Cautiously Optimistic

I wanted to kill myself this week.

Not like when someone says “Oh my god, this play is so awful, I want to kill myself.” or “If these skinny jeans don’t fit me anymore, I’m gonna kill myself.” No, I wanted to end my life. I shouldn’t even say want. It felt more like that was the only option.

That is how depression fucks with you or at least me. Some people say, with disdain ”Oh my, I would never entertain the idea of suicide.” Which first of all, suicide isn’t something I entertain. I don’t give suicide some brie and those Pepperidge Farm butterfly crackers and ask it if it wants to join me in a sing-along. No, suicide is more like the person who comes to the party, that random acquaintance you didn’t even expect to show up, and stays long after everyone else. You start folding up the chairs, putting on your pjs, and they’re still there, flipping around the channels on your TV and trying to make you feel bad about owning all the seasons of Friends on DVD. Suicide is that fucker.
Second of all, take your disdain and shove it. You aren’t better than me because you have never been suicidal. That’s like saying you’re better than someone because you’ve never had eczema. No one ever judges the eczema sufferers.

But anyway, back to this week. I’ve spent days feeling suicidal, it hasn’t been intense all the time, but it’s there, and at night it has felt inevitable, not immediate, but inevitable, a feeling so strong I couldn’t imagine it not there.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday night were horrible, and then I woke up Saturday feeling better, and today (Sunday,) I felt fuckin good, a good that I haven’t felt in a long time. So I am enjoying it, embracing it, but I’m not totally buying it yet. I have been here before, and before, and before, and I so want to think “Yeah, this is gonna last a long while.” but I have seen it go the other way.

So I find myself saying my phrase of the past couple years, whenever I get here. “I’m cautiously optimistic.”

“How you doing, Deena?”

“I’m cautiously optimistic.”

“Oh that’s awesome, so glad everything is back to normal.”

“Well, I’m, uh, cautiously optimistic, it could change.”

“Oh stop it, you’re great, I can see it in your eyes.”

“Uh, ok, thanks.”

So that’s where I’m at, “cautiously optimistic.”  What exactly does that mean for me? Well right now it means I hope to wake up at 7 AM feeling this way, but for good measure, at 9 AM, I’ll strap on some electrodes and get some shocks. Ah, the fancy life of the cautiously optimistic.