The Meaning of Life Is

It's been a week since I've started taking an antidepressant called Bupropion.  Also called Wellbutrin.  How I got the prescription was a mirror image of me when I was 18 and in a similar state of mind with a dash of drama added.  I was in a doctor's office breaking down the moment I'm asked about it.  I've been steadily depressed for around three and a half years and was not self aware enough to realize it. Unhappy at a job I once loved, in a relationship that was going nowhere, very uncomfortable with my body, then unemployment, the dissolution of the relationship, one of my sweet dogs dying suddenly, and a few other things just kept pushing me down until I was just down all the time.

Way
down.

No where, no one, no nothing.  No, no, no.  I slowly isolated myself.  Away from everything and everyone.  Just stopped caring.  Didn't want to care or give or love or share or fight or have to express myself because I had nothing to express.  The only emotion I still felt was when I was with my family.  Everything else felt so exhausting and fake and pointless so I'm going to go home and go to sleep.  We're all going to die anyway.

But with everything, there are cycles and waves and I could poke my head up sometimes and see what was happening was bad and that I needed to do something about it.  But I've always been a slow starter so when it was more than a little bad and I started having fleeting suicidal thoughts I realized I had to get up and I had to do something because there is so much beauty in this life.  I can still see that, every day I see that.

Here are some of the things I find beautiful:

my parents utter devotion to each other
good books and words
murmuration
the feeling I get when I look at a dog
oceans
my sister's optimism
mini horses
music
my brother's doggedness
mountains
watching someone do what they love the most
my nephews' uninhibited joy with life





"The meaning of life is just to be alive.  It's so plain and so obvious and so simple.  And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves."
---Alan Watts