...

It's about the time of year again, and the time of messing with my medications again, when the depression really starts to set in.
It feels like a pit inside your chest. It feels like someone's tied a rope to your windpipe and hung themselves from it. As cliche as it sounds, everytime I try to force a smile, I do feel tears prick the corners of my eyes.

This post does discuss topics relating to pregnancy, miscarriage, suicide, and suicidal ideation. As such, sensitive paragraphs have been spoiled. Hover or click to read. Part of me wonders if it's something to do with the dreams I've been having recently, far too often for my own comfort. I've had dreams before about children; having them and caring for them. But I always end up losing them. The first one happened when I was 17, and it was so achingly real. So real that I feel like I lived a life inside my dream. I still can't forget it.

His name was Eli. He was about two months old. He was born premature, an emergency c-section due to concerns with the umbilical cord wrapping around his neck in utero. He had a heart defect. He had brown eyes, and brown curly hair, thick as grass in an untouched meadow. In the dream, I am driving to the hospital in the passenger seat, holding him in my arms. He is going into cardiac arrest. Before we reach the parking lot of the ER, he is dead. I hold him, my child, my baby. I'm still holding him. And he won't ever take another breath.
When I wake up, for real, in my own bed, I still feel the weight of his small body in my arms. I cry, for hours. About a dream, as pathetic as it sounds. But it was so, so real. It was the most real I have felt in a very, very long time.

I didn't have another one of those dreams for a while, but somehow the next one was worse, and it was the most recent. I remember, in the dream, being asleep. Asleep in my boyfriend's bed, and warm, and safe, and happy. I woke up to something...too warm. Something that signaled there was something wrong happening. Whipping back the sheets, I was laying in a pool of blood. Dream me knew right away that I'd lost the pregnancy. It was an odd, expected, known sense of failure and guilt and hatred for my own body.

That feeling followed me to the waking world for the next few days. I was supposed to have a therapy session, supposed to get to talk about this all, but when I got there, I got so tired - the kind of tired that follows you into your bones, like you're drowning. I got so tired, and so sad, I couldn't even say what I really felt. I had fifteen minutes before I was interrupted, and all I got out was "out of control, overwhelmed, helpless, inadequate, inferior, worthless, exposed, powerless, isolated, abandoned," and "fragile."
Part of the exercise is relearning how to define and acknowledge my emotions. All I got through was the definitions. I don't know how to stop feeling like this, and I fear it would lead to another depressive spiral. I can't do that - I have so much good going on for me. But I had a panic attack tonight, and sometimes when the hatred and guilt and failure and expectations get too much, I do get that passive suicidal ideation. I do get the desire to stop eating, to slowly let myself waste away. I get the urge to just lay in bed until I hopefully stop breathing. I stare for a little too long at the various medications on my desk, in the cabinets. The little voice in my head talks to me, how easy it would be, how much nicer, how much better, and it gets so hard to not listen.
It's so fucking hard, and I know many, many have it worse than me. Who am I to complain? Why should I? But in the end I think it's worth it to complain. It proves I was here. I won't be forever, but I am here now. I am here now, and I am trying so, so, so very hard to only look at the best things in my life.