Although I have been battling the depression since early 2006, each time I experience a flare-up, there are some things that remain constant and others that are different. For instance, last summer, I was sleeping all of the time. Deep sleep. I was exhausted, and I would have to force myself awake and up and out of bed. This time around, I'm not sleeping. I don't even remember the last time that I had a good night's sleep. I think it might have been two weeks ago. Since then, I have been unable to fall asleep much before four in the morning, and my sleep has been restless and frequently interrupted. I stay in bed far longer than I should, far longer than all of the experts suggest, in the hopes that I may find some peace in several continuous hours of sleep. But it hasn't happened. It's very common for people with depression to experience sleeping problems. It's also common for them to reverse their waking and sleeping hours, finding their most comfortable, productive time during the overnight, while spending the daylight hours under the covers. I'm caught in that cycle right now, and I would love nothing better than to change it.

Meanwhile, I am beginning to experience frustration from people in my life. My parents, mostly. Having done a lot to try and help me get better last summer, they are finding it more difficult to provide that same level of support this summer. My mother is the worst. I'm not really sure what's going on with her, but she has been distant and cold toward me since she returned from three weeks spent in Chicago following the birth of my niece. I don't know what kinds of things were talked about between my sister and her husband and my mother, but it seems that from the moment she got off the plane, she was giving me a hard time about just about everything. Unfortunately, it was shortly after she arrived home that I became depressed again. Whether or not it's a causal relationship is unclear. For years, I put up with what I can honestly say was "emotional abuse," beginning during my teenage years when a young man typically experiences a separation from his mother. But I managed to work through it, and I tried to build a decent relationship with her. And it has been decent at times. For instance, when she came back to Pittsburgh from Florida last November to help me get back on my feet when I was going through a particularly difficult time with the depression. But now she feels as though she has done her part, and she doesn't want to provide the help that I need right now to keep going while the depression tries to drag me down. I really hope that I am not at the point now where my depression fluctuates according to my relationship with my mother (read: I just want my mommy to love me.). But it's clear that something has happened to her to cause her to want little to do with my depression. That leaves my father as the understanding one, and you may remember from posts written last summer that my father is old school and has a tendency to think that if I just "pull myself up by the bootstraps," then I can beat this thing. My father is retired, and he still gets up at six every morning. He certainly can't understand how and why I would spend the day in bed. I don't know. I feel like I've just skimmed the surface of these issues with my parents, but it's so complicated and in many ways, hard to put into words. We all have issues with our parents, right? But for all of the years that I was able to deal with those issues (probably by internalizing them, rather than dealing with them in a healthy manner), now I seem particularly vulnerable to them. And I know that thinking about them is making me feel worse, making me sicker. But when I'm lying in bed and I can't sleep, my mind naturally starts to ruminate over them. As an adoptee, it's almost a given that I would have abandonment issues. But now they really seem to be haunting me.