I need a place to say it.

I've been living with pain for so long.  Deep pain.  And I've been feeling lately that if I could just express it and put it out there into the universe somehow then the pressure would ease and it will be livable. 

Depression. Anxiety.

They have been my companions for several years.  There has definitely been an ebb and flow to it--but at this moment there is more flow and less ebb.  I sit back and almost physically feel the dull ache wash over me, with occasional bursts of stinging pain. 

I've done so much and yet so little to "help myself" "overcome" this mental illness.  And yet here I sit with tears rolling down my face, all alone in my house on a gorgeous rainy autumn day, wondering how I will ever experience the meaning in my life. 

I don't say "find" the meaning in my life, because it has been found--it's always been there.  I just have a problem accessing it, touching it, feeling it, and experiencing it.  My life is absolutely beautiful, one that I would choose and create for myself if I were the grand architect.  It is right there in all of it's splendor before me, but I am behind an impenetrable glass wall with my nose pressed up against the glass, wishing and hoping and pleading that someday I can access it.  This is what makes it all the more painful--knowing what I am missing out on, and seeing the days, weeks, months, and years fly by knowing that they can never return to me the empty days I have lost and fill them again.

In my experience there is no miracle pill or cure.  The paradox of depression is that to overcome it you need to get moving--makes decisions, talk it out, go to doctors,exercise, study up on options--and yet depression is the very thing stopping you from moving.  Anxiety tells you that making a simple phone call is going to be a difficult and painful experience. 

Hope.  It hasn't always been in my line of sight.  These days there are strong, yet very short, glimmers.  It is the memory of them that carry me through today.