How's my blogging? Dial 1-800-HEY-STFU
Aug. 23rd, 2005 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
constanceLately something happens to me, I think about something, I see something, and I want to talk about it. I've been posting a lot lately, one or two posts a day and sometimes more, and as I write I think of more things I want to say, and then think, well, that will have to wait since I just made this bullet-point fifteen-item post. But the list keeps growing, and every night when I sit down I sift through it in my head and pull up the things I most want to talk about, but the list is still out there, and it never seems to get any shorter. In fact, it seems to be growing.
Tonight I actually wrote the list out, because no topic seemed to be floating to the top, and I thought I'd make a poll and let my imaginary friends decide. But then I did think of another topic (see what I mean?). And I have a sort of story to tell you.
:::
The fact that I'm talking at all, I was thinking today, is something of an accomplishment for me. In my last journal, I was updating about twice a month, and when I updated, I mostly just talked about how unhappy I was, how much of an effort it was to do anything but lie in bed and cry for hours at a stretch. I wrote this, last year, just before I went on meds:
I realized today as I was making my list: I am there. I am here. It's taken nearly a year, going on the meds and the frightful, twitchy anxiety accompanying them, the improvement so gradual that I don't even really know when I stopped waking up thinking, literally, that the world would have been better off if I'd just stayed unconscious. Going off the meds with the feeling that I was jumping off a cliff (in the words of my boss, this afternoon, "happy happy happy oops"). That ticcy anxiety again. And then the leveling out. The floating up.
It's been four months completely off meds now, and I feel...well, for me, I feel fine. I wake in the morning and I don't feel utterly defeated at the mere idea of having to shower. I don't burst into tears at the idea of having to decide what to have for dinner. I go to work and know that I'm not feeding starving children like my friend H. or setting up orphanages in Afghanistan like my friend A, and that's okay. I forgive myself for that. I forgive myself for fucking my own life up. I forgive myself for my mistakes. I listen to the voices in my head, the ones that say, "No, you're wrong. You are going to fail. You're an idiot. No one wants to hear what you have to say." And I speak up anyway, and feel better for it, and when it's clear that there are people in the world who might actually be interested in what I have to say--it was maybe true all along, and I just forgot how to see it--
Well, let's just say that last year there was that black hole sucking away at me, turning all my matter into antimatter. And this year I can't see it any more. It is probably still there, but I feel as though it's far enough from me now that I can struggle against it if I stumble into its event horizon.
The Girl Most Likely to Live the Tao is back. She's feeling better, thanks.
:::
And that is my story. How do you like it? Except for the muddled physics, I mean.
Tonight I actually wrote the list out, because no topic seemed to be floating to the top, and I thought I'd make a poll and let my imaginary friends decide. But then I did think of another topic (see what I mean?). And I have a sort of story to tell you.
:::
The fact that I'm talking at all, I was thinking today, is something of an accomplishment for me. In my last journal, I was updating about twice a month, and when I updated, I mostly just talked about how unhappy I was, how much of an effort it was to do anything but lie in bed and cry for hours at a stretch. I wrote this, last year, just before I went on meds:
You might not believe me when I say it, especially if you haven't known me for long, but there was time when I was The Girl Most Likely to Live the Tao. I was annoyingly buoyant, a virtual Pollyanna compared to the rest of my friends. Dory in human form. I was the least convincing surly goth you ever saw, and not just because of the red hair and freckles.
I remember a breakfast a few years ago, French toast with my friends N and B, a conversation about the futility of life, the perpetual struggle, the unrewarding grind of it. I was quiet for most of it, and when pressed for my own existential contributions, I said, not without some embarrassment, that I agreed that life was futile, that frequently our efforts go unrewarded and even unnoticed, that most of us live out our small lives without making a permanent mark. But that this did not bother me, that is the material thing, that I didn't mind running on my exercise wheel and getting nowhere. I traded the things I had to do for the things I wanted to do, gladly. I made my shallow impression on the world's surface and did not long for lovelier lands.
