Gut Punches

It's odd. When I started this blog, I had a number of ideas for posts, on all manner of topics related to the strategies that I had been working on to get over my depression. Yet, as the weeks have passed, I've found that I largely haven't been writing about those things, because every week brings something new. This week has been no different in terms of new and unexpected changes, and this time not for the better.

It's very difficult not to hope. As I planned the road trip that I'm currently on, I debated back and forth about what I should do when I passed through Akron. Should I ask my ex if he wanted to get dinner? Even knowing that I still have very strong feelings for him, and even knowing that there was no reason to expect anything out of such a meeting? Knowing that the relationship was over? Despite myself, despite having no expectations, I know I went in to last Tuesday night with much more hope than was warranted. I had thought, leading up to the evening, that I should kill that hope, but whenever I tried to kill it I ended up feeling like doing so was equivalent to killing myself (mostly figuratively...) - if I can't hope about John, why should I bother hoping about other things, either? Most of the things I'm currently hoping for feel like such a long shot, that if I can't put my faith in one long shot, how can I put it in to any other? So I didn't quell the hope. I hadn't even seen John, though, before I realized what a monumentally bad idea dinner had actually been. I was having trouble not breaking down just walking up to the building where he works, and it didn't get any better throughout dinner. I held it together...barely...but I didn't at all behave as I had hoped. I just wanted to be the upbeat, cheerful, interesting girl that he was starting to fall for, but there was just no way. There is too much sadness in me now, too much struggle, to be that person, and so the depression kept peaking through. And despite myself, I did end up crying in his presence before the end of the night, and I was furious with myself about that, too. For a dinner that probably went almost as well as could legitimately have been expected (by which I mean: amicable conversation with an ex-boyfriend that is a continuing part of the process of attempting to salvage a friendship from the wreckage of a love).

Tuesday night was shattering to me.

Before that, I was starting to get my feet back under me. Before that, I was starting to wake up each morning with a little bit of pep and think, this won't be so bad. Before that, I was starting to think the worst was over and I was going to start recovering, and in that recovery I'd be able to take a more reasoned look at some of the many things I've thought about the last three months and figure out which have any merit and which were just Chushanrishathiam being a douche bag in my head.

After dinner...the hope just died, and once again, as when he first broke up with me, I felt like there was nothing left at all, that everything was pointless. I still had a two hour drive after leaving him, and I spent most of it sobbing, and the rest on the phone with a friend who I sufficiently impressed with the seriousness of the situation that she didn't want to let me off the phone because I was scaring her. I have enough fight in me not to succumb to those thoughts, fortunately, but it was not a good drive, and I've hardly felt better since. More fortunately, the friend who I would call to talk me off the ledge, who I was talking to that night, is also the friend who I was staying with starting Friday (And I actually ended up changing the original plan, and coming out to her place Thursday instead). I've been there since, though I leave today.

I don't have much good feeling right now. I'm just pleased that I went from entirely bleak this morning to feeling decidedly neutral right now - I think entirely because despite it all I've managed to chip away at my to-do list just a little, which had been building up the last week. I'm still behind, but I'll be spending the next few days with friends who work during the day, so it's getting more manageable. Anyway. That's a tangent. Since I don't have much good feeling the last few days, I thought I'd take this post to instead describe just what the worst feels like. I'll never forget, my freshman year of college, feeling low and not being able to figure out what the feeling was. Why do I feel this way? What is this emotion? I didn't remember ever feeling it before...I talked it over with a friend, and finally we put a name to it: I was lonely. When one has never felt an emotion before, it can be shockingly hard to put a name to it, to figure if that thing you're feeling is what other people are talking about when they mean sadness, anger, joy, euphoria, or whatnot. After this past week, and these past months, I'm starting to feel like an expert on depression, so here goes, the elements that compose my depression.

1. Hopelessness. This is the core of it, for me. The feeling that there is no point in even trying because no matter what I do, good things have not happened and will never happen. That never part is important, it projects the current feeling of hopelessness in to the future and makes it immutable and unchangeable.

