Jinx Pinch Poke, SOMEBODY buy me a Coke!

It's that time of year for me.  My bestest girl Jen jinxed me.  She asked me at the beginning of the week how I was faring with the changing of the seasons and I said, "Really well.  I think the medication, that I've been diligently on since almost a year ago, is definitely working." 

She of all people knows that I have fought with my depression the most at this time of the year.  She knows that 98% of my relationships, romance, platonic and with myself, have taken turns for the drastically worse at this time of year.  My first husband and I separated on Thanksgiving Day.  My second husband and I, in our many demises, rarely spent a winter together, and ultimately ended in an October.  My relationship last year fell apart right around the same time the one before it started to crash and burn the year before. 

It's also at these times that I isolate myself from friends and family, some of which are still there on the other side, some who are not.  Jen and a small handful are always there when I come out of the shadows.  The people closest to me know better than to come in with me.  It's too damn dark in there and I won't let them.  I actually know my way around pretty well.  O.K.  So last year was definitely different.  I knew the way out, I just didn't want to keep walking.  My closest people kept telling me, "you can do this Dinie, you've been through this before."  And my answer was, "I know I CAN, I just can't find the will to WANT to do it again."  I was tired and broken and bleeding on the inside and had no desire for self repair or anymore Mr. FixIt's. 

Jen convinced me to talk to my Doctor.  He couldn't let me legally leave the premises after our chat.  Sara got to come get me and she's the one that had the ultimate pleasure of bargaining with the lunatic to stay at the hospital.  It came down simply to, "if you let me go smoke a cigarette in your truck, I'll stay."  I think she might have lit it for me.  :)  And then came the big fun in the nut ward and the resistence to having to be on some damn pill forever.  What if it changed the good stuff about me?  Made me boring as hell?  Fuck that.  I'd rather be insanely suicidal than BORING!  And yet, it didn't.  It took two different tries and several weeks to adjust, but it's been pretty damn good not swinging out into the thunderclouds every couple of months. 

Slowly and steadily I've gotten my life back on an even track, in spite of the pennies that are sometimes on the rails.  I flattened them and kept on rolling.  Yet today, I feel like I hit a spike that's come loose.  I am jarred and jostled.  A bit off balance and feeling pretty ricketty.  I'm not feeling like the Japanese Shinkansen bullet train so much as a really fucking old steam engine that can't shovel my coal fast enough.  I'm gettin tired again.  I'm not givin' up.  Trust me.  That's why I'm telling on myself.  Retraining my train.  I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...  Oh.  All right I know I can.  And I am.  Woot Woot.