Hopelessness is a very strong thought for me; it’s taken years for me to try to even acknowledge that maybe things realistically have a chance of changing. Having this small degree of freedom has allowed me to see just how incredibly devoted my thoughts have been to this hopelessness, to this immobility, to this futility. It has been more than a belief, it has been as foundational as “I think, therefore I am”.

It’s almost as strong, one could say, as a belief in god. The belief that people hold so concretely that they know it to be true, without question. It is the belief that is at the center of all others for them. They’ll do any number of mental acrobatics to keep it in place, and anything that may cause them to question the belief questions their very self.

This will, I hope, be outside of the area of “Those Feels”. I do this partly so that, if I ever do get “Better”, I can be sure to never make light of how bad it could get with rose-tinted hindsight. But also, I avoid writing “feely” posts because they tend to be very fleeting, and this particular topic is something that does not seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

I’ve made a lot of progress in the past 2 years. Those close to me and my therapist would say as much. But if you grabbed me on any day of the week, nearly any time of the day, I’d say I’m just kind of waiting around. At this point, depression for the rest of my life is a matter of degree, and I accept I’ll always have it, but I don’t expect to get better. Yeah, I’ve gotten “better”, but I’m not going to get “Better” with a capital “B”. To be functional or “normal”, where mental illness is a person’s attribute instead of a definition.

Let’s skip the part where I pretend to know all about Dialectical Behavior Therapy and just get to the part that my therapist has given me.