I'm suddenly depressed. Really, really depressed. I don't want to do anything, I don't want to get out of bed, I can't see any reason to live. It hit me like a truck all of a sudden last night and it hasn't let up. I am at a loss for what to do. I thought the damned antidepressants were supposed to keep this from happening? I've been taking them every morning like clockwork. Why have they suddenly stopped working? Or is it something else entirely? What am I doing wrong?

It sucks that this happened right on the heels of my declaring myself a compulsive shopper and figuring out a plan of action to deal with it. I hate having all of my mental/emotional maladies rear their very ugly heads at once.

And I hate that I have to sit through four hours of meetings this morning feeling like this. Yuck. I hope I don't have to socialize too much.

Still depressed and without the energy that I need to get the things I need to do done. And Mark's parents are here, so that's an extra stressor (so far so good with that, but they've only been here since yesterday afternoon). Mark is in the shower right now and I really need to pee, so I'm irritated about that.

I love my dog, though. Love him more all the time. I'm beginning to see why people are so nuts about dogs. It's an interesting personality development.

I really want some Entemann's coffee cake. My food obsessions are so strange. I am about to start my period, though, so I think I'll give myself a break.

I hate to notice this, but I am forever giving myself a break. I need to give myself fewer breaks.

Ug ug ug. Today is just shitty all around. I can't believe how much the upsetting news of all of my friends is upsetting me. I can't tell if it's empathetic or self-centered to say that, either, which just makes me feel vaguely shitty about myself.

And I got not enough sleep last night, so I am crabby and tired. For the first time, I'm not looking forward to Regulation of Gender this afternoon.

I'm bailing on the doggie training class on Thursday in order to volunteer at a Stop Domestic Violence event. I have on idea if the event (which includes a performance by Lisa Loeb, a short film and a speaker) will be any good at all, but I told myself I was going to get more involved in actual feminist activities here, and by God I am.

For all that's worth.

I think I might be getting depressed. Leaving the house to go to class this morning seems like more than I can manage. I am going to try, but only with the understanding that as soon as I get back I can return to my pajamas and not take them off again all night (i.e. skip my night class). I feel so overwelmed...and I'm not really sure why. Sure, I have a lot of work to do, but no more than I'd easily have done in this time frame at Reed. Maybe it's being here by myself and taking care of the dog and all that? I don't know. Maybe it's seasonal--the cold weather gets to me? But I have that distinct sinking feeling.

The Phoenix, which I love and am so proud of, is on the verge of becoming just another headache I don't need.

Basically, I need to grit my teeth and hold out until the end of the semester. Vacation sounds SO good. Until then, one step at a time, one foot in front of the other. First, a shower.

Yep, I'm definitely down in it. I went to bed at 10:30 last night and still could barely pull myself up at 7:30. I am already thinking of ways to get out of class this afternoon and hoping my meetings this morning will be short. And it's not that I want to come home and get to work on this damn paper--it's that I want to come home and go back to bed.

Wonderful. I know what I need to do--just keep my head down, try to eat reasonably, and see myself through this. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no time for self-coddling. Shit.

So I just put my roses in fresh water and clipped them. They are doing pretty well, considering they are on their fifth day. I think taking care of them makes all the difference.

It is amazing to me the difference having fresh flowers in the house makes to my psyche. I know it's not PC to buy cut flowers and I am supporting the use of all sorts of nasty chemicals and all that, but I can't help it. They make me feel better, and when I feel like I have been, I'll do whatever makes it better.

Could be heroin, right?

So this is one of those things I have posted about a few times in the last couple of days, then erased the posts and hoped nobody saw them. So if you see this and then come back and it's gone, don't worry--I probably just thought better of it again.

It is something I really want to write/talk about, but I'm just not sure how.

I made a therapist appointment. Finally. After more than a year of putting it off. It's a week from Monday, and I'm terrified. What if I don't like her? What if I just get in there and break the fuck down and everything comes out at once? What if she doesn't like me? What if she says there is something essentially wrong with my personality and I'll never be fixed? What if she says there is nothing fixable wrong with me and this is just the way I am? Worst yet, what if she says nothing?

