I want to be in charge

By the time Sunday night rolled around, I was fed up, ready to give up, and ready to email my doctor for anti-depressants, but then I was again faced with the idea that I really have no reason to be unhappy. Well this realization can only take me two ways: my struggles are either purely chemical, or I just have a hard time remembering how to allow myself to be happy. At that point, I decided to fight my hardest to be in charge of this thing. Is it possible to just continually decide to be happy? I suspect it might be. I decided I just have to give it my best try. Yesterday was a pretty great success. Today through trial and error, I am at a minimum ok, maybe a bit better, but I can feel the crazy lurking underneath. I got myself out of the house not long after awakening today. This kept me from devolving in ways that I do not wish to devolve, but did not save me from indulging in some acts of crazy. My latest, and largest obsession, is job hunting for next year. It doesn't seem to matter how much I remind and reassure myself that I have time, it's early and I will find something, I still think about this problem every day almost the minute I open my eyes. I keep thinking that if I can just get this figured out, everything else will fall into place. I wish that were really the case. I just can't seem to relax about this issue for long, no matter how much time I spend reassuring myself. I made a deal with myself that on my free days I would send out two cover letters. Of course today, despite my generally better state of mind, I sent out four, and I feel an itch to do more. I have been getting replies from a few of my letters, but each of them has been to tell me that the position I am seeking has already been filled. I suspect I am spinning my wheels in many cases, applying for phantom posts... And even though I know this deep down, I can't seem to stop myself in the same futile process every day. The thing is that I know myself. I know my own compulsions. It is super-difficult to coax myself into down time. I kept telling myself yesterday that laying around with a novel is hardly wasting my life or ruining my chances of finding a job for August, but I must have done a poor job of convincing myself because when I considered such an option this morning, I felt that bubble of contentment I spent yesterday creating, starting to slip a bit, and I knew that if I didn't leave the house, I would slide down that sharp abyss of mind into a place of darkness. I believe that I may have the ability to control my state of mind, to be in charge of how I feel, but I wish it didn't feel like "work." Until Sunday night, I found myself fighting so hard against impending anxiety and depression that my head ached. The last couple days I am not fighting nearly as hard, but it is still there, closer to the surface than I want it to be. That is why anti-depressants remain a bit of a lure to me. I promised myself a week to try a commitment to happiness, so I am really trying...

Self-indulgence

I suppose the fact that I can take the time to sit in a coffee shop and update my blog is a form of self-indulgence. At the moment, I don't have internet at home and I keep feeling this need to update my blog. Sometimes I think the best way to fight the darkness that keeps trying to engulf my brain is to write. I am not sure if it really helps, but I have already realized the hard way that I can't just hole up in the house and hide from dealing with my life. Sometimes I find the hiding gives me temporary relief but ultimately, I think it makes me feel worse. Sometimes I just want to bury myself in bed, under the covers with my beautiful kitty beside me and just try to forget, forget the imperative to do, and worse the imperative to find something to worry about every day. It seems the moment that I have managed to put one worry to bed, another one finds a way to crop its ugly head. I try to fight them, but every day, something seems to emerge. I feel like these things will strangle me. I just want to go back to bed, but I know that if I do, in the end, I will feel worse. Each day I find that by somewhere between noon and five I feel good again and I can hardly remember what was plaguing me. The whole thing then just looks like a giant self-indulgence, but when I am in it, I am in it. I find my breath is shallow, I am filled with a nameless fear and I am not sure how to find relief. Later, I seem to start dragging out free, deep breath, after free deep breath, until I feel fine again and no one who sees me can even suspect that my day started so wrong. I keep trying to figure it out... How can I get my day to begin without sadness or fear? Why can't I feel as good at 7am as I usually do at 7pm? Every day I tell myself, "Tomorrow will be different" but then the next day arrives, and the cycle repeats itself. I am confused. Why is it that no matter how much I tell myself not to even let the ugly thoughts start, they just creep in and then settle down to quietly strangle me? And then, like right now, they are just gone and I am fine but almost afraid to go home, afraid they are waiting for me there... A seemingly illogical part of me of me keeps thinking, "If only x,y and z fall into place, I will just stop worrying and everything will be perfect," but that is the real crazy because I am looking at external things to solve some very internal issues. For years I have continued to try writing all this out, always hopeful that if I am just self-aware enough, I will resolve all things that bother me.

