Love Signs Baby, Love Signs (Amy)

It’s pouring down rain, I’m leaving an appointment and heading to another. It’s cold, wet, gray and all around not my favorite kind of weather. My boyfriend tells me I’m like a plant, always seeking the sun. I do better when it’s sunny. I’m happier when I get that shot of vitamin D, even if it’s just through my office window. But I digress…

I suffer from depression. I have anxiety too, so sometimes it’s a super fun mental health party when they join forces. The latest “episode” started before Christmas and I’m just now feeling the anvil lifting from my chest. My ruminating and intrusive thoughts are going back to their normal ruminations and intrusions instead of the scary ones that come with depression. Yes, I’m in therapy. Yes it helps. I wouldn’t be writing this if I wasn’t in good hands.

When I’m in the throws, it’s really hard for me to see any good, any light, any hope. I continue to do “all the things” that I’m supposed to, because I have learned that even if I don’t think they help, they do. I go to yoga (forcing myself up early), I meditate (yell at the voices to stop being so mean), I sleep (alot), I drink water (and hot chocolate), I eat (alot).

Coming out from under the dark cloud of a depressive season is an interesting time of transition. It happens slowly for me, one day at a time, things start to just feel better than they did. My heart stops hurting so much, I stop ruminating on things in the past that I cannot control. My mind stops telling me I’m terrible and I’ll never be happy again even though I have a great life and there’s nothing to be sad about. I can taste food again. I have more energy. I want to get up and go to work/hang with friends/be with my kids/live my life.

Today, as I’m walking out of my one appointment and on my way to another (therapy! yay!), I saw this heart on the sidewalk (see pic). I could have easily missed it. So easily. It’s so tiny. The picture doesn’t do it’s tinyness justice. Tinyness should be a word.

But there it was. In the grayness of the day, in the rush of the appointments, under my hood, with my glasses spotted with rain, a Love Sign. I imagine all that had to happen for it to get there for me to see. I ruminate on the goodness that transpired to lay that heart in my path so that I would feel that tiny love. I send a picture of it to my boyfriend and a few other friends. A tiny heart reminding me to receive its tiny blessing and share it. Reminding me that even in the gray cloud, I am loved.