2. Helplessness. Nothing I do can change anything. This starts at the local level: why am I still depressed? nothing I do can shake this feeling of depression. From that simple level, it grows out from there - nothing I do, nothing I try, no matter how hard I've worked, nothing I do makes any difference at all. I could disappear and no one would even notice.

3. Loneliness and Neglect and Isolation. All of these goes hand in hand. It's about feeling alone, but it's also about not wanting to be a burden. It's about feeling like no one cares, yet being unwilling to ask for help. I mean, three nights ago I cried myself to sleep when there was help fifteen feet away in another room, because I didn't want to put my friend out when it was already midnight and I knew she had her own issues going on. Yet on some level, I wanted her to find me, to discover me. I remember the day before John broke up with me, I couldn't sleep at all, so I went into the living room so I wouldn't bother him, and I ended up crying for most of an hour. I didn't want to be a burden or disturb anyone else, but secretly I was hoping that he'd come out and tell me that everything was going to be okay - but he had room mate who I DEFINITELY didn't want involved - and so I fought this ridiculous internal battle about just how much noise it would be okay for me to make while crying. I wanted to be quiet, obviously, but since part of me hoped for discovery, I also wanted to make some noise. The whole process was sick and ridiculous and left me feeling like a manipulative bitch. (In the end, I was undiscovered, and I decided to try to go back to sleep, but I couldn't, and he woke up, and I ended up owning that I'd been crying in the living room for an hour, and the whole situation fell apart quickly. I'm not really sure how I SHOULD have handled it, but I clearly handled it wrong...probably I should have just woken him up and been like, "I feel like shit. Can we talk about this?" ...but we'd already BEEN talk about it and there was nothing left to say and mostly I was crying because I was scared that things weren't seeming to get resolved...and as it turns out I guess I was right to be scared...)

4. Desolation. Just a feeling of absolute and complete emptiness. I look for something to say, something cheerful, something happy, some glimmer of thought, and find...absolutely nothing. Blank slate.

5. Lack of appetite. One of my only physical symptoms, my appetite goes poof. When I'm a somewhat less depressed point - pretty but not entirely depressed - I actually end up eating MORE because I lack the energy to tell myself no when I want the enormous dessert all to myself - but when I hit the depths, I just don't feel hungry at all anymore, and I have to make myself eat. I also get headaches (Especially when I've been crying...which is a lot...) and have trouble falling asleep. 6. Disinterest/Lack of Preference. What do I want to eat? I don't care. What show do I want to watch? It's all the same to me. It's not that I find I'm opposed to eating out, or watching TV, or what not, but in terms of having an actual opinion? I really couldn't care less. 7. Inability to Face Simple Tasks. Like getting out of bed. Or, in my case, most frequently, walking the dog. I HAVE to walk the dog, but I've often reached the point the past week that the idea of having to take her out has been so daunting that I was struggling to get up in the morning. 8. The Merry-Go-Round. This is my short hand for what I'm actually thinking in my own head. At the risk of triggering some pretty bad thoughts for the rest of the day while I'm actually currently feeling functional, I think it'd be easier to replicate some of this out-right than try to describe what I mean. The thought process goes something like this: I wish I understood why John broke up with me. Why did he abandon me? Why does everyone abandon me? It must be something about me. In the end, everyone leaves, everyone gives up. He gave up on me, even though I wasn't willing to give up on him. I guess he's no different than I am, because I'm just giving up on myself, now. What's the point? If I try again, it'll just end the same. People told me to be myself, and this is the closest to being myself that I've ever been in a relationship, and he ran screaming in the opposite direction. The next guy will just do the same. No one will want to stay when they see what I'm like. I'm just too crazy. I can't put up with myself, so why should anyone else put up with me? And now that I'm so depressed, it's even worse, like my only redeeming feature was being the girl with pep and spunk and energy and now I have none of those so why would anyone want me around at all? If being myself wasn't good enough, then what's the point? It's not like I can be someone else, but who I am sucks. He broke up with me because I'm a wreck, and everyone else will also think I'm a wreck. There's no point in even trying. Chushanrishathiam (reminder: my new name for my inner monologue when it's being all evil) goes on like this, and on and on, and worries at the same points for hours and days and weeks, and that's why I call it the Merry-Go-Round: even if I beat a particular piece of unpleasantness on one day, the feelings eventually cycle around and I have to try to beat them another day. When I try to argue back (I'm not pathetic! It's about his issues, not mine! This is just depression, I'll feel better eventually! I'm not crazy!) I don't really get anywhere, even when I marshal evidence (I know I'm not crazy, because crazy people aren't able to accomplish the things that I've accomplished without supports of kinds that I haven't needed)! All in all, for me, the MGR is at the crux of all of my problems, and the difference between good days and bad days tends to be my ability to shut the MGR down. Increasingly, though, I've found that the methods that were working to stop it have been less effective this past week.

