There's Actual Physiological Evidence of Depression!

Today was a really rough day.  Not for any reason in particular, but because I had a meeting with my counselor and I went in kind of on fire.  I went in telling her that I felt angry because I am so unbelievably tired of waiting to feel better.  Yes, I have a good day here and there, but overwhelmingly my days are either blah or bad.  I hate waking up not knowing whether or not my day is going to make me cry a lot or if I'll feel just fine most of the day.

We talked about how difficult it is for me to turn my brain off, how hard it is to calm the chaos that is perpetually ruining my peace of mind.  My brain is just constantly going, thinking about a million, bajillion things all at once and it's absolutely exhausting.  My therapist told me that when they look at FMRIs of depressed people's brains, that they show that there's intense amounts of activity going on, and that from that, scientists have discerned that depression is a stress-illness.  Except that when you look at a depressed person they look completely exhausted and like there's not a single thought in their head.  But the reason for that is that there's just so unbelievably much going on in there, so much stress, so much physical reaction to the stress in the mind that they look as though they're not capable of coming up with a coherent thought.

Hearing that from her was kind of a relief, because I feel so exhausted so much of the time and I don't feel like it's warranted at all.  She said that depression isn't just sadness, that it robs us of our vitality and our energy and our actual will to do things, while at the same time putting the brain on hyperdrive and overwhelming us with thoughts about what we should be doing and why we're terrible people because we're physically incapable of doing those things.

Anyway, I needed to write that down so that I can remember it.  That's all I feel like writing tonight because Ethan is over and he's making me laugh.

Just Some Wishes

Today is one of those days where all the shitty stuff and all of the evil of the world feels like a personal affront on me.  I feel just plain sad.  No other words to describe it, really.  I haven't written in...what, 4 days?  Let's see....I was out late getting plastered one night and couldn't even sit myself up let alone write by the time I got home.  The night after that, I got sick at my parents house and wanted to not move for fear of throwing up and had no intention of writing.  The other nights I think Ethan came over and I just didn't write.  Ethan spends the night a lot, even though he doesn't sleep well at my house.  I can relate - I never sleep well at the other person's place at the beginning of a relationship.  And I've pretty much insisted that we stay at my house all the time because his house is too quiet.  No cable, no internet.  The cacaphony in my head in all that silence might make my head actually explode, I fear.  That's why when I come home from work, on goes the TV.  Or some music.  I may not even be watching it, might be only half-listening to it, but it helps me not listen to all the crap in my head, or at least not focus on it, not pay attention to it.

Yesterday, my surrogate mom posted pictures on Facebook of her snorkeling off Cancun with manta rays and whale sharks, and it made my heart hurt deep, deep down.  I so long for the ocean.  I long to be able to go out on a boat and get in the water and swim with the creatures and explore whats beneath the surface.  I mean, that's mostly why I took the scuba class in the first place!  Anyway, looking at those pictures got me thinking about moving away from Colorado again, and where I would go and what I would do if I left.  Which then got me thinking about what I'm going to do about school, and how I can possibly continue it, feeling the way I feel about it.  I have so much pure hatred for it that even the simplest tasks for the one measly class I'm taking are absolutely monumental.  I would rather swallow a handful of rusty razors than do this schoolwork.  I would rather trudge up a snowy mountain with Ethan than do this work, and I hate snow and am not a fan of hiking.  But I feel like I'd at least be accomplishing something, where with school, I feel like even finishing this class, I'm nowhere closer to an end-point, or a goal.  I'm still just an accountant in the corporate office of a restaurant.  Doing nothing close to what I'm passionate about, or what gets my blood pumping.

