Depression Theatre: Popping the Bubble

I understand why people kill themselves, and I shouldn't, and I don't want to. I believe in Hell, even when I'm so pissed off and disillusioned that it doesn't feel like anything could exist but the pain. There's not even a reason for it! I cried when a nurse practitioner told me it was low thyroid, because that can cause depression. That's a reason. And I cried again when my regular doctor took me off the thyroid medicine because it was making my heart race, making it impossible to sleep or think, and because that meant it was just depression again.

If you believe the whole brain chemicals thing, it shouldn't make a difference. If you don't believe it, just knowing me is enough to prove it's got to be more than dramatics. I can't control it, God, I wish I could. My eleven year old has better emotional control than I do. She'll freak out at little things, because kids do that, but in half an hour, she's back to herself. Half an hour later, I'm still reminding myself not to do anything stupid. Same an hour later. Same for days, sometimes.

I even have reasons to be depressed, real reasons to be ever-so-slightly discouraged about life. I worked my ass off in school, worked my ass off to go to college, and it seems like life keeps shitting on me. It shits on everyone, I know. It's my own fault for making bad decisions, I know. I should be able to just get over it, just work through it like everyone else does, but the littlest things can set me back so far.

Someone reminds me of my faults, and I'm useless for days, just hating myself. I know logically that I'm smart, I'm a good writer, good designer, good artist, good parent, but none of that means anything because smart doesn't get me a job. Good writer, designer, artist, doesn't get me a job, doesn't get me I don't know, love or something. I don't even know what I want.

Do I want a house of my own? Yes. I would like to get my life out of storage after almost three years. I would like my daughter to have a space all of her own, and all of her toys. I'd like to be able to stop telling her I'm sorry, that's in storage, and tell my family, I can't get that for you, or I can't find out, because that's in storage, too.

I'm not a big guy, so I let someone else pack the storage unit. He and his friend piled stuff up in such a cluster that I can't get it apart without either injuring myself or going into a rage and just breaking it all. My paintings are supporting box corners and there are beer bottles scattered around. My belongings don't remain in storage because I'm lazy.

This is where I'd complain again about being unemployed if I hadn't done so a hundred times before. A note on that subject, though. Pizza Hut sent me an e-mail after I applied saying they don't have any jobs I'm qualified for.

My friends get sick of the drama. I don't blame them.

I feel like a complete waste of life having to hide the scissors when I get like this. I've never hurt myself like that, and I don't like even the urge to do it. I can't control that, either. I don't sit down and say, I'm miserable. I want to cut to punish myself/to show people how much I hurt/to remind myself that I really am alive, and I can still feel.

I've been over that before, too.

Why do you even bother?

Because I don't have a choice.

There's always a choice. Your choices got you here.

I tried! I tried to do the best I could. I listened to my parents even when I didn't want to, I never did drugs, I never sneaked out, I didn't even teach myself to cuss until college. I was nice to people who were mean to me. I've tried to be everything anyone ever wanted me to be, so why can't something go right?

Because you don't get anywhere being nice. People are attracted to confidence. They want someone who knows their own mind. What the hell do you know?

I don't know.

Exactly.

And I'd continue trying to convince my inner critic that I'm worth something, but the mind blank just got me. Sometimes it's annoying. Sometimes I'm in the middle of telling someone something, maybe explaining to my sister why I'm acting even more pseudo-emo than usual. Then poof I've got no clue what I was saying.

It's trying to get me again. I'm having trouble stringing together sentences, but right now, I'm fine with that. I was feeling really bad a few minutes ago.

So, to paraphrase: I was having suicidal thoughts and self-harm thoughts, and chose to blog while listening to Don't Jump, by Tokio Hotel. The depression bubble popped. I'm still miserable, but no longer leaking from my face (highly unpleasant, that) and no longer thinking, self-harm or otherwise. If I wasn't out of cereal, I'd go have myself a bowl of comfort food.

Moment passed, nothing to see here. Move along.

