The unexpected

It's funny how things we don't anticipate can totally change the way we view the world.  I heard a story today of someone I know deciding to become an American citizen after 9-11 because all of a sudden it actually felt like her homeland.  I heard another story of some good that came out of the Vancouver riots after the Stanley Cup final.  A man in Nova Scotia will soon turn 100 and his wish for his birthday was to see his estranged son.  No one knew the whereabouts of the son.  After the riots some TV station was doing a story of the effect on the homeless in Vancouver and someone recognized the estranged son.  They went to Vancouver and found him and took him home to see his dad.  Good from bad.  Changed views because of the unexpected.

I for so long ran from a diagnosis of depression.  I wanted nothing to do with it.  I was scared of the stigma, scared of being on medication, scared of discovering the real causes of my depression, scared to know myself, just plain scared.  Since accepting and getting help for my depression I see the world differently.  While there may still be some stigma about it out there, I know that a lot of it was in my head as my own fears.  Taking medication isn't the end of the world.  What I can see now is that I was in really bad shape and  living with the medications is better than feeling like I did then.

And the biggest thing has been really getting to know myself.  Stopping the pretending and really understanding what was driving me to act in certain ways.  This has been terribly hard and terribly rewarding all at the same time.  If you had told me even a year ago that I would feel this way, that I would come to accept depression as a part of me, that I would come to accept some of the other things about myself that I have, I would have laughed at you.  I guess I probably could have anticipated crashing if I had let myself, but really it was unexpected for me.  And yet, this is better.  Living as a whole person (at least I am on the way there) instead of ignoring so much of who I am is better.  I feel alive instead of in a fog.

Someone said to me that she wouldn't wish depression on her worst enemy, yet she wouldn't change having gone through it.  Considering that I have been suffering with this for a long long time, I also wouldn't change the healing process.  I am finally learning how to live, how to be alive, how to be all of me.  For me the unexpected has changed my view of myself and of the world.  Bad to good.