What if all she wants to talk about are my parents?

I have no idea what to expect. I have no idea if this will help. I'm terrified that the experience will just be one more thing to feel shitty about.

I'm really really tempted to call the whole thing of. Yes, I accept that I could probably be very helped by therapy, but WHAT IF I'M NOT?

My friend Susan calls this "feeling purple." It's as good a description as any I've heard. I'm feeling purple today. Makes me think I'm feeling bruised, which I am. Makes me think I'm feeling like my head it wrapped in purple velvet and I can't see or hear clearly, which is certainly the case. I like it. It's descriptive.

I haven't been posting anything of substance here lately, as some of you have noticed. There is really one simple reason: The Man is getting me down. I don't know what it is precisely, or more I can't put a neat label on the combination of things it is, but I'm wearing a little bit thin. School is overwhelming me, which makes me feel lame. I'm exhausted all the time, which is probably just from allergies, but it still makes me feel lame. Work is...gray. It's fine, but I feel guilty for being here when I have so much school shit to do (and of course I feel guilty for not being here when I'm at home). I'm tired of doing all the freaking housework. I'm tired of exercising and trying to eat well. I'm incredibly tired of bleeding and of the pain that comes with it every. freaking. month. Mostly I'm just tired.

So yeah. I'm in a funk. If I snap at you, I apologize in advance. I'm trying not to be a pain, even though I feel like being one all the time.

Depression is coming on. I can see the cloudiness at the edges of my vision. And I'm so tired, as if I've run marathons and solved equations for days. Everything is sad. My officemate's music is making me want to cry. The usual Phoenix shit is setting my teeth on edge.

Timing, as usual, is bad. Mom is still here. Howell and Melinda will be here in three days. I just want to get in bed and stay there.

So Mark totally fucking rules. And I am going to tell you why.

Last night, I came home to find a clean house and several loads of clean laundry. Then, he sat me down and had a talk with me about how my depression is obviously getting worse, I sleep all the time, and I need to go to the doctor.

I balked at it at the time, but he's right, of course, and it got me off my ass today and I went through the extremely tedious and fairly humiliating process of filling out a transfer request for my medical records and filling out the 19,000 pages of pre-shrink paperwork. So, in theory, I will get an appt. sometime in the next eon.

In the meantime, I wait. I am actually doing fairly well today--I've been really busy, I got less than 8 hours of sleep last night, and I feel damn good. Not even too tired. But I know it won't last. I feel a lot like I did before--as if there is something physically wrong with me.

I wonder if it's normal to conceptualize one's psychiatric illnesses as physical? It really does feel that way to me.

Anyways. Yeah. I'm going to go read now.

I got a library card today!! Wheee!!

We all want something beautiful
Man I wish I was beautiful

I'm in the gray. I don't know why, but I am. Maybe it's the weather, maybe it's the reduced Prozac dosage. Maybe it just is. My friend S. calls this feeling purple, but to me, it's more gray. Oregon in February three-consecutive-months-of-drizzle-looking
-out-the-window-and-seeing-nothing-alive gray. Dammit, this is what I moved away from.

I'm not unhappy. I'm just...unenthusiastic.

So I have a secret. Naturally, what else would I do with it than post it on the Internet where millions of people could theoretically read it?

I am drug-free.

I've been off the Prozac for nearly a month, and off the Wellbutrin (which I was never on much of it anyway) for a week. I'm clean.

And frankly, I feel fucking great. I may be eating too much and shopping too much (the ups are back, apparently), but I don't feel depressed, or tired, and I am starting to be able to conceptualize why people might want to have sex.

Life is good.

I've been thinking a good deal about suicide lately. No, not my own--a coworker's wife killed herself a couple of weeks ago, there are small children involved, it's a terrible situation, and it's been buzzing around in my head. Then, today, I was home sick, and I was filling time, as I am both wont and apt to do, by watching the Top 20 on CMT. The video for this song came up:

"How Do you Get That Lonely", Blaine Larsen

As I have mentioned here before, I struggle with depression. I took Prozac for a couple of years, then for a while I took Prozac and Wellbutrin (the Prozac was killing my sex drive), then just Wellbutrin. For the last several months I've been drug free. I decided to go off the drugs because my life had gotten pretty stable and happy, and I felt they were making me sleep all the time and not letting me enjoy sex.

