Depression Talk

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.

As a person suffering from Insanity, I have a grave fear of watching anything that relates to psychiatric hospitals. This has been my fear since the first few times I suspected that I wasn’t right ‘in the head’: if I mentioned it to anyone, I would be immediately descended upon by large, burly men with restraints and syringes full of Haldol. And while I do typically find myself in a trance over large burly men, and I am a proponent of the use of presecription sedatives, I’m not so big on the restraints.

Tonight Mal and I are settling in for a quiet night of stuffing our faces and lazing on the couch in unflattering pajamas. Mine are so unsettlingly hideous that her father accused me of stealing jogging pants from his closet. Because clearly, only a family man in his mid forties would be seen wearing some of the clothes that I wear.

I happen to be a horror movie fanatic. By fanatic, I mean someone who can spend three months of her life watching only those movies that pertain to chainsaw, axe, serial, and posessed-by-demons movies, and I rarely ever flinch.

By the end of Girl, Interrupted, I fully intend to be hiding under Mal’s mother’s kitchen table, clutching my CrazyMeds and crying out for mercy, in a manner akin Mel Gibson in the final scenes of Braveheart.

But I think I can do it.

I’ve been in a blind rage all day today, no telling why. I woke up perfectly content, rode my horse, recieved a call from my dearest Berry Queen who later arrived with her kids. We went fishing briefly and then returned back to The Ranch to swim the afternoon away. I’ve been on edge and ready and willing to holler, screech, and contemplate beating anything that crosses my path. Including inanimate objects.

I don’t know why I’m in such a foul mood: Everything is going perfectly. The cancer treatment is behind us, we made it through another berry season. I have my horse, my beautiful, wonderful Thoroughbred gelding who I love. He lets me scratch his ears and kiss his nose AND he lets me ride him. Seriously. Like winning the horse lottery, that one is.

And yet this rage consumes me over every action every person or thing takes. So far today I’ve considered taking up kickboxing, a vow of silence, buddhism, alcoholism, prescription drug abuse, and a combination of any of those things listed. At one point I was thinking that perhaps I’d feel better if I took up all of the above at the same time.

I just can’t work out the logistics of a drunken, sedated, silent, praying girl trying to kick box her way into happiness.

Moving on has never been one of my strong points. I remember everything. I once organized twenty years worth of photos because I remembered every outfit I had in them and what year I wore them, along with who bought them for me. I remember everything.

Sometimes I worry that I will never be able to move on from anything, and that I will spend the rest of my life dwelling on something that was never meant to happen, and that as a result I will miss out on the things that I am really supposed to be living.

Like, this guy. I just can’t get him out of my head, and I really, really don’t want to come off sounding like I spend ANY TIME AT ALL listening to Kylie Minogue, because I totally don’t, but really, the thought of him will JUST NOT GO AWAY.

And then I sit and I wonder, what if I never, ever move on? What if I’m stuck on this same old topic for the rest of the years of my life, and when I’m elderly and needing geriatric care while I still live in the room above my parents’ kitchen? What then?

It was just one of those regular nights. We celebrated July the Fourth last night, with fireworks and a barbeque and friends and family. Happy Independence Day.

I got to chat with my best girl, my T who I love so much, and the Berry Queen and my mother were playing music in the background, and she told me that he said my name.

And I felt all floaty and wondrous and lightheaded and grand.

And then when I realized that I felt that way because I’d been holding my breath since she began on the topic of him, I started breathing again and everything returned to normal, and I told myself to grow up and move on and not be such a nitwit.

But I still have smile when I think of it, because its not often that someone with a PBR shirt says my name.

I live in a near constant state of fear, one that I don’t really understand. I constantly fear that I am not a good enough friend, that I’m not a good enough worker, that I’m a bad Aunt, that I’m a bad daughter or sister…

I don’t know why this fear comes over me, or why I feel it so often. But still, it remains, and any criticism of anything I do makes me want to curl into a ball and weep.

Just another part of being obsessed with everything.

Sleeping has been a problem for me most of my life. Namely, the problem is that when I’m sane, I can’t get enough of it, and when I’m Insane I can’t get any at all.

I’m living away from home right now and the Bery Family has a wonderful bed for me here. It has a new matress and flannel sheets and a down duvet. I think they’re trying to convince me to move in here forever because I do handy things like play with the baby and manage their fields. If only they needed me for more than three weeks out of every year, I’d be set.

