Autumns are spectacular down here. August slowly melts into September, and by its 3rd week, the golden light created by Birmingham's nationally ranked air pollution eases into orange and purple sunsets, the temperature and humidity recedes, and October sees consistent days of dry, mid-70-degree weather. Though the days get shorter and the calendar slowly swirls into the toilet bowl that is the holiday season, it's not unusual to wear a T-shirt in January.
Hit a bit of a low this weekend. Didn't do much of anything except watch tennis, obviously. But I was very unproductive, lethargic, and self-medicated.
One of my favorite posters on the fray, Slate's message boards, bright_virago, says that I need to move. I've been in Birmingham over 10 years now, longer than I've lived anywhere ever. I definitely see her point. The problem is that even if I were to move, I'd still have to take myself with me.
What I seem to be in the middle of is full-on all-out depression. As far as I can tell, it's not being caused by anything specifically, and it comes and goes, this overwhelming feeling of despair, hopelessness, pointlessness, anxiety. You know, all the fun stuff.
I need to quit smoking. When I quit successfully over 3 years ago (or whenever) for just over 9 months, I was on Zyban, which, if I'm not mistaken, is a mood stabilizer. I'm pretty sure I should be on something, and that beer and pot aren't doing a lot to improve my demeanor.
I haven't heard from the-one-that-got-away in a week. I'm sure that has something to do with my mood. I hesitate to mention her because I get the sense that people are a little tired of hearing about her and that my ignorance on the subject verges on the exhausting. (I'm thinking specifically of another favorite frayer, rundeep.) But not having heard from someone who for the last 6 months would call me every day is not necessarily single-handedly responsible for the chronic blahs and slight panic attacks. I wish there were a pill that made everything seem fine, like Prosium in Equilibrium (Great movie!). I would so take that drug and not even complain. Who cares about art and music and prose and poetry if all it does is make life worth living, anyway?
My diet's improved, but I'm still about 15-20 pounds underweight. But I'm not sleeping well. (That's the beer talking.) Though I don't look like Christian Bale in The Machinist. Yet. (Though I've not committed vehicular manslaughter that I know of. Yet.)
So I need to move, but not literally. Clearly what I do need is change, whether it be in routine or state of mind or drug abuse or alcohol abuse or whatever. Because it's become pretty obvious to me here of late that the self-medication regimen I've got myself on just ain't workin'. I've been spending a lot of time by myself, which, while not catastrophic, doesn't exactly make for good conversation all the time. I mean there's only so much you can tell 2 dogs and a cat before you start saving all the newspapers and make forts out of them in the basement. (Thank god I don't have a basement.)
It's not so much that I'm only happy when I'm miserable. It's more like I'm only miserable when I'm happy. It's just that the whole thing is so demoralizingly stupid because it's all my own doing, my own accord.
Perspective. Yet another of my favorite posters, Isonomist, lost a son to leukemia not long ago. And here I am bitching about nothing in particular. I mean, honestly: I'm reasonably healthy (Chortle!), I have a decent job (though severely underpaid), I have a great family (whom I never seem to find the time to visit), good friends (whom I blow off on a regular basis for no reason in particular), I have a decent sense of humor (I'd have to; it's either that or just crying all the time), and I have a huge alcohol tolerance. Everybody wins.
Oh well. Thanks for listening. Again.
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12 comments:
"Never being happy isn't the same as being unhappy. Is it?"
(Whatever you do, do NOT watch Fame while in this state. Seriously.)
I stink at giving advice, so my advice is to be more busy. For example, this Sunday I have to be in two different places at the exact same time so instead of feeling autumnal general ennui leading to despair (my parents divorced in the fall, it's never a good time for me) all I feel right now is cold, pure panic and since you're not sleeping well anyway, those jolts that break you right out of sleep into a fully awake state of terror won't bother you like they do me.
Start saying yes any time anyone asks you to help with something*. Move that piano? You betcha. Cleaning out a flooded basement? You're so there! Roof the neighbor's house, again? Oh my yes!
Exclamation point!