For the most part, I've been pretty happy with being off them. I haven't had any really bad tailspins, just normal ups and downs.

A few days ago, something happened.

I seem to be having one. I'm having what I think are panic attacks. Mark and both had about an hour of hysterical crying last night. I want my dog back. I need to take some time off work, and I can't. I need to grieve, or heal, or something, and I'm not. I thought I was doing so well, but my facade is falling fucking apart.

I am going to go back on the anti-depressants. Chance has been gone nearly a month and I have nightmares every night. I know I'm not supposed to feel like a failure, but I do.

Well, you can read it if you want to, but don't say I didn't warn you. This post is likely to contain some freaky, gruesome, she-should-really-only-share-that-with-her-therapist shit. I'm sorry, I can't help it. I don't have a therapist, and this has to go somewhere.

Both Dr. B and Dooce have been writing recently about their depression. It's an incredibly brave thing to do, in my opinion. It is much, much easier, when depressed, to retreat, not tell anyone anything, hide. For me, at least, it's the natural response. Talking about it only makes it more difficult to ignore or explain away, not to mention just being embarrassing. Besides, on days when getting out of bed feels like a major achievement, talking about it is just too damn much work.

Inspired by Dooce and Dr. B, I decided to force myself to say a bit more about what is going on with me:

I've just learned that a friend of mine from home (someone I worked with) has stage 4 mestastic breast cancer. This is really, really not good. I am at a loss as to what to say or feel or think about it, but it hasn't really left my mind since I found out.

As for my own life, I am back on the "fake until it's true" plan of action. If I pretend I am OK, eventually I will really be OK. At least that's the hope. Mark and I had a heart-to-heart the other night, and I know he is dissatisfied with our relationship now, and frankly, I don't blame him. I am not all that much fun recently, and to be honest, in some ways I haven't been very much fun for quite some time. It's not just that I never want to have sex (although I never do), or that I never want to see anyone (although I never do), it's that I am sickly and cranky and demanding and mean. And that is a lot to put up with.

In other news, I am thinking about trying acupuncture for my allergies. I'm still too scared to go back on the allergy pills and see if they play nicely with the Wellbutrin now, and I have to do something.

This time it's Lexapro. Advice?

This morning in the shower, I came upon a very funy thought (to me anyway):

Every day, I take a pill to protect me from sperm (Apri, birth control pills), a pill to protect me from myself (Lexapro, antidepressant pills), and a pill to protect me from everything else (Zyrtec, allergy pills). I should just get myself a plastic bubble and be done with it.

I haven't been much on the personal content lately, and basically that's because things have been really, really sucking. I haven't been in a depression, not that kind of sucking, but rather circumstances-conflating-against-me sucking, in combination with my-having-to-take-some-close-looks-at-my-own-behavior-and-not
-being-happy-with-what-I'm-seeing sucking. I've realized, through my recent period of introspection, that there are some things in my life I'm really not happy with, and it is up to me to change those things. Change, as always, comes slowly and with great difficulty, especially given the other conspiring circumstances. And all of this has made me not all that into writing.

All of that is vague, I know, but it's about all I've got, for now.

All of a sudden, the weather in Austin has changed to meet my mood. The crankier I get, the colder, wetter, grayer, and nastier it gets outside. I'm not sure weather to be pissed or grateful about that.

So yeah. I'm cranky.

I'm going back on the Lexapro. Some people with mild, low-lying depression can live without antidepressants. I'm clearly not one of them.

Cathy, I'm lost, I said
though I knew she was sleeping.
I'm empty and aching
and I don't know why.
-Simon and Garfunkel, "America"

I've moved seamlessly from passive to active depression.