9. Suicidal Thoughts. This is always a tough place to go, to admit to others that I've been experiencing. It feels SO manipulative to even say that I've been thinking about killing myself that I hate to even own it. Yet, it IS part and parcel of all of this, and it's not going to go away if I pretend I haven't been thinking it. I've found the worst combination has been when I've felt awful while driving, because it just feels like it'd be so easy, just jerk the steering wheel and I have nothing left to worry about. More than specific thoughts on attempting suicide, though, I've persistently thought in the past few months - when I've been having a bad day - that I just wish I'd go to sleep and not wake up the next morning. I've even managed to get in to the "I wish I'd never been born" stage of things - the kind of useless conjecture that is comforting because it's the only version that hurts no one else. I don't WANT to hurt those around me, I want them to be happy, and I know that plucking myself out of their lives would make them very unhappy, and that's the main thing that keeps me from taking an extreme action - but if I just died anyway, or even better if I'd never been born, that's less pain for them. The suicidal thoughts have been one of the scariest aspects of all of this for me, because while I'd suffered from depression before, I'd never so consistently found myself wondering why I'm still alive, what the point is, and - on the worst days - staring at my wrists and wondering what the knife would feel like cutting in. I've had more than one day like that in the last week, and as soon as my head is a little clearer I'm horrified by it. Heck, even when I'm experiencing it, I'm horrified by it, but that horror doesn't stop me thinking about it.

10. Fear. I know there have been times in the past when I didn't feel this way, but now it seems like I have no idea when I'll feel this way or for how long. What happens if this is what the rest of life is like? This tends to tie in to the previous, because if I AM going to feel this way for the rest of life, than what's the point? Obviously none of the things I want and hope for will be accomplishable while I feel awful.

11. Inflicting pain because of the inside pain. While there is an element of actual physical masochism in this, for me what I actually more mean is a tendency to, when talking to my support network, say things that I know will make them sad, or worried, or frightened for me, because there's just so much pain and emptiness inside of me that I can't NOT share it. I'd say this is the main piece I've found that is actually damaging to the people around me. And of course, when I realize I'm doing it, I roundly condemn myself, and that doesn't make me feel any better.

12. Resentment. Another piece that involves the projection and competition with others, I've noticed an increasing tendency in myself to channel anger that I can't express at it's actual targets towards targets that are not at all deserving. I'm finding I increasingly resent and am jealous of the friends that have the things I want - particularly a spouse and a family - even when, when I look at their life more closely, it's clear that there is no joy in it. In the cases where my friends have a good and actually happy life, it's jealousy: don't I deserve what they have? Haven't I done enough? Haven't I done as much or more than they have? In the cases where it's my friends who actually are kind of a wreck, the thought is: they have what I want and they're totally screwing it up. If I was given the chances they've been given, I wouldn't blow it like they have. It's not fair.

