Oh, It's You Again...

I titled this post and started writing in ages ago, then never came back.  Here I am again, deleting what was and starting over.  Same topic.
I had kind of a relapse a bit ago with my depression.  It made a lot of sense, what with the newlywededness and the thesis writing and the work stress and so forth.  My psych increased my meds a bit, which scared me.  I don't want to have to keep increasing them, you know?  But she said that it was temporary, and that if my illness is exacerbated by stress (just like my eczema), there's no shame in boosting the meds for just a bit.  I suppose she's right, and I needed the pep talk.
The newlyweddedness is much more stressful than I'd thought it would be.  My mom and my friend Jenny warned me that the first 2 years of marriage are the worst, because while you're getting used to each other, you fight all the time.  I can understand that with my mom, she has a very strong personality, and clear notions of how things ought to be.
Our problem hasn't been that.  We haven't fought at all, yet.  I think the trouble is that I'm an introvert sharing a 500-sq ft house with another person (and 2 cats).  Husband's presence is never irritating to me, I never consciously want him to go away, but my body recharges by being alone.  Since I'm rarely alone now, I feel like I can never quite catch up, as it were.  Like everything that would have stressed me out this much now stresses me out THIS much, because it builds up.  I feel like I have no control, because there is no place in the house (besides my side of the bed) to be alone.

The crazy thing about my relapse is that I was back in the same place I came from with myself.  That is to say, I didn't realize I was going crazy.  I had thought that because I've been sane for a while, on my meds, practicing healthy thought patterns and whatnot, I would be better at recognizing it when I started to go off the rails again.  Now that I know what being sane is like, shouldn't I notice when I'm not?  But I was back in that place where I couldn't tell if it was a normal amount of stress I was feeling.  Where the things that I did seemed perfectly logical to me, until someone else noted that I was acting odd.  It's kind of scary, to know that I'm just that close to the edge.  It's terrifying to live in a mind over which you have almost no control (without meds).
This brings me to a post my friend The Shoe made the other day about control.  We are taught that we must have control over our emotions, over our thoughts, over our actions, and that's a good thing.  As I've said before, the meds give me the ability to practice that control, which I wouldn't have otherwise.
On the other hand, control can easily get out of control.  We want to control our budget, our calories, our time, the people around us, everything.  Obviously we can't do that.  Only God has real control.  I've long held the belief that just about every sin stems from our need to control things, even when those sins inevitably lead to losing control.  My other friend had some great insight on the whole thing: "I guess we need to feel in control because it makes us feel…not-helpless. I mean, if you go way back to genesis, why did Adam and Eve eat the fruit? because they wanted the knowledge of good and evil. They wanted to be like God. Maybe that’s the real crux of original sin: we want to be like God. So we do everything in our power to pretend that we ARE like God, and that shows itself in trying to control our circumstances." Pretty much every sin is a variation on the original one: not trusting God to know what's best for us.
In the end, control, like everything, is about moderation.  There are many anti-Christians who like to point out how the Bible is full of contradictions in its mandates, and plenty of Christians who seem to think that every word of the Bible is a black-or-white choice.  They're both wrong.  Where is the intersection between becoming all things to all men and letting your light shine before men?  Which is correct, that there is neither male nor female in Christ, or that women must be silent and may not teach?  Maybe these are bad examples, but they're the ones I think of off the top of my head.  My point is that the Truth lies in moderation, in finding balance.  The Bible has 1 black-and-white Truth: That Christ died to save us, and that if we believe in him and repent of our sins, we go to heaven.  That's about it.  As for the rest?  It would have been stupid for God to fill the Bible with black-and-white either/ors.  Life is not black-and-white.  Biblical authors were writing to different people with different needs, because life is made of gray area.  The Bible exists to help us navigate that gray area.
That is why people want control, I think.  We don't like gray area.  We want to know what, exactly, to do at all times.  We don't want to have to think for ourselves.  We want to be lazy.  We want never to be wrong.  But life in our fallen world is messy, and apart from that one aforementioned thing, there are no easy answers.
So: Control what you should, let go what you must, and above all, trust God.
As for Husband and me (going WAY back to the topic that started this post, since I had no idea where this was going when I started), we're doing better.  The meds have kicked in.  I still need some extra time on top of that, but it's easier now to say, "Hey, don't you have friends?" and let him wander out the door.  Or I can go sit naked on my side of the bed and read, in a-whole-nother room than him.  That helps, too.  It's becoming easier to self-regulate.

Post-post: I've had a really stressful week.  The gloomy weather on Monday (and a dark convo with a friend) triggered me, but then I felt better because the Morilverin came over and dyed my hair.  Then Tuesday, I worked 12 hours on my feet, and came home to a sick cat.  Wednesday, he almost died, but he's doing better.  Thursday we went from having a nice financial cushion after bills, to overdrafting getting stuff for the cat.  I have been super cranky.  At the end of it, however, we had a couple game nights and Cat Crisis 2013 was averted.  I'm feeling ok.  I'm still frustrated about the finances.  I feel like we just can't get ahead.  No matter what we do, whenever we have a little money a car or a cat or my husband breaks and suddenly we're hand-to-mouth-ing it again.  Such are one's 20s, I guess.  At least we own property, so that's cool.  Also, we're supporting the 2 of us on just my income, so once Husband graduates and gets a job, we'll be better off.  So I'm optimistic.