No Question It's Depression

  Depression is something I have been battling with for years, pretty much since the first day I began to write poetry. What I wrote wasn't meant for criticism or for publication at all. For me poetry was a coping mechanism for my depression, more like a hobby. This is not to say that I didn't know at that time that I wanted to write professionally. No, I knew that at a very young age. However, depression put the urge to write fiction, and all prose in general, on indefinite hiatus. Through poetry I felt I could accurately convey my emotions while masking their inceptions, through abstract language and vague descriptions. This period of poetry lasted from ages 14 to 20ish, always coupled with feelings of anxiety and depression. Only when I became of age did the urge to write poetry begin to waver, yet depression remained. A block, it seemed, set upon me. When I read Boise's maintenance problems, I noticed many of them applied to me, unsurprisingly. I never once in 6 years asked for help with my depression. Never. To do so would be preposterous! Why did I need it with poetry by my side, comforting me, temporarily relieving my symptoms daily. If you look at my old blogs (my first one was on Myspace, my second here on blogger!), you will see somewhere close to 1,000 posts, many of them poorly written, sad poems containing overwhelming angst. Depression emanates from them, without a doubt. But because I did not feel I had a reason to ask for help, it was a problem with no solution. That it, until the current phase of my life, where I have felt creatively blocked for about a year and a half.
  Unlike Boise's assertions about depression as a reason for blocking, I now know mine stems from problems with my relationship, problems I have suppressed. My brother says that we do things like this because they are easy. It's easy to stay in a harmful relationship, avoiding the inevitable, painful end; it's easy to say you are suffering writers block, without analyzing why; it's easy to make excuses for your failures, placing blame on such ridiculous things like your cat or your car; indeed, it's easier to live on autopilot, while the problems snowball, blocking becomes a way of life, and depression rules every action. Accountability and what Boise describes as maintenance are non-realities on autopilot.
  Mindfulness and meditation, amongst a few other things, have given me power. When I began this course, my crisis hit me hard. I realized that all my unhappiness was due to a lack of a mindfulness of myself. Everyone and everything else had always come first. My problems didn't matter; I didn't matter. Just before this course began I finally gathered the courage, the self-worth, to ask for help. If I were going to get rid of my depression, I was first going to need guidance and support that came from someone anonymous. Then, as we began meditation on a daily basis, the overwhelming, cluttered, buzzing spiral in my mind slowed it's violent swirl. My mood showed signs of stabilization in the periods between meditation. Yet my stress did not cease, for my problems were not solved. It has taken the entirety of this course for me to gain any traction against them. When you have let them run your life for almost 2 years, and depression consume you for almost 8, it takes time to change. But it is possible.