Depression Talk

After a couple of disasterous relationships, a few years ago I took myself out of the dating scene. Since I became celibate I’ve been able to start my own freelance writing business, give to charity and help out my family (instead of the other way around, for a change). I’ve also been able to make great strides in managing my major depression.

Am I Being Punished?

Perhaps it was my Protestant upbringing, perhaps it was watchign too many movies or perhaps it was my depression, but many times I think the reason that my relationships turned out so badly was because I never stayed true to my biggest love.

My biggest love happens to be Peter Gabriel. I fell for him when I was 16 and now I’m — a lot older. However, the big snag in my relationship with Peter is that he’s completely unaware of it. He’s also currently married to a woman younger, more attractive, more intelligent and more fertile than I am, so I don’t think I have much of a shot (not that I ever did. In between wives, he’s dated actresses, models and other singers).

But yet, I’ve still not stayed true to him. In one way, I’ve betrayed my greatest love, so is that why my relationships were always crap, because I was being punished.

This Is, Of Course, Nonsense

Even if I did manage to date Peter, I’d sure as hell screw it up somehow. That’s just the way I am. I like being single — and unchained by a relationship. So, I feel miserable in the spring when the hormones start rushing about my body, but it’ll pass. It always does.

When you’re depressed over being victimized or abused, you often hear crap like “forgiveness is good for the soul” or “you’re creating a psychic chain between you and the one who hurt you.” This advice — although probably well meaning — winds up hurting a depressive all the more. This makes the victim feel guilty, which is the exact same tool abusers use in order to manipulate their victims.

Don’t Go Overboard

It is unhealthy when a victim constantly obsesses on how to get revenge upon an abuser. That definately needs intervention, if just to keep the victim out of jail. Life isn’t fair and you just have to accept it. Over time, the memories of pain and humiliation lessen.

Trying to get revenge on an abuser is like trying to get revenge on a tornado. Abusers are untouchable in the sense that they have no feelings for anyone other than themselves, so nothing you can do will affect them.

There are so many other things to do to occupy your time rather than obsess on revenge. These things will help your mental health and also help your loved ones who have to put up with you.

Forgiveness, Shmorgiveness

I have clinical depression and I have survived an abusive relationship. I will never forgive the man who abused me (and, who I discovered later, abused others). Quite franky, I hope he gets skinned alive — and even that would be too kind of a punishment for him.

He’s taken everything else away from me — but he’s not taking my forgiveness. And by staying ticked off at him, I can stay away from other abusers and help give support to other victims.

So, if someone urges you to forgive an abuser or murderer or whatever, ignore them. Anger is a tool — use it.

Just in case you were wondering, there isn’t really an official Catholic patron saint of depression — but there is one for mental ilness. Since depression is considered a mental illness, this is about as close to we’re going to get. Although I’m not Catholic, I love to learn about mythology. It’s also good to know how other cultures perceive your depression.

And despite St. John’s Wort being touted as a nautral antidepressant, the herb was not given its name because St. John had anythign to do with depression. The herb got the name because it bloomed around St. John’s Feast Day (also known as Midsummer).

Say Hello to Saint Dympna

St. Dympna had the twisted and tragic life that typifies the more interesting of the Catholic Saints. Since she is supposed to have lived in the 600s in Ireland, it can’t be proven whether she really lived or not. However, most myths are based in reality, so it’s highly possible that Dympna was either based on an old long-lost Celtic myth or from a real person. She’s also known as Dymphna and Davnet.

Dympna was not the one who had the mental illness. It was her father Damon, a Pagan leader of some sort. (As a Pagan myself, I won’t take offence). After her mother (a Christian) died, Dympna’s father ordered her to wed him. Well, like the good Catholic Saint she’d be, she refused the admittedly creepy thought of having her marry her Dad, so she took off for parts unknown with the help of her Christian priest.

She and the male priest ran off to Antwerp and did tons of miracles to help the sick and the poor. There’s appraently nothing in the story about anyone raising their eyebrows at the sight of a lone, nubile young female travelling with a male in a priest’s uniform. Sure he was her priest. Right.

Anyway, Dad Damon catches up with the pair and beheads them. End of story.

Death Becomes Her

Dympna apprently has had a busy time of it after her head and her body parted ways. She’s not only the patron siant of mental illnesses, but also of epilepsy, sleepwalking and posessed people. Oddly enough, serotonin is thought to play a part not only in depression and epilespsy, but also migraines (which definitely make you feel possessd).

Either that or bitchy Dympna causes all of the problems because she had a bad childhood.

