{"id":11843,"date":"2022-06-30T06:37:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-30T13:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=11843"},"modified":"2022-06-18T09:38:10","modified_gmt":"2022-06-18T16:38:10","slug":"you-think-you-know-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/you-think-you-know-me\/","title":{"rendered":"You Think You Know Me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer\u2019s voice on the page.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You Think You Know Me<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Karen Handyside Ely<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You think you know me, but you don\u2019t know\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

that I am struggling with a powerful bout of depression. I\u2019ve battled it before. I\u2019ve been in deeper, darker, more dangerous pits. This current episode has rolled over me slowly. Not a storm, but more a dense, thick, cloud cover, wrapping me in the heavy humidity of numbness and ennui, pinning me to the ground with a listless, languid, low-grade despair that makes me want to sleep all day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m suffocating one breath at a time\u2026 in slow motion. This time around, my depression isn\u2019t a raging sea, which has been my usual experience, but an ebbing tide that creeps back over the sand as the fog rolls in to smother the beach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could cry, just writing this, but I don\u2019t. I continue to function, smile, interact. And I try to fight back. I fight with prescribed medication. I fight by restricting alcohol and chocolate \u2013 alcohol because it provides temporary, false relief that will ultimately kill me, and chocolate because of my natural proclivity to drown myself in calories, which will also kill me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I work with a counselor. It doesn\u2019t feel like it helps, but I know it will. I know I WILL get better. I always have before. My hope has not completely flickered out. I think this is partially a delayed reaction to the covid years, a sort of PTSD, now that the crisis is over (as \u201cover\u201d as it can ever be.) I lived in fight mode for 2 \u00bd years and managed to keep my head above water, legs propelling me forward. Now my strength and discipline are gone. I\u2019m left with a sorrowful emptiness that I cannot shake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For now, I am trying to be gentle with myself. I\u2019m clearing away the unrequired obligations in my life that do not bring me joy. I am de-cluttering the way I live, ala Marie Kondo. I am reintroducing the activities that used to motivate me. I am withholding self-judgement, the hardest exercise of all, and learning to love who I am, not what I do or how I look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t think that I am alone. Yes, I have a medical diagnosis of depression, but I can sense the sad fatigue that clings to people around me wherever I go\u2026 in grocery lines, or shopping at TJMaxx, in airports and zoom meetings. I think so many are coping, on some level, with this feeling. It hides behind frantic busyness and red-hot anger. It lurks beneath everyday smiles and societal pleasantries. Most of us aren\u2019t incapacitated by it, but the weight of what we carry has become a constant. You think you know me, but you don\u2019t. Right now, I grapple with knowing myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Karen Handyside Ely<\/strong> was born and raised in Petaluma, California. She delights in difficult crossword puzzles, the Santa Rosa Symphony, and traveling with her husband, James.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Karen has been published in several Write Spot Books<\/a>: \u00a0The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing: Discoveries, The Write Spot: Reflections<\/em>,\u00a0The Write Spot: Possibilities<\/em>,\u00a0The Write Spot: Writing as a Path to Healing, <\/em>and\u00a0The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year<\/em>.\u00a0All available at Amazon<\/a> and your local bookseller.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer\u2019s voice on the page. You Think You Know Me By Karen Handyside Ely  You think you know me, but you don\u2019t know\u2026 that I am struggling with a powerful bout of depression. I\u2019ve battled it before. I\u2019ve been in deeper, darker, more dangerous pits. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1474],"tags":[1818,1566,1444],"class_list":["post-11843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sparks","tag-depression","tag-karen-handyside-ely","tag-the-write-spot-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-351","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11843"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11844,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11843\/revisions\/11844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}