*insert amusing cheese factory anecdote here*

No One

One of the many problems with long-term depression is that it doesn't stop. There's no three-month period where you're sunshine and roses, and everyone can just enjoy your company and forget the depression ever existed. It's constant, and that makes it extremely difficult to find anyone to talk to when you desperately need to talk.

Everyone has problems. Everyone has bills they need to pay, everyone has things they need to do and not enough time to do them. Everyone has people who need things from them, and that's not a complaint, it's a fact of life. People have problems.

I can't ask my friends and family to put their problems aside and listen to my unfounded worries (or my completely legitimate worries) every time I have a stress attack. They know I'm stressed. They know I'm broke, that I hate myself so much sometimes that I can hardly stand to take another breath, and there's really nothing they can do about it. They can't take care of me.

I should be able to take care of myself, anyway. I should. But for some reason, I can't deal with stress the way "normal" people can. I can go take a shower, try to read a book, snuggle under some blankets, eat comfort food, tell myself repeatedly that someone loves me, and the entire time I'm still on the verge of breaking down.

Does it really matter if someone loves me? Not really. In the face of crippling depression, logically knowing that someone loves me doesn't help. If I die, they'll be miserable for a while, but they'll go on, because that's what people do. When I'm in heaven or hell or purgatory or limbo or being reborn as a dung beetle, is it really going to bother me that a handful of mortals on planet Earth will be left mourning? Probably not. They'll comfort each other, assure each other that they'll see their loved ones in heaven.

No matter how many times I try to convince myself that I've made a positive difference in someone's life, or that I might in the future, I still feel empty and useless. There's nothing I can do that no one else in the world could do. If I don't do it, someone will fill my place.

No happy ending this time. That's life; suck it up.

I'm No Quitter

I did not quit taking my medicine. I do not enjoy crippling depression, despite how glamorous it might seem on the surface to be reduced to a pile of sobbing, third-day-shirt self-hatred for no apparent reason. Not that I don't have several damned good reasons to be depressed, like my car being out of service, being unemployed in a small town and required to search for a full-time job to get food stamps, etc.

So, funny story: My mail goes to my sister's house. She went on "vacation" and holed up in her home with her husband and their dogs, and temporarily cut off all communication with the outside world. Can't say I blame them. Unfortunately, during their solitary week, a letter came for me saying to reapply for my insurance and food stamps or they were cutting me off. I didn't get the letter, didn't respond by their date, and lost my medical insurance. Hahahaha, good one, right?

So I scraped up enough money for two of my three medications, but the third cost $99 before tax, so I didn't get that one. I did, however, get my ass in gear to get my insurance reinstated. What's really funny *chuckle* is that all this coincided with my prescriptions expiring *haha* and my doctor doesn't like to renew them without seeeing me *snicker* but I couldn't afford a doctor's appointment! Hahaha!

Well, my insurance is reinstated because my unholy terror of being left without my medications was highly motivating. Unfortunately, another of my medications expired, and though I  was finally able to get the $99 one (at the bargain price of a single dollar), I didn't take it for a few weeks, so it'll take time to build back up in my system. Because it would be too easy if they were instant-happy pills, which to my knowledge don't actually exist.

Remember I mentioned once losing my train of thought when stressed? I could reread what I've written, but I'm feeling pretty apathetic right now, which is a preferred state, so I'm not going to mess that up. The complete blanking of the mind is a relief.

So one time, at the Career Center, I applied to work at the cheese factory. Night shift. We'll see if they hire me, since I quit last time.

99% of people who read this won't re-post it.

People who have backbones, people who read their friends' statuses, people who think abuse is bad and people who believe any number of honorable things will NOT repost this because they see it so much that it begins to lose meaning, or they're tired of reading that they're unworthy if they don't re-post or click like.

Am I really not your friend because I wouldn't post the third letter of my last name? I read the post, must I then prove my worth by responding to every chain-post on every friend's wall?

