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juushikaI 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!:
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!:
