Tag Archives: depression

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You Signed Up For This

I’m sure those aren’t that squirrel’s man bits, but it sure as hell looks like them. Those would be some impressive man bits.

I’ve been getting comfortable enough with The Viking to start letting more and more of my weird slip through. I make comments on rodent testicles in a public place, can you imagine what my private texts are like? Yep. I would feel sorry for the guy, except he gets to experience the brilliant random weird first hand, and he signed up for it. I’m pretty up front about being crazy and a weirdo. People normally don’t believe me and act surprised when I do something completely oddball. Bitches, I warned you.  I believe in truth in advertising.

So, I have finally admitted I was in a pretty thorough funk. I can’t really guess for how long. My guess is that you guys have known for awhile. You guys always know when I am in a funk or depression before I do. I don’t like admitting it to myself, so I pretend everything is fine, because that behavior has always worked so well in the past.  Yeah.

I’m not very kind to myself. I’m very busy focusing on what I need to do, what I am doing wrong, and what I am not doing, but I forget to look at what I have done. I’ve always felt very strange taking praise or feeling a lot of pride. I don’t want to be arrogant or develop an over inflated sense of self, but I think it is just as unhealthy for me to lack understanding of my real value.

I was also really overwhelmed. Yesterday, I picked a few small things that have been bugging me and fixed them. They were pretty small, but I felt a lot better afterward. I’m going to do that everyday, pick a small thing, or three, that bugs me, and fix it. I am also going to stop being upset with myself for not eating and exercising like I should. I just need to fix it. I’m not a failure for not sticking to it; only if I don’t pick it back up. Guilt and self loathing are useless and destructive.

I have no idea about my writing right now. I keep trying to work on different things and coming up with ideas, but everything feels like busy work. It is so frustrating. Everyone keeps reminding me I have a golden opportunity right now. I know I do. I feel a lot of pressure to be making pure literary gold leak from my fingers. I should be a fount of amazing words and world changing prose. Yeah.

I’ll get it figured out. I always do. I’ve written two major works. The Bloggess thinks I’m pretty. I’m a big hit in the Ukraine.  I send awesome random texts messages. I got this shit. No, really.

 

 
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This Too Shall Pass

I am fighting strange bouts of depression right now. (I know, I know, no foreplay with that one. I went straight into the hardcore stuff.) I have been since last week. This isn’t one of those really bad periods that I have went through in the past. I just have hours in a day every few days where I feel bleak, and I want to curl into myself and disappear for a bit. I am not suicidal. I don’t know how to describe how wanting to press the pause button on feeling is different from pressing the stop button, but it is.

Yesterday evening I was going through a pretty heavy bleak spell. I was in the middle of it, and I knew I needed to ask for something to help, but I didn’t know what, or how to get it. Finally, I told my mom what was going on, and a little later, I told her I just needed her to hug me, tell me she loved me, and that I am awesome. She did, and I felt better.

I guess that was lesson one. Learn what you need and how to ask for it. It sounds simple, but I don’t think it is. I think we all have a hard time figuring out exactly what we need, and if we do know what we need, sometimes we don’t know how to ask for it. I think we want those people around us to instinctively know what we need, but that is asking too much of anyone. It is okay to need things, and it is okay to ask.

Then I was sitting here last night writing with my music really loud in my ears feeling my bleak. I let myself feel it. I didn’t try to subvert it. I just kept telling myself that this too shall pass. There is so much power in that simple knowledge. I have been here before. I know this pain and this bleakness. I have fought it, and I have won. I know that this too shall pass.

I am so thankful, with every fiber of my being, that I understand what this is. I am thankful that I can stare this in the face without shame because I know that. I know that this is something I can live through.

I remember before I understood. My heart breaks for anyone going through this who is too afraid or too ashamed to get help or try to understand. I remember trying to lock it away, afraid that if I acknowledge it, it would overwhelm me. If you know, though, what this is, you can face it and raise your chin. You can whisper to yourself that this too shall pass.

Life is a gift; the good and the bad. I know that sounds so strange coming from someone who sometimes wants to press the pause button and be blank for a moment, but even those moments I wouldn’t trade.

You earn your scars in life. Many more people have a lot more scars than I do, but these scars are mine. My scars have taught me things, like I am strong in my own way, and I am brave in my own way. They are teaching that being emotional isn’t bad. They are teaching me that there is something glorious in the fight, and that life is the fight, not something that happens when the fight is over. You live through this moment to get to the next, and even though this moment sucks, this moment is life, and that this moment has value. There is power in that.

So.

Deep Breath.

Chin Up.

Feel what I am feeling.

Whisper: this too shall pass.

 
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Hello Wall

Happiness is a choice. I always try to chose happy. I look at the good things in my life instead of the things that aren’t spectacular. Some people enjoy being miserable but I am not one of those people, so I trudge forth with this insane ability to be happy with my blessings and accept things that kinda suck. Some people think it is naivete or denial, when it is just how I survive. I look at what is good, I look at what is bad, and I try to see if there is anything I can do about what is bad. If I can fix or improve what is bad, I do, if not, I make a note of it and try to accept it. It is a lot of freaking work but I refuse to chose to be unhappy because my life isn’t perfect. Life is a gift. Some days, though, I get really exhausted.

