Meaning . . . Less

Revisiting the Veil Nebula. ESA/Hubble [CC BY 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons
This image shows a small section of the Veil Nebula, as it was observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.  This section of the outer shell of the famous supernova remnant is a region known as NGC 6960 or—more colloquially—the Witch's Broom Nebula. (Info copied from Wikimedia Commons, linked above).  Isn't it beautiful?

This winter has been hard.  Sometime around the beginning of December I hit a major downswing with my depression which I've not been able to claw my way out of yet.  It's annoying.  And it's so hard to deal with anything, do anything at times like this.  So that even though I know ways to deal, I can't freaking deal.  

What's left is to actually fucking deal.

Like I said, I know the ways to cope, to deal, to lift myself out of this hole, it's just so hard to get motivated.  Then you spiral . . . 

I need to recalibrate my brain.

So these are things help that I'm currently not doing because of weird brain stuff, but I do keep telling myself that I need to do them, and I have every expectation that I will be doing them at some point in the very near future:

• Sleep—my sleep schedule is all wonky, it has been for years.  If I can get myself on at least a semi-normal sleep schedule I will feel better.
• Drink more water—I let myself dehydrate when I get like this.  I forget to drink.  I need to remember to drink.  If I drink plenty of water I will feel better.
• Eat—when I'm in one of my slumps I am not consistent in my eating habits.  I may go all day without eating and then binge at night, or I may graze continuously throughout the day.  There are only two consistencies in my diet and those are overeating, and eating "foods" with absolutely no nutritional value.  I need to be more consistent with my schedule for eating and I need to eat actual food.  If I do this, I will feel better.
• Go outside—I haven't actually spent time outside since I quite smoking.  I need the sunlight.  I need the air.  I need the dirt.  I need the trees.  If I start spending more time outside, in the sunlight, I will feel better.
• Move—when I'm like this, I will sometimes only get out of bed to get food and go to the restroom.  I'll just lie in bed and and watch Netflix or Amazon Prime or DVDs on my computer.  If I get up, stretch, exercise, move around I will feel better.
• Take my meds—so, a little over a year ago I started a daily regimen of St. John's Wort.  It helped.  I had more energy, a more hopeful outlook.  I felt like I was healing.  In September I had to stop taking it while I was sick, so it wouldn't interfere with my antibiotics.  Since then, my regimen has kind of fallen apart.  I need to get back to it.  If I take my meds on a regular basis I will feel better.
• Socialize—I have a tendency to isolate myself anyway, but I practically become a hermit when I'm depressed.  If I make an effort to see and talk to people I like I will feel better.
• Interrupt—I get trapped on these loops of negative thoughts that end up reinforcing all the terrible habits I fall into when I get depressed.  In theory, I know how to interrupt these loops, these thoughts.  In theory, I can redirect myself towards something more useful than negative thought.  If I redirect my thinking towards positive thoughts I will feel better.
• Meditate—this is to train my brain to get better at interrupting my negative thoughts and finding a bit of peace within myself.  If I regularly meditate I will feel better.

If I do these things I will feel better.  I will feel better.  I will feel better.

To Ponder & Forgive

I got this picture from Pixabay.  Nice, right?

My mother once told me that depression was anger turned inwards.  I believe her, and not just because she's my mother and I love her so much that I've practically deified her, nor because she has a psychology degree, but because it makes sense and I am so very, very angry with myself.  Almost always.  Sure I feel sorry for myself sometimes, but mostly there's this simmering anger focused on every mistake I ever made.  And I have made a quite few mistakes, some so monumentally large that I'll feel the effects of them for years to come.

I've been thinking about this, and have come to the conclusion that I need to give myself a break.  I'm not perfect.  I can't be perfect.  I can't make the correct decision all the time.  I'm doing the best that I can now, and I did the best that I could at the time.  I need to let it go.  I need to forgive myself.  I need to stop obsessing about things I cannot change.  I cannot change who I was; I can only work on who I am and who I will become.