I’ve tried to commit suicide more times then I can remember. My last attempt was in April, 2003. It’s been over five years without the urge to die. That’s the longest gap I’ve had since childhood. I’ve tried to kill myself in different ways but all of them wound up the same — me on my hands and knees, throwing up.

So, if you are contemplating killing yourself ask yourself — how much do you like throwing up? There’s also that whole death thing, too, but let’s just stick with tangible elements here. If you’re going to try and commit suicide, especailly if you are a woman, chances are all you will do is wind up throwing up for hours on end.

Overdose Attempt

Sometime in 2001 (I can’t remember what month), I found four boxes of painkiller in the trash. They were massive. They looked like horse pills — combinations of opiods and paracetamol (acetominophen in the US). Now, I can’t even read the word “paracetamol” without my stomach rolling over. I naively assumed that by taking as many as I could, I’d fall asleep and die. It all made sense at the time, trust me.

No such luck. I wound up puking for 36 hours straight. And the guy who’s trash I’d gone through had found out and was really angry with me and threatened to call the police. Not that I cared at that point. I remember the only thing that distracted me from the pain was watching Air Force One with Harrison Ford, which for some reason was on TV. I know that movie gets panned (”Get off my plane!”), but I’m forever grateful that it was made.

The Lesson Here

When you are deeply depressed and life seems that it can’t get any worse, well, you’re wrong. Life certainly can get worse. You could spend 36 hours throwing up and thinking about how you are so stupid that you can’t even kill yourself.

And then, somehow, you will laugh. Take that laughter and hang on to it and then go get help. Things do get better. They don’t get better right away, but eventually they do.

Remember when Radiohead had hair and made CDs as opposed to downloads? Perhaps I’m showing my age. However, their breakthrough song “Creep” sounds just as brilliant today as when it first aired in the early 1990’s. It’s especially poignant for anyone with clinical depression, in my humble opinion, whether you are a man, woman or hermaphrodite.

When you have clinical depression, you don’t feel as if you fit in anywhere. You feel like an alien dropped you off on the planet somehow. You also have a very well developed sense of self-hatred, which is also apparent in the lyrics of this song. You can also dwell on comparing yourself to others, making yourself even more miserable by magnifying your shortcomings. You also mistakenly believe that you are the only person in the world who has these feelings and fears.

I’ve always wondered what the love object thought of this song. Perhaps they sing the same thing to the person they idolize.

Enjoy.

When I started out this sixty five days of not drinking, I didn’t know where I wanted to go with it. I thought that my mind would be clear and made up: I thought that at the end of that period of time, I would have a definite idea of how I feel about alcohol.

I think that at a certain point in my life, I became defined by being the one with the beer in her hand. I have an entire circle of friends who don’t know the other sides of me that even exist: The quiet, pensive, serious, studious side of me. They see the Saturday Night me, the me without a care in the world.

And that bothered me.

The Saturday Night me is not a me who I dislike. Quite the opposite, I love that now and then I can get up and dance, laugh and look like I’m loving it. Typically, I’m not even inebriated when I hit the dance floor at a club. But if I’ve got the beer in hand, people think that I am. As a result, I’m covered. If I trip and fall over my own two feet? I’m a drunken fool, rather than a really bad dancer.

A bad week, an asshat doctor, an exhausting wedding, no date, a painful hairstyle, confusion about my work and my position at school: I ended up drinking on Saturday night.

Are those lame, pathetic excuses? Or is it a matter of me not caring enough to continue with my beer-fast? Does it really speak volumes about my character that I hate being in public next to the woman who is the centre of attention?

I don’t know what it says about me that I didn’t make it. I had a few drinks on Saturday. It didn’t lead to a bender. I still made it forty days and I plan to go another twenty-five days from there.

I don’t know what it means, but I failed on my mission.

And I’m trying to be ok with that.

I-Escape is a method used with people in crisis. It is part of what I’m learning about in school. Essentially, it deals with the steps you use in debriefing people about a crisis they’ve just entered, how they felt about it, what they can do the next time, make a plan for the next time a similar situation pops up, and then re-enter the situation.

The thing that is killing me about this is that having gone into a mini-crisis of my own this past weekend, I can’t follow the steps myself. What kind of leader will I make to people who need me later on down the road?

I need to take the necessary steps to turn my behaviour around but at this point?

I really don’t know how.

I’m the Maid of Honor in a wedding this weekend, the wedding that is the reason my hair is five hundred and forty eight feet long. If it were up to me, the reception would be held at a reputable hairdressers’ salon, and the bride and groom would clink delicate champagne glasses together as the hair is chopped from my head. Somewhere near the scalp, preferably.

