Coming Clean- beginning the chronicle

Guess what, y'all? I suffer from depression, dysomnia, and moderate OCD. I figure I've struggled with them most of my life. For years I let it define me, I let myself thing that it made me less of a person for some strange reason, and that I was protecting myself by not admitting these issues out loud. Guess what? I don't care anymore. We all have our problems and sometimes they are worse than other, sometimes they have a greater impact than at other times. It reminds me of the analogy about a group of people who hung their "burdens" on a clothesline. At first they would look at the burdens hung up by others and think, it's smaller than mine and I could deal with that. After looking at the rows of burdens on the lines the individuals finally were ready to reclaim their own burdens in comparison with what other's go through. James also likes to watch the show "Baggage." The premise of the show is that a dater reviews the baggage of three potential "datees" to see which one has baggage that is acceptable and which has baggage that is not acceptable.

So anyway- here's my baggage.

• I have trust issues- I am trusting, but I don't want to/have not been willing to "let people in." I am great at listening to other's empathizing, but I wasn't willing to return that same level of trust and share my own insecurities or issues. There have been a few exceptions to this, but for the most part I held people away. 
• I count- and this one is difficult to explain. I started counting in junior high and it is still a large part of daily life. I count by fives, I've even found myself counting out paragraphs to see if the letters in the paragraph are divisible by 5. I count around things, particularly rectangles, circles, or triangles by seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty (and by the way, seventeen is bigger than twenty). That may be strange, but it beats counting from 1 to 20. It does get annoying when I get caught up in counting around each reflector pole I pass, thank goodness there aren't many reflector poles where I live now. It's frustrating though when things I count aren't divisible by 5. 
• Sleep- a major issue for me. I have been diagnosed with dysomnia, which includes insomnia and other problems with sleep as well. I am loving finally getting a good nights sleep, although I don't particularly appreciate not remembering my daughter putting stickers on my arm, not remembering what is dream or reality from the night before, but it is kind of fun to stand on the end of my bed and say "Timber" and fall forward on my face.
• Depression- I consider 2010 to be the "black hole" because there is nothing there. It's like living in a fog, a dark, dank, foggy reality. I've had a few moments of being in the sunshine, being out of the fog for a bit, and it's getting better, but is still an issue. 

As a result of my issues, I've been thinking a lot about how different people cope, how people keep going, how faith interacts to help get through things, and how we all struggle with our own individual problems. I was speaking with my father-in-law, who has helped me a great deal get through things, and he reminded me that the greatest battle we will fight in our lives will be within our own minds. I believe he was paraphrasing from Sterling W. Sill. Believe me, I know what he means. I've seen the people that are having a battle in my mind. 

So, now we have the summary. I am bitterly embroiled in the battle of my life and it remains to be seen where it goes from here.