*I'm generally not in favor of traditional "volunteering" as a cure for funk slumps - if you don't have a passion for the work of the agency you're serving, you wind up being a tease - they love you but they know you won't last and then it's all Heartache at the Helping Hands House and I never see them again but there's still all this stuff to be done. Oh, wait we're talking about you. Sorry.
Don't be happy. Be busy.
And, you know, I regularly pray for all y'all.
And, sorry this is so long.
The northeast is best in the autumn. I feel like I'm waking up. It'll last until the leaves fall.
I'm not going to offer you advice. (The last time I did, it was all wrong anyway, something about how to drink on the can. I've considered rectifying it in a full post.) I'd tell you a relevant story or two, but not in public.
But I may bitch about my job insecurities (again), as I contemplate a change. Rather terrified of it as I suspect my problem is less this place, and more myself.
The Fall is my favorite season, hands down. The air doesn't get crisp until about October, and I don't need a jacket till November, but the colors go into those shades that send me to church in thanks to live in such a world.
Oh my dear. You are employed. You probably have health benefits. You should use them. For months you've portrayed yourself as a lonely, drinking, antisocial, potsmoking, noneating doormat for an unrequited love. I assumed this involved a good deal of exaggeration. Maybe it still does, but this entry suggests to me it's less unreal than I hoped. bright's solution is a good one, typically, but it seems to me that's exactly what your home improvement projects have been meant to accomplish, and they haven't exactly done the trick. No one is happy all the time. Not supposed to be. But you know you've done better, and you are not there either.
Go see your family in Ohio, now, seriously. Change is gonna come, but it can't unless you are totally commited to it. Love y'all.
You know, I don't mean to contribute to your problems, but if you're underweight, you're not drinking enough beer.
i will give you advice. let the one that got away actually get the fuck away. seriously. don't answer her calls. don't go see her. in short, tell her to fuck off.
tough, sure. but seriously necessary. sure, you wouldn't be able to write about wallowing in misery, but that's a small price to pay for actual happiness.
i will say this, and i firmly believe it. being happy is a choice. it's far more difficult to be happy than to wallow in misery. wallowing takes no effort at all; it's really fucking easy. i know. i was depressed as hell for the last year of my marriage. and it would have been very easy to stay in it. hell, i'd been with the woman since i was 18...10 years is a lot of time and energy to put into a relationship, then walk away from it. but i decided i wanted to be happy. so i made the most difficult decisions of my life. tough, but necessary.
you know what you have to do to be happy. no one else does. likewise, the choice to act or not rests upon you and you alone. i'd encourage you to choose happiness, but i also know it's often very difficult to do so. takes awhile to figure it out and courage to act.
that's all i've got.
I'll be right over. Love, topazz
Fuck.
I am sorry. I wish I could help but I feel the same way...overwhelming feeling of despair, hopelessness, pointlessness, anxiety etc. for no particular reason.
You are not alone. We are not alone.
Goddess hugs and kisses, baby.
Self-medication R us. I ran out of the pot-and-booze option a loooong time ago. Now I use exercise and shopping and movies and food and the internet, and if I could get away with it, I'd take my migraine medication every damn day.
Once a fairly popular girl, I've grown tired of people and much fonder of my cats. The loneliness can wear me down, though. I try to stay in touch with sympatico types as much as I can.
Exercise really helps. The Zyban is probably a good idea. Take some time off the other substances (did reading that give you a little jolt of anxiety? Then you definitely need to take some time off). Moving might be just a geographical cure (everywhere you go, there you are), but a change really is as good as a rest. For me, it's often better. twiffer once gave me excellent relationship advice. I recommend listening to him. Don't worry about empathy-fatigue. In this format, the only people who would get annoyed hearing about it are those who have an investment in you taking their advice. That's quite human, but it's not your problem.
People really seem to love you. You said that people like you more here than in real life. I'm guessing that's because here you don't do all those things to distance yourself that you probably do in real life. We're already distant, and therefore safe.
Find a good therapist. See him or her for six months or a year. Assess how you feel at that point, and whether your reality has come more into line with your desires.
Listen to Aimee Mann: "There is nothing that competes with habit." I can work out everything else, but this is the one I can't seem to get around.
Don't listen to Aimee Mann. She's depressing.
