Saturday, June 1, 2013

Day 12: Well, Shit.

It needs to be understood at the outset that I am not a stable person. I usually maintain a facsimile of functionality by pitting my neuroses and psychoses against each other, and going about my business while they wage horrible trench wars in my head. It's like playing speed chess against thirty opponents blindfolded while utterly convinced you're participating in a checkers tournament.

I'm paranoid as hell, constantly worrying about everything, walking close to walls whenever possible to watch the people around me in case one of them suddenly loses their mind, pulls a gun, and starts blasting. Obsessively tracking license plates to see if I'm being followed on the highway. I don't have hallucinations, but no one's perfect.

I'm slightly narcissistic and I have an inferiority complex. Take a moment to wrap your head around that one.  Half the time I think I'm a moderately attractive, popular fellow who suffers from genius syndrome. The other half of the time, I'm convinced I'm an overweight psycho that has friends only because it's easier than telling me to go away. I know it's somewhere in between, yes. Doesn't mean I don't have that shit going in my head.

And, of course, I'm mildly depressed most of the time. Not enough to do more than slow me down, as a rule, but enough that I have trouble getting out of bed two days out of seven. Enough that my writing always has bitter overtones, even when I'm being funny. Enough that I notice.

But I manage. At least, I normally manage, for certain values of normal.

However, twelve days ago I was thrown headlong into my first full blown panic attack in over ten years. I quit my shiny new job (which was, admittedly, a wage zombie grunt job that had full time hours as it's only benefit; also, admittedly, it was the source of said panic attack) and promptly got hit with a blast wave of depression that could level New York.


As with the panic attack, it's been years since I've been this depressed. Not as long, only a few years, but still long enough to have forgotten how much feces coated platypus wang it sucks to be depressed to the extent that when asked "how are you" the only honest answer is "meh."

I can hear you all in my mind (except you, Twin) saying that I should just Buck Up. That I must find the Source of my Depression and Strike It Down. That Someone should get me a Happy Pill. That Capitalization-As-Emphasis is a Privilege of the British.

To all of which I say: Bugger You with a Hedgehog.

Depression is not a lack of happiness. I smile. I have moments where I'm having fun, and the sight of small things still makes me squee. I laugh at jokes. I'm down to hang with friends, though with the caveat that 90% of my friends are as broken as I am, or have been at some point. Being cheered up isn't something that's going to work, because I'm not sad. I'm depressed.

As to Striking Down my depression with the Vorpal Sword of +1 Bogey Smiting, that's not an option either. I'm depressed, people. If there was something I was doing that caused it, I would stop doing it. If there was something I wasn't doing that I should be, I would start. There's no source of depression, I'm just freaking depressed.

And happy pills? Well...I'll have to take back my absolute no, there. Just because it's gone away before, just because I know how to live with it, doesn't mean some crucial part of my brain didn't step out to tea when puberty hit and got lost in traffic on its way back. It might be that I need pills. If this keeps up much longer, I'll probably have to break down and go get some. Hell, a fabulous woman I know would make the case (successfully) that trying to do without pills at this point is selfish. Because now I'm inflicting my depression on the people around me.

And yet...and yet, I've managed to beat it back into its hole before. I've functioned for going on fifteen years without pills, and of the two times I've made a concerted effort to reach out to the medical community for assistance, one of them nearly ended in suicide as a side effect and the other temporarily removed my ability to give a fuck about anything. So, not so much luck on the pharmacological front.

But you know what? This is day twelve. This is the longest I've gone without writing in years. I thought, at the outset, that I'd give it a couple days, and be right back to ranting and writing haiku and poetry. I can't chalk it up to fatigue or say that I just need a bit more sleep, or that I need to relax and let it go. I'm depressed.

And an unfortunate side effect of chronic depression is medication. So if this goes chronic, I shall be reporting to my local doctor and asking him to find me a pill that won't kill me while doing something about my utter lack of fucks.

Yay.

Anywho. This shall update irregularly until such time as I function well enough to write for my normal blog again. You may also find horrible emo poetry over on the Laughing What. And no, there's really nothing worse than an English major who's depressed and regularly gives head time to metaphysics. You have been warned.

That's about the size of it, then. Ta, and see y'all when I see ya.