Depression Talk

Apologies for the no post yesterday: My internet was not co-operating with me. I have to say that the one major drawback of living in the middle of nowhere is the wonky dial-up internet connection.

Anyhow.

My hair.

When I went to university, I had this goal to not cut, color, perm, streak, or mess with my hair in any way for the duration.

I don’t know why I wanted to do this, other than to see what my natural hair is like, sans additives.

Last January, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. So I decided to donate all my hair to Locks of Love.

But, my best friend got engaged and begged me not to cut my hair until after her September wedding. I figured that would just mean more hair for Locks of Love.

Well, I measured my hair the other day (Because that’s just how cool I am) and I have over fifteen inches of long, straight, brown hair to donate.

And now I have to live with all fifteen inches of it (More than that, because I measured it in a pony tail) until September AND IT IS DRIVING ME CRAZY.

This hair is ON MY PERSON at all times. If I wear a tank-top, it tickles the backs of my arms. When I ride, it is sticking to the back of my neck. It gets tangled in things (Like my cat. Nothing worse than having your hair tangled in a cat) and when the wind blows it stands on end and attacks my face like a rabid squirrel.

It does these things even if it is tied up.

The dogs chase it, babies grab it; it grabs onto my horse’s halter and when all twelve hundred pounds of him walks away? It is very, very hurty.

I have approximately six weeks left of this insanity.

I’m going to need to buy stocks in mousse and many, many varieties of drugs.

I don’t know, sometimes you just have a series of bad days, those days that make you think that maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t bother to get out of bed.

But then you start your day and the small child you made breakfast for shrieks in happiness instead of demanding something else; and then the small child wraps his arms around your neck four times and says “I love you, Auntie”; and your best friend comes over and you watch two horror movies and then you pick some beans from the garden for dinner; and you also get corn and peas; and you ride your horse and he is just so wonderful you could cry, and then after that you eat so much steak at dinner that you just may make yourself sick…

And you think, OK, maybe I can keep doing this whole ‘being upright and conscious’ thing.

On edge.

On the brink.

The horizon is looming over.

The straw that’s likely to break the camel’s back…

And I have to stop and wonder, just how much straw would it actually take to break a camel’s back? And how, exactly is that straw packaged? Like, is it pressure packed into little packages such that it will sit on the camel’s back? And just how would you put straw on a camel? I dunno, its just that I’ve worked with straw on numerous occasions and a camel doesn’t seem to be the handiest way to go about transporting it. I suppose its a regional thing, though.

At any rate, I’m ever amazed, because I feel utterly twitchy, like if one more thing were to happen, or if one more person were to open their mouth and make sound come out of it I might just explode.

And, as per usual, I don’t.

I went away for the weekend to drink and be silly with some girlfriends for my best friend’s bachelorette weekend. It turns out that my sleeping habits were the highlight of everyone’s weekend.

I talk often of my desire to sleep, my need to nap, and the intenseness of my unconcsciousness, but I don’t think that people really get it until they’ve experienced it firsthand.

The first night all of us drunken girls returned to the camper to go to bed. So I announced that I would be having one more cigarette and then I was going to sleep. And then I had my ciggie, and then I laid down, shut my eyes, and was gone.

In the morning my bunkmate was astounded. Like, Dude, you were totally asleep two seconds after you said you were going to sleep! And my best friend was like, Yep, that’s what she does. She announces her need to be unconcsious and then she’s gone.

The following afternoon, I needed my required nap. I laid down on the couch, told the girls I would be going to sleep, and promptly did.

During this time, the other members of the campsite decided to come over and visit with us. At one point, they decided they should do something cruel to the unconscious girl, and they sent in a few people to investigate. I slept on. They decided against tormenting me.

Then one of the guys said that someone needs to do something to that girl. Well, the girls informed him of my hatred for feet. So he decided that he should come in and bother my feet. He reached right into the blanket, pinched my toes, and tickled my feet. I slept on.

He went back outside and announced to the rest of the people in the yard “THAT GIRL IS DEAD. WE NEED A CORONER.”

And while I’m mortified that someone had the gall to molest my poor, innocent little feet while I slept, I have to say that the ability to play dead at will came in very handy.

Because if he had come near my feet while I was awake, he probably would have lost a tooth, his left testicle, and a large portion of his kidneys.

I’ve been having anxiety and panic attacks the last number of days, and I have no idea why. They have lasted hours and at one point I was in my friend’s basement, clinging to the remote control, desperate to find some mindless television with sheer terror and adrenaline coursing through my veins.

Someone recently asked what it feels like to have a panic attack, and I suppose there is no real way to describe it. For me, it feels like no matter what amount of deep breathing exercises I do, I can’t get enough breath. My heart races, my palms sweat. My stomach feels like it is on a roller coaster, alternated with feelings of being squeezed by the Hand of God.

If I’m nervous about an upcoming event, I don’t mind a panic attack. I don’t mind pre-onstage anxiety, I don’t mind fleeting terror when I feel like my horse is about to toss me to kingdom come. I can deal with the heart-stopping anguish when I worry that I’ve lost my nephew while I’m caring for him (He can generally be found coaxing my neagle to love him with a box of Milk Bone).

What kills me about this is that I don’t know why I feel the way I do. I’m overcome with these horrid feelings, for two to five hours at a time, and I DON’T KNOW WHY. I’m a very compartmentalized person. I like everything to be defined, neat, tidy, and put away in a little box. I can deal with being a crazy person, because there are a plethora of reasons behind it.

I can not deal with anxiety coursing through my veins for no apparent reason at all.

I’ve had fits of anxiety and panic twice this week. I’m very irritated at them because for one thing, I can’t seem to pinpoint why I had them. And for another thing, I’m on enough drugs to sink the navy. I’m not supposed to have panic attacks any more.

At any rate, two of them in one week, and my word, feeling like your head is going to explode and that you’re going to suffocate in broad daylight for hours on end is exhausting. But no, I mean, like, its more than exhausting.

I suppose if I was to describe the way I feel after a good, long anxiety attack, it would be something like a deflated balloon. One that spent all day out in the sun at a carnival, in the hands of a hyperactive toddler. Only, half way through the day, it got deflated and left the hands of the toddler, to be picked up and dropped repeatedly by small birds. But the thing is, the last time it got dropped by a bird, it landed on the free way and spent a good three hours being smashed into the pavement by transports.

Yeah. That’s it. I think I’ve got down how it feels to have survived a panic attack. You’d think the feeling would be more virtuous, victorious… but no. I felt like someone in need of intensive care and a six week order for bedrest.

So I watched Girl, Interrupted the other night, and at first, I didn’t think it was that bad. First, the movie is set in a psychiatric hospital in the 1960’s, so I’m pretty sure that those of us who may be sent to one in the modern day are freed from worries of electric shock therapy. Phew.

The movie was fine until half-way through, or thereabouts, when a lot of it really started to hit home with me. Is that main character, Susanna, really crazy? Or is the world she lives in crazy? Or maybe her insanity has her more enlightened than the average Joe?

I’m not sure, but either way, I didn’t cry for Steel Magnolias, Beaches, Titanic, or The Notebook. This one had me weeping in my pillows until I feared I might actually drown in the soggy mess that made up my bed when I was through.

Clearly, I should stick to horror. I always sleep much better after movies of that genre.