Yellow IV Bag

There are times that I hate seeing people post pictures of themselves in a hospital. My instant reaction is ‘this is a cry for sympathy and attention.’ They are just seeking comments, sad emoji faces and are just simply attention seekers that thrive on other people’s expressions of concern.
And yet, yesterday, while I was hooked up to a two liter IV bag with replacement fluids, I found myself wanting to snap a picture and post it on Facebook. I wanted it to be known that I was experiencing something severe enough that warranted a hospital bed, puncturing of veins and an intravenous supply of hydration and nutrients. All because my depression this time had stripped me of 15lbs of physical presence and state of mind.
For me, when things have to be inserted into your body to help provide you the benefits of the normal functions of sleeping, eating and drinking, then something is wrong.
This is not to overly dramatize a mixed solution IV bag. However, an IV bag is not an everyday solution (no pun intended) to feeling poorly. In fact, for a rather intangible and inward facing condition such as depression, it’s a very physical reminder that things are not fine.
The yellow IV bag is a symbol. It’s an actual call for help. It’s a real sign of needing to be paid attention to. It’s a sobering recognition that this is not business as usual — some allowances must be made.
It is a symbol for me, even more so than it is for friends I have disappointed, colleagues I’ve left hanging and workplaces I’ve left bereft.
So often, in my depression haze, I convince myself that I am the problem. That I’m not strong enough of a person, that I am a person of a mentally weak constitution that can’t follow through on the simplest of commitments.
My depression is a haze I can’t see through. Reasonable, rational thought and behavior are blind spots I’m not even aware of. At best it’s a faraway object outside of my grasp. That short but sweet birthday call, that message to say I can’t make it, that email to request a reasonable extension. Those are actions of a mature and rational person. In my darkness, I am not that. And so, my friends, family, and colleagues this is where I make my apologies — for the past, present, and future.

My experience of depression is a slipping away of rational consciousness into a dark haze of unconsciousness thought. It’s like sliding down a climbing rope throughout the course of the day. There are a few moments when I can hang on and even get some traction moving upwards, but ultimately I’m sliding downwards. Once I’m down, I’m down. All the energy was spent trying to hold and make a few centimeters of positive movement on a work related task.
Or it is the sudden deflation of a balloon. I’m going along all happy go lucky, then all of a sudden, without warning, I’m down. And because I’m deflated, while I have thought, I have no physical movement to get me to do anything much about it.
Or sometimes it is a small sickening gritty ball at the back of my head and at the base of my throat that consumes more and more energy and expands into the spaces in my brain and my chest. Over a period of days, I become less able to vocalize or even identify the things that are eating away in the deep recesses of my mind. In the presence of others, I become irritable, sullen and reserved. Eventually, I pull away so much that I’m a tiny ball of anxiety and dread par