Getting out of bed in the morning is especially difficult while here because the sheets are just so… flannel-y. So luxuriously soft, as though they were made from the down of day-old chicks. As though you’d washed the finest sheep with Infusium Conditioner every day of its life and then shorn it with shears made of gold.

Berry season is also particularly difficult because I wor from seven in the morning until eight at night. Regardless of what you do for a living, when you do it that continuously, you’re tired.

And now every day I have to tear myself out of this bed, and some days I literally have to be torn, and it pains me to know for the rest of the year, my bed will be empty, my sheets without my sunburned and peeling body.

I think of my bed and my sheets and the lovely duvet without me for eleven months of the year, and I feel a little bit sad.

My boss and I went on a beer run tonight, the type of run that is not uncommon for girls like us. We generally guise our beer runs under some other thing, like “Us leaving the farm right now will help the farm succeed through this season. As a result, it is pertinent that we leave. Now. Heading South. And I swear, its totally a coincidence that we must go South and the Beer store is South of us.”

We were on this run when my boss went on a diatribe about the people I date and I have to say, My God, is that really the impression people get? Because I swear, I’ve totally dated nice people. It just so happens that they’re generally terrified of a psycho like me, and head for the hills after my first outbreak of hives. If that’s not the case, I have to toss them soon, Very, Very Soon because what’s wrong with him if he’s sticking around? Clearly, a lot.

But, we happened across a handsome man this evening, one driving a minivan which either means he is so young he’s not legal for me to date, or he’s got seventeen kids and he’s met and needs to drive around at least five of them. I commented on his attractiveness and sighed. My boss could contain himself no more and shrieked “Amanda! He has only TWO LIMBS and they both come out of his NECK!”

“Wha-?”

“Amanda’s dream boyfriend: No speak English!”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that for the love of GOD, you need to date someone who doesn’t have an obvious deformity and who’s native tongue is compatible with yours!”

“But-”

“And he can’t be a chemist because that’s code for someone who WORKS IN A METH LAB!”

“They typically are more covert about their –”

“And just because he’s HIGH ALL THE TIME doesn’t mean he can call himself a pilot!”

“Well, now, I’ve never –”

“AND his native language needs to have developed a form of WRITING COMPATIBLE WITH WINDOWS XP!!”

And you know, I’ve never really thought about it like that before, but maybe she has a point. Maybe I should look for someone who’s limbs number more than two, that extend from a part of his body that is entirely separate from his neck.

And after that, there were people, and after the people came a desire to eat the fruit, and then all reason was lost.

I don’t know why it is so difficult, and you’d think that managing fruit and who picks where would be easy, but it is not so. It is difficult, it is trying, it is madness inducing and mostly the people doing the picking are mad themselves.

Its hard not to throw up my arms in disgust. Like, if you went to a fruit farm to pick fruit, and you saw a big white sign that read ‘Picking Here Today’ and then you saw a large number of little blaze yellow flags beyond that sign, wouldn’t you think that PERHAPS you should obtain fruit AT THAT LOCATION?

I need Xanax.

I am going to combust.

Seriously.

SO MANY PEOPLE have been doing revolting things while in my presence in the last week or so that sometimes I just want to scream for everyone in the free world to stay ten feet back at all times.

What makes things worse is that now I am sick. Clearly, there can be no other reason for my sickness than the disgusting things people have forced me to inhale over the last few days.

Some examples include, but are not limited to:
1) Burping so that I have to inhale the burp air.
2) Coughing without covering.
3) Not washing hands for thirty seconds with warm, soapy water before leaving the washroom.
4) Not even pretending to wash hands after using the restroom.
5) Breathing heavily where I have to breath.
6) Allowing their air to waft over to where my air is, so that I am FORCED AGAINST MY WILL to inhale the air of others.
7) Maintaining a level of stench upon their person such that I am sure that the air infected by said stench is full of harmful bugs.

These are only a FEW of the nasty things that people have done near me and if one more inhabitant of this world causes me to ingest the cast-off nastiness from their person, I will simply cease to exist.

The other day I was in Wal-Mart and I watched a woman come out of the stall from using the restroom, change her baby’s diaper, pack up her baby and its belongings, and leave the restroom without washing. She even had the nerve to leave through the door that I had to leave through, leaving her trail of germ-y goodness for me to be forced to put my hands in. Every time I’m in a line, it seems as though I’m standing behind or in front of a non-covering sneezer.

I blame these people, these diaper changing, non-handwashing, non-covering sneezers I run into in Wal-Mart and Tim Horton’s that I’m SICK. I’m stuffed up and sore-throated and I can’t breath and I haven’t slept and I’m just a big old barrel of sunshine really, really pissed.

