Always and never

On a recent social media post of mine, a commenter stated that he thought my position was that relapse into clinical depression (i.e., another major depressive episode of the kind I just came through) was inevitable. In his experience, he has come through two major depressive episodes in his life and believes that he will never be in that place again. I hope that he is right.

For me, I’ve had to work over the last year to remove the words “always” and “never” from my vocabulary, at least when I am talking about what I will or will not do now or in the future. These are absolute terms. They have zero tolerance for aberration. They set up unrealistic expectations for me. They demand perfection. They set me up to fail.

I’ve become much more comfortable with uncertainty. It’s an unexpected outcome of this experience and one I deeply appreciate.

As I’ve written before, I do not believe that any outcome is inevitable. Instead, I recognize that I live in the rain/sun paradox. Right now it is sunny and, at some point, it will rain. Now I know that the rain is temporary. The sun will come out again.

I can live with that.