Am I the Only One*

Did anyone else grow up in a house where you could ask each other to do things for you, like get you a glass of water when they were already up and you were weight down with things on your lap in the middle of a project? Because apparently my roommate finds this the height of rudeness. Funny since her snotty refusal to do it is incredibly rude to me. I bring her things all the time.

I just had to get that off my chest.

*The title totally makes me want to listen to that Melissa Etheridge song.

Worry Worry Worry

I'm noticing a pattern here. A pattern where a few of my friends, who happen to live with each other, are never online anymore. Actually, they are online. They just have their chat programs set to show them as offline. How do I know this? Because one of them has told me in the past that he does this to dodge certain people. Only now it appears that he is dodging me. When I ask about it, there are all kinds of excuses. The thing is, he's always on the computer. It's his life. So saying he never touches it is laughable.

They're leaving me. Why do my friends always leave me?

Grrrrr.

So today Crabby seems to be the watchword. I spent most of the day being fairly lazy. I feel as though I accomplished something simply because I tidied my room a little, showered, read my book for a while, talked to a fellow depressed friend, and went on a short grocery shopping excursion. In retrospect I wish I had been a little more lazy and not gone shopping. Because apparently I hate everyone today. I had not realized that until that point, having seen no people today. I did know that I had an annoying sinus headache. I think it was somehow affecting the part of the brain that holds patience. I had none. The clerks were lazy and rude (not totally my illogical rage talking there, I witnessed them ignoring and patronizing other customers), everyone was in my way on the roads, and I had to go to four stores to find the printer cartridge to make my printer work. The result is that although I am cheery at the moment, I'm pretty sure if there were people around I would be biting off their heads. I'm fairly certain that this is partially due to my impending "time of the month" (sorry if that's too much info, imaginary reader), which seems to amplify the anger part of my symptoms. I even annoy myself with all the drama in my thoughts that anger seems to bring. Ugh. Now I might just start snapping at myself.

Couldn't Have Said it Better.

I subscribe to a few blog feeds at psychcentral.com, and I read one today in which she mentions those annoying people who try to tell you to buck up when you say you are depressed, or "conversations with people who think mental illnesses are like mermaids–not real–and that absolutely every health condition can be fixed with the right thoughts plus a little acupuncture."

Yes! Excactly! If only I had a mermaid. Nope, just apathy, crappy sleep patterns, lots and lots of sadness and anger, and a nice big helping of anxiety. Plus some other symptoms that elude my mind... oh, yeah, like poor concentration.

I love my bed.

It's 5:21 p.m., and I still have not gotten out of my bed. I am sitting up, which is progress. I've checked my email, looked at some job postings, and watched Dr. Phil and Oprah. I'm really going to have to make a run for the bathroom soon. Somehow I don't htink this is going to help me correct my sleeping schedule. I have tried staying up all night, taking a short nap in the afternoon, and then going to bed at a semi-reasonable hour twice now. But I can't quite bring myself to get up. My bed is warm and comfy, and sleep is stress-free, once I get there. Plus sometimes I have nice dreams that I actually remember when I sleep too long.

Is a Little Empathy Too Much to Ask For?

Today I am lamenting over friends who just don't understand. If you're clinically depressed, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the friends who think you are lazy, that you need to buck up. Those friends who, regardless of how many times you have explained the many symptoms of depression, think it's just about being sad.

Yes, there is sadness. There is also anger, anxiety, lack of concentration, too much sleep, too little sleep, too much hunger, too little hunger.... but it's not just sloth and gluttony. Yes, I still have my free will. But the problem is, when I wake up in the morning (or afternoon, or evening), I don't want to be conscious. It hurts. I'm not necessarily talking body aches and pains, although it seems like sometimes I do wake up with a headache or general physical ickiness that makes me want to retreat back into my dreams. I'm talking about an all-consuming sorrow. It's as if I've woken up to realize that my best friend has died. Fortunately this is not the case. But it's that magnitude of grief on the bad days, and I don't always know why. And yes, sometimes when I get up, and pass that threshold of pain upon first waking, I realize there is no real source of the sadness. Sometimes I do buck up, and feel better, and thank the heavens for the beautiful day. But sometimes I just wish, all day long, that I hadn't listened to the voice of reason that told me I should get up.

Sometimes anxiety consumes me, and I spend the whole day chasing my thoughts about a stressful situation around and around in my head. It's not the useful sort of thinking, where I contemplate solutions, and rational decisions are made. It's the kind of thinking that slowly deteriorates into totally irrational thoughts. At the beginning of the day, I might be thinking about how my best friend has not been online this month, and the fact that he sometimes marks himself as showing offline to get work done. By the end of the day, I've convinced myself that he has marked himself offline to avoid me, and that something I said at some point offended me. I've convinced myself that he doesn't really like me at all, and just puts up with me for his wife's sake. I've convinced myself that I should have seen this last year, and I start to see patterns in his behavior. And the hard thing is, because I seem to be less observant when I am my most depressed, I might have in reality have offended him and not noticed it. So I tell myself this is anxiety, and that I am being irrational, and I talk to this friend, and he assures me it is not personal. But I don't believe him. Because I've seen a pattern. And I have a tendency to expect the worst. Because why would anyone want to be friends with me? I bug the crap out of myself.

This is the week I've had. I have a close friend who refuses to help me wake up for church, which I keep sleeping through, and which is important to me. She seems to think that the fact that I sleep through it is an indicator that I am not as devoted to my faith as she is. She seems to think that I am choosing not to go to church because sleep is more important. In reality, my sleep schedule is so messed up I don't know where to start to fix it. I'm not working right now, so a bedtime is a little silly. There is nothing to wake up for the next day. Even when I try to correct my schedule, my thoughts race and my hearts race and my muscles ache. I cannot sleep when I want to. When I do manage to relax and go to sleep, I sleep for far too long, and I fight wakefulness, for the reasons described above. So when Sunday rolls around, it is doubly hard to rouse myself at the right time, and get myself to church. And when I do succeed in attending, all of the people annoy me, and all the happiness makes me want to wretch. In my rational mind, I see that they are, for the most part, not annoying. And that I am incredibly angry. And that no one understands, which makes me hate them more.

So, dear friend, I say to you here, where you will never read: educate yourself. If you have a depressed friend, it might be me. And I am telling you, your inability to show compassion makes me feel that much more freakish. Learn about the symptoms, maybe watch a movie or two, and try to put yourself in my shoes. I already am disgusted enough with myself. I don't need your judgement.