GAH.

“Oh, crap. I forget that guy’s name…”

“Which one?”

“The one with the cars. What’s his name?”

“I dunno. What about the guy who gave me hives? Do any of us remember his name?”

“I thought he died?”

“No, no. That was the guy who called me Dumb as a Table. He died. Hives man is still alive and kicking.”

“And probably searching out fruit.”

“Have you bought yourself a new tube of itch cream?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Berry season is soon to be upon us. This year there is actually a part of me that doesn’t want to go to berry season because I just GOT A HORSE and I’m kind of sad to leave him behind.

At any rate, I get to spend three weeks consecutively managing the field, among other duties, at a friend’s fruit farm. This job is one of the most interesting I’ve had in my lifetime, probably because of the guy who called me dumb as a table and that other guy who made me break out in hives.

Its three days until we pack our bags and leave for the fruit farm. I’m going to need novels, batteries for my MP3, my laptop so I can sqitch up the music on my MP3, a case of beer and lots and lots of valium. Valium that I refuse to share with anyone.

Guilt has been a major issue within my Insanity throughout my life. When I had a relapse of Insanity last fall, after almost three years Insanity-free, I was plagued by guilt. At the time I was living in the Big City, studying Sociology. I had an apartment, a cat, a family who loves me. I had food, I had new shoes, I had comfy clothes to wear. I had a good job with a great boss, I had friends who would cook me dinner and not banish me from the house when I burned holes the circumference of pop cans in their couches.

And I was unhappy. I was so, so lost inside this feeling of being clouded in. I felt that nothing was possible in my life, that forever I would be living in a city I didn’t want to be in, pursuing an education that I wasn’t sure I wanted. My brother was overseas in Afghanistan, and I had just lost my grandfather. My student loans hadn’t come in, I was taking six full time courses, and working enough to try and make the rent. The very small, teeny tiny little part of me that is sane and rational knew that period in my life was temporary.

I felt like everything bad in this world was looming directly in front of me. The task of getting out of my bed was one so great that I attempted it only when absolutely necessary. I had a constant feeling that pure, unadulterated badness was approaching in my life, like nothing was ever ok, that nothing would ever be ok.

I felt guilty over all this because I knew that I had everythign I needed in my life to be perfectly content. And yet still, I wasn’t happy. And that made me feel bad.

Now I am back living at home, I’m officially a graduate from university. I have everything I need or want in this world, emotionally and physically, and what do I feel?

Guilty. I feel bad because I’m so happy and there are other people out there who aren’t nearly as happy as I am. There are still people out there fighting battles with depression and so many other issues.

I suppose that guilt is something I either need to do away with or accept as part of me. Regardless of what my situation is, I seem to be plagued by it.

Depression, Relapse of Depression, Guilt, Happiness, Hopelessness

I freely admit to people that I have a disgusting habit.

I chew.

As can be expected of a chewer, I do chew on my nails. Its gross, its unbecoming of a lady to have nails down to the quick. It is not particularly attractive; although it is handy in terms of playing the guitar.

I also chew on bubble gum. I can’t get enough of gum balls in my life; I buy them in bulk and hide them away. When it comes time for me to study, I sit down with my gumballs and I begin. I must take two at a time, two of the same color, and chew them for about five minutes. I always have a paper towel handy so that I can spit out the flavorless ones and repeat the process. The people who have been subjected to the sight of me, hair tied to the top of my head, wearing my favorite sweats with a stack of nasty old chewed up gum balls beside me have nothing to express but pure horror.

I also chew on my hands. It is quite revolting and from time to time the skin surrounding my fingernails is actually open. It hurts a lot when I do this, because you can’t really avoid getting things into the open wounds, and sometimes things like dirt or pickle juice will work its wiley way in and make me feel like I have stuck my hand into a tub full of milk house acid.

The desire to chew often sneaks up on me. I’ll be sitting about, minding my own business, and a twitchy feeling will come over my jaw. Its like I can feel that the muscles in there are getting bored, they need to be working out and DOING SOMETHING to keep from atrophy. If only the muscles in my ass were as motivated as the muscles in my jaw, I would be a perfect specimen.

The easiest and most accessible thing to chew on is a lip or a hand. (My own lips or hands: When I get to the point that I need someone else’s lips or hands to chew on, I promise, I’ll go into voluntary lockup.)