The hardest part to remember, for me, is how many pieces of this aren't true. Of COURSE people would notice if I disappeared! I'm actually - when I'm not depressed - well aware that I am a well-liked person with a lot of caring friends. But in so many ways depression isn't about reality. I've come to think it's about a projecting the way it feels inside (empty, desolate, lonely) onto a world that is, generally speaking, entirely indifferent, and occasionally genuinely caring - and only exceptionally rarely actively hostile. However, I feel undesirable and hopeless, and that gets converted inside to, "no one loves me, no one cares," despite ample evidence to the contrary. Evidence means very little to that darkness within, I've found. One of the questions I've wondered a lot this past week, and haven't found an answer for yet, is why AM I still fighting? Even in those very black moments - hours sometimes - when it felt like I just didn't care at all and didn't have a shred of hope to cut through the empty desolation inside, well, I'm still alive, SOMETHING in there still thinks there's something worth fighting for. I feel like if I could dig through all the sludge to uncover that something, I'd have a potent tool to shine through the darkness. Yet I haven't got a clue what it is. A lot of it, though, is embodied in a song I know by Goldfinger. I can't remember if I've quoted it before, but it seems apropos at this moment. The song is called "Disorder," and the second verse goes:

"I sit there at the bar, and wonder what I've done.
Should I just fuck it all, or should I go back home?
Cause if I take that drink, I might as well just die
And if I kill myself, I'll be giving up my try,
So I fall down."

I've said that to myself a lot the last three months: If I kill myself, I'll be giving up my try. This depression is the scariest, hardest thing I've ever faced, but I guess some small part of me DOES still believe that there will be something worthwhile on the other end...

What's in a Name?

When I was a kid, I had two nearly all-consuming phobias. One was of the dark. I couldn't STAND that dark. It freaked me the hell out. I remember once, when I was very young (four or five years old?) we were visiting my grandfather's house. I'm from NYC, where it's NEVER all that dark, but he lived outside of a small town in New Hampshire - VERY dark. I was sleeping in the basement with my brother and my mom in nearby beds, and I was absolutely petrified with fear, but I was afraid to tell anyone. I was convinced that in the inky darkness, through which I couldn't see, there was a panther that had opened up the storm doors nearby and was stalking me. Only by telling myself that the panther couldn't see me unless I opened my eyes did I force myself to lie down, close my eyes, and try to sleep. But sleep was a long time coming. Nightlights became mandatory, or at home, the hall light had to be on (outside the room I shared with my mom). My second phobia was both scarier and worse, and it started at about the same time - though it persisted even as I started getting over the darkness phobia. I was afraid of death. I used to have nightmares in which the skeletons of my parents would dance around me and there was nothing I could do. As I got older, the dreams got more common, and I started to be afraid to go to sleep, and over time it developed in to fairly bad insomnia. It came and went, of course, but when it was bad it was REALLY bad. My mother used to let me stay up late and stuff me full of Sleepy Time tea to calm me down, and that often helped, but when I'd spend summers at my grandfather it was more problematic. Finally, when I was 10 or so (it was either the summer after 5th, 6th or 7th grade...I think 6th...) it started to get unmanageable. I was so afraid to go asleep that I would just sit on the bed in the dark (with a nightlight, and no longer in the basement!) and rock back and forth and cry. Poppop was, of course, worried about me. One night I woke up in the middle of the night after a nightmare, and had a full-blown panic attack. Poppop came in, and calmed me down, and promised me that the next day, we would go in to town and we would find me a guardian.

We ended up at a mall with quirky local shops. We didn't have much luck at first, but finally, tucked away on the second floor in a place that I remember mostly having furniture, we suddenly found it: a wolf, about two feet tall, his mouth open to howl. I knew he was the one, but he was $65 and I felt REALLY guilty asking for him. But Poppop didn't even hesitate, and the wolf went home with us. When we got back to his place, he went digging out the bookshelves and pulled out a book for me: bible names and their meanings. "Why don't you find a good name for your wolf?" Poppop suggested to me. So I diligently sat down on his bed with the book and paged through. I ended up with three or four names, but I only remember the one I ended up picking: Hezekiah. The book said it meant "fortress." That was what I needed, I thought: something that would protect me, and give me strength, and keep the bad things out while I was sleeping inside. It was decided, and he was promptly nicknamed Hez. Yet I was nervous: would this work? I wasn't a little kid any more - I knew that there was no Santa Claus, and I knew all my swear words and what they meant, and I knew that dolls were just dolls, they didn't DO anything. As night came, I got more and more scared. It wasn't going to work! It was just a doll! All the things that scared me would still be waiting when I closed my eyes.