Today, I've been wishing that instead of this stupid, awful depression - that gets very little respect in the medical community, is attached to a stigma wherein anyone that has it simply isn't trying hard enough to get better or feel better or be better, is attached to a stigma that presupposes that the person with depression is just lazy, or stubborn, and can't problem-solve their way out of the chasm in which they've settled - that I had a real disease that people will donate to for a cure, that people will run or walk or march for so that they can wipe it off the face of the planet, like breast cancer, or Hodgkins Lymphoma like two people I actually KNOW.  People who don't deserve to have to go through the horrors of chemo therapy, and being sick and having poison intravenously pumped into their bodies with the hopes that they will continue to live, when here I am, miserable anyway for no good reason.  I'd happily take their cancer and put it into my body because I'm suffering anyway.  Why not give me an illness that actually gives me cause to be sad and hopeless instead of this ridiculous affliction where my stupid neurotransmitters are out of whack.  These people's bodies are actually attacking themselves, and they remain hopeful, positive and in good spirits.  They don't deserve it, and I feel like I do.  I wish I had a REAL reason to be unhappy.

I wrote all of that earlier today when I needed a break at work.  I am not feeling quite as blue now that the day is pretty much over, but I'm really glad I got all that out right when I was feeling it.  I don't think I would have been able to capture the way I felt as well tonight.

I don't think I'm going to be able to keep up writing every day, as much as I'd like to.  I'm still going to try to write as much as possible, but I'm not going to hold myself to writing every single day.  There are just some days when I don't feel like writing, or don't feel like I have anything to write about, or I'm just too tired.  I definitely wish I had more opportunities to write at work because that's often when the most intense feelings wash over me and there's not much I can do about it.  Maybe I will try and make a point of taking a break to write briefly when I can when I'm feeling really badly if I can.

Anyway.  That's it for today I guess.

Missed Intentions

I didn't write last night.  I should have.  That's really the only reason I am writing tonight even though I don't really feel like it and I don't feel like I have much to write about.

I went to work today.  I got a lot of stuff done.  That needed to be done.  Jess was in today which was awesome because I really do miss having her around.  Maybe I'm delusional but I feel like I can tell when someone has genuinely positive feelings about me, and I think that she does.  I hope that she does, because I have genuinely positive feelings about her.

I had a brief moment of massive unhappiness today after I posted a status on Facebook about my BFF Colorado Kate having a very important weekend coming up.  I posted that she and her fiancee are in my thoughts and that I'm sending them all my love on their trip this weekend, and she got mad at me because apparently that was indicative of her getting married and people started blowing up her FB and her phone when she got off the plane.  She thought I'd overstepped some boundaries and blown the cover, though I felt that I had been as vague as I could be while still being heartfelt.  I guess I was wrong.

I met up with Ethan and some more of his coworkers at Twin Peaks after work and had a beer and some bar food and then came home and now it's bedtime.  Ethan is here with me and I am feeling quite tranquil and calm.  I really do like this guy an awful lot.

Yesterday, I got to ride my motorcycle.  A lot.  I rode it down to Denver, and back to Louisville and finally back home and the weather was perfect and it was beautiful.  That part made me happiest yesterday.  I had to see my therapist, which sort of ruined my good mood for a few minutes because it got real heavy real quick and I'd been kind of able to not think much about anything and was doing just fine that way.  Anyway, that was the high point of my day yesterday, aside from making Ethan a delicious spaghetti dinner and spending the evening in his arms.

When The Day is Filled, The Mind is Occupied

I'd call today a good day, in the scheme.  I made it to work by 10am, even after stopping to get myself some breakfast and coffee.  I only had some housekeeping to do for work today which was really easy.  And Ethan stopped by to visit me for awhile, and that was lovely.  I got a lot done, including helping our Pearl Street location, who needed me to print like 1000 new menus (we call them Oisos), which I was able to do for them.

I stopped at the Registry to see if we had mail, and to say hi to some people over there that I hadn't seen in awhile.  Got to talk to my married guy friend for awhile, and then my old friend Amber for like 30 minutes.  By the time I got home I was feeling pretty good.

And that's about it for the day.  I really don't feel that well at all so I'm going to go to bed early and hopefully wake up early enough to actually make something of the day tomorrow.  We'll see....

