So Sad

Not okay with losing friends. Especially when I have to see said friend every day. And especially when said friend acts like it's no big deal. Not okay with fake friendship.

Work Faster.

I took my new upped dosage of meds last night. I really wish immediate gratification were possible with meds. Waiting is dumb. Especially when you have this ugly dead inside feeling with you when you wake, when you work, when you try to relax, when you sleep... Or if not dead inside, a wishing you were dead inside. I'm tired of feeling like this. I don't want to be this person. Why can't I just be happy with what I have and all that junk?

Please Oh Please Let the Meds Make it Better.

So talked to the doc today and I will be upping my meds. Really hoping that this will be the step up that makes the anxiety that's been consuming me manageable. Really afraid that it won't do anything, and we'll be on the continued search for the med that is the answer. My doctor is resistant to prescribing an anti-anxiety med since she says they should not be taken frequently, or you can build up a resistance and addiction to them. I think that's benzo's she is talking about. I really need to educated myself because I'm not sure, and I am also unsure if there are other meds she could be looking at. All I know is that this anxiety is making my life miserable and I want it to stop. I'm trying to be healthy and junk. I am just so tired of my thoughts being so miserable and sad and desperate and angry and paranoid and corrosive. Praying for the meds to work.

Today I was thinking about starting another blog. I would make it my blog where I updated the webiverse on how big of jerks some of my coworkers/friends can be. I could say all the mean things they did and how very abused I am. I concluded that while this sounded satisfying at the time, it would really probably not feel so great. I feel like I already spend so much time devoting thought to negative stuff. The rational part of me tells me that focusing on the crappy moments will not make anything better, and that I shouldn't devote my energy to thinking about them, since I can't change it or make them behave differently. Stupid rationalness. Being grown up and reasonable sucks sometimes. This is what I think when I have moments of reasonableness, at least.

How Can I Disappoint YOU Today?

So the theme of my life this week/month/year is disappointment. Not my own feelings of disappointment, although I seem to succeed in being disappointed in everything and everybody lately, what with my whole glass mostly empty view on life. No. The disappointment I speak of is the gazillion ways that I can disappoint the people I work with, the people I love, the people who love me, and the people I serve. I have blown it in some big ways lately with people.

I've stood friends up for dinner frequently (mostly unintentionally because I have turned into the biggest airhead in the world). They have been patient but I can feel them resigning themselves to my inconsiderateness, which means the socialness I have been working so hard to engage in will be that much more difficult to achieve, since no one will want to set dates with me.

I screwed up in a major way at work, and the effect of what I messed up on has caused ripples that keep rebounding off things and lapping back over me, extending the moments of disappointment and magnifying my feelings of ineffectiveness and perpetual failure. So, yeah. The career is looking great.

I'm failing at church. Failing to go, failing to follow through on service I have committed to. Failing to engage in the spiritual rites and practices I know would soothe me. Even now, writing about how I could be soothed, I feel so anxious and guilty that even though somewhere in my heart I feel my religion could help heal me, most of my heart seems to be saying that I am too far gone and that there is no point. In my heart of hearts I think I must be greatly disappointing God.

I've been working forever, it seems, to learn how to cope with my depression. i thought that I had grown in my depression and that the deep wounds have made me wise and that I had weathered hard times and it had smoothed some of my rough edges. And then this last year or so happened. I feel as though with all the tumult, my edges should be smooth like a rounded pebble on the beach. They should be. But when I examine myself, I feel like a jagged rock that has just been shattered and has more edges than the ocean could ever smooth. My flaws are more glaring and my barriers to being a whole person loom larger than ever before. People I trust and love tell me that I am so unhealthy,so odd, so not normal, that they must go over here and be happy together, away from my toxicity. They tell me the truth as they feel bound to say it, and move away before they are infected. And I don't blame them. I envy them. It must be nice to know how to Be. To give and receive love and feel the glow of being a light in the lives of the ones you love.

I used to feel like that. I used to be able to draw myself out of the space I'm in now and feel that there was hope. That I had friends I gave light to. That my soul was not as ugly and dark and decrepit as it felt in my low moments. I have fleeting moments of that feeling now, but I seem to stumble upon it. I can't intentionally elicit it, and I half hold my breath when I am feeling it, because at any moment an ugly thought or sudden realization of what feels like the horrible truth of my condition  could emerge and take my brain hostage again.