Yes, I added you to get friends on an application. I needed more neighbors, more vamps in my clan, whatever, and I added hundreds at a time a few times. But if you've been around more than a couple months, I've kept you for a reason. This is where you can pretend to get worried that I've stalked you, because I've visited your profile. I've kept up with your public status updates, and we probably have more in common than the games we choose to play, though that alone says something.

Some of you may have noticed we don't even play the same app anymore. Are you still a wizard? How many farms do you have? I may not remember, but when you change your avatar, I notice. I send a prayer your way when you ask, but I don't click like because hell, you don't know me. I don't know you, either. I know this guy's cat is stupid, but hilarious, I know this woman is beautiful in a way that implies she doesn't realize it, but it's all superficial.

Okay, so maybe I'm really not your friend.

I don't click that stuff for my family or my "real life" friends either, though. Really, Aunt So-And-So? You're going to delete everyone who doesn't have the backbone to re-post a copy/pasted, recycled, mass-produced comment? Delete me, then.

In "real life" I'm one of those people who's quiet so much of the time that people forget I'm there. They either assume I know everything and tell me nothing or tell me things several times because they're sure no one has mentioned it. Thanks, Dad. You told me about your congestion (read: constipation) medicine when you called two hours ago. I haven't forgotten. No, Grandma, I wasn't told that my cousin is having a bridal shower tomorrow, I did not plan on going and I have nothing to give her.

Don't re-post this if you don't care. Don't re-post it if you're too busy. Don't re-post it simply because the title has challenged you, or because you labor under a belief that people will think you uncaring or unpatriotic if it doesn't immediately grace your Facebook wall.

If it pisses you off, however, you may re-post it to share another example of how much stupidity exists on the internet. You may also re-post it if you think it makes a good point, or if the whim takes you, or if you're bored.

And remember, even though 99% of my readers WILL NOT RE-POST THIS, between 28% and 76% of statistics are made up on the spot anyway. So sayeth I.

Build a Bridge

I'm officially over living in the middle of nowhere.

I used to live just north of the middle of nowhere, but I don't anymore, and the difference is huge. I live in a town with no gas station or grocery store. There is, however, a hardware store, a bar, and at least five churches. For around five hundred people, if you count the area around the town, which actually belongs to no town at all. The church I've been to actually gets about twelve people on Sundays.

But I digress.

My current gripe is about the lack of Internet access. No one (including my grandmother, who is paying the bills while I'm unemployed) can afford it. The options are Verizon, which is apparently too pricey, and this guy who gets such a good connection that, for a fee, he'll give you the access code and you can use his. That's what everyone has. And yet, last month, for $40, the internet worked in five-minute blocks for maybe a total of an hour, maybe less. This needs no exaggeration to be true.

I have a smartphone, which is my lifeline because I can't in good conscience ask grandma to pay $40 (or, at dial-up speed, $30) for Internet that doesn't work. This leaves me unable to do a lot of things that I do online. Of course, I wasn't able to do them the past month and a half either, so the difference is that now we're not paying for it.

I love Facebook. Or, I loved Facebook. There's only so much to do on a mobile phone, which means my apps are all null and void. Can't check on my farm, restaurant, city, etc. on my phone. The family gets pissy when I don't announce things, such as the vacation I'm currently on, and earlier I got a message on one of my photos that my cousin was mad at me for being in California and not telling her. My cousin who lives in Vegas, and who'll be visiting California after I've left. Sorry, cuz, that I didn't FB-alert "the fam" that I'd be in the state.

I'm only here for a week, and my daughter is going to the mountains, the beach, Disneyland, Universal Studios, and Hollywood. I really can't visit the six-plus cities from San Diego to San Francisco where extended family resides, especially when I'm staying with the friend who paid to fly me out here, and I don't have a rental car.

Those are not complaints, by the way. Those are the fun part. The complaint is that my family is butthurt that I'm not doing my duty.