Garfield Hates Mondays and So Do I

Let's see.  Today, I saw my psychiatrist again.  I must stress how satisfied I am with the treatment I am getting from this lady.  She's pretty great.  She asks me insightful questions and prods me for information, and even if she doesn't really, she seems to genuinely care.  She's having me up my Pristiq dosage to double what I've been on, so we'll see if maybe my anxiety goes away entirely.  I'll be honest, I didn't want to go in to see her because of how much effort it would take, but I went anyway, and I'm really glad I did.  Also I didn't have to pay for parking because today was Veteran's Day (thanks, Veterans!).

When I spend a whole day in the house, not really doing much or interacting with people, I feel the need to further isolate.  It's much harder to get out and do stuff when Phoenix is the only being I've really spoken actual verbal words to all day.  I guess that's why it's even more important that on those days I do go out and do something, even if it is something small.

I did exchange texts and IMs with most of my important people today.  I talked with Tiffany a bit, who is going through a rough patch and we agreed to try to check in with one another daily and come up with three positive things about the day to tell each other, which is an idea I got from Colorado Kate (I think I wrote about it...).  I'm hoping that it keeps me at least a little accountable for attempting to try to have a positive attitude.  It's a lot harder to come up with three positive things than one might thing, but it's worth a shot.  She mentioned that she has to stick out teaching third grade until May, because she'd much rather be at home, and I told her that I have to wait until at least May to make any kind of big life decisions.  After thinking really hard and carefully about making a cross-country move to Florida after breaking up with The Ex, that wouldn't even happen until my little sister is able to graduate college because she said she'd come with me.  It sure would beat going alone.  Plus I have to try to stay in school to keep insurance coverage.  And maybe get an internship.  Either way, I think that's a good timeline to set for myself because it doesn't put a lot of pressure on me to make any big decisions that I'm not capable of making right now.  It allows me plenty of time to think about all of my options and try to get better and feel better and not be impulsive and end up doing the wrong thing.

I very briefly talked to Colorado Kate, who has divulged to me that this weekend she's going to St. Louis (where her sister's family is) with her fiancee and dog to elope.  Her parents are flying in to be there and it's going to be a close family affair.  It makes me extremely happy to know that they're doing something like that, which will make them both very, very happy, but it makes me really sad that I won't get to be there to be a part of it.  She's been a close friend of mine for a good couple of years now.  We met when we were both working at Keller Williams almost 5 years ago and we got very close after she invited me on a camping trip two and a half years ago.  She's been there for me through a lot of emotional crap - including my year-long writing project - and I want to be there for her for something very special.  However, she's chosen to have it just be a family thing, none of her close friends will be there, and I have to respect and understand that.  I know that it's nothing personal, and I just want her to be happy.  It just sucks a little.

After my psychiatrist appointment, I stopped by my parents house to catch up with them for a few minutes.  They had a problem today because they let their cell phone bill (which includes both parents and both sisters) get pretty out of hand and then couldn't really pay it in full and all their phones got shut off.  I offered to pay it for them, or at least a portion of it, but they wouldn't let me.  They ended up spending money they'd been saving for Christmas for it.  I thought maybe if I actually went over there they might let me help them with it, but by the time I got there, they had already spend the Christmas money on it.  Either way, I got to see them for about half an hour, talk to them about Ethan and everything else adult that I never get to talk to them about when the kids are around, and then hung out until the kids got there so I could get some good hugs and kisses.  Which was wonderful.  Sometimes I wonder if hearing them tell me they love me and give me hugs and kisses would be a permanent cure for my mental illness.

After seeing my parents, I met Ethan at a bar where he was having drinks with his coworkers, and hung out there with them for a few hours.  That was my first outing with any of his people - he's only been hanging out with my people so far, so I'm glad I had the opportunity to do that.  He lost a bet last week over his fantasy football team and had to wear a bowtie and suspenders to work today and ended up getting crazy compliments on how great he looked - and I'll even admit that one of the pictures he had taken makes him look kind of like a model.  Which is freaking awesome.  Being physically attracted to someone I am dating is really important to me, and I'm at that point with Ethan and it feels really good.  I remember feeling that way on one occasion with The Ex....