I got in to bed, and Poppop put Hez in my arms, and turned off the light. The scary things started immediately, but I closed my eyes, and held Hez close, and thought, "Hez will protect me." I thought it over and over again, concentrated on that thought...and everything else fell away. The only thing in there was, "Hez will protect me." And that night, I slept.

I slept with my fortress every night until my senior year of high school. At that point, I decided that college kids don't sleep with dolls, so I weaned myself into sleeping with a pillow instead - but Hez was never far. I brought him to school with me, and in my junior year of college when things started getting rough with my boyfriend in ways that I didn't really understand, I started sleeping with Hez again, and continued until I was in graduate school and I'd broken up with said boyfriend. The only reason I stopped was that when my dog was a puppy I used to close her in my room. Puppy on the floor, Hez on the bed. I got home from work to find that Jonie had ripped Hez' sad, worn leather nose to shreds - her first act of destruction after she started teething. I was VERY upset but there was nothing to be done, and I carefully put Hez in a place she couldn't reach him and went back to sleeping with a pillow. I STILL sleep with a pillow. And I still need to fix Hez' nose.


Not the best pic, but the only one I have - Hez is up in the upper left hand corner.

So, why talk about all this now?

I need a new name. There is this person in my head - I know it's me, yet at the same time, it's NOT me - a voice who produces so many mean things that I sometimes can hardly even face my own criticism. When I describe this to other people, such as in posts in this blog, I keep saying things like, "my brain then said..." or "my inner demon." But none of that feels right. My therapist calls this voice "the brother in my head," after the unavoidable conclusion that the voice reflects an internalization of the things that my brother used to say to me when we were kids. He was very verbally abusive, and used to call me stupid and pathetic. But I can't call it my brother - for better or for worse, he and I are adults now and we actually do have a relationship, and not a bad one all things considered, and it gets better every year and I want to continue that. Heck, I'm staying at his house starting tomorrow night, and when I touched base with him by text earlier, he mentioned potentially going out and visiting William T. Sherman's house with me - he knows that Sherman is my personal hero - which is to say, he does care about me, and cares about what I'm interested in only because I'm interested in it, and I care about him, and it's not been easy but we've REALLY worked at it, and so I don't want to make that voice be him if it means villainizing him after all we've tried to overcome.

What I realized a few days ago was...that voice needs a name!

I don't have my grandfather any longer - he died last August - and I don't have a book of bible names, but I do have the internet. So I've wondered over to unusual biblical names. Hmm...Abishag, it means "father of error" or "blundering" - that seems appropriately derogatory for an internal monologue that's always putting me down. Achaia, Achaicus, Achan, Achor, Jachan, all mean "trouble" or something similar. This one I like a lot: Achzib, which means "deceit." Akkub - insidious. Amasa, Massa - burden. Buzi - contempt. Chozeba - falsehood. Chushanrishathaim - twice-wicked Cushan (which means "darkness"). Eshek - oppressor. Hagab - locust. Hareph - reproachful. Ikkesh - twisted. Ishbosheth - man of shame. Kelaiah - insignificant. Maachah - oppression. Maalehacrabbim - hill of scorpions. Mahli, Mahlon - sick. Merari - sad or bitter. Phaseah - lame. Shephuphan, Shupham, Shuppim - serpent. Ulam - solitary.

Hmm...well, I think I need to sleep on this, but from the moment I read it, I've been leaning heavily towards Chushanrishathaim. I could call it Cushan for short. Darkness seems very appropriate for me, given my childhood phobias (which still, on rare occasions, give me trouble). Chushanrishathaim.

On a much lighter note, I also found Zemaraim. It means "double fleece of wool." I loled.

