April 02

The down swing. 

God damn depression.

Earlier this evening, sitting in front of the computer, and all of a sudden feeling like I've been hit by an emotional powder keg.

Weepy, confused, dazed, exhausted, afraid, agitated, and slowed way down.

I went to bed for a couple of hours, then managed to get up again, watch a little TV and now I'm trying to write here, but it's hard.  My mind goes into 'shut-down' mode.

I feel an unbearable stress - like I have a huge exam the next day I haven't studied for and the test is worth... my life.  Or... I don't know, how do you characterize it.  It's just a sense of feeling -wrong-, and some of the hardest parts of it are not really knowing what is wrong.  What triggered me?  Did something trigger me?  What do I do now?  When is it going to start to feel not this utterly horrible again?  How long are these unbearable unpredictable low days going to keep up cropping up in my life totally incapacitating me.  There's a confusion and overwhelming sense of helplessness that shrouds me at these times.

Despair.

Everything turns ugly and threatening and dark and unpleasant when you look out at the world through this biochemical haze.

Things my brain says to me in these moments that I hate, that seem above my control, thoughts I have no power over:

What a failure I am.
People must think I'm a total whack job (or nut case, or insert mentally instable put-down term of choice in here).
I'm never going to get better.
What if I never get to be a happy person again.
I'm going to let everybody down.
Where do I get me a nice case of SARS

It's raining outside, and not just raining, pouring, and not just pouring, but a deluge... and it feels like nothing, compared to the torrent inside.

Then there is the guilt, guilt over everything, guilt over my feelings, like I have no right to them, no right to be hurting, no right to be sad, that I should be grateful and happy, followed by more hopelessness and helplessness, because in this state there is so little control, over what I do feel, and what I do think.

The only thing I can do is hope the deepest down part of the down swing, passes not too slowly, and try to stave off as much of it as I can... hard to do, it stops me from concentrating enough on tasks that might otherwise serve to distract me, it makes me restless and unable to escape into sleep, when I do sleep it haunts my dreams with nightmares.

People offer helpful advise... think positive thoughts, go out and do something, get some exercise, eat healthier foods, read something mood lifting, or any number of sane mundane things that do affect normal moods...  I usually don't have the ability, the energy, the competence to even begin to explain to them, how impossible those simple things become.  How a mind that during 'normal times' is able to meditate and maintain a focus or stillness for an hour or more becomes completely unruly, filled with dark, troubling, even frightful thoughts that seem so alien at times that I feel like a stranger to myself.  Go out and do something... fear traps me inside at moments like these, knowing that the unpredictable world outside might throw me a stressor that could send me into a complete break - knowing that's not just a fantasy... I've been there, in the hospital, days on end afterwards.  exercise... When the depression hits like this, sometimes I'll be laying down and a body part will fall asleep and/or start to ache, or I'll desperately have to go to the bathroom, or the phone will be ringing... but I can't move, my body feels leaden, and like my limbs have become encased in concrete, hours can go by as I stare at a wall and my consciousness removes itself from my body, because it's a place I no longer want to be.  eat healthier foods, I don't eat at all unless Wolfe puts food in front of me, and often then, if it's not something that I'm craving, usually crap food, the thought of it makes me nauseous.  Cooking, shopping... tasks way above my ability to wrap myself around, I eat what's convenient and usually sweet.  Reading... sometimes I can, but often in the really bad parts of this brain chemistry mayhem I find myself reading the same sentence over and over and over again, the meaning of the words completely eluding me.  Depression isn't just an emotional state, it's a bio-chemical imbalance that can effect the functioning of body and mind in so many ways.

I've been worse, I can sit here now, and write this, and articulate some of it, and hold it back at bay, but it feels like I'm running a little mental marathon, and that I'm just getting so damned tired.  Sometimes when I'm in the state I'm in right now, as I'm here writing this... I actually wish I was just a little worse off, the depression going just a bit deeper into the fog... where I start to be able to disassociate more, and am less aware of my feelings, less aware of my thoughts... more lost, and less found.  I'm just aware enough, feeling enough, conscious and contemplative enough to appreciate all the nasty nooks and crannies of my mental predicament.

I think it's time to hit the bed again.