Not licked yet

Sometimes I just want to lay down and never get back up. I just want to succumb to the darkness obliterating my light, my reason but I am not ready to stop struggling. I am not ready to just give up. I might if I had never felt like this before... But I have known darker times, tougher days and still gone on to know happiness. I wrote the other day about a break in the clouds. I have more of those these days now than I ever have had before in times of anxiety and depression. I am watching myself, trying to decide how many days of anxiety and depression, days where I feel powerless and unmotivated that I can take before I just give in and email my doctor for an antidepressant. So I count the days, good versus bad, and I cling onto the little things that give me hope, the little things that bring relief and sometimes even happiness. Today I am winning the battle. I won it Thursday, fought a skirmish yesterday, and survived, and now I look forward to a good day today and tomorrow. I am not licked yet...

A Break in the Clouds

The waters of my life seeth around me like a storming sea. Sometimes I feel I will be completely submerged. I can't even lift up my head to look beyond the next wave. Sometimes I just want to give up and drown. The thing is, I'm not really ready to give up. Even in the darkness, I remember the moments, many moments where my joy was so great I felt I could hardly even contain it in one body. I remember moments where the waters were calm and placid. And again, even in these darker times, there are moments... There are moments of complete calm and deep faith that all things will work out just fine. And there are other moments of ecstatic joy. Often I am more than satisfied just to be motivated to make things better, or just to breath an entirely free breath. One of the real problems with anxiety and depression is that they feed on themselves. You feel bad or anxious so you don't want to do anything, or even worse, you feel suddenly like even doing the smallest thing is too much effort. You become overwhelmed and want to do nothing. Then, to make matters worse, you feel bad about doing nothing. These days I suspect that the only way I can deal with the really hard times is to start moving, get some momentum and then keep moving. I like it the most when I actually get to feeling content just being. It is a hard place to get to, but sometimes when I do, I feel really good being in that place. Sadly, it often wears off way too quickly. I had a pretty good day today. It was good enough to make me want to blog while I felt a break in the clouds. I am not sure how long this break will last, but while it is upon me, I thought I might leave myself notes on how to get back to that ever-elusive patch of sunlight. I had a good talk today with another special person in my life who I knew would understand. She was talking about being depressed, and she noted that you begin to forget the things you even like in life. Slowly you start to even forget most of your reason or desire to live at all. She reminded me it is good that I still have those things I know I really love even in these tough times. She is right. Sometimes I just imagine myself doing wraps and setting up drops for aerial fabric and I am filled with excitement. I think about doing acro with friends or teaching the stuff I love, and I just smile. I have noticed that I still have a big smile and a light in my eyes so I must somehow be there, the best of me, somewhere right below the gloom.

Life without antidepressants

I am not going to lie. I will not even sugar-coat the truth for mysel,f or anyone else bothering to read this. I remember now that life without antidepressants is hard. At the time of my diagnosis, I fought hard to avoid all meds. It took a year before I went on Copaxone, and another year before I finally committed to taking Effexor for depression and anxiety. I think the thing that finally brought me to the Effexor was my anxiety. I found myself absolutely incapable of being present. All I could focus on anymore is the stuff I thought I needed to do. I also felt guilty about not being able to shake off the bad feelings enough to even do the stuff I was worrying about. Being on antidepressants was like taking a two year vacation from worrying about anything for more than about five minutes. I learned to let go of my anxieties and to just enjoy and trust in the present. I found tools for coping with challenges, but with the help of Effexor, it was easy to use the tools. All the stuff that had previously gotten me down, just quit bothering me. I learned to worry less about what others thought, and to ignore my imaginary grand score-card in the sky. I stopped really being concerned about my ability to take care of stuff. I just trusted that I would take care of things effectively when I must. I did not waste any energy worrying about how and when I would take care of stuff. I even learned to feel better about just relaxing and hanging out. I was less driven by the nagging feeling that I must be forgetting something. Now, drug-free, I am looking at my world, my future and my mounting to do list, and I am not quite so confident. I am doubting myself more. I indulge in moments of "crazy" where I feel guilty about not running one more errand, or doing one more chore before I "reward" myself with a break. What the hell happened to all my positive momentum toward self-acceptance, happiness and actualization? I am glad I can still remember a bit of what life felt like on Effexor. It often helps me talk myself down from the crazy, but I admit to losing some sleep. I wake up in a sudden panic with ugly things in my mind, like competition or comparison of myself with others. And yet I know, down that path lies only bitterness and discontent. Lately I discover that I am again giving myself points or demerits on that imaginary score card and I hate it. Then I turn around and hate myself a bit. That too is a vicious cycle. Remembering life on the Effexor cloud is harder. Does this mean I will go back to the Effexor? Not just yet. I wanted to remember what it felt like to live life with out anything to block the "realness" of it. Now it's real, and sometimes it is hard, but I am not ready to give up on my current course yet. I really do believe I can do this!