Endings and Beginnings

Since Friday...I've felt okay. In fact, I've felt pretty much like myself. It's been really good. Each night when I got to bed, I worry that it won't last, but so far, well, it's Tuesday, and I've made it. Anyway, I don't have much time right now - I'm heading out the door, about to start a four week road trip! For the trip, I'll be making fourteen stops (!!) where I'll be seeing family, lots of old friends, and finally meeting some new friends, getting dinner with my ex and possibly seeing both my other exes. I've been nervous about it, I'll admit - lots of time alone in the car, also worrisome - but in the end, I think it'll be exciting. Sussex, NJ; Binghamton, NY; a stop for a meal in Syracuse, NY; Rochester, NY; University Park, PA; a stop for a meal in Akron, OH; Columbus, OH; Indianapolis, IN; Chicago, IL; Bloomington, IN; Louisville, KY; a stop for a meal in Nashville, TN; Savannah, TN; probably a random excursion down to Corinth, MI (I've never been to Mississippi before! Is that the right state abbreviation?); Lynchburg, VA; drive down to Chapel Hill, NC; drive up to Charlottesville, VA; a stop for a meal in Silver Springs, MD; and finally back home! Four weeks, total, and it'll be exciting.

The past week, I've done a lot of prep for this trip. The first step was to clean. I never want to come home to a messy apartment, so I put a bunch of time in to just straightening and cleaning and putting away. I'd already stashed most of the things related to my break up that made me sad to look at, but there's one thing I'd left out. Last January (2011), my dad came down to visit and found me down. He told me about a strategy he uses from time to time. When things get too rough, write down whatever you can't let go on a slip of paper. Put that slip of paper in a jar, or a bowl, or what not. When there are a lot of slips of paper, burn them all, without reading them. In the early days of this January, I'd filled out a LOT of slips of paper, and I'd been holding off on burning them until I was sure I wasn't that likely to add more. Finally, as part of cleaning, I took the jar (I keep mine in an old used up Yankee Candle jar, I can be positive it's fire proof...) and burned them.



I read one or two of them first, somewhat inadvertantly, since the text was facing up. In truth, I'm glad I did. There was one phrase written there that had been on my mind a lot the last few weeks. See, John (the ex over whom so much of this was triggered) had said to me on the phone in mid-February that he felt like he ruined everything. I'd really latched on to that phrase, and started to feel like I'd co-opted it from him when I started thinking it myself. But there, in my jar - which I hadn't added to since the second weekend of January - was written on a slip of paper, "I ruin everything." It wasn't from him, I'd had it all along. Seeing that, and then watching it burn, felt really good.

So that was my ending. I burned the last of the bad, on Sunday, and I think it's a piece of why I feel a lot better this week (which started Friday night, so it's not just that - it's really a combination of things which have happened, starting with a rock-bottom moment on Friday morning). I'd like to write about all of that, but I really don't have time just now...oh, screw it. Quick overview. On Friday morning, I was feeling very low. This culminated around 9 AM when I walked the dog, and I got in the elevator, and another woman was in there, and she gave me the hairy eyeball for getting in with my dog, who was acting a bit rambunctious. I hate when people do that to me, and so when I left I said, "you don't have to roll your eyes at me, she's not going to hurt you." It felt good to fight back, but it always feels lousy when folks are mean to my pooch, she's not well trained but she's perfectly sweet. The training is my part. Anyway, I got back to my apartment, and promptly started to cry. I'm assuming hormones, though not PMS, apparently. Still, it was shocking. That's just not normal. I pushed through, went about my day, and decided to go to a lecture that afternoon. While at the lecture, a strange but cute guy sat next to me and started a conversation. And...it was nice. We just talked. Then, after the lecture, we just talked more. We ended up walking back to the train together, at which point we shook hands and said goodbye. I'm sure I'll never see him again, yet it was just a great experience. It made me feel wanted and interesting, and feeling curious and mystified and intrigued and engaged by another person - and, really, by a cute guy - also felt good. I got home feeling much better. Then, on Saturday morning, out of the blue my ex called. I still really care about him and miss him and am coping with the sadness of the break up, and I'll admit it never occurred to me that he would just call me because he felt like talking about life. It was really nice, and we had a really pleasant conversation about nothing important. For an hour. And he said he would be happy to meet me for dinner when I drive through his area. Then...just, the weekend went okay. So add it all up, and I feel good about life. What a change from last Monday! And now really I have to stop.

