Well, I have settled on my excuse for not writing more lately: I was in the throes of a major depressive episode that I didn't know I was having. Or maybe I talked myself out of thinking I was having it. Because October is always bad, so obviously that was just October. And November, I was getting over October. Then the holidays are always rough, and December is a hectic mess. Then January is for getting over the holidays, so of course I was low, and also, my husband is a huge jerk. It all seemed so rational.
When I finally did figure out that I was too low, I had my reasons, and I just thought it was a slight overreaction to serious provocation. I had a prescheduled check-up with my doctor, and she put me on some Wellbutrin to boost my normal stuff, and I figured it would help a bit. I was really low by this point, crying every night before I went to bed and every morning when I got up, because, you know, I had grievances. Then a few days later, I completely lost my mind. I told Husband that I couldn't remember why I ever thought he'd loved me. I spent the next day in an impenetrable fog, working 8 hours that I mostly don't remember, so low that my coworker could hear it over the phone, so tired that I had trouble moving my body and I kept dropping things and knocking them over because I just couldn't function.
Then the next day, I woke up. I rolled over. I was...fine. Just fine. Not *All better!* Not suddenly happy, just fine. As the day went on, the horror of what I had said to my husband started to dawn on me. I still took issue with some things (we live together, this is inevitable), but none of them seemed to matter as much. Then the next day, I woke up and I was fine again, and he was still there. I told him that I ever said something like that again, he could site this incident as proof that he loved me. I said awful, horrible things to him, but he just sort of waited it out. He was still here when I came back.
I mean, I know he married me and whatever, but seriously.
God it's frightening. It's bad enough the times I see it - to know that you're crazy but not be able to do anything about it. To feel sad and you know there's no reason for it, to feel panicked and know that nothing horrible will happen, but you still can't shake these emotions out of your gut - that's scary. Your own mind, for the love of God, should belong to you.
Then there's times like this, where you don't know. Where it's only in retrospect that you see your crazy and you think, "How could I not know?" All the signs were there - I was tired, I couldn't focus, I overreacted to everything, I couldn't handle people, on and on - but I couldn't see them, really. Everything had a reason. Like when I dropped out of college, and it didn't occur to me that anything was really wrong. It's frightening to think that you could go completely nuts and just not know.
Usually, my depressive episodes taste like college. That's when I didn't leave my apartment for 2 weeks, when I dropped out, when I slept with/dated that guy, when my depression took over my life and everything I did was driven by this...garbage.
This one tasted like High School. Really, my High School years were one long depressive episode. I never really thought about it, since I didn't do anything terrible during that time. It's overshadowed by what came after. But somewhere in the tropical monsoons of tears, I caught a familiar note - my husband doesn't really love me. My best friend is leaving me. My best friend is leaving me.
Years later, when we talked about it - the only time we really have, as it's somewhat uncomfortable for us both - she said she didn't understand. She said it hurt, that this person she knew and loved was changing into someone else that she didn't understand. I wonder. I had never really considered whether my depression had to do with that breakup. It was her boyfriend's fault, obviously. And she just drifted away from me. And I cried Katrinas of tears while I pushed her aways with all my might, because she was leaving me. My best friend was leaving me. My husband doesn't really love me.
Time is odd.
It's frightening, too, to have someone this close, upon whom I depend so much, with whom I share so much. Like I said, we live together. Little grievances are inevitable. Even big grievances are inevitable. My depression is sneaky, and it will latch on to any real thing that it can to validate itself, and then blows it out of proportion until it fills itself up. So now that I have this husband, I have these inevitable grievances, and I have someone to BLAME when the world stops making sense. It's not my depression, it's YOU. You hurt me, you caused this, I'm not crazy, this is a real grievance, I'm not crazy, it's YOU. But I am crazy. And no matter how real those grievances are, that's all they are, grievances. Not symbols of a larger issue, probably, not monumental failures. Just normal things. Human things.
