Feeling the emergence from a neurodivergent-like depressive state.

~As a mother and as someone with lived experience, I am writing these random thoughts from a #developmentaldisorder perspective. I would be happy if you could sense the neurodivergent nature of my experiences.~

　It seems I have started to emerge from a depressive state. I believe this is because the shower of affection from so many friends has helped me let go of the many things I was struggling with.

　When I fall into a depressive state, my already thin self-esteem becomes so invisible that I can't even see it exists. I can only think that my very existence is a burden to those around me.

　I want to disappear. I want to be gone. I cannot forgive myself for being alive.

　Only feelings of self-denial emerge. A total rejection of myself.　My brain becomes completely covered in such feelings.

　It is truly pathological. Some people give me advice saying, "You don't have to think that way," but I cannot control it myself. It just wells up on its own and covers everything.

　Then, a shower of affection from friends around me pours down... It might evaporate like water on a hot stone, but thanks to them continuing to pour it without giving up, it gradually soaks into my brain. As that spreads, the negative feelings decrease. The negative feelings that used to well up endlessly start to appear less frequently.

　Even so, as time passes, they well up again and cover me... and then I am healed again... I repeat this cycle. Even in the very low depths of a depressive state, I think I am subtly repeating ups and downs. I believe that by doing so, I am rising little by little, bit by bit, and approaching a state of peace.

　It's okay for someone like me to be alive.

　When I start to be able to think even a little bit like that, I think graduation from the depressive period is near.

　Twenty years ago, I experienced a heavy and long depressive period. Every day was like crawling at the very bottom of the darkness of the ocean floor, and I thought I would never return to how I was before.

　I never want to go back to that time; that is my sole focus.　I think it is necessary for me to monitor myself, put things into words, and make them "visible" to compensate for the existence of things that cannot be seen.

　That is what this note is.

　That is all from Ayu, with a mother's heart and the heart of someone with lived experience of developmental disorders (*'ω'*)
　Thank you for reading until the end today as well. I am grateful.
　Things are getting better and better! The future is bright!