For my new beginning...in all of this, one of the things that kept cropping up in my head was how alone I felt, how isolated, how I feel like no one cares. This is obviously nonsense, but surprisingly hard to refute. Yet, I'm about to go on a road trip where I will see literally dozens of people who care about me. Like, I'd have to count, but I'd guess around 30 or 40. Maybe even more. So, I'm going to ask all of these people if I can take their photographs, and I'm going to make myself an album of all of the people who care about me, and next time I start feeling like no one cares, I'll just pull that down. I won't get everyone in there - my mother, my friends in NYC, my friends and family who live in more distant places like Texas and California, I won't be seeing any of them, but I can add their pictures when I DO see them. I'm really looking forward to this project. It's sort of like a scrap book...but with out all the collage. ;)

Deserved and Undeserved

Over the weekend, my friend A. shared on Facebook that her boyfriend, B., had proposed to her. I was happy for them, of course, but I was also shocked by how jealous it made me feel. How unreasonable of me, I thought! Surely, if any two people I know deserve to be happy, it's A. and B. (not their actual initials, in case that's not obvious). A. had been in a relationship with a guy for a seven years, during which he had systematically told her that everything that was "her," all her perkiness, enthusiasm, and energy, was immature, stupid, and inappropriate. She had finally broken up with him, and all of us had breathed a sigh of relief. "Finally, A. is free of him!" Then there's B. He had gotten married to a woman who, well, is a total bitch, no two ways about it, and all of us had wondered why he had stayed with her. They'd finally gotten divorced, and we'd all thought, "finally, B. is free of her!" At another friend's wedding last summer, A. took me aside and told me, very excitedly, that she and B. were going out. They didn't want everyone to know yet cause the break-ups were still recent, but they knew I didn't live locally, and the only one of the bunch I knew more than a little was A. - I didn't get along with either of the exes well, and when I'd lived locally, it had been impossible to get to know B. without spending time with the bitch he was attached to at the hip. Telling me was pretty safe. Yet I felt a little jealous then, too. It was a terrible feeling. Why couldn't I just be happy for my friends finally finding happiness together? Surely they, of all people, deserved to finally find joy.

I've never thought of myself as a jealous person before, so I've been trying to figure out why I feel jealous. What is it about this situation that makes me feel so envious? And then it struck me. It's not that I don't think my friends deserve to be happy. Quite the contrary. I think they DO deserve it. But it leads immediately to my thinking, what about what I deserve? What about my happy ending? Haven't I got just as much right to have something good happen to me, to have the things I want happen?

This concept, of what I "deserve," is one that I've really been struggling with the last few weeks. On the one hand, no one "deserves" anything. I don't really believe in a karmic scale or a cosmic balance. As awful as it is to acknowledge, it is possible for bad thing after bad thing to happen to a person who has never done anything wrong, and it's just as possible for good things to pile on to someone who never did a thing to earn those good things. Life isn't fair. Yet even though I know, objectively, that that's the case, that doesn't really help. I want to think that, in the long run, if I do the right thing, work hard, am honest, am a good friend, that good things will come to me, because I've worked for them and I've earned them.

On the other hand, I think in general I know when I've really done my best, and when I've done my best, I would like to think that would be recognized and rewarded. I'll get a bonus at my job. I'll get praise for my completing the assignment. I'll develop a strong bond with a friend. In many cases, this has happened in my past. Yet, right now, this narrative is falling apart, and it's causing me a lot of problems.

What do I deserve? I find I don't want much in life. I don't care about money one way or the other - it's nice when I've got some, but I've managed when I don't. I don't care about my house - it was awesome when I lived in a four bedroom house, but I was just as content when I lived in an 180 square foot apartment with a shared bathroom. I don't care where I live - I prefer cities and decent sized towns, but I've spent months living in rural areas and it's got it's charms too. What do I care about? I do care about my job - all I want is a position doing something that I care about. I care about being alone - I'm lonely, and I want someone else (read: a significant other) in my life, someone who cares about me and who I care about. I keep coming back to a sticking point: don't I deserve those things?