I do remember saying this, and the utter blank astonishment with which my contribution was greeted. I remember meaning it, too; I remember being sure that my life, small and insignificant as it was, was worth something. That the world, so very far from being the best of all possible worlds, was worth engaging. I remember being certain, in my cautious, anxious way, that I was lucky to be here. Lucky.
I remember saying this, and meaning it, but I can't remember how it felt, that certainty. Is it because of my depression that I can't remember? Is it because I'm five years older now and the cynicism and pessimism of disillusioned middle age are catching up with me? I miss that feeling, anyway. Its absence in my life means that I feel, constantly, that something is missing, that I've lost something incredibly important. Something necessary to survival.
Well, here's my point. I want it back, see? I would frankly rather annoy my friends with relentless buzzing cheeriness than with ass-dragging whining. And I'm taking a gamble: I'm betting that the depression's the culprit here, and not permanently lost idealism--that I have a treatable disorder, a chemical imbalance. I've got a prescription in my name and a determination to get back to this--dare I say it?--optimism. And, for once, I'm not afraid to use them.
I realized today as I was making my list: I am there. I am here. It's taken nearly a year, going on the meds and the frightful, twitchy anxiety accompanying them, the improvement so gradual that I don't even really know when I stopped waking up thinking, literally, that the world would have been better off if I'd just stayed unconscious. Going off the meds with the feeling that I was jumping off a cliff (in the words of my boss, this afternoon, "happy happy happy oops"). That ticcy anxiety again. And then the leveling out. The floating up.
It's been four months completely off meds now, and I feel...well, for me, I feel fine. I wake in the morning and I don't feel utterly defeated at the mere idea of having to shower. I don't burst into tears at the idea of having to decide what to have for dinner. I go to work and know that I'm not feeding starving children like my friend H. or setting up orphanages in Afghanistan like my friend A, and that's okay. I forgive myself for that. I forgive myself for fucking my own life up. I forgive myself for my mistakes. I listen to the voices in my head, the ones that say, "No, you're wrong. You are going to fail. You're an idiot. No one wants to hear what you have to say." And I speak up anyway, and feel better for it, and when it's clear that there are people in the world who might actually be interested in what I have to say--it was maybe true all along, and I just forgot how to see it--
Well, let's just say that last year there was that black hole sucking away at me, turning all my matter into antimatter. And this year I can't see it any more. It is probably still there, but I feel as though it's far enough from me now that I can struggle against it if I stumble into its event horizon.
The Girl Most Likely to Live the Tao is back. She's feeling better, thanks.
:::
And that is my story. How do you like it? Except for the muddled physics, I mean.
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Date: 2005-08-24 02:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-24 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-24 02:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-24 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-24 02:27 am (UTC)I'm so glad the black hole is gone. May it drift off into space, never to return. Would you mind if I parked my exercise wheel next to yours? <3 <3 <3
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Date: 2005-08-24 02:55 am (UTC)<3 <3 !
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Date: 2005-08-24 04:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-25 01:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-25 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-25 09:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-24 05:30 am (UTC)Congratulations. : )
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Date: 2005-08-25 01:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-24 08:19 am (UTC)Sorry I missed you on Sunday eve.
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Date: 2005-08-25 01:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-26 06:52 pm (UTC)Also, I've been, erm, writing an H/D fic. It's for a challenge I agreed to ages ago - and have kicked myself for saying yes to many times, because I totally lacked inspiration for it - that's due in on Sep 1. Could I ask you a favour? Would you mind running a quick eye over it for me? Only to point out any huge, glaring errors. Um, minor incentive: it's a bit kinky. But say no if you're too busy.
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Date: 2005-08-26 07:19 pm (UTC)I WOULD LOVE TO TAKE A LOOK AT YOUR STORY!! Send it along whenever, and I'll read happily! And kink! :D:D:D:D:D:D
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Date: 2005-08-26 09:38 pm (UTC)And yes, my schedule changes back on Sunday. But this weekend is a bank holiday and I have to work right through it, so I'm feeling a bit peeved about that.
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Date: 2005-08-24 09:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-25 01:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-24 08:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-25 01:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-25 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-25 03:04 am (UTC)We are both all about the belated-yet-affectionate communications lately, aren't we? It is like the unspoken theme of our friendship.