Dancing with Tears In My Eyes

I haven't been here in quite awhile and actually this time it's been a deliberate thing.
You really wouldn't have wanted to hear what I had to say...

I've been fighting a boulder size case of depression. The real scary kind. The kind that gets you a standing with a therapist every week. The kind that gets you a new pill to pop. The kind that you fight every morning just to get out of bed and get moving.

I couldn't tell you what led to it. There were signs, yes. Trying to buy a new car last spring and sobbing when the salesman was less than kind about my trade in, the terrible pain of turning 40 with no spouse or children, the constant deaths or cancer diagnoses in my family and friends. Upheaval at work, losing my greatly respected manager, a verbally abusive co-worker and a second admin who seems to constantly undermine me. It all just took its toll.

And in the midst of these things, I began to cry a great deal, weeping and sobbing and found myself unable to stop.

 I've started rethinking the act of crying. There is a lot of it in depression. Sometimes it comes out when you don't want it to. At work is a problem, and in the company of others. I sought treatment for depression more for the prevention of embarrassment due to tears than anything else. I hated them, they ran makeup, they made my nose red and my eyes swell. I felt that they made me appear weak when I wanted to be strong. I worked and strove and damped down feelings for years trying to keep them at bay. But come they would.  It's as if all of the tears and pain that I pushed down and held back for years came gushing forth like a dam breaking it's wall. They and I could be held in no longer.

Boom...depression.  Tears and more tears. A monsoon after years of drought. Years of telling myself, "I can handle this."
"I am fine."
"I don't even want children, plenty of people live fulfilled lives without them"

I break down and then I work at therapy. I fight and I fight to just hit the top edge of happiness before falling back down. Sometimes it even happens.

A few weeks ago, I travel for the first time in my life to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Anxiety and panic have kept me from making this trip for years and years. I am 40 and I catch my first glance of the mountains. Hear a wail emanate from somewhere deep inside of myself and then I can't stop them, the tears, rivers of them. The first sight of this majestic mountain range has me sobbing like a child. My companion asks, 'Am I okay', and I laugh while sobbing,

"I never thought I'd get here."
"I never dreamt they were this beautiful...they really look blue...."
On and on I babble, for once the tears are present, but they are a manifestation that something... something good and joyful is happening within me. All of the cares and worries of my life seem to diminish, to melt away in the face of God's awesome creation.

Then last week, the night before the election. I am anxious and uneasy, I am ridden with worry about the country, things like ISIS, Ebola, my company has just announced a 25% reduction in the workforce. Did I make the right decisions, did I do enough? What is enough?

I stand in front of my bureau. I don't know what prompts me...I start to march in place, it feels good, I try one rhumba step, I try a cha-cha step and the next thing I know I am dancing. I am moving my hips, the muscle memory of 'Cuban motion', it comes back, it just feels so good. I am dancing the cha cha, the rhumba, east coast swing, west coast swing, some tango hustle, the cupid shuffle, the merengue, salsa steps. Oh I'm teary, but I'm dancing.  Dancing with tears in my eyes...It's 30-40 minutes before I stop and later when I lay down, the worries that have beset me, they are nowhere to be found...I close my eyes and drift into sleep.