I was at a social event today, observing the events around me and chewing on my thumb. The fmaily friend sitting beside me was watching me, twitching because I knew that he wanted nothing more than to grab my hand out form my mouth, shake me by my shoulders until I had a head rush, and scream “FOR THE LOVE OF JESUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH, STOP DOING THAT NOW.”

Instead he threatened me with gangrene, saying that I could actually lose a thumb to a ravenous infection of sorts.

“Hah,” I replied. “If you’re like me and you wash your hands thirty-two times a day, and you sing the entire alphabet song while you do it, your hands are home free from having infection ravage their open sores.”

Moral of the story: If you’re going to be a crazy person, you have to make sure that you have a touch of the OCD so that you can pre-empt any of the damage that might be done by your craziness.

Nail Biting, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Gum Balls, Gross Habits, Hand washing

My legs are itchy.

No good can come of my legs being itchy.

Every summer I act as field manager for a dear friend’s berry farm. It is a wonderful job that I love, and at the same time, it is an insidious job that no one in the free world should ever have to do. I go back every year because I love the owners and their beautiful, wonderful children, and the Berry Queen always keeps me well stocked in beer. Not to mention that her husband, the Berry King, makes the best Strawberry Daquiris on the planet, and the kids all make me beautiful cards for my birthday. Plus, they pay me money to do this job, and ninety five per cent of the time, I actually do love the job itself.

Last year I had one particularly stressful day that led to me having hives. I’d love to recount the entire incident, but it was long, involved, spanned over three days, and might make you want to shatter your screen so that you can poke your own eye out with a shard of glass.

The end result of the incident was a serious case of hives. It was so serious that I ended up buying out the entire pharmacy’s stock of anti-itch creams. I kept them with me all season long, and had to apply them multiple times each day. The Berry Queen eventually felt that if she saw me apply an itch cream to my red and swollen legs one more time, she would break my beer bottle over my head and proceed to poke her own eye out with its shards of glass. The hives were that irritating to those around me; use your imagination to determine how irritating they were to me.

I’m not exactly stressed at this point in my life, although I do have a fair amount of stuff going on. I can usually pinpoint exactly what it is that leads me to break out in hives. It usually has to do with a boyfriend or my need to be heavily sedated; this time, however, I can’t seem to figure out what it is.

The last few nights I have gone to bed with large, conspicuous itchy bumps on my legs. They haven’t been breaking out in droves like hives usually do. Instead, they have been breaking out one at a time, starting as a little pink itchy spot, growing to about the size of a nickel, itching like mad, and then disappearing before dawn.

Perhaps I am allergic to one of the new fabric softeners I’ve been using; perhaps I am allergic to working in the barn or digging about in my garden.

Either way, my legs have been itching like mad for the last several hours and I’m starting to think that the hives are imminent.

Bring on the anti-itch cream. It could be a long and scratchy summer.

My life is one that is very full of children, all of whom belong to other people. I make it a point to never mention my insanity to small children for a few reasons, one being that I’m not sure how to say “Sweetie, your Auntie is a fucking nutjob sometimes and during those times you are going to want to RUN. Fast. In another direction. For a long time.” I just don’t think the young ‘uns can handle that sort of information, and so I try not to give it out.

I do worry about the effect that having a crazy person near you can have while you’re growing and developing, but there will always be the nature/nurture debate and I don’t think any of us will ever have that one figured out.

Feet is one of my ‘things’ and I really detest feet. Sandal weather makes my skin crawl and if a person is going to put their feet anywhere near my person, it had better be to kick a rabid raccoon out of my vicinity and for no other reason than that. Sometimes feet make me want to vomit and other times I just want to put my hands over my ears and curl up into the fetal position. I once dated someone who thought this was funny and who would spend time putting his feet near my feet — which is the ultimate double-whammy — and you know what happened to him? I’d love to tell you but then several people might end up in jail and if they ever do find the body, I don’t want it to be because of a post on my blog.

My mother tends to like feet, particularly the type that are attached to rolly-polly babies who gigle when you tickle them. My mother and I were visiting my neice this weekend and at eighteen months old, she has already decided that no person shall ever come into contact with her feet. If you try to tickle her feet, or touch them in any way, she curls them up and hides them from your reach and I have to say WAY TO BE, BABY!

This discovery made me so deliriously happy over the weekend for a variety of reasons, the primary one being that at eighteen months of age, she can’t have already been influenced by my insane presence in her life.

Long live the feet-haters, I say. I’m sure this will be one more thing for my neice and I to bond over in years to come, and if insanity can bring about bonding, why the hell not?