So I got fat.  So what?  I did it, there's no denying that I did it.  I can't go back in time and not get fat, but I can work to lose weight now.  I can work to get back in shape.  Sure, it would have been easier if I'd changed my eating habits and started working out again back when I first started to gain weight, but that didn't happen.  Instead I ignored it as much as I could, then I wallowed in grief and self pity, then, when I tried to change it, I'd grow frustrated with how difficult it was to do things I once found easy like run, or dance, or aerobics, or yoga, so I'd quit and go back to wallowing.  It was incredibly self-indulgent, and it resulted in me gaining more weight.

I quit dating 15 years ago, give or take, and that was a mistake.  It was a conscious decision on my part.  Or, at least, it started that way.  I needed time to get over both heartbreak and a bruised ego.  Then heartbreak again, as my friends left with my lover.  I needed a break, time to heal.  I should've newly single time to better myself, to fix the things I wanted to fix about myself, like the aforementioned weight gain, but I didn't.  Maybe I couldn't.  I don't know.  It would have been better, easier, if I hadn't lost all my friends at the same time.  What can I say?  They liked him better, and they weren't very good friends.  But I lost them too, and so I withdrew and indulged and wallowed.  I didn't know how to ask for help, or truly recognize that I needed it.  I dealt with being abandoned by my friends by withdrawing further.  I should have been braver and stronger.  I should have said, "Fuck them!" and gone on to make new friends, have new lovers, but I dealt with it the way only way I could at the time.  I survived.  

Getting a Master's in Library Science was a terrible decision.  It was, there's no denying that, but I didn't know it at the time.  I thought it was . . . safe.  It wasn't what I wanted to do, but I didn't have a clear picture of how I wanted my future to turn out.  I knew it was something I'd be good at, and I'd had several people, including most of my family, telling me for several years that it was something that I should do, and I thought, Why not? I could be a librarian.  And I could, except I can't.  I didn't know that library jobs would dry up.  I didn't know that a million other people had the same idea I did, many of whom have much more passion for the profession than I.  I didn't realize how hemmed in I'd feel, how desperate, when I couldn't find a job.  I didn't even think not finding a job was a possibility.  I just wanted something steady, something professional, something wherein I'd be treated with more respect than retail.  Who knew that it'd make me feel more miserable and more worthless than retail?  Who knew that I'd spend years applying for every full time library position I heard about in the Northern United States, including Alaska, and that those ~1500 resumes and carefully crafted cover letters sent, and applications filled out would result in a grand total of three interviews, and zero offers?  I didn't.  I couldn't.  So I did the best I could at the time.  I really did.  That it didn't work out is not my fault.  Not really.  It was just a conspiracy of bad timing.  I really thought that I was making my life better.

I don't know where I go from here.  I have no real vision of my future, but I've got to forgive myself for the mistakes in my past.  Those mistakes make up the foundation of me that is my past.  They can't be undone.  I have to forgive myself.  I have to, in order to heal and live.

I don't know where my life is going.  I don't know what I'll do next.  What I do know is that I need to stop being so angry with myself.  I need to stop being so self-destructive.  I need to forgive and grow and learn and heal.  One foot in front of the other, these are the steps I need to live.

What's the worst thing about depression?

Three pictures of the same Nō 'hawk mask' showing how the expression changes with a tilting of the head.
by Wmpearl [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I was asking myself this earlier today when I had a thought that my random bouts of deep sadness were the worst thing about dealing with depression.  I thought this because I was in one, and it was something that I wish I could have avoided.  When I had this thought my immediate response was to question it, because those random bouts of deep sadness are not, I think, the worst thing about dealing with depression.  I'm not really sure what is, truth be told, because there's so many things that depression brings that are the very worst.  For instance:

