Depressed.

 I told my mom a few days ago that I was depressed. I never really talk to her much, we are low contact. I don't talk on the phone, and she doesn't text well, and I don't check my messages to see if she has texted often. 

It's always a mistake to open up to her. Every time I am vulnerable and she asks what's wrong, if I tell her it immediately becomes ammunition for the next time she's upset with me. So I very rarely tell her anything about me anymore. I very rarely am real with her. I checked my phone and she had sent me a message asking how I am a few days ago.  I answered and told her that I'm depressed. It's been since before christmas of last year, maybe even may last year that I visited her or the rest of my family. They're out of state, and it takes a big day trip to go visit and The last time we went, the house was so bad I didn't want to go inside. And she didn't want us to come in, either.  The bathroom smelled so badly of urine that I was trying not to gag when I had to go in there to pee.  Since then, my brother says my mom has started smoking INSIDE the house. I'm really allergic, and so is my brother and my dad (who lives there). So it just seems like there's no logistical way to visit, because I can't go inside without getting sick, and she doesn't really ever leave the house, and Honey can't go into most places. 

My grandparents are both 90+ years old (my dad's parents) and living on their own. They are both very hard of hearing, and I don't know how to spend time with them without being really anxious because I don't know how to have a conversation if I can't talk to them. But they want me around. But I don't know what to do or talk about. Or how to communicate. 

All of that, added together with my ADHD and anxiety and depression being really bad, has kept me from being able to even think about visiting. I always paint canvases for Christmas presents. I didn't paint for Christmas, and haven't painted since. 

It's not just that I don't have time, which I always feel like I don't, it's also that I don't even feel the urge to paint.

So I told my mom I'm depressed, and that I wanted to visit but haven't even wanted to get out of bed lately. 

The next day there was a bunch of walmart bags on the front porch. Candy, toys, notebooks, paints, permanent markers, bubbles, sidewalk chalk, seeds to plant sunflowers in my garden. 

As soon as I realized it was from my mom (The paint), I burst into tears and ran back inside. I just sat on the floor sobbing for about 10 minutes. I never cry like that. I wasn't... happy. I felt just completely broken.  For the first time in years, I felt like she loves me. I don't know why, but it fucking hurt.  I guess because I wanted for so long to feel like she cared, and that for it to surprise me, I had to admit that I didn't think she actually loved me or cared about me at all. 

To make it worse, I'd been trying to play it off kind of. I had been telling myself and my Master that I just didn't have time. I just couldn't focus. 

(He told my psychiatrist that I'm depressed again, and I almost started to cry there- My voice cracked, and I couldn't compose myself to really explain. Now she's talking about starting me on antidepressants next month. I didn't know that he thought I was depressed, and that was really the first it had even been on my own radar.)

So I was still kind of in denial about it, but during a really low moment, I was honest with my mother. It meant I couldn't hide it any more. How could I, when she'd sent all this silly kid stuff to our house? So I cried the whole time we took everything out of the bags and looked at things and I wondered how she could love me at all. How she could be capable of something selfless and thoughtful like this.