Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this. 

I'd been repeating this phrase for the past few weeks and months. Brain fog, fatigue, hopelessness, anger, and trouble sleeping were getting to me. I could barely get out of bed and make it through the day. I stopped doing most of the activities I loved: reading, exercising, and being outside.

Chemical imbalances tend to trickle in, unnoticed, over time.

You don't notice that life appears a little bit worse each day until you finally get to where you've lost hope and say, I can't do this. I can't live like this.

That was me.

I've always been hard-headed, wanting to do it all myself. I can only imagine my pre-incarnation meeting with the Earthly onboarding angel team, "So, Allison, you're excited about the themes of emotional isolation, lack of self-love, and being stubborn about receiving the well-being you'll constantly ask for? Great. We're all set. Off you go."

I'd been trying to muscle my way out of my physical symptoms for the last few months and weeks—think positive, keep your head up, smile. I'd have a few good days, but the bad ones occurred more frequently.

After a few tearful conversations with my husband, I began to recognize what was happening.

It was Darkness, my old friend.

I have suffered from bouts of depression my entire life. It started in my teens with ten years of family drama and was definitely present living in France at age 18. Darkness revisited in my 20s as I started a life and career in Chicago. It reappeared in my 30s as postpartum depression and visited briefly in my 40s for reasons I can't now recall.

In my 50s, Darkness is back. She comes on the wings of menopause. Look up the symptoms of menopause. I have (had) every one except hair loss. 

Even though there's no reason to feel ashamed, feelings of worthlessness and shame tend to accompany depression. Being a spiritual mentor with 100% certainty about the divine essence of spirit doesn't exempt me from challenges due to aging. Now that I'm feeling better, I feel no shame about sharing that the last few weeks have been hard.

If or when you have a depressive episode, please know you're not alone. Even the "most positive" and spiritually tuned-in among us struggle with feelings of disconnection. One of the markers of depression is isolation. You feel so alone in your pain, believing no one understands or that you can't "burden" others with how you feel.

If you are struggling, there are resources to help. Whether it's a doctor, friend, or therapist, someone DOES want to know how you're feeling. They want to help. I want to help.

Depression wrongly makes you believe you deserve to suffer. Misery guides your thought process, making you feel no one cares, which makes everything seem worse.

My menopause journey brought on this recent depressive episode. Hormones are essential to positive mental health and can make life incredibly hard when they change.

No woman gets around menopause; it happens to everyone. However, we all go through it so differently.

One thing that ties all my depressive episodes together is the sense of hopelessness and worthlessness. It feels like enveloping Darkness, slowly constricting my ability to breathe. The constriction lies to me as it takes hold of every part—mind, body, and soul, until hopelessness and despair make complete sense.

I've heard women talk about menopause as a joyful time of "rebirth" and letting go of beliefs that no longer serve. For me, it's been more like a violent chaotic purging or "cosmic squeeze," forcing me to painfully examine my negative beliefs and violently expel the ones that have no place in my future.

I'm keenly aware that my menopause journey is a time to expunge outdated beliefs—which aren't going peacefully. One of the hardest parts of my menopausal body is weight gain. I was lean and athletic until my early 40s. As things started to change in my mid-40s, new thought patterns of "not being like I used to be" became repetitive and torturous.

I had an experience recently where I felt as if there were two of me: a version who loved me unconditionally and one who spoke ugly things to me constantly. Aware of the simultaneously presence of both, I saw this negative speaking version as an "altered ego" talking to me as opposed to through me.

In the past, the negative voice and I have been inseparable. She always presented inside my head. This time, she seemed external, as if I was a witness to the embodiment of the negative voice inside my head.

I looked in the mirror, and it was as if the nasty one was outside me. She was saying mean things as the mean one always does, but this time, she was no longer inside me. I was sober; it was a bizarre psychic experience.

By saying mean words, such as, "You're ugly. You'll never be good enough," it was like I spit her out. It felt like an exorcism. 

Soon after that experience, I spoke with my doctor and found a suitable solution to ease my menopause symptoms. Good news—I'm feeling a lot better. And the negative voice is hardly audible anymore.

Yo—the power of hormones is real, ya'll.

The negative voice in your head doesn't get to take up full-time residence when your hormones are balanced. If you're struggling with a chemical imbalance at any age, there is help. Don't wait any longer to find a solution that works for you. Call your doctor or therapist and start the conversation today if you find yourself repeating, I can't do this.

You can do this—with help.

PS. I always find the physical manifestations that parallel our inner lives so interesting. Last week, my laptop stopped working. It wouldn't boot up. It was stuck attempting to start and overheating. It mirrored how I felt—wholly burnt out and useless.

Once I got help (Apple Store), the solution was clear: send it in for repairs due to a hardware failure.

Not ironically, menopause feels like a hardware failure. 

I backed up my laptop a few weeks ago, but it'll probably be returned to its original state and all the data cleared.

I see the parallels between me and my laptop.

While I will never be able to "restore" myself to my "original state," I can clean out the backlog of negative beliefs slowing me down and causing mental exhaustion. I can move forward slowly, at a pace that works for the new me. I can more closely examine what I choose to download on my computer and into my mental space.

I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.

And I can always ask for help.