Keep writing about it, if it helps.
Exercise really helps.
Call me if you want to talk: 604-786-3790.
fall sucks
twiffer's right
brownies [no added herbs]
daylight
leave the house. every. single. day. twice.
if you're not up for the level of commitment in bright's suggestions [she's right about fame too], go somewhere where there are people doing things. when i lived in your city, i went to books-a-million every night.
all those nights at b-a-m means that i now own ~1500 paperbacks [or they own me]. nowadays i go through the mcdonalds drive-up window every morning, buy myself a coffee, and sometimes hand them a book or three.* they're always just a little bit happier [and genuinely so] to see me than they are to see most of their other customers, and i get warm fuzzies and great service.
* i had originally meant to donate a couple of boxes of books to the friends of the library book sale, but had gone by at the wrong time. so there i was one morning, buying coffee, stuck with a bunch of books i couldn't get rid of. the person on the other side of the drive-up window asked me why i'd been carrying around boxes of books for days on end, and it dawned on me that people who work at mcdonalds probably don't make enough money to buy 1500 of anything, why not give them some books?
never underestimate the healing power of giving other people small and manageable amounts of joy.
I'm sorry you're feeling down. That overwhelming feeling of despair, hopelessness, pointlessness, anxiety, and all the other fun stuff is a feeling I have some intimate familiarity with. There's a lot of good advice on this board. I don't know what I could add to it.
So instead, I'll say this: depression is what happens when it's time to restructure your priorities. I think we tend to get stuck there because the ways we structure our lives, in this culture, emphasizes constancy over adaptive flexibility - one of the lasting gifts of the industrial revolution (maybe). You know you need to make some changes, and you know you need to let some things go. The longer you fight it, the longer it will take you to find the alternatives that are waiting for you, and the more stuck you'll feel.
There's an inherent irrationality to the process, which is ok, but something you should recognize. The biggest danger of depression is that you won't recognize this irrationality for what it is, and you'll mistake the priorities you're letting go with a more essential you. There's a degree of panic associated with giving up narcissistic props (not meant to be pejorative - they're part of life). We tend to confuse us with what/who is around us, so letting go of what's around us can feel like letting go of a part of us. But it's a cognitive misapprehension you won't really recognize until it's done (then it'll be clear).
Zyban isn't a mood stabilizer, it's an antidepressant (rebranded Wellbutrin). As antidepressants go, it's not bad - more activating than most, does well for people who might have a little underlying ADHD. The discovery it cut nicotine cravings was made in clinical trials, and was completely unexpected. There's another drug out now that seems even more effective, craving-wise. I can't remember the name.
Wellbutrin doesn't do so well for people who get anxiety, however (though it will help keep you from smoking when you do feel anxious). The SSRI's do better for depression with anxiety (proxac, paxil, zoloft, celexa/lexapro, effexor (sort of)). Wellbutrin is a norepinepherine agonist (and weakly hits Dopamine, as does Effexor).
For whatever it's worth, cannabis seems to be a pretty powerful anxiolytic (the side effect profile sucks, though). If you want to give it up, underlying anxiety is likely something you'll have to deal with, one way or another. Giving it up is almost certainly a good idea.
I'm appending an informal primer on antidepressants at the bottom (I know, too fucking much information I'm sure), in case you want to avail yourself of it. Your doc may tell you something different. Nod politely, and trust me. I'm a big fan of quality psychotherapy. I'm not a big fan of directive therapies, however (though they work well for some people). The research on exercise and depression is impressive, and both B vitamins and Omega-3's have shown positive effects in some studies. Sometimes, though, you just need to be sad for awhile.
Last thought - the people who know you here may know you better than the people around you (really). Online relationships are sort of bizarre - one kind of intimacy compensating for the lack of another. We all hear stories about the ways in which perceptions online can be dramatically, and tragically (or comically) incongruent with the physical world. It's a consequence of our natural/automatic inclination to fill in gaps.
But some people are much more prone to this than others, and I have every reason to believe that the people who've said kind, supportive words to you here have a clear sense of who you are. They've known you for a long time, and none of them display the kind of inflexibility that would suggest a distorting need to project qualities onto you that aren't there. So I guess what I'm saying is, despite the lack of proximity, the assessments of the people who care about you here are both real and meaningful.
