At sixteen, learning to drive, I got our car stuck over a ditch. The car wobbled, suspended by the right front and back left wheels. I don’t even remember, over twenty years later, exactly what I did to put us there. My dad had spent many hours attempting to teach me to drive (and would yet spend many, many more). After he managed to extract us from the ditch, he said, in the tone of someone who’s had a major epiphany: “You’ve spent your entire life oblivious to the world around you, and that’s the problem! You’ve never really noticed the world before!”

I was offended by this completely accurate statement, although he didn’t mean it as an insult.

I think he understood for the first time why it was taking so dang long to teach me to drive. I brought books with me wherever I went (usually multiple books, a la Rory Gilmore, in case I was in the mood to read something different), including car rides. I could usually read without carsickness, and I always did so. This meant that until I learned to drive, I never noticed how to get from my house in Orem to, say, BYU. I spent as much time as possible in a state of book-induced escape from reality.

I eventually got my license after I’d failed the driving test three times. I still hate driving, though, and I’d be perpetually lost without my GPS. When I make a left turn, my kids know they have to be quiet, and whatever conversation we’re in the middle of must stop until I’m done. I can’t talk and drive at the same time. I can’t listen to music and drive at the same time. It requires so much of my focus, so much awareness of the world around me, and it’s not a natural skill set for me. I have to process so much of the world at once.

But God, as near as I can tell, wants me to figure out how to live in the world. The real world, not the ones I’ve spent hours inhabiting while someone else drives. In the Real World encrusted cold cereal dots my kitchen floor. The laundry piles divide and multiply like amoeba. In the Real World, all my children need my attention, sometimes all at the same time. And when this happens, when the phone’s ringing and two kids are fighting and another one needs homework help and I’m in the middle of making dinner (which must be done by 5:30, no later, because people have to be somewhere), I feel like I do when I’m driving in heavy traffic: tense, anxious, surrounded by Reality that is so hard for me to process and pay attention to all at once. And I want to escape from it all. This, in part, is one of the things that’s caused my depression.

I am working on it. I try to find time to be present with only myself–I have started journaling again. A journal, with no audience but myself, feels so different than a blog. I started meditating using an app called Headspace (thanks, Angela!). I do yoga when I can, so I can train my mind to be still in challenging poses. I’m trying to limit things that bring me out of reality–Facebook, internet surfing, and even books–and be more grounded.

The reality of me and this world, though, is that right now, and maybe forever, I need more than all of these things to stay present enough to function, to drive in the real world. I’ve been on Lexapro for over a year now. It’s been a tremendous blessing to me. While I hope that one day I will no longer need it, I am so grateful for modern medicine and the way it has helped me function through depression and anxiety.

I’m writing this because one of the things that helped me take the step a year ago to see my doctor and ask for some medication was a blog post written by Gabrielle Blair, Design Mom. Her post is a great resource.

If you’ve had experience with depression, and come through to the other side, I would love to hear about it. What helped you the most? And does anyone else out there hate driving as much as I do?