Funk This Mood.

Please welcome my friend Singlemama CC to the blog today for Mental Illness Awareness Week (MIAW).

I met CC back in May and she made a big impression on me. She is truly a pull-no-punches, tell-it-like-it-is mama, who fiercely loves her daughter (called the PIT on her blog Not Your Average Single Mama). She’s written this raw post about the funk of depression.

After you’re done here, I want you to go check out her blog and read this: Ready or not mama, here come the uncomfortable questions. Y’all know I’m all about suicide prevention, mental health understanding and awareness. This is CC’s story of not only living through the suicide of a dear friend and going through the stages of grief, but also getting the hard question from her daughter “How did he die?” It is SO powerful, especially during MIAW.

Parental advisory warning for adult language ;) 

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Learning to love yourself can be somewhat challenging when you are your own worst enemy.

Constantly battling your own thoughts is fucking annoying and beyond frustrating.

You feel trapped but know you have the power to escape, you just can’t find it.

I annoy myself on a daily basis.

Daily I can be heard yelling “fucking COME ON!!!!”, followed by the sound of my head hitting my desk, steering wheel or wall.

Living with the funk is like walking around with dirty glasses.

You can kind of see but not well enough to function to your full potential.

It’s foggy and gloomy even when the sun is beating down on your face.

You look around and there’s nothing “wrong” except the way you feel.

I’ve felt the pull of this funk my entire life.

As a kid I remember having no desire to go play outside with my friends, I was fine curled up on the couch watching cartoons.

As a teen, the funk mixed with hormones and that did not go well.

My mom took me to counseling, she tried to be patient and understanding, all while ignoring the fact that she felt the pull of the same funk.

She’s a firm believer in “you don’t need drugs, you need to get over it”.

If I knew what the hell IT was, I’d fucking cartwheel over it, Ma.

As an adult, I’ve learned there’s nothing to get over.

This is the way that I am.

I have depression, a chemical imbalance in my brain.

I have anxiety that makes me vomit and keeps me in the house more than I like.

There is no cure for this.

I’m not going to wake up one day and be a chipper little ray of sunshine.

This is the way I am.

This is part of my life.

Accepting that I am battling myself has made the battles a bit easier to beat.

I’ve found ways to pry the funk off me.

Music, books, writing, Dexter or Weeds onDemand, playing hide & seek with the PIT, wrestling with the bastardcat…laughing…laughing helps a lot once I can LET myself laugh.

The meds help but are pointless if I’m not doing my part to fight back and somedays…I just don’t fucking want to and I know better than anyone that I am one stubborn little shit.

If I don’t WANT to, I’m not going to.

Somedays I lock myself in the bathroom and cry it out or crawl back into bed, try to restart with a better start.

Those days are getting further apart and who knows, maybe one day, I won’t have those days anymore.

@Singlemama_CC blogs at Not Your Average Single Mama. Single mum to one divalicious creature, aspiring writer, amateur photographer, all around social media whore pointing out random fuckery all around us.