I guess I felt compelled to say that, just in case my suspicion about your inclination to discount the fondness others have for you is accurate.
I've also developed real appreciation and respect for you. It doesn't matter whether or not I know the whole story of who you are - the fact that we know each other online hardly makes our familiarity unique in that regard. But you're one of the handful of people here I'd hate to lose touch with, and would love to have a beer, or coffee, with.
I hate to impose, though, or lay expectations on people. If you were ever inclined to drop me a note, I'd be honored. No pressure.
Otherwise, as Hipparchia used to say, I'll send healing thoughts your way, Switters. I wish there was something more I could do.
TK
Primer on SSRI's: Prozac is the most activating, which means more energy, but may also be agitating. It also has the longest half-life. Lexapro is the one with the least side effects, but for some is also less effective (though for many works well). Celexa is cut-rate Lexapro (ask your doc). Paxil's short half-life means many people experience discontinuation symptoms, but is otherwise a good choice. Zoloft works a little different than some of the others, but is also a good choice (and the longer half life means its unlikely you'll have discontinuation symptoms). Effexor is the sledgehammer of the SSRI's - most powerful, broadest acting, and most likely to cause side effects.
The SSRI's are probably not really antidepressants. Affective disturbances involve arousal-related positive feedback loops (self-amplifying)- with depression, you feel crappy, you think about things that make you feel crappier, and you tend to selective attend to things that make you feel crappy (crap colored glasses). With anxiety, you feel agitated about things, which leads you to think about more agitating things, which often ends up contributing to some somatic symptoms - tightening in chest, butterflies, sometimes escalates to things like rapid breathing, all of which contribute to more anxiety (and can culminate in a full-blown panic attack). Sexual arousal works in a similar manner.
The SSRI's take some of the amplitude out of all of these processes. This means they take awhile to work, and instead of making you feel overtly happy, you end up feeling less burdened (which in my opinion is a much more desirable effect anyway). Sometimes people feel like they're not working, because the effects are ego-syntonic. If you try one and are wondering, you should alternatively ask the people around you for an assessment over time, or you should do a little mood journaling for awhile.
If you feel like you need one, take one. It sort of sucks to feel like you have to take a medication. On the other hand, it also sort of sucks to realize that you've structured you life in such a way that you really can't afford to lie in bed in the fetal position for a couple of weeks. We all make unnatural accommodations to cope with our unnatural lives.
PS. Antidepressants have, to one extent or another, the two actions (activation and, I dunno, anti-obsessional I guess). Sometimes, the activation piece can kick in before the other piece. In that situation, you end up with an agitated depression.
This is the most unpleasant state one can find oneself in, and I think physicians have done a terrible disservice in not warning people this can happen. This is what's responsible for the increased suicide rates (an agitated depressed person is also a highly motivated depressed person). If this happens to you, talk to your doc immediately. If it's mild, it'll likely pass. If it's not, you should try a different one (they all work a little differently). But don't go thinking it's you, that it's more than peripherally connected to actual events in your life, or that it won't pass. It's not, and it will.
wow, TK. For a guy who had nothing to add, you certainly did a good impression. ;-).
Agreed, there's a lot of good advice in the comments.
On my theory that there's a Ben Folds' song for every occassion, here's one that your post reminded me of. Time for a change, indeed.
Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down
Tonight the bottle let me down
It let your memory come around
The one true friend I thought I'd found
Tonight the bottle let me down
I've always had a bottle I could turn to
And lately I've been turnin' every day
But the wine don't take effect the way it used to
And I'm hurtin' in old familiar ways
Tonight the bottle let me down
It let your memory come around
The one true friend I thought I'd found
Tonight the bottle let me down
Each night I leave the bar room when it's over
Not feeling any pain at closing time
But tonight your memory found me much too sober
I can't drink enough to keep you off my mind
Tonight the bottle let me down
It let your memory come around
The one true friend I thought I'd found
Tonight the bottle let me down
Logorrhea: I'm conceptually incontinent.
My apologies for my customary wordiness.
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