tower over me, and I cannot escape. Just when I think I've seen the promise land, when I think I am safe, it turns out to be a dead end. I am trapped. Jan asked me what I thought this signified in my life. I told her I think it represents all of my insecurities and my paranoia, that towers over me, consumes me, never letting me escape its clutch. I also told Jan that I am sleeping a lot, and I am constantly tired. I wake up every night though. Always between four and five am. I get up and I am wide away. I force myself back to sleep though.
What if all of these signs aren't symptoms? What if they are just a product of my nature, my biology, my life, the way I just am? It doesn't have to be depression...does it? Just because I wake up every morning at four or five am. Just because I am loosing my memory or I feel sad, does it really mean that I am depressed?

Jan said something interesting. She said that sadness is may way of coping with the world. That I don't know any other way to deal, so I use sadness instead. I am not a fulfilled person yet, and so I take the sadness and I try to fill myself with it, in the hopes of feeling whole. I do not feel whole. I feel like an empty, used shell.
Telling Jan my nightmare made her envision a wall. The wall is my depression, my illness, my troubles and my problems. I am constantly hacking at the wall, Jan tells me. I am trying to destroy it, trying to pull it down until all that's left is ruble. Instead all I need to do is walk around the wall. To say "Fuck it all" (as my mother vicariously shouts from time to time), and laugh in the face of my fears.