• Rage: the white-hot anger that burns through me–again, randomly–and is mostly triggered by the unfairness of life, petty injustices.  The fact that I can't find a job or support myself in any way, after years of working multiple jobs and going to school, getting TWO degrees, and spending most of my free time applying for jobs.  Getting rejected again and again and again and again.  I'm mad at myself and I'm mad at the world, and sometimes that just bubbles over.  It's often followed by Deep Sadness or Utter Exhaustion.
• Utter Exhaustion: when I just can't move or do things.  All I want to do is curl into a ball and sleep, sleep forever.  If I had to make an effort to breathe, I probably wouldn't.  Though Utter Exhaustion often shows up after Rage or Deep Sadness, it sometimes visits on it's own.
• Deep Sadness: the best I can describe this is as an endless pit of tears.  A well so deep as to be bottomless.  For me, it is often triggered by babies or children and happy new mothers.  At least, right now.  I've always wanted to be a mom, and I don't think I'll ever get to be one.  Also triggered by couples, people with successful careers, and job searches.  
• Stupidity: brain misfires, the inability to think, a lack of concentration, losing words and names.  I'm smart.  I am.  Gifted is what they called me in school.  I was just one point off from getting a perfect score on the ACT in high school.  I remember almost everything I read.  I learn quickly, needing, in general, just one pass at any task to be able to do it again.  And yet, there are times when I can't think.  I just can't.  I can't think, I can't remember, I don't know.  I can't string words together to make a sentence.  I can't read.  I can't understand.
• Physical Pain: this one doesn't happen very often, but any of the symptoms above can and sometimes do trigger migraines or muscle cramps/spasms.  Sometimes I just ache.  Sometimes I just hurt.

None of these are pleasant.  All of these are the worst while I'm dealing with them, you know?  When it's bad, all of these show up at once.  And it sucks because I still need to function.  I can't hide like I so very much want to.  I push through.  I work, I live.  Sometimes I even laugh, and I die a bit inside. But I have customers and coworkers, friends and family, and none of them want to know.  So I don't let them see, and that, truthfully, is the worst.  The constant lies eat away at you and cause much of the Rage and Sadness and Exhaustion.  The never letting anyone know what's going on with you because you did that once and lost all your friends, your lover, and caused your family pain.  You never wanted to hurt anyone, you just wanted a little bit of comfort, and maybe a hand to help you stand up and move through what was supposed to be a temporary sadness.  But you were pushed away, abandoned, and blamed.

So you took that lesson to heart, and you learned to lie.  You swallowed your emotions, your pain, your sadness, your anger.  You swallowed them all and forgot how to feel.  Except sometimes, when it all became too much for you to bear, and then, sometimes, you cried or you raged or you wallowed, but only when there was no one around to see.  Only when you were alone.  And those times were refreshing, the only bit of freedom you were allowed.  So you found a way to make those times longer, you kept yourself apart from others more and more, and you forgot how to interact with other people because you didn't want to wear that damned mask.  You didn't want to lie.  And you relearned how to feel.

Of course it couldn't last.  You get lonely when you're always alone.  You need work and friends and you always wanted a family.  So you step out in the world and try to live your truth, but that truth includes your pain and others still don't want to see.  You bring the mask back, but it chafes.  You're healing, you know you're healing, but it's not happening fast enough, and you're still so fragile.  The lies make you weak, but they make you socially acceptable.  Every time you laugh when you want to scream it's like opening a vein.  There's only so many pints of blood that you can spare, and you lost those pints long ago with a wound that's never fully healed.  The mask keeps it open, you see.  The mask makes you bleed.

It's harder now than it once was, to wear the mask I need to wear to function in the world.  I think it's because I don't have stable footing right now.  I keep slipping and my mask falls, and they see this bleeding, tired creature desperately grasping for a little bit of normality, a little bit of stability, just trying to stay upright.  I bleed from a thousand tiny wounds, a thousand cuts of worry.  I bleed, but I can't let anyone see it.  I'm punished when I do.

But showing it, talking about it, feeling it?  That's how I heal too.  That's how I let the mask go and find the bandages and antiseptic that I need to cleanse the wounds caused by the jagged edges of the mask.  That's how I know I'm human still.  A bloody creature, maybe, but one that can learn and grow and, yes, heal.  That's how I remember that change is possible.  And, gods, I need a change, and the change I most want and worry about is in my job situation.

Right now, my big worry is money.  It's so hard because I'm less than a paycheck away from losing everything I have.  If I lose just eight hours of work a month . . . Yet, I think the slips of my mask make it harder for me to get a job.  Would you call that irony, or just plain bad luck?  I need a full time job and the money that the job would pay me.  I need the money and the stability the money will buy me.  I need the health insurance and the psychiatric care that health insurance brings–mostly in the form of antidepressants.  I need a little breathing room, time and room to heal.  I need to pay myself back, pay off my debts, and rebuild my savings.  That would be the first of many steps, of course.  I've a long way to go before all's said and done.