Back to the point. No Internet once I get home. I'm on a badass little two-screen setup right now that makes me want nothing more than to pull up Photoshop and multi-task the hell out of it to see what it can do, and I'm soaking it in while I'm here. In the evenings, between running around doing glamorous and exciting things, none of which involve trying to explain my life to people who don't try to explain theirs to me, either. [/bitterness]

Depression is Depressing. II

There's a lot of stigma that comes with clinical depression. My own father has said I'm just crazy, though admittedly he hasn't said it to my face in years. I mentioned having seen a school psychologist once and everyone suddenly got worried, leaning away as though I might suddenly attack them with my hat or the nearest utensil. No, actually, I had a bad case of senioritis, but details.

It's some of those everyday reactions that (pardon the pun) drive me crazy. At first, my being unhappy, for whatever reason, garnered a sharp, "Build a bridge and get over it." Pause for explanation: One of the differences between feeling depressed and clinical depression is the inability to get over it, and that there doesn't need to be a reason for it. All the happy thoughts in the world can't get rid of the hopelessness.

This is where I fight my own stigma. I live it, and I've lived it for over a decade, yet I still feel like it's some kind of personality defect. Everyone has hard times, but most don't collapse, unable to do anything but try to keep alive. Yes, we've all been there, and that's why it's so tricky, that's why it's so hard to understand. We've all wondered if the world would be better off without us, and we've all had that flickering thought that maybe if we lost control of the car for just a moment...

Would that flimsy-looking metal barrier stop the car? Would the car flip? Sink? Could I get the door open? Would anyone report it, or would I die? Would I want to be saved? Are my underwear clean in case the EMT has to cut my clothes off?

We all think that stuff. Right?

I tend to think it more than most. I hate the two bridges I cross four times a day going to and from my daughter's school. I wonder if there's any bank on the other side, or if I'd go straight into the water. I'm afraid that if I did lose control of the car, people would think I'd committed suicide and that would trump any good memories they might have of me; the ultimate failure.

The people who have dealt the most with me over the past years, who have seen the uncontrollable mood swings, still have problems completely understanding, and I mentioned this earlier before I started a side-rant. At first it was, "Build a bridge and get over it," which by the way makes it worse because God, I wish I could do that, you have no idea how much I wish I could do that.

Then people began to accept, but not being in my head, couldn't tell if I was legitimately, normally depressed, or uncontrollably, clinically depressed. The response became, "Did you take your medicine?" Yes, I did, actually. I do not like curling up in a corner somewhere crying while trying to convince myself that suicide will send me to hell, and an eternity of hell can't be much better, so I am highly motivated to take my medicine each night before bed. Plus, if someone randomly saved me from an attempt, I could end up crippled and unable to even try again.

Ridiculous? Possibly. Morbid? Probably, but if it works, it works.

I've gotten a new reaction now, and I think I'd have preferred the old, "Did you take your medicine?" The problem, apparently, is a misunderstanding. I'm having a hard time right now, what with being technically homeless and other things I don't feel like listing off. I think that gives me a right to claim legitimate, non-chemical depression. I got beat up by a cat yesterday (story for another time) and was mopey because a) I hurt, b) I'm sick, and c) it's gloomy outside, and well-meaning family started listing off basic blessings for me, as though they feared for my life. Yes, my daughter is healthy, aside from her illness, yes, I have a roof over my head and wheels under my butt, but I hurt, I'm sick, and I'm sweating a bit because I refuse to take off my sweatshirt so everyone can see that I wallked out of the house today with my shirt on inside-out.

Thank you all for reminding me that I have a place to sleep at night. (Though I'm sharing the bed and am so sick of Christmas decorations I could scream. Just sayin'.)

I am going to post this, and I'll come back later to fix the typos. It's difficult to compose a legible blog on one's phone, qwerty keypad or no. OMG it's so hard! *sniffle* I hate my life! I'm going to go cut because the only way to deal with my pain is to fall into broad stereotypes!

Right.

Edit: edited