Pinpricks of light.

It has been just over three weeks since I went on meds to help manage both my chronic pain and my depression. I am not amazing fantastic but I am feeling the tiniest bit less like the world is going to end at any moment. The fact that my pain has gone from awful to moderate has helped a lot as well.

I feel like someone has poked some tiny holes in the darkness so that some light can seep in. It is slow and small but it is there. I have been listening to Laura Daigle album Look Up Child on repeat lately and so much of it speaks to hope and to knowing that you are not alone even though you feel as though you are.

I know that I have people who love me and who want me in their lives. Friends who chose to be in relationship with me because they like my company and enjoy being with me but when I am depressed all of those people fade into the woodwork I  ( because I disconnect )  and their absence then becomes part of the struggle when I feel so very alone. Parenting my kids created a lot of social isolation for me and now that the boys are not in my home I am struggling to find social situations where I feel like I can be myself without having to rehash our story 16 times or lie to people about where my boys have gone because the truth is more then they can handle.

The few local connections that have stuck through this with us have their own lives and families to manage and will be there if I ask them to be but I am not so good at articulating my needs and when I am depressed the last thing I want to do is be with people. I want to hide in my room and binge watch tv or pretend that I am independently wealthy by wandering through the mall spending money we don't have imagining that my life is some how different.

I am trying to make some solid plans with others that will get me out of my house and being social with people who get it and will not ask a million questions. Kate is in theatre camp this week and is going away for 9 days on a canoe trip later this month and although she and I are both looking forward to the change in our routine I am sort of wondering what I am going to do with myself for that long!