I Do Not Have Depression, I Am Just Depressed.

I hope I do not have depression.

That worried me, because for two weeks I was agitated, I was restless. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. I was waking up early in the mornings and walking through Central Park. My legs didn’t stop moving even at work, I’d anxiously shake them while at my desk.

And I didn’t really mind, because hey, who can’t stand to lose some weight?

Ennui. That’s what I said. And to make it more fun, Emu. I was feeling like a flightless fowl, unable to free myself from the earthly bonds. I stopped seeing my future. I stopped seeing the good around me.

Then I looked up the real definition of Ennui- depression. I took the survey from my therapist, I had to mark everything yes.

But that doesn’t mean I have depression, it means I was in a state of depression.

What I’ve had, for quite some time, is Post-Traumatic-Stress Disorder, PTSD. Being a Manhattanite, that’s a trendy diagnosis. But it has nothing to do with the towers falling, it has to do with my ‘childhood trauma’ which are likened to over 20 years of torture.

My mother has a diagnosis, presumed by her actions: Bi-polar.

That scared me, for so many years as a child, as a teen, I was afraid to show emotions because she was like a shark ready to attack. Hell, she admitted later in life that she enjoyed making me cry, causing pain, doing what she could to feed off emotion. So I stopped crying, stopped everything.

Then, in my twenties and having severed ties with her, when I felt happy or sad or anything else I feared I was bi-polar. I am really still learning what emotions are and how to not be afraid of them. I have been tested many times, and so far a clean bill of health. Not bi-polar, PTSD.

The thing is, I get triggers. And after finding out what depression was and only knowing about Cymbalta I dive-bombed and found I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t make any decisions, felt like everything was futile.

But now that it’s past, I realize what happened.

Triggers.

When something happens that threatens my safety I become that teenager I was who couldn’t control anything in her life and had to deal with the irrational parent that enjoyed causing her children pain. That was a time when I felt I wouldn’t live to be twenty.

I feel so silly now, knowing that construction outside my house coupled with fleas in the apartment threatened my feeling of safety. I’m upset that such seemingly normal events can send me spiraling.

But I suppose that’s why I’m in therapy.