As part of my duty, I am making the guest book. Now, typically, this would require me leaving my house, going to a store, buying a guest book, and coming back home to laze on the couch. But, no. I had to go and have this wonderful idea that would make a lovely memory book of the guest book.

I decided to make it a scrap book of the bride and groom’s life, with alternating pages for guests to leave messages on.

Crafts and neatness have never been my forte. I am the worst Obsessive-Compulsive person in the world, because my handwriting is atrocious and I can not do anything in a straight line. I’m surprised that I can drive my car to work every day without killing people. Lots of people.

All those teeny tiny stickers with letters on them? Make me want to impale myself on sharp farm implements. The cutting tiny things out? Smash me in the face with a shovel. The glue? MY GOD, THE GLUE.

My hands sweat, my heart rate increases, my stomach tightens, and my legs tremble just thinking about all those teeny, tiny little things that need to be stuck to other teeny tiny little things.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and wash the leftover glue from my locks of hair.

Apologies for the no post yesterday, but I was in the hospital being diagnosed with nothing all day and that took up a large portion of my time.

I think the good thing about mental health issues and being diagnosed and treated for them is that the doctor can generally do them without getting out of his or her seat.

Apparently, getting out of one’s seat and looking stuff up is a big ol’ pain in the ass.

The prefer to send people home to weep on their couches instead.

I’m in a cranky, cranky mood.

I’ve been working full time for the last three weeks, and I have to say that thus far I’m loving it. Breaking up the routine with getting out of the house and making some money is a nice thing to do from time to time.

I have an income now, and this is something I haven’t had regularly since April. The thing that kills me about having income is that as soon as you have money, it needs to go back out on things you didn’t really want the money to go out on. Thus far:

- The Little Chevy needed a new gas tank
- The pony needs a vet check on his leg
- The pony needs two blankets that actually fit him
- My neck has two swollen bumps on it and the Doc recommended I see a dentist.

I see this eating up the entirety of my first pay check. Sigh.

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.

I love to sleep. I really hate to be cliche, but if sleeping were an Olympic Sport, I would have the gold medal in it every year since 1984. I have always been a wonderful sleeper, and I remember being little and asking my mom if I could take a nap after school when I started the first grade. I never really did give up my habit of napping, and I suppose that in this sense, my parents did NOT get the short end of the stick. In every other sense, I’m kind of a dud, but hey! THEY GOT MANY NIGHTS OF SOLID SLEEP even after I came into the world. Daughter of the year, right there.

When things are wrong with me, I stop sleeping. I become a person who is no longer capable of sleeping at all. My eyes become wide and red-rimmed, dark circles grow under them, my face becomes pale and every ounce of energy I have is devoted to trying to find a way to make me fall asleep.

I’m not sure what it is that keeps me from sleeping when I’m unwell. It is partially the fact that all the scary things that are for sure going to happen to me are whirling about my head. And yes, when I’m unwell it does seem entirely likely that I may be maimed or killed in a car wreck on my way home for the weekend; or that everyone I know will be mad at me and start yelling the next time they see me; or that something terrible is happening to someone I love RIGHT AT THAT VERY MOMENT and if I fall asleep, I might just miss their call. I never claimed that being Insane was fun.

Napping very rarely interferes with my ability to sleep at night. I am one of those fortunate souls who can sleep from midnight until ten in the morning, and then from one until four the following afternoon, and still be ready to hit the hay again at midnight. My sleep is deep and comfortable; I love to sink into my pillows and my luxurious sheets and wrap myself around the extra sheet and pillow I keep on hand, neatly arranged the way that only a person with OCD can arrange them.

I love every single aspect of sleep: I love drifting off and catching myself so that I can feel as though I am drifting off one more time. I love rolling over when I wake up to find myself all tangled up in the sheets (and sometimes at the wrong end of the bed) and wondering what I was dreaming about that would cause me to wake in such a position. I love laying on my pillows for a few minutes before I step out of bed, and then I love curling back in so that I can be in my sheets with my down duvet for just five more minutes.

Because of the deep love I have for everything related to sleeping, and because getting enough sleep is just so good for a person, I have to wonder why, when I’m not well — when the Crazy has sunk in, and Insanity reigns over all — why, is sleep so hard to come by? This is a question that I could ask myself until I’ve driven myself nearly mad, and OH! WAIT! I’ve already done that. Twice. And then the heavy duty sedatives came along and brought me back to the place where the sane people live.

Like so many aspects of this illness, the fact that I can’t partake in my favorite activity when nothing in the world could would be better than partaking in this activity really confounds me.

But for topics related to depression to be confounding — well, is that really surprising to anyone?

Sleep, Insomnia, Sleepless, Nap, Napping, Sleep Aids, Depression, Anxiety