On a different note, something that struck me today was a post by this lady that I've recently been following on Facebook, for the blog she writes called The Klonopin Chronicles.  She's been diagnosed Bipolar and is dealing with the breakup of her marriage and she writes about it on her blog.  She's quite brilliant as far as I'm concerned - her writing is full of profanity and it makes me feel like maybe without three kids and an alcoholic husband, my life isn't so terribly confusing.  Anyway, she posted this today:

and it really spoke to me, because that is EXACTLY how I feel on my days off.  It's super confusing because I feel like I'd go crazy if I had to work 5 straight days a week, but at the same time, the days when I have nothing to do are the days I feel the most lost and nutso.  Obviously I'm not getting divorced but I feel the same way when I've been busy for awhile and then suddenly have nothing going on.  Maybe days off for me are a bad thing?  It's really hard to say.  I was doing pretty well when I was at The Registry three days a week and then at Hapa for the other two.

I had a moment tonight when I felt the flare and passion for forensic science and death investigation tonight when I was explaining to Ethan my experience with NecroSearch, and my interests and ideas for internships and fleetingly remembered where my actual passion lies.  And it has nothing to do with getting my stupid Masters degree in Criminal Justice.  But if I could secure an internship somewhere, especially somewhere that interests me, I might have an actual chance at finishing my graduate degree and getting a job in the field of my choice.

I must drink too much because I can never remember what else I've written about on this blog...

My new therapist mentioned to me that I'm experiencing a huge loss with the realization that I might not be able to find a job in my field of interest.  I haven't really given it a ton of thought, but today I did think about it a little more, and especially after going into it for Ethan, I remember what it is and why I love it and it makes me realize what a big loss I feel.  The idea of going into that field has always excited me, and the idea of being stuck in a job - just a job, not a career - makes me absolutely miserable.  Which is what school is doing to me.  Training me for a job.

I'm rambling yet again.  Talking myself in circles and not really getting anywhere.

My positives for the day:
-I actually went to my psychiatrist appointment.  And I wasn't even late even though I showed up to the wrong place.
-I didn't sleep past 9am.  11am is just way too late to sleep for someone my age on a day off.  For some reason.
-I spent a good portion of my day snuggling with my adorable puppy.
-I got to see Ethan.  He's a good influence on me and my mood.  So far, anyway.
-I got to see my nephews and niece and got hugs and kisses from them.  Which are like magic.
-I watched a slew of videos of dogs reacting to their owners in the military coming back from an overseas tour.  Laughed and cried tears of joy because it was so cute and sweet.
-I had a good hair day after I showered.
-I got to watch Bones, Friends AND 30 Rock.  And I remembered why I love all three of these TV shows.

That's it for today.  For more on The Klonopin Chronicles: http://theklonopinchronicles.blogspot.com/

Purposeful Boredom

I don't have much to write about today because I mostly just slept.  Of course I could have done about a bajillion different things because it was Saturday, but I really just wanted to do nothing.  So that's what I did.  The day of course, sped by, but that's okay because there's a whole day left tomorrow and Ethan keeps reminding me that there is probably all kinds of time with which I can finish the last 2 weeks of homework that I've been putting off and dreading.  Just thinking about it tonight completely paralyzed me.  I hate it so unbelievably much because I don't give a shit about it at all.  I could not possibly care less about these assignments right now.  What I want to do is just go to work, come home, spend time with my friends, have drinks, spend time with Phoenix, and not fucking worry about school work that means absolutely nothing to me in the long run.  It is literally ruining my life experience right now, and I can't even begin to express the hatred I have for it in words.  Although maybe I already have.

Anyway, that's it for today.  I didn't go to my parents house for dinner this week, which is fine.  Just different.  They didn't have the kids anyway, which is often the best time to go over there because then I can actually have grownup conversations with my parents without interruptions from the kids, but whatever.

I still feel semi-paralyzed by the idea of having to do homework so I'm going to just go to bed now.  No more Ativan today....

Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster It's Friday

Soooooo, I didn't post anything last night.  That's because I was really, really, really tired.  Ethan took me to see Iron & Wine in Denver and we got home after 11 and I could hardly stay awake.  The concert was just about everything I had hoped it would be.  My favorite song, of all time, of all bands, is Such Great Heights, originally by The Postal Service (who I saw in May and who played this song), and redone by Iron & Wine (who played it last night and I about died of excitement).  So I have now seen my favorite song, sung live, by the two artists that play my favorite versions of it.  I could die happy.

That said, today was a little more rough.  Waking up was hard, and I made it into work the earliest of all the days I worked this week, but I got a lot of work done and got caught up on a lot of the work that I had allowed to pile up.

Anxiety washed over me at about 4pm, for no discernable reason.  It was kind of the same last night, right about the time I was getting ready to go to the concert.  Today I took a couple of Ativan, but I didn't feel them kick in, like, until I was driving home from work.  And at that point I just wanted to get home and lie down and do nothing, which is essentially all I have done since I got home.

I don't have much more to write about at this point, because Ethan is over and we're having a sleepover so we're gonna watch some Friends (even though he claims to hate it) and go to sleep and SLEEP IN.  Because waking up this week has entirely sucked.

The One-Eighty

I slept for 13 hours last night.  I took three Ativan before bed just in case, and fell asleep quick.  When I woke up at 10am this morning I felt pretty much great.  I actually got up pretty much right away and got going.  I put in a load of laundry, and went straight down to start sweeping up the leaves out front that have been driving me crazy.  That took me into the garage that needed straightening up before winter.  We store our motorcycles in the shed in the wintertime but it's not time to get them in there yet, so I just cleaned around them.  Then I moved into the back yard and cleaned up the area outside the doggy door.  Two big bags of leaves later and also after having removed a tiny wishbone from the inside of my dog's mouth, I felt pretty darn good.

I ALMOST laid down to take a nap after such vigorous work but then I remembered that I needed to replace the headlight on my car.  That's out.  So I set about doing that.

It was a lot harder than I thought it would be.  The entirety of the instructions were in my car's manual that it came with.  I had to unscrew like 10 bolts, with nothing but an adjustable wrench, two of which were like 6 inches deep in a place that was pretty close to unreachable and it took FOREVER to get them unscrewed.  I had to actually detach the top part of the grill of the car because if you look at a Chevy Equinox, the logo is on a chrome strip that actually extends across both of the headlight apparatuses (I thought for sure it would be apparati but I'm being told by the red squiggly line that apparati is not a word, but apparatuses is, so we're going with apparatuses).  So I finally got the new headlight in, and I was checking everything to make sure it was all working and I discovered that the fog light on the same side was also out.  For some reason, I did not look at the front of the vehicle PRIOR TO going to the car part store or I would have noticed this.  So I see that this bulb is also out and I had to stand there for awhile considering whether or not I wanted to wait until another day and attempt to remove everything I had already removed, again, and I decided that I did not.  But at this point, the front grill is hanging off the vehicle, and one of the headlight apparatuses is literally out of it's place and I can't drive anywhere.... At which point I realized that I own a second vehicle!  My motorcycle!  Except that I had put laundry into the washer and that included every pair of pants I own.  Literally.  I had NO clean pants, and all the pants I did have were in the washer, wet.  So I put on a pair of cargo capris and rolled them down as far as they would go, put my boots on, got my riding jacket and gloves on and grabbed the helmet and keys and wallet and car manual and went on my way (see?  getting ready to ride the bike is kind of a hassle because putting on the gear takes time).  At the end of the street I almost made a turn so that I didn't have to come to a complete stop, but there was a car coming so I had to stop kind of quick and the bike sort of leaned under me and I moved my legs to steady myself and ended up burning myself on the tailpipe.  Again.  Not nearly as bad as the last time, but it still hurts.  In the same spot too.