I have chronic depression, I don’t hide it. I am not ashamed of it. My brain chemistry is jacked up. I am not weak because parts of my brain have calcified; that is like believing someone is weak because they don’t produce enough insulin or because they have asthma. So, I am open about my depression. I face it and take my medicine for it. I try my best to handle the best I can.

Most people’s depression shows as sadness or complete apathy. I have that, but I also have the fun added bonus of strange anger, paranoia that I am hurting those I love or they are mad at me, and bad anxiety. The people I love know all of this about me and love me and accept me anyway. I treasure them.

I really didn’t know where I was going with this, but it is actually helping me.  80% of the time the Prozac makes everything very manageable. 80% of the time I feel my emotions how I am supposed to without help of jacked up brain chemistry.  I have been very low and moody the past few days. I have had a headache since Tuesday, revising has been difficult, I have been under stress almost constantly, and I have been freaking out thinking that I might be bi-polar. (It runs in my family so it is a genuine fear for someone with established mental health issues.) I had been so happy because of my book then BOOM depression. I thought it was because I was having a hard time revising and all of that other stuff, I think I figured out what it really is while I was writing this.

I wasn’t going to write about this today. I was going to find something else to write about or just post something funny. I didn’t actually realize that things were really wrong until Kathleen mentioned it to me. I have a way of not noticing the symptoms of my depression until someone brings them up to me. I am blessed that my mom, Tina, and now Kathleen are there to carefully and lovingly point out to me I am being a loon.

Anyway, I keep digressing, I wasn’t going to write about it until I went outside to take the trash and two butterflies landed on my. I decided to write about this and be as honest as I could be. As I wrote, I realized a few things.

My difficulties and disinterest in revising are probably due to my depression.

It is the season change between summer and fall. This is a rough time for me. I have bad seasonal affective disorder. All the season switches effect me a bit but summer to fall and fall to winter are rough on me.

I am probably not bipolar. I was really happy and excited for a really good reason. I wrote my first book. That is a big freaking deal. I am depressed now because of the season changes. YaY. (Honestly, I know bi-polar is not the end of the world and I would live a happy life with it. People who know me know why I fear it so much.)

I probably put way too much stock in butterflies as messengers.

Okay, I am done over sharing now!

 
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If There Ever Was

I got a Facebook message today from I woman I had been friends with in World of Warcraft until some guild drama ended our friendship. It really got me thinking about that period in my life.

awesome worgen image I stopped playing WoW about two months ago. I do not miss it.

God has it really only been two months? It feels like my life fell apart ages ago and I have been scrambling to put it back together while being emo and moody for far longer than that.  I might not being too bad for two months out.

Anyway, I stopped playing WoW and there is not a part of me that misses it.  I miss some of the people. I miss the feeling of community I had since I haven’t really formed bonds in Rift. I do not miss the overwhelming spot I let WoW have in my life.

I am not one of those reformed WoWheads that believe it is evil and will destroy your life if you play it. I believe it is addictive and that it is very easy to lose perspective when you play, but I feel like that is true for many many things. I think it is also true that if you lose balance and let WoW take over your life then it is most likely because something was wrong in your life.

My biggest issue with the game was that I always invested far too much emotionally into it. I allowed myself to get wrapped up in the drama that is inherent with 12 million emo gamers doing anything. My very nature is to be social and to care about people. I forgot to draw the line between caring about my other gamers who are real and do matter and the game which means nothing. I also became very comfortable allowing World of Warcraft to fill some very important roles in my life.

I need social interaction. I need friends. When I moved back here, I felt my lack of friends painfully and distinctly. I could get that big group social dynamic from the game really easily. This is the thing non-gamers don’t understand and it is very important to try to wrap your brain around, the relationships you form with other players are real. We do form relationships with genuine emotion in them. “Normal” people have a hard time understanding that since people have a tendency to put such emphasis on face to face interaction. MMOs are a bonding experience for gamers. We have a big community of people like us. We are a subculture that crosses most socio-economic barriers and most of us delight in this world of people like us.

I don’t apologize for using WoW to make friends and get a social group. I don’t even actually regret it. Now, though, with two months out of it, I miss my “real life” friends more than ever. My regret is that I lost some motivation to hang out with friends I have had for years because I had a readily accessible social core just by turning on my computer. I write blog entries and get responses from Renee, Jill, Lynsie, and Amanda and I realize just how much I miss these women. I may be the fifth wheel when I hang out with the Kreigers and the Hagans but I miss it. It is my own fault too. When I was WoWing all the time, I started to feel awkward around groups of friends and I thought it was the WoW, now I realize that it is me. I have always been awkward and I need to not let that worry stop me.

I also let WoW fulfill my need for a sense of accomplishment. I have a strange sense of self-worth. In order to be happy I have to feel like I am doing something with my life. When my WoW was at it’s most insane, I was not in school and if I did have a job, it was a half time job with no chances of advancement. My self esteem was low because I felt like I was wasting my life away. That wasn’t World of Warcraft’s fault, it was mine.

I don’t know that I have any conclusions yet. I don’t feel like I wasted years of my life. I don’t have regrets because I feel like there are lessons in there, I just have to be willing to look for them. Every small thing in my life has led me to this point. World of Warcraft was one of those things. Things may hurt, things may be hard, and I still have moments of intense melancholy but feel like I am where I need to be in my life. I feel like once I get through this there will be something wonderful, even if it is just a lot more knowledge. I need to think some more.

 
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