Ugh.

So, I have this problem: I can't stand taking photographs of myself; I can't standing looking at photographs of myself; I get this sick, super-panicky feeling whenever I'm told that I must get pictures taken for whatever reason.

And now, I've got to take some photos.  To help my brother and his wife adopt a baby.  And I will, but it doesn't keep that feeling from eating away at my guts.

The problem is that I'm very fat.  I weighed in at 309 lbs this morning, and while that's less than my heaviest, it's still far heavier than I want to be.  I've maintained this weight for the last several years.  I want to lose it though.  I just don't feel attractive, which leads to another of my problems: social isolation, but we're not getting into that today.  Today, we'll just talk about the fatness.

And my fear of photos.

They break the illusion, you see.  In my mind I don't see myself as fat, just an older version of the svelte teenager I once was.  Seeing a photo of myself I have to admit that I put on over 100 lbs, and just generally let myself go.  The weight's not attractive on me either, it sits awkwardly around my middle, making it difficult to sit straight with my legs closed.  The least my weight gain could have given me was bigger breasts, but alas, no, my boobs have remained relatively the same size.  Though, on the bright side, I'm taking that to mean that when I lose weight they'll remain the same then too.

I did not gain weight attractively, more's the pity.  Some of my friends did.  There are women out there in the world, who I knew from middle and high school, who put on significant amounts of weight - as much as me, adjusted for their frames - who look good.  Maybe they don't feel that way, maybe when they see themselves they feel the same way I do when I see me, but that thought doesn't change the way I feel about myself.

I need to lose weight.  I've been saying it for years, promising myself that I won't go another summer, another Halloween, another birthday so uncomfortably large, but I never follow through.  And I need to follow through.  It really is affecting my health and happiness.

My knees hurt, my back hurts, I spent the last two days hobbling around like an old woman most likely because I spent Friday night at a full moon ritual where I had to sit on the floor and stand multiple times.  This is not who I want to be, and I am far too young to have all these aches and pains.

It's decision time.  That quote from The Shawshank Redemption seems apropos: "Get busy living, or get busy dying."  I need to change my life.  I've blogged about this before, but it really is far past time.  I fear having the loose and floppy skin, but I think I fear the poor health, atrophied muscles, a lifetime of pain, and the belly that makes some ask when I'm due more.

So, what does this mean?  Well, 10k steps is being reinstated*, my fitbit is coming out of hibernation, and I'm going to take a serious look at my diet (I've got to cut out sugars).  Beyond that?  I'm not really sure.
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*Sorry, that's from one of the posts I recently deleted in my massive clean-out of this blog.  10,000 (10k) steps is about the equivalent of 5 miles, and it is my goal to work up to walking that every day.  When I was in really good shape (still dancing, etc.) I walked/jogged around 9 miles a day in addition to dance classes, aerobics, acrobatics, and yoga a couple of times a week, and on top of my daily just-moving-around.  Like I said, I was svelte.  At this point, I would just like to hit 10k steps a day total, once that happens I'll think about additions.

Moving Forward, Staying Still

First off, I want to say thank you to all my friends and family for your support in the wake of last weeks post.  I'm so very glad that I have people who care about me in my life, however peripheral.  That said, please, please stop sending me suicide prevention hotline numbers.  I assure you that I'm not suicidal.  I'm just massively unhappy with the path my life is currently on.  That doesn't mean I want to die.

My mother, she with a psychology degree, says that depression is just anger turned inwards.  I get that.  It makes sense to me.  Since I fluctuate between raging at the world and at myself, it makes sense to me.  It's just that I don't know how to fix this: my life.  I don't know how to find success and happiness.  I can't seem to do anything but fail, and it makes me bitter.  How do you get a job?  Or even a job interview?  I'm closing in on 700 resumes sent or applications filled and have only gotten two interviews.  I try, but no one is interested in giving me a chance.

I've applied for jobs that I'm perfectly qualified for - jobs that seemed like they were made just for me - and nothing.  I've applied for jobs that I'm overqualified for, and nothing.  I've applied for jobs that I'm under-qualified, and, of course, nothing.  There are only so many ways I can change my resume.  So many times it can be rewritten.  I keep trying and I keep failing.  Again and again and again and again.  I don't know what to do.  I don't know what else to do.  Is there something in me that's lacking?  Something other people can see, but I can't?

