Dissecting Depression

"How're you doing?" my boss asked.
"Surviving." I replied.
"Just surviving?"

"Surviving" means a lot to me. What I went through in Spokane nearly killed me. There, I was struggling with depression so dark and deep that I couldn't eat. Couldn't get off the couch. There, emotional pain translated to the physical world and took me off my feet. That wasn't "surviving", it was walking numbly through life as I shut down piece by piece in response to overwhelming misery. It was dying, another week or two and I might have eaten a bullet. It wasn't impossible, even though I hate the idea of suicide.

I'm struggling in my internship, to be sure. From what I had reasonable expectations of when I first walked through HQ's doors three months ago, everything got FUBAR'd. I had applied for, been interviewed for, been medically cleared for, raised funds for (3/4 of which came from me working two jobs), gotten a VISA for, and had plane tickets for a certain internship. And it was something that I was, that I am, very passionate about. 

Instead, everything went sideways. I'm on the wrong continent. I'm working on the wrong airplanes (Cessna 206s instead of King Airs and Quest Kodiaks). It took something of an argument with my supervisor to even be allowed to do as much as I am doing, since interns normally do a couple weeks of bitch work around the shop and then go home, they don't spend two months doing engine overhauls and airframe inspections. And even then, I'm not learning anything new, nor am I allowed to do as much as I have been trained on, since the Organization's regs are strict about mechanics who haven't gone through Standardization.

From the reasonable expectations I had (spend 3 months in a certain country, working on certain aircraft, etc.), absolutely nothing has come to be. That's disappointing, as one might expect. 

And the process of me getting here wasn't exactly pleasant, to say the least.

So even just the internship has been a struggle.

But it's stacked on top of being homesick for a home that doesn't exist. Odds are pretty high that I won't get a job in Nampa or Tulsa, the two towns that are the most like "home." I don't have a job to return to, so I will have to travel to wherever I can find work. Which I don't mind in and of itself, but when I'm struggling here, I wish I could look forward to returning home, not being at a pseudo-home for a few days then spending two days on the road.

And I'm broke, too. I'd saved up some money for the post-trip expenses, but then I had to buy health insurance, and then I got laid off from my primary job a week early, and then I had to buy a new fuel pump for my car. Came out to over a grand that I don't have now between the three. Life is what it is.

Those are situations. Bad situations can make anyone depressed, it's the nature of being human. People get bummed out when they lose their jobs, when the car breaks down, when things just don't go their way. It's part of human nature. 

I'm also manic-depressive, though, and so I'll be struggling when I'm making A's in school, my after-school job is going well, and I've got friends that love me and whom I can talk to when I'm down. It's part of who I am, that I deal with clinical depression for a good chunk of the year.

Then there's the existential questions. I've taken on faith, over my logical objections, that God is calling me into missions. I said three and half years ago that I'm not the guy for the job, and I still don't believe that I'm the guy, but I also believe God is calling, and God doesn't make mistakes.

But I could be wrong. It's happened before. So the fact that everything has gone sideways on this internship brings up very real doubts that I was ever right about being called into missions. Doubt is cancer, and it eats at my faith that this is where I should be, that this is what I should be doing with my life, that what I believe is real is real.

So as I'm struggling with everything that brought me to Maseru, as I'm struggling to keep moving forward, the real question becomes "Where does one stop, and the next one start?"

What is simply situational depression, that needs to be ignored and answered with Faith that God has a plan beyond this? What is clinical depression or mania, and needs to be addressed medically? What is the Abyss of existential despair, trying to swallow me whole?

Where does one stop and the next one start?

I'm surviving, and while that doesn't mean thriving, it also means that I'm not slowly shutting down, I'm not moodily lashing out at everyone, and I'm not emotionally numb and just waiting for the end of the trip. This sort of thing doesn't concern me for the short term, and I'm not entirely sure if it really concerns me for the long term.

This, by my standards of life as a manic-depressive person, does not qualify as unhealthy. I worry about mania when I can't sleep, can't sit still, and get frustrated with how laid-back everyone else is. I worry about depression when I can't get out of bed, when I can't keep moving through the day, and when I start shutting down.

This, what I'm dealing with now, isn't me being unhealthy. It's simply part of life as a manic-depressive.

However, if I want to make missions a long-term thing, and I *do*, then I need to find a better way of staying healthy. In Tulsa and Nampa, I lean pretty heavily on my friends when I'm down, and I'm very active when I'm up, those combined with proper meds help me stay functional.

Here in Maseru, I don't really have the support network I had back home. It takes months to develop that, I'm only here for sixty days total. That's hardly time to develop a support network out of a group of guys who are all married and all have kids. They don't have free time, which means there's not a lot of free time that I can borrow to just have men to talk to.

Also, I can't be nearly as active, because I'm in a foreign country, and there are rules in place here for security reasons. I can't hit the range on a Saturday, I had to leave my rifles in Idaho. I get a lot of exercise, but I have to be back by nightfall, so I can't go backpacking or go walking until I've talked with God about my day and am at peace with it. And with very limited internet, I can't really hide in music and talk with my friends online.

While I was in the ward in Spokane, they talked about having multiple layers of safety nets to avoid coming back to the ward. Take the meds AND develop a safety net of friends to talk with AND develop a comforting place to go for alone time, etc.

I don't have most of that here, and I *MUST* find a way to change that if I want to do this long-term. I need to get better at developing support networks. I need to find a way to have a comfort place (my bedroom normally works great, but this one has ants that seem to be immune to the local ant-killer spray) when the city itself is off-limits after 1845.

(I'd say I should find a wife, but that becomes a frustrating and depressing subject without any help from the rest of my struggles in life.)

I'm surviving here, and that says a lot, but I need to be able to thrive in adverse situations, not simply survive.

That said, I'm not losing the struggle, and that's important to keep in mind.