Being married is terrifying. I have always thought that, and actually being married hasn't stopped it. To love is to be vulnerable. I have willingly, even happily, given someone else the power to destroy me. That frightens me, no matter how much I love and trust my husband, because I come from bad family. It never really occurred to me that that goes both ways.
It's frustrating, to feel like you're not in control. Everyone has this problem. I've long thought that every sin, starting with the first one, comes from our desire to be in control. This is different, though. This episode really affected my work. I couldn't focus, details were slipping by me, it was rough. I'm just a shift supervisor at a Starbucks. Nobody said anything, I don't even know if anybody noticed, but I did, and I know that my work wasn't up to what I thought it should be. What if I worked someplace else? In a different set of circumstances - would I even still have a job?
It's pointless to get caught up in those kinds of thoughts, and really, they might drive me back down. I just get so frustrated. I know that my illness is cyclical, and that it will get better and worse, better and worse for the rest of my life. But I am good. I know I need my medicine and I take it regularly. I'm getting better at self-care. I'm restricting certain things that I know trigger me. But I still broke. And I feel like I'm restricting and restricting - like there are things I could handle before and now I can't and I feel so fragile. I know in my head that I couldn't really handle those things, and that's why high school and college were so rough for me, because I was constantly pushing myself past limits I didn't know were there. It's just hard to remember doing things or having schedules that I can't sustain now.
I wanted to be a professor, but the market is shit and I don't want to be back here 7 years from now, one PhD up, but back on the job market with no real prospects. When I first went to college, I thought about going into psychology, but I decided against it, for fear that I would take too much of it home. I'm an empath. It's hard for me to compartmentalize other people's pain. Lately, I wonder what I'm doing with my life. I had been doing so well. I thought, "With this free tuition (thanks, Sbux!), I could go back to school." There are a lot of homeless people who come into our store, many of them really properly crazy, with no one to help them. I think, maybe I'll get a degree in human social services. I'll help people.
Then this happens, and I worry that any job that I find really meaningful will drive me literally mad.
I haven't been to a therapist in a long time. We worked on my main problems, and I was feeling really good, so I stopped going. There was nothing to talk about when I went. Part of this was a problem with the system. My therapist's higher-ups wanted her to have a plan: "What do you want to work on? What will it look like when it's done?" I have a life-long illness. I need to see you regularly so that you can gauge whether I've gone batty or not, since I can't always tell. I'm thinking I should set up at least a monthly appointment. I think I should at least see someone to help me deal with this latest episode.
I'm on my medicine. I'm taking care of myself. I'm being a spokesperson for mental health. But I'm still vulnerable. I'm still sick.
I'm on the Wellbutrin until April, since there's a good chance it's mostly this fucking Wisconsin winter that's driving me batty. It's super common. People do this all the time. It's just that this is the worst it's gotten in a really long time.
I took up writing again just today. Fleshed out a chapter in my book that I had written months ago, when I was pushing myself to write even though I didn't want to. I was convinced it was garbage and was prepared to just scrap it and start over today. I decided to skim it for good phrases first, and found that it wasn't half bad. I'm kind of good at this shit. Not that you can tell from my blog posts.
Today, I'm thinking that maybe I should regard writing as more than a hobby. I get so down on myself, and I don't trust myself to be able to sustain creativity for very long. Admittedly, I haven't written in MONTHS because depression sucks the life out of you. Coming back to this chapter, though, I'm kind of impressed. It's not earth-shattering, but it's decent. I wonder if maybe I should focus on my writing more, not as a hobby, but as a way to make money, as a way to DO something I find meaningful.
I'm 27. I'm so old! I come late to every fucking party. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Alan Rickman didn't start acting, really, until he was in his 40s, so who knows? (RIP, you sexy, talented man)
It seems that I'm still feeling pretty negative. I think it's mostly aftershock, though. I'm functioning, I'm writing, I'm better focused. I think I'm better, as better as I get. But it's been an ordeal and I still kind of have to process it.
I have my next blog post more-or-less written in my head, but I felt like I needed to get this out of the way first. Love you all.
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