My therapist says I am doing better. She says I am dealing with ugly thought patterns better and that I should not be so hard on myself and celebrate my successes. My friends who have told me how hard it is to be around me have remarked that I have been doing better. But they are still over there. And I need them over here. All of this isolation might possibly drive me mad.

There is a woman who is mentally ill who uses services in the building I work at. Often, in the afternoon, things get to be too much for her. When the internal stimuli that is taunting her gets to be too much, she lets loose with blood curdling, heart rending screams. Over and over and over. For as long as 30-45 minutes. One day, after one of these episodes, she remarked to me, "I want to apologize. I don't know why it happens. It just gets to be too much." I wanted to tell her, I know how you feel. I want to join you. Those screams sound just like the ones in my head. My heart answers every scream torn from her lips. I want to join her. If I did, maybe I could just stop trying.Give into the crazy in my head. They would commit me somewhere, put me on nice soothing medication that soften all the hard feelings. And in the moments the medication was not working, I could purge my soul and get it all out. I could scream until it was drained out of me.

I think it might be time to talk to the doc about upping my meds....

Watch This. Think About It.

This isn't my story, but I found this story very compelling. Will's depression led to a life-altering decision... thankfully not to death, but it very easily could have. I found his message, and the message of his mother and teacher (videos B and C on youtube), to be poignant. Pictures of the car and Will in recovery in video D blew me away..

Me Today.

When I started this blog I thought it would be all kinds of therapeutic. I thought I would be posting ALL the time. Writing has always been cathartic for me.

And then... the worst depressive period of my life. Ever. I'm really tired of it. The good news is I've got new meds that have brought me WAY up. Up enough that I can actually write. As mentioned in one of my posts not too far back, I don't get how suffering makes people more artistic. It just froze all the creative parts of me. There was a huge void where deep thoughts, or even frivolous goofy thoughts should be.

The other part is, even thought I'm starting to have an interest in activities again, and am not so apathetic I just want blissful unconsciousness, thoughts are still often painful. Especially the ones around my depression and how life has been going.

It's not helpful to have a friend tell you over and over that the effects of your anxiety that she is seeing are NOT NORMAL. Emphatically. Over and over again. Um, thanks, dear friend. And, also? Bite me. So, at least I am feeling a little feisty. I do okay with anger in my depression. It's when I'm too depressed to be angry and I just cave when people attack me that things get really bad. Because I totally have enough  negative inner dialogue. I don't need other people to help. Especially friends. But I don't want to tell that whole story right now. Because, like I said, those thoughts are painful. And I don't feel like dealing with that situation further at this point, except to know that I am really angry and that's okay.

So I've been focusing on little things to make life better. Because I still am a wee bit apathetic and get exhausted when I push myself to be the happy person I feel like I should be. So, I'm trying to make myself get up and clean when I want to lay and bed and watch me some online TV. Having a clean home makes a big difference in the mood. So at least when I succumb to my bed and laptop after a while of cleaning, I have accomplished something, and things are orderly around me, and I had some physical activity. So that was step one.

Step two is to start making plans with people and to go visit my cute little niece and nephews like I used to do so often. I've done that a little bit. This week has been so awful I bailed on my friend that I was supposed to get Thai with twice. Fortunately she is forgiving. We will reschedule.

Step three is to volunteer more. I do a little bit of volunteering with some kids. I've been doing bare minimum with that effort. Part of it is I think I need some change. I've started looking at some one-time opportunities with other organizations to just try some things out. That will help me to be a little bit social while having a task so I don't have to focus on the awkwardness of being social. I've never  enjoyed being social for socialness' sake. I like hanging out with friends one on one. Not "being social." Plus, you know, volunteering is good. Helping people, being passionate about a cause... all that.

I'm not sure what step four is. I'm still working on the first three. I'm a little weak on all three. I have little spurts of not being weak. That's better than where I was at. I feel like I should be filling my life. And then I feel like trying to do that would set me up for failure. Bleh. This is a lot of work. I'm tired just writing about it...