I was talking to someone a while back about how hard it is for me to talk or write about my depression, and how much I admire bloggers who are able to discuss it intelligently in their space (read this post by Alice of Finslippy to see what I mean). And they asked what I was afraid of. It's a lot of things--people thinking less of me for being someone who depends on psychotropic drugs, seeming weak, etc. But I've never been able to put a really good finger on the other thing, the big fear, until I saw The Willard Suitcase Exhibit. People's entire lives stolen, to be recovered only in fragments from their suitcases decades later. That's what I'm afraid of.

Thanks to Blue Lily for once again turning me on to something I needed to see but likely would have missed otherwise.

I can't get the Willard Suitcase Exhibition out of my head. I even dreamed about it last night. So this post will contain "spoilers," as it were, and I highly recommend you click the link and take a look for yourself before you read it.

I don't know how much it has come out here, since I haven't been writing much that's all that personal (which is, I think, a nice change from my usual blogging style), but I'm getting depressed. Or maybe I am depressed? I feel like I've been "getting" depressed for long enough that it's either already here and I missed it's arrival or the journey is, in this case, the destination. Either way, it's been a pretty good struggle to get out of bed most mornings for the foreseeable past, and I'm walking around with the feeling of carrying a very heavy imaginary backpack. Which is not something new to me, nor is it something I can't cope with, but it's a bummer, all the same.

One of the things that has been suggested to me, by both friends and professionals, as a way of combatting getting bogged down in depression and letting my behavior spin out of control, is to make a point to "check in with myself," ideally in writing, at given interludes. The idea is to get down what your goals/obstacles are and be able to check back on them over time, so you have "proof" to show yourself that you are (or aren't) making progress, or doing what you know you need to do, or whatever.

One way we do that, I think, is with the tradition of New Year's resolutions. Obviously, annually is not often enough to check in with oneself, at least not for someone like me. But it's a start. So I'll begin with last year's resolutions. I made 12 of them last year.

I am not going to bore you with the various and sundry ways in which I sucked this weekend, nor with beating myself up about it. I shopped, I didn't go to church, Mark and I fought, it was bad. However, it is back to being not bad now, and so forward we will go.

On a happy note, both Oliver and Edie are now on trial adoptions with their new families, who seem in both cases to be well-suited for them and happy to have them. This is great for them, and good for us, as well, as we need a little bit of less stressful non-fostering down time to get our collective shit together.

I gotta tell you, I'm hating myself today.

I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of. Really.I could fill pages. Most of them, though, I can say I learned from, or I couldn't have avoided, or I have one of half a million excuses for. However, one thing I am not proud of, that totally makes me hate myself, for which I have no excuse, is the constant knack I have for pushing away and distancing myself from the people I love the most, particularly if they are distant geographically.

I reconnected this afternoon and evening with my best friend from way way back, and realized it's been probably six months or more since I'd spoken to her. Things worth talking about had happened in both of our lives, and we hadn't talked about any of them. And it's totally my fault. I just shut down, I go inside my house and inside my head, and I don't communicate. And it's not even that I don't want to see or hear from my friends--in fact, I'd love nothing more--but I just can't manage to make it happen. I do the same thing to local friends, but I am much worse over long distances.

I was just having lunch with a friend, and the subject of creating drama in your own life, as an antidote to boredom or loneliness or whatever, came up. This is something I actually spend a lot of time thinking about, believe it or not, since I am so frequently and totally guilty of it. But much as I've analyzed this behavior in myself and in others, I still don't get it.

What is it in us that we create problems when there aren't any, like we have a problem space that has to be dedicated to drama at all times? Doesn't it seem like, in terms of evolution, that would be counterproductive?

And much as I beat myself up about this, I know it's not just me who does it. I see other people do it all the time, some of whom can admit it and some of whom can't. The truth is that there are very few things we face in our day-to-day lives that constitute an actual crisis, and if we've gone through one of those things (and honestly, I'm drawing a blank on any of them in my own life) and see how the rest of our drama falls away, we can pretty easily see our own drama queenery.

So why put ourselves through it? Is it a sign that our lives are too easy, that we should be required to devote more to the day-to-day? What purpose does it serve us?

