Strong.

Oh, my daughter. 

You are making a stand in the exact place I have been pushed slowly for years.  I am proud of your courage.

Refueling

In the interest of being transparent, I've told a few people I trust about the depression.  One common response:  "You hide it so well!"  I'm not sure how I feel about that one.  Everything in my life has been so thuddingly dead, and I'm stumbling zombielike through the apocalypse, and you didn't even know until I told you?

I was thinking about it today, and it isn't that I'm not able to handle difficult situations, or social gatherings.  I try to avoid them at all costs, but I still have to deal with a lot of things.  The difference, I realized, is how long it takes me to recover the amount of energy I must expend to act minimally normal for that time. 

I teach a Sunday School class at church, which also requires me to attend on Wednesday nights.  I love the girls I work with, I adore the other leaders, and every meeting is a struggle.  I'm deeply ambivalent about my faith, or lack of it these days, but I keep going because I don't feel good about making huge life altering decisions while under the influence of a distorted world view.  I go.  I do, and I try.  And then I spend the next day or two trying to get my mojo back.