The Acid Test

Last Monday, I was out of it emotionally. Slow, indecisive, unable to get myself moving. I had taken a couple of weeks off of work because I got hit by a particularly bad stint of depression, something I've had on and off for oh, I don't know, most of my life. I'd been dropping emotionally for several months but not in the way I usually drop, or at least that is what it seemed at the time. This drop was more physical than emotional if that makes any sense. Physically this is how I felt. 

• I did not want to move. Ever. Again. 
• I could not decide what to wear, when to get ready, even when to go in to work. Every decision felt monumental, far-reaching, and completely overwhelming. This I knew was not normal. Major indecisiveness plagues me in this place. All I can see is an interminable number of days stretching out ahead of me with more and more and more decisions to make. This makes me want to curl into a fetal position and moan continuously. 
• My very head felt heavy and dark. Like too much was going on in there and I needed someone to prop my eyelids open for me to be able to see.  

This feeling is not a feeling of health. I know that intellectually in that moment, but it is so hard to believe. So hard to comprehend. You get so conditioned, so habituated to feeling miserable and terrible and unhappy and full of loathing day after day after day that it is hard to comprehend that you ever felt any differently. That the world every looked brighter. That this is not normal. 

It is so hard to believe. 

When I realized how low I was feeling, how out of it, how in the dumps, I started to wonder if I should go on medication again. I thought about going to my doctor. I thought about doing anything and everything to make myself feel better. Even for just a moment. 

That is when I remembered a book I had called The Mood Cure. I love this book. As I reread the book, I suddenly remembered that one of the supplements recommended in the book--amino acids--were some of the same supplements my doctor had given me a while ago and I had not been taking them. I had been feeling fine. But I had forgotten that she told me to take them again if I noticed a dip in my mood. 

Let's just say that I had noticed a dip in my mood. More like a deep, gaping maw of a hole. Or a valley carved out of the guttural innards of a sky-touching mountain. Yes, I had finally with all of my deeply aware perceptions noticed the pumping hemorrhaging of my soul. 

So, I went immediately to my cupboard and took two of the amino acids. And then I went back to my book with my skepticism fully engaged as well as my heavy, heavy eyes, my indecision, and my utter inability to move. 

And then I woke up. 

Within a half an hour, my indecision lapsed, my eyes fully opened, and I moved. All seemingly simple, simple things. And all often easily brushed aside. But when you've been living on the planet of How-Will-I-Survive-the-Next-Hour, those are monumental, heroic, unbelievable feats of power and wonder. 

It was in a word a miracle. 

One that has not left me yet. One that I will continue to test today, tomorrow, and the day after that. 

It has become my acid test.