This dialog has been going round and round in my head, and yet it keeps coming back in the same loops. The job one, I'm dealing with. It's under my control, and I'm changing it at the snails pace that I can. I just wish I'd figured out just how unhappy I was with the way things are right now, so I could have done something about it sooner. It's the relationship one that's really causing me problems. I've been single 5 out of the last 6 years. I haven't gotten in to relationships with people I wasn't genuinely interested in. I've treated my relationships seriously, and done my best to be myself, and be there for the other person. Everyone keeps telling me, "do the things you love, and you'll meet someone." I've done the things I love endlessly, so much so that I'm not even sure I love them any more, I've gone out, I've gone to museums and festivals and concerts and events. I've traveled all over the world, and throughout the US, going to conventions and celebrations and even a cruise. I've put myself out there. And I've hardly met a soul. I've made only a handful of friends this way, and only met one of three boyfriends by doing those things I loved.

So, the inner monologue goes like this:

Me: "I deserve to be happy! I deserve to have good things happen to me?"

Inner Demon: "Do I really? Then why haven't they happened?"

Me: "Maybe I haven't tried hard enough." This one leads on a dangerous path - it makes me think that I should be doing more, but the reality is I HAVE done a lot, I've worked really hard. I can refute that this is the reason, so I move on to another. "Maybe it's just not time yet." This one is also tough. I feel like I've waited long enough, like I've "done my time" as a single woman. "Maybe I just haven't met the right person yet." True, presumably, and totally useless as a response, because it just leads to the question, "why haven't I met the right person yet?" which has no answer. "Maybe life just isn't fair." Well, I knew that all along, but again, it's a useless answer. I'm not likely to just give up, and so the only way to confront life being unfair is to keep trying. And that invariable leads to the last maybe, and the one I haven't figured out how to deal with yet. "Maybe it's me." This is the hardest, the most insidious, and the one I have the least counter argument to. It's a very simple trap: Occam's razor, and nearly irrefutable. The easiest explanation, requiring the least cavaets, is probably the correct one. Either all of maledom (and the couple members of femaledom I've been interested in) doesn't realize how great I am. That seems unlikely. Alternative, I'm not that great. A very difficult thing to accept, and one that I'm not actually sure is true. I'm not gonna claim I'm the greatest catch in the ocean, and in my head I can list the things I think are my strengths - a useful exercise, but not the purview of this post - yet it always ends up coming back to, "if all those things are true, then why I haven't I found anyone yet?" Another question with no answer. I think, of all the things I've been dealing with the last couple months, this one might well be the one that leaves me feeling lowest.

See, if it's me, then I'm in a bind. It means that whatever I do is part of the problem. It means that where-ever I go I won't escape the problem, because it's in me. It leaves me feeling like there's no point in trying, like there's no way I can "win." I end up asking, "don't I deserve to be happy?" and, since I can't seem to escape the conclusion that I'm the problem, the only answer I can produce is, "no, I don't deserve to be happy, because I'm too damaged/silly/lazy/etc." - the reason changes, but the message remains the same. In the end, it feels like a circular message: "If I deserved to be happy, I would have found happiness already. Since I am not happy, that must mean I don't deserve to be happy."

I have no answers for how to deal with this. I haven't got the least clue. I know that I can't seem to escape from it, though, and that it generates hopelessness like nothing else I've ever found. It generates jealousy of my friends, even though I want them to be happy. It generates self-loathing and self-defeatest attitudes, because it feels unchangeable and unanswerable. It leaves me wondering where such destructive inner monologues even come from. How do we get like this? Why do we do these things to ourselves?

I wish I had something heartening to say this week, but I really don't. I'm actually not as low as I was last week, but I just feel so weighted down by depression over all that I can't seem to push through the trees enough to see the forest. Maybe next week, I'll have figured out some answers. For now, I'll keep pushing on, and remembering and using the strategies I came up with last week for dealing with bad days. ;)