What A Bad Week Looks Like

This entry is not about travel, nor is it purposely entertaining. It is about adventure, I suppose. Adventures in Major Depression. Wompwomp.

So some of you who've read a bit of this blog and some of you who just flat out know me know that I've been struggling with major depression. It's been coming and going as it pleases for about the past 10 years, leaving casualties in it's wake, including weight fluctuations, social isolation, near loss of jobs, and worst of all a serious case of poor self worth.

With that said, it's been a bad week. I'm not usually one to broadcast my business, or even talk candidly about it, but I'm trying to get better at looking for support. I find that as I grow older, attention actually makes me uncomfortable, particularly from strangers. Although, perhaps that's just part of the depression talking as well. Anyway, I'm also trying to get better at telling people when I need to talk, and about asking for help, both of those concepts are for some reason incredibly tricky, despite my pretty solid phone-away-from-home support system. But I thought it was time to journal again, and for some reason it seemed like a good idea to make it public. It was probably a terrible idea, sorry in advance.

My depression can be disabling, and I find that highly embarassing to cope with and admit to people. I don't know how many times I've said things to myself such as "Stop being lazy." or "Get over it." And the old, self-abusive favorite, "You can do better than this, what the fuck is wrong with you?" No one is as hard on you as you are on yourself. Part of me still doesn't understand why I'm like this, and I think that despite the many neuroscience books I've read, countless therapy sessions and discussion with people who also have depression there is something about this disease that doesn't make any fucking sense.

Anyone who has never before experienced major depression firsthand may have a very hard time understanding the situation. Often, they automatically think you are being lazy and you can change if you reaaaaally want to, you just aren't trying hard enough.

Really??? Do you know me at all? Do you know how hard I've tried and succeeded at so many, many things in my life? I have overcome adversity on more than one occasion. I have the capacity to succeed, and I have the know-how to do so as well. Don't you think that if I could have fixed myself overnight I would have? I promise you, I do not enjoy this. Every single bad day, the big thought that keeps me going is that somehow, someday I will be myself again, or at least a better version than I am now. But even that I hardly believe sometimes. Those are the really bad days.

Some people also scoff at the idea that it's disabling. Honestly it's not a word I would have used previously to describe my situation, but I had a bit of a revelation this weekend. I worked on Sunday and I had the pleasure of working with a man who was a wonderful human being with some significant cognitive deficits. His sister was telling me all about how he neglects many normal everyday activities, as if not recognizing them as priorities. Basic human routines, such as eating and sleeping, bathing and going to the bathroom. Sometimes he just forgets that any of that is important.

Well, shit if that doesn't sound familiar. I have a miserable ass headache today, and you want to know what? I gave it to myself. I'm mega dehydrated. Water, the substance of life. I deemed it less important than doing the dishes. I have been avoiding drinking water at home because the dishes in my sink were piled too high to get water out of the faucet without making (more of) a gigantic mess. So instead, I just didn't drink. Nor did I cook. I went out and bought throw-away plates and bowls and cups and plastic cultery so I wouldn't have to do the dishes. A sigh of relief, at least for 25 more meals.

Normal lucid brain say what the fuuuuck??

Yep. Also, I am pretty sure I own more underwear and socks than anyone else I know, because whenever I run out of clean ones, I just go by some more. Laundry seems an insurmountable, impossible and unimportant task. Doing dishes seems less important than having drinking water. Just a few examples from my everyday Adventure in Major Depression.

Ok, clearly something is wrong here. I know it, you know it now, my cats know it, the guy at Target who sees me buying socks in bulk weekly probably knows it too. But knowing the problem does not fight the battle, nevermind win it. When I have these times of realization, that I'm wasting my life sleeping on my couch, gaining back weight that I've lost and being completely isolated, that's when I am the meanest to myself. I know it's clearly not the right way to deal with things, especially since it's not working. I don't feel better or more motivated when I call myself a lazy, fat fuck. Funny, you'd think that'd really motivate me. -_- Clearly I know better, but clearly I do not do better. There's the disconnect.

I'm working on it. I'm working on all of it, all of the time, 24/7. Some days just getting out of bed is "working on it." And luckily, today is one of those days that I have some hope that someday, working on it will be good enough, working on it will be working towards something and I'll start to feel better. After all, wearing new, clean sox is better than wearing no sox or dirty sox, so at least I've made some progress there. The concept of feeling better is grasped, it's the execution that's a little elusive. Sweet Princess Diaries quote right there.

Erin comes to visit tomorrow. I'm so looking forward to the respite from my own mind. And we'll do lots of fun stuff that I'll post about, I'm sure. Hopefully sooner rather than later so this isn't the first post you see on my blog. But thanks for bearing with me.