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...