What do I have to do to get a full time job?

I'm not sure that I believe that it will ever happen.  And then what do I have?  Nothing.  Useless degrees and many thousands of dollars of student debt.  I can't afford a life.  

I'm so ready for this summer to be over.  Autumn needs to come and bring with it crisp air and cool rains to wash away the mess the summer has left in it's wake.

I don't know what I'm going to do with my life.  I need some kind of plan, some structure.  I thought the library would give that to me.  I could make my career, find my place . . . The truth is, I've been questioning that assumption all along.  For all that I would be a fantastic librarian, for all that I spent tens of thousands of dollars getting a degree that would allow me to move up in the field (provided anyone gave me a chance to get out there), for all that I've invested my time and energy and spent my spirit, I've questioned . . . From the beginning I've questioned if this was the right path for me. 

I want it to be.  I would love to work in a library in a librarian position, as a professional, as an integral part of my community.  And I love libraries, I do, but I don't fit.  I don't know why, but I don't.  I wish I did.  It would be so much easier, but when, of late, has anything been easy?

The thing is: what else can I do?  What. Else. Can. I. Do?  What else can I do?

That's the crux of my problem: I don't know.  I don't know what to do.  I don't know what else I can do?  I just know I can't stay here.  Stagnant.  I've got to move forward with my life, and I don't know how.  I need to find a job, and I don't know how.

I suppose I'll have to figure it out, because I can't stay here.  I can't.

It should be an interesting journey.

Drama. Heartache. I'm so done.

Sometimes I wish I could just burn my life to the ground and scatter the ashes to the winds.  Or cut ties, walk away from everything, begin again.  No sick and helpless father (though he's out of the hospital now and still has both feet/legs!).  No massive student debt ($48,000+).  No crappy infighting and bullying at the library.  No annoying underemployment.  No frantic, fruitless job hunt.  I could be/find something novel, something new.  I could find my place without the weight of everything dragging me down.

I imagine myself as a of the hero in one of the fantasy novels I love so much: wanderer, poet, mage, bard, adventurer, lover, dreamer, warrior, witch, princess, thief.  Brave and strong and smart.  Wild and wily.  Have you ever noticed that they don't need funds?  That they can walk away from or stab their enemies?  Have you noticed how everything works out for them - these heroes of my faery tales?  Somehow, everything works out.  It must, otherwise it wouldn't be a good story.

Life isn't a story.  It sure as hell isn't a faery tale.  And I'm not sure that anything's going to work out for me.

I'm so tired of bad luck.  I'm so tired of failure.  I'm so tired of thinking I'm moving forward only to find myself further back than when I started.  I'm tired of not being told what I'm supposed to do at work, then getting in trouble when I don't do it.  And I'm tired of platitudes, and "it gets better"s, and false reassurance, and "at least you don't live in (whatever 3rd world hellhole is fashionable at the moment)"s.  I'm tired of "it could be worse."  I know it could be worse, but it's pretty damn bad now.

I almost walked out of the library tonight.  That's one of two things I've never done at any of my jobs: I've never quit without giving at least a months notice and I've never been fired.  But I was ready to walk out, go home, and never return.  My boss actually talked me out of it.  She was right when she pointed out that it would damage my future career.  It would, but I'm not really sure I have a future career to damage.  I have a couple of meaningless, expensive pieces of paper that ideally should make me employable, but haven't seemed to help me at all.  I have a constant headache and tears in my eyes every single night, but especially when I leave the library lately.  I have a brain that replays the bad parts of my day, my life, over and over and over again keeping me from getting to sleep until I pass out by way of pure exhaustion.  I have a desire to cut myself, something that is so fucking cliche and upsetting to me, something I haven't done in over a decade.  I have an almost pathological fear of going to work, and the beginnings of a need to avoid libraries from now until the end of time.

Which sucks because I truly love libraries.  And for the most part I love my job.  I LOVE helping people find books, answering questions, doing research.  I love thinking up programming ideas and learning about new trends and conceptualizing my ideal library.  I love making pathfinders and study aids.  There is a comfort for me in libraries, but it's slipping away because of stupid internal politics and a fucking bully of a supervisor.

