Bravado and being real

Yesterday the local counseling centre was providing free depression screening on it's website.  I took a look at it, just for interest.  When I looked at it, it reminded me of the many times I manipulated those screenings to show that I was fine.  It wasn't hard.  I am smart, and I know the symptoms of depression and so when someone would give me the test, I would lie about how I was feeling.  No problem.  In a lot of ways I felt like I was outsmarting them.  In some ways, I think the system was part of the problem.  More than once I was given the screening before I even talked to a person.  For someone like me, who was good at hiding, didn't really trust people, and scared to death, I wasn't going to reveal that up-front.  I needed time to get to know someone.  I also needed someone to push me, not to back off when I was prickly.  I didn't find that.  In the end, I know that lying about how I was feeling didn't hurt the counsellors, it only hurt me.  But at the time, it seemed like a completely reasonable thing to be doing.

I was scared of depression.  Scared of anti-depressant medication, scared to show any kind of weakness and quite frankly not that aware of my own feelings.  So, I put up a front, put on the bravado that everything was ok and moved on.  I saw lots of counsellors in that time, but nothing really ever changed.  I know it wasn't their job to change things for me, but I also think they weren't observant and were not well equipped to deal with the wall I was putting up.  It also seems to me that they were very dependent on the screening and didn't really take a lot of time and effort to really observe or listen to the undertones of what I was saying.  One mentioned depression a few times and I immediately changed the subject, every time.  Maybe my expectations were too high.  Whatever the reason, I kept going on with the mask, the wall and the bravado.

I will be forever grateful to the counsellor I have been seeing for the past couple of years (and to the friend who suggested her).  She really took the time to listen to the words I was saying and somehow saw that there really was something there.  She called me on the bravado and let me know in no uncertain terms what message that sent.  Every time she saw it she said something about it.  She also showed me, somehow, that she couldn't help me unless I let her in, let her behind the wall.

I was terrified to say the least.  Letting someone see the hurt, frankly, letting myself discover the hurt, was so scary and hard.  Hurt is difficult, hurt is horrible, but numbness is worse.  Living behind a wall is worse.  Eventually, I managed to find a way to let myself chip away at the wall, and to let her see some of what was there.  It wasn't pretty, but for the first time in a long time I started to see the real me.

In the end, when I felt like I had hit a wall in my healing and she suggested depression and the anti-depressants I was much more receptive to hearing it.  I trusted that she knew what she was talking  about, and that she wasn't just relying on some answers I gave in a screening.  She knew a lot of what was going on and could see that there was something other than old hurts going on.  I was still terrified, but at least I managed to do something, I wasn't paralyzed.

I struggle everyday to be real, to leave the bravado behind.  I have to remind myself constantly what it is like to live behind the wall. It's not living, and that's the thing, it is only existing.  It protects me for a certain kind of hurt, but inflicts a whole different kind, which is so much bigger and harder in the end.  The wall blocks out living, it blocks out connection with other people, it blocks out joy and sorrow.  I live in the world now, most of the time.  It is harder in so many ways, but it is the only way to live.