As ever, the cycle ebbs and flows; undulating anxiety and depressive episodes, sliding into couch paralysis when obligations aren’t pressing… and sometimes when they are. Consistent sleep eludes me, but so does staying awake. The thoughts within are exhausted and frustrated with feeling the happiest I’ve ever been, but still fighting against the darkness clouding in. And the sought after relief at the end of the day never quite arrives.

It’s incredible what the mind can do. The memories it deems necessary to remind you; the ways it fills in what was never really there. And while it sends it all racing around in circles, the heart bursts with every possible emotion. With love and hope, with sadness and loss, with grief, fury, and the feelings that cannot be named. If only it could all just pour out into some other vessel, or out into the wind.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s done just that when I see my son struggling. Have I poured that bit of myself into him? I gave him the ears and chin, but did I also give him the MDD and anxiety? Did I pass along the need to bunker down in the house like hermit when the world outside seems scary? Or the need to rip your skin off because it feels like everything you feel is stuck inside with no way to come out?

He may have inherited these things from me… and I wish I’d been the one to pass along the ability to bounce back so quickly. He acquired that elsewhere. Or did I once climb out of the pit just as quickly; only now, in my later years, ripping and tearing at the stone of the well, grasping at air, at nothingness before I finally snag a ledge and lift myself out? Those times before seem so far away. A distant life in a distant time.

We’ve both been back in regular therapy. I’ve been taking two separate medications: one for anxiety and one for depression. My dependency on them has grown more than ever as the clinic we attend cannot see patients at the moment. I feel like I’m flying in the wind without a target to aim for. So I get more tattoos, drink more coffee, and bake more bread hoping it’ll all pull me out of the storm. I avoid the news when I can; go to the gym to refresh – and yet “it” so easily slides back into place. It knows the curves and grooves of my mind and soul; tucks into the crevices – puzzle pieces sliding into place. It’s so easy to be there; so easy to sit at the bottom of the well; so comfortable – like going home.

There have been new diagnoses, medication changes, mental health urgencies. There’s been government shutdowns, working without pay. Hard conversations with people we love, and hard conversations with ourselves. We’ve made plans and canceled them. Made new plans and stuck to them. We’ve been making an effort to step outside of our comfort boundaries. Sometimes toeing that line is scary and exhausting, but we keep at it. Anything to keep the darkness at bay.