Unless you want to read my expositions on the brilliance of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and how I think Season Six is particularly amazing, or hear about how I am so depressed I can barely hold up my head, I really don't have much to say.

*title with apologies to Mary Gauthier

So there's no being cryptic about it--I'm a big freaking mess. So far I've been able to more or less continue getting up in the morning, washing, dressing, and getting to work, but that is about the end of my list of accomplishments. I go home and go directly to bed, sleeping or watching DVDs on my laptop with headphones. I am having a horrible hard time conversing with people. I can't sleep very well. I'm not eating much. I am not answering email, returning phone calls, or in any way looking forward to any of the things I have planned in the next few months. The entire sum of my concentration (such as it is) focuses on putting one foot in front of the other in order to accomplish the few things that are non-negotiable in my life. Everything else, everyone else, is fast fading to background buzz.

That's one of the things they don't tell you about depression. No matter how much everyone loves you, no matter how much they want to help, you are alone with it. All the time, every day. And you push people away, because they can't help you, and because the chatter in your head competes with their chatter and the chattering gets unbearable. And that makes it worse, because they you feel guilty for pushing them away, and you get to deal with that addition to your worthlessness and self-loathing.

And, if you're me, at least, you just want a fucking break from it all. A break from feeling like this, and a break from having to worry about how much your horrible behavior is upsetting those around you. Some mercy.

To those who have left kind comments here or emailed me: thank you. I'm really not in a great place for one-on-one communication right now, and I'm honestly probably not going to answer you individually. I apologize for that. Please know that it doesn't mean I don't appreciate your kindness. I really, really do.

I've been sort of trying to avoid writing about this, since I'm boring even myself at this point, but it is here, in the room with me, and sometimes I think writing about it helps.

The thing is, I'm not really doing all that much better. I keep telling myself, and telling others, that I'm improving, but I'm not sure I am.

I'm still fairly functional (if measured in terms of showering, at least), and I have a grand plan for the weekend which involves me actually taking care of some of my responsibilities at home, rather than just holing up in my bedroom in the dark with my DVDs, but really, I still feel empty. When I look inside myself for feeling, the most I can find is a vague disappointment. I'm letting people down. I'm shirking all of my responsibilities, to others and to myself. I'm not taking care of myself, or my partner, or my pets, or my house. I'm wallowing and slothful and I just can't seem to care.

Which is one of the very most frustrating things about chronic depression. There is no dramatic rock bottom, at least not for me. There's no cry for help, no impassioned and tearful speech. There is just day in and day out of me sleepwalking through a life I know is precious, not enjoying it, and not even caring enough to hate it. Doing as little as I can to get by and feeling nothing.

In her comment on this post, Allison asked a couple of good questions, regarding the interface between depression and creativity, and the effect of anti-depressants on creativity and, for lack of a better time, "aliveness." Those are both things I've thought a lot about, in my various decisions to go on and off anti-depressants, so I thought I'd share my experience.

Once again, a comment by Allison on a previous post has led me to feel the need to write a whole new post on the subject.

In her comment, Allison asked about my opinion of/experience with alternative, non-drug depression treatments and non-depression causes for depression. She linked to this site and this one. I'll start with the second link, on "neurotherapy." I'm really, really skeptical. Basically, the idea of letting someone zap my brain scares the shit out of me. I may be totally wrong, and it may be that drugs should scare me more, but they don't. Reading that website leaves me with visions of mental hospitals administering shock therapy, and just the thought makes me want to curl up in my bed, seen no one, and pretend there is actually nothing wrong with my head so that nobody will take me away in a straight jacket. Seriously. I really, really hate the idea. But I am in no way an expert, nor have I done any research on the subject--those are just my off-the-cuff feelings.

Jon, who is married to the lovely Heather (aka Dooce) has written a phenomenal piece on his own blog about living with a depressed partner. I came right over to tell you about it just as soon as I stopped bawling.

