April Showers Bring May Flowers?
The Vicious Grey Cycle
April was a tough month-but then again, so was March and February. Winter just sucked, okay?
I’ve been on anti-depressants since the Fall, and they worked wonders for a while. As someone who’s been depressed since his early-20s, it was nice to feel more like myself for once. It was as though a grey lens had been lifted, and I could actually see colour.
I welcomed the sadness, anger, and frustration-alongside the happiness and excitement, of course. It certainly beat the constant irritability, reticence, and feeling of monotony that had characterized my life up until that point.
I’m not sure when that upward momentum stopped, but I grew increasingly withdrawn entering the winter months. Maybe all of the life changes that I had gone through up until that point had finally caught up to me: buying my first home, moving away from my friends and family, settling into a new job, preparing for my first child, supporting a pregnant partner, and all of the usual financial and personal stressors one deals with on a day-to-day basis.
My therapist has since helped me acknowledge how much that truly is, but at the time I chose to repress and avoid processing anything. Looking back on it now, when has repression ever worked for anyone?
