Awake again, a thousand thoughts going inside my head. No rhyme, no rhythm, just there. One hundred thousand times a second it seems. Kind of like a meteor shower, just a constant barrage of information hitting and bouncing around like a bubble in my brain. It is strange, but all my years of consciences memory, all floating around and running laps in my grey matter.Past lovers, past enemies, past friends, past wrongs, past rights… all of that, just free floating and creeping in and out in a masterful weave of total crap. I mean, it is my history on parade, and who doesn’t love a good docudrama, but in this case, I just want to sleep. This is one of the first nights in a while that I have been kept up by my thoughts. So, I will call it a win.

I am writing tonight to try and slow me down. I want to get to a point in life where I am not having the thunderous hordes of all my life’s works bombard me until three in the morning. It is a challenge to anyone who has ever dealt with a mind disease. I mean, who knows what set this one off, was it the horrendous customer service that I received from my mortgage company, or what is the fact that I was not in the mood to be working today?  I am over trying to figure out the patterns or the triggers. There is no reason for it. Honestly, I am healthy, my kids are safe, my wife is here with me, and we have a roof over our heads… no worries to be had.

Yet, there they are.  Everything all at once. It starts out easy enough, it really does. You just get memory after memory, and you start walking down that road. Then there are more, faster and faster, until you can just see the beams and micro flashes.. kind of like headlights on a highway, or the ludicrous speed from Spaceballs. But, I know what is coming next. Oh, you can not fool me depression… I know what is next.

I am going to try to stop it again. Like I always do, but the tapes of my failures and what could have beens are on the way. Maybe not tonight, maybe not tomorrow, but this is the cycle. This is what comes next. I will get sent down the road I don’t want to go down, to fight the demons again. Yep, that job promotion I missed because I was not good enough, or the past relationship that I screwed up because of my childish ways, or whatever my tangled wiring wants to conjure up this time. Yep, that is what is next. I will muddle through it, I know I will. I will get past it, I always have. I just hate it.

So, here I am again, trying to slow it down. Praying for God just to slow me down. Curses to this affliction! My mind just will not be still. I say this with all the sincerity in my soul, I know I can defeat this massive disease, I just wish that I already have. I believe that I can, I am just not sure how yet. I guess that is what I am supposed to learn, how to let go. How to just let this be, be still with myself, and just God take it away. Back in my human, flawed self, he is not working fast enough. In the instantaneous day that we are living in, I should have been healed long before tonight. Right? Not so……. but what the hell am I to gain from this? What secret life lesson is going to come from my insomniatic mind numbing experiences?  I don’t know.

Here is what it has brought me. Closer to God. The day I let depression actually win, I turned myself over to God. Honestly, I was done. My life was not worth living. I could have died and ended the fight, let depression win. God said no, gave me the Grace to start over again. It has brought me to this forum. Without depression, I would not have had the courage to actually start writing this blog. I was keeping all of this locked up inside. Instead I have found a reason to share my story, my thoughts, and my work with everyone.  I started this with the hopes of one person ever actually reading it. Well, that was surpassed on day two. It has helped me become more sensitive to the people around me. To hopefully appreciate the fact that I am still functioning in society, and I have no completely shut myself in. All good things, I would say.

I am not sure the point of this post, other than to illustrate the ramblings of my mind. Honestly, as I am writing this, a million and a half thoughts have happened, with no real stop to it all. God, I just want you to slow me down.