And I hate it.  I hate that I hate going to work now.  I hate that I feel underutilized and unappreciated. It just compounds, you know?  It just keeps getting worse.  I'm so stressed and upset and it seems like nothing is going my way.  Nothing IS going my way.  All my family drama is stacked on top of my professional failures is stacked on top of my general depressed person depression, and that twisted layer cake is topped with this new work bullshit.  Something's gotta give.  I just can't do it anymore.  I'm having nightmares, night terrors, again.  I woke myself up screaming and tearing into my arms the other night with my fingernails.  I can't do this anymore.  I feel sick inside.  Rotted.

Knowing that I'm not the most stable, mentally, at the moment, and not in the best frame of mind to make decisions, I'm going to give it a couple of weeks - until the end of the month.  Then I'm probably going to quit my job.  I hope that something comes up before that.  That somehow, miraculously, one of the many, many, many places to which I've applied gives me chance.  It would be better that way, easier.  With my luck, though . . . 

I wish I could just walk away from it all.  Disappear.  Go on some grand and magical adventure, and return home triumphant, if I return home at all.  Life's not that neat though.  It's messy and awful and painful.  There is no "better."  There is only the same or worse.  Or at least that's the way it's been for me for my life.  And I know from trying that there's no way for me to change it.  I endure.

Learning how to deal

So, I figure I've been dealing with a fairly serious case of depression for several years now.  And by "several years" I mean over a well over a decade.  Considering that I'm only 33, that's a pretty huge chunk of my life.  I've not been formally diagnosed, of course.  I live in Kansas, and fall in that not-so-sweet spot that precludes me from social services including mental health provided by the state - I make too much money, you see, but I don't make enough money to, you know, pay for that stuff myself.  If Kansas had accepted medicaid expansion . . . Well, we won't go into that.

Anyway, my depression.  I'm 99.999% sure that depression is a problem for me, one that I haven't been very good at dealing with.  I withdraw, compulsively buy books, sleep way too much or not enough, I have no energy for anything.  Sometimes it's worse, sometimes it's better, but it's always there; and, from what I've read, it's fairly typical, my depression.  Textbook, even.

I've never really recognized it as a problem.  I knew I had it, but I thought I had it handled.  I mean, I didn't think I suffered from it.  I am not now and have never been suicidal, you know?  Other people had it worse.  Lately, I've been thinking that I've been looking at it all wrong.  I have suffered.  I haven't been suicidal, but I haven't been living.  There is so much that I want to do that I haven't done, and I think it's because of my depression.  I've let it take over my life.  It has been my life or at least most of it since I was in my late teens.  Hell, it conducted a hostile takeover in my early twenties and has been the driving force of my life since then.  I think I can safely say that it's behind the sad fact that I haven't actually done anything in the last twelve or thirteen years.  There was a time I actively pursued my goals, but it surely hasn't been any time lately.

A couple of weeks ago I had something of a slow epiphany.  It'd been building for years, but with the death of my cousin it really kind of struck home.  Life's too short for me to waste it like I have been.  I need to get out in the world and do things.  Live, you know?  I need to find a way to stop being miserable and move.

I say that this realization has been has been building, but that's not the entire truth.  I've known it for a while now.  It's one of the reasons I went back to school a few years ago and got not one but two degrees (a bachelor's and a master's).  My degrees are not enough, obviously.  I need to continue moving forward in my life.  I know what I need to do, I'm not really sure how to do it, but I'm smart, I can learn.

I have goals.  The same goals I've had for a long while.  Some I've had since I was a child, like becoming a working writer.  Others are fairly recent, like losing weight.  I've basically proven to myself that I can't be trusted to work on these goals one at a time.  I'll come up with a way to put everything off that way, and time is so short.  I've got to bundle things.  Work in stages, maybe, but work at it all, and focus as much as I can.  I've come up with a schedule of sorts, so that I can work towards these goals.  I think I'm going to have to be fairly strict with myself for a while, until I fall into the habit, or back into the habit, of doing things I have never done, or haven't done in a long, long time.

And things are going to be slow for a while as I find my footing.  But things are going to get done, which is the point, and more than what's happening in my life now.  I'm going to learn how to deal.  I'm going to learn how to live.