I've written here before about my depression. Pretty frequently, actually--there's a whole category. I haven't, however, ever talked about the other part of it. Mostly, that's just because, though I do definitely have periods of both depressive and manic behavior, I mostly have the former, and it has more of an impact on my life. Also, mania is harder for people to understand. Even for someone who has stable moods, the idea of depression makes some instinctive sense, and it's easy to see why it's bad. Mania is harder to wrap your head around. When you try to talk about it to someone who has never experienced it, it's as likely as not that you'll get a response like "I wish I had that much energy!"

It's so not about energy, though. For me, at least, it's much like depression in that it's about control, and particularly about lacking it.

When I'm manic, I shop. I shop when I'm not manic, too, but it's a different experience. When I'm manic, I'm the wide-eyed woman you see walking around Target muttering "toilet paper, tights, vacuum bags, pretzels." Why? Because I can't keep a list of even four things in my head. And when I pick up the pretzels, I have to make sure to change the list, or three minutes later, after going to get the vacuum bags (and getting distracted by the question of whether or not we need a new Dustbuster), I'll find myself back in the snack aisle, wondering why I'm there. My mind can't stay in one place for long enough to complete a simple task. It's very frustrating.

Another thing I do when I'm manic is drink. As alcohol is a depressant, this makes some sense as self-medication. It's not really about that, though. It's more about not being able to keep in my head why I shouldn't have another glass of wine, and about seeking. In general, mania is about seeking. Needing more stimulation, needing to drive faster, needing to do more. More. More.

I don't self injure when I'm depressed. I know a lot of people do, but I don't. I do, however, self injure when I'm manic. I've never been serious about it--it's minor things and isn't anything that anybody needs to be concerned about, I promise--but when I am manic, it shows up. And, again, it's about seeking. Suddenly, even though I am bright red, the shower can't be hot enough. I do things even though they hurt. I do things because they hurt.

Does any of this sound like fun to you? I know there are some people--I think more those who are truly bipolar, rather than the mostly-depressed like me--who resist treatment for their illness because they don't want to lose the "high" that these periods give them. For me, it's not a high. I don't feel smarter, or more creative, or even particularly more ambitious. I feel anxious. I feel scattered. And, most of all, I feel out of control.

I think it's safe to say that I've hit the depression after the marathon. I'm not surprised--after months of living almost completely externally, with no time or energy to devote to the life inside my head, my mind, or maybe my soul, demands time to turn inside. This, in combination with my new life of solitude (working from home, no car, with Mark gone long hours) has me in this state of nearly no communication. I don't answer my phone; I answer emails with a line, if you're lucky; I don't reach out to my online friends; I don't blog. I make excuses to get out of any social obligation that comes up, preferring, strongly, to stay on my couch.

I know, because I've played this scene before, that it's not the world's healthiest thing. I stop doing anything I don't absolutely have to. The quality of my work declines, the quality of my companionship declines--sometimes, the quality of my hygiene even declines. I'm sure it irritates the hell out of anybody who has to deal with me or needs anything from me. While it's not necessarily destructive--I have always, to this point, been able to keep my shit together enough to keep my job, for example--it's not pretty. It is, more than anything, completely selfish. I just get to this point where dealing with anybody outside my own head is so much work I can't see a reason to do it. I'm not miserable--in fact, I'm pretty content--but only so long as I don't have to engage with anyone.

Usually, at least these past few years, these periods of intense hermit behavior come in combination with an obsessive-level interest in something. A book I'll reread over and over again, or a television show (often, a television show), or the need to make hundreds of batches of bath bombs. I'm not sure if this is typical for people who have whatever my flavor of mental illness is, but it seems right to me, seems like a coping mechanism that, while irritating to those who have to be around me, is ultimately benign. A temporary place to put the focus I would normally direct at the events and relationships that define my real life.

The really great thing, I guess, about having been the way I am for so long, is that I know it doesn't last. Being in it, the way I feel right now, I can't imagine wanting to have a conversation, or participate in anything, really, or even leave the house. But I know, because I've been here before, that eventually, the fog clears, the obsession plays itself out, and I return to the way I was before. It usually happens gradually, ending the same way it started, and then I realize one day that I'm totally back to normal.