On this depressive episode: how I feel and how I feel about it, with praise for Devon

I keep opening this up to post something but never can quite figure out what to say. A couple times in the last few years, journaling honestly about my mental health issues came around to bite me in the ass in the form of harsh judgement from people that I thought I could trust to respect my mind and my life. I also just hate reading my old posts about depression and the anxiety, anger, and misery that comes along with it—they pain and embarrass me. So these pathetic, navel-gazing, depressive posts are difficult to write—but I have the urge to say something and nothing else will come out. Perhaps it is healthy, my keyboard-and-screen therapy; perhaps there is some good in my honesty, some message that will ring true for a reader, some sentence I will be thankful to reread later. Mostly, though, it's just all that I can say.

It's ironic, considering how anxious and afraid of the future I often am, but I've always had a hard time seeing beyond the moment: emotional states I inhabit at the moment feel like they must be the emotional state I have inhabited, will inhabit, for days and weeks and forever. That means that when I'm feeling better I can be half convinced that I must be coming out of my funk and heading towards brighter days, but it also means that when I crash an hour or two later, I feel like I'll be stuck in my moping misery indefinitely.

Devon has been an absolute angel with my depression lately. He always has been, I think, but the special situation of this episode—that for once it really is all in my own head, uncomplicated by stressful circumstances, and so it's tamer and more manageable than it's been in the past—allows me to see it through somewhat less clouded eyes. I'm hardly rational, but I'm not feeling persecuted by family and school and so I have fewer negative emotions to spill over to Devon. We're also living together now (we weren't when this happened in the past), so he can do daily first aid rather than weekly desperate triage.

He is present, sensitive, concerned—and so patient. He cares so much. He's willing to try so hard. And he knows so many little tricks and techniques to give me a change of pace or a few minutes of laughter, which may not fix the problem but sure helps me cope. He's not perfect of course and I'm not as thankful or understanding or head-screwed-on-straight as I should be; I'm sure there's plenty of times when this all drives him up the wall. But just as often these days I'm in awe of him, and inexpressibly thankful to have him in my life. (And thankful, too, that I can see that, this time, for a change.)

That goodness (and it is much goodness) is balanced by the heavy weight of where my brain is, right now. I'm blessed to have him to help me but, you know, I'd also be blessed to have a brain that doesn't pull these pathetic stunts. The last few days I managed just enough in the way of good moments coupled with self-delusion to believe that I was finally heading towards improvement, but it was too soon to make that call. I'm still in my ditch, my rut, perhaps not my downward spiral but still in my own dark place. I am nonfunctioning, noncontributing. I watch Law & Order: SVU reruns and have recently started adding in indie and GLBTQ films, for a change of pace—because I cannot even find the motivation or attention to play a motherfucking video game. A friend came over yesterday for a few minutes and asked "What do you do all day?" Nothing, John, nothing. Nothing at all. Especially not right now.

I think that admitting that all of this was going on was harder on me than I thought at the time. I've come so to terms with generally being defective, but when I all-out break down it shames and pains me to admit it. That makes me feel like a hypocrite, but there you have it. I may be honest about who I am, but it doesn't mean that I like that person very much.

These are two circles of self, concentric but so similarly sized that they can't help but overlap: My mood has been a roller coaster, climbing up thanks to lucky moments and the help of my wonderful boyfriend, hanging in midair for a breathtaking moment of self-delusion, but always coasting or crashing down again to what is these days a simple, uncomplicated, unimpressive bout of clinical depression; there is a lot that makes this episode easier than all of the others have been through, but so help me if it doesn't still make me fucking miserable and ashamed to be the broken, failing person that I am—which does nothing to improve how I feel. 'Round and 'round again, how I feel and how I feel about it, the loops melding into each other. But less poetic and less precise, of course. This is nothing special. This is just another fucking mood disorder.

Hey look, eggs—and a baby!:

Picspam: Madison, in the guinea pig cage and out, with thoughts on Alfie.

Madison still has not left the guinea pig cage, which she entered when we cleaned it last weekend and filled it with Carefresh bedding. Well she has, of course, but she's chosen it as her new home and bed and comes back there whenever she's done running around for the day—despite family attempts to remove her from the cage (she just jumps back in a few minutes later) and despite Kuzco's perhaps-accidental, perhaps-targeted habit of peeing in her spot whenever she does vacate (she finds a new one, or else waits until it's dry again).

What can I say, the cat loves her Carefresh.

So I have pictures, of course—of Madison, with cameo by pigs, although somehow this largely turned into a illustrated devolution of Madison's grace and dignity. For those who are forgetful or new, since I've visited these subjects in a while: Madison is my boyfriend's family's cat, a batshit tiny gray tabby who's just learned to appreciate people-beasts; Alfie is the pink-eyed-white guinea pig and Kuzco is the honey and brown pig, and they live separated by bars because they have never, ever gotten along: Alfie has the self-awareness of a rock and Kuzco has a Napoleon complex, and that's a poor combination.


( +2: the motley crew, and Maddy's face. )

Alfie was restless today so I gave each of the pigs a paper bag (and then threw the cat outside, because while she ignores the pigs I don't think she could ignore a vibrating paper bag, and I don't need her batting at a guinea pig toy), and for the first time since Dink died I saw Alfie popcorn—and then he immediately can to the cage bars and tried his damnedest to break through to Kuzco's side. It was heart-stirring and heart-breaking all within just a couple of seconds: he's happier but he's lonely, and I have no fix for that. I can offer him things to chew and hide in which help keep him occupied at least, but I can't give him cuddles to replace a cagemate (Alfie sometimes tolerates but never enjoys human company) and I can't give him a cagemate either. The split cage is a decent compromise, but it's hardly perfect.

I don't mourn—missing beings that are gone just isn't a skill I possess—but I am well-practiced with guilt and I still feel so much of it over Dink's death. Alfie, love, how I wish I could bring him back to you.

They are adorable beasties, though, all of them. (Kuzco was thrilled with his bag too.)