So I managed to go get the new fog lamp bulb and make it back home.  It didn't take me that long to replace it, and when I did, I stood back to look and make sure everything was working and I realized that it was a completely different color than the other fog lamp.  So again.  I stood there contemplating whether or not to change out the bulb on the other side simply so that the colors matched, or just leave it.  And so I decided to change out the other bulb so the color would match.  I proceeded to unscrew even the ridiculously difficult screw, and THEN realized that I didn't even need to remove the entire headlight apparatus to replace this particular bulb.  Somehow I missed that on the other side.  Then I replaced the bulb as before.  And all of a sudden all the lights on the front of my car work!  And they match in color!  I put my car back together, and cleaned up and by that time it was like 3:30.  I needed to go to the bank to get my rent money out and deposit the check I had sitting around from StubHub from selling the extra ticket I had from the Todd Helton retirement game.  So I drove over to my bank by my parents house, and decided to pop over there for a minute too.  I had my dad's circular saw in my car from cleaning out the garage, so I figured I'd return that.  So I stopped and talked to my mom for a few minutes, filled her in on Ethan and the flowers he sent me yesterday (yes!  He SENT me flowers.  That were delivered to my house!).  Then I came home.

I had a full chicken sitting thawed out in my refrigerator from like a week ago when I decided that I wanted to cook it and then didn't, so I decided to cook it.  I invited Ethan to come over and Braden too, and actually roasted some garlic and spread that out underneath the skin.  I cooked it on a bed of onions, carrots and apples.  I covered the inside with garlic salt, fresh ground pepper and basil.  Then I sprinkled the outside with it too.

I let it cook while we all talked and drank wine and the chicken turned out amazing.  A.  Mazing.  We ate and talked and talked and talked.  Braden finally went home and so Ethan and I went up and watched American Horror Story.

Compared to Monday this is a change of 180 degrees.  I haven't had this much energy and motivation in weeks.  WEEKS.  I just kept going and it never really even occurred to me to lie down and try to take a nap.  I feel good because I cleaned and I cooked and I fixed and I did some things that I needed to get done, and it feels really good to have been productive for like a full 12 hours at least.  I can't even remember the last time I got that much done, and it feels great.  I feel like I felt during the summer, or during last winter, and last fall and last summer.  Normal.  Or as close to normal as I know what normal feels like.  It was terrific and I almost don't want it to end.  What if tomorrow isn't as good?

I'm not going to worry about that tomorrow.  I will worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.  Because TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY (thank you, Scarlett O'Hara).

Yet Another Bad Day

What I would love, is to be tranquilized, heavily, and to sleep until I feel better.  When I have days like today, I feel like I'll never feel good again.  Never feel normal again.

I drank a lot yesterday; that was a mistake.  This is the second time during this episode that I've awakened the day after imbibing too much alcohol and felt quite miserable.  I went to sleep by 11 last night and woke up at 2:30am feeling pretty crappy.  Nauseous and anxious and restless.  I felt like I very suddenly, though I was sleeping, could not hold still.   I then chugged a full Nalgene bottle of water, and laid still in bed watching TV until I felt sleepy again.  Luckily it only took me until about 4am.

When I woke up at 9am I felt pretty much the same, but a little calmer.  The first thing I did was go to get my newest prescription for more Ativan filled.  When I dropped it off the pharmacist told me it would only take about 30 minutes, but I never got a text from the pharmacy (that I usually get) saying it was ready.  I felt so anxious I could hardly stand it.  When I went back home I watched TV for a couple of hours trying to just get out of my head and calm down, and fell asleep at about noon.  When I woke up at 3, I again felt like I could not hold still.  My heart felt like it was pounding - not racing - really hard, and I still felt nauseous.  I went back to the pharmacy to pick up my prescription, only to have them tell me that insurance says I can't fill a new prescription for it until tomorrow.  I walked around the store for a few minutes, trying to find something to grab that might help me to feel like I had something to look forward to, no matter how small.

I knew when I woke up today that I had three things that I should try to get done today: 1.) The rest of the October billing for Peggy, 2.) Send out purchases for work because they normally go out on the 3rd but the 3rd was yesterday, and 3.) Last week's homework assignment because I didn't do it last night.  It was like all I could think about all day long was how much I had to do, but how badly I didn't want to do any of it, but how I needed to get it done.  It was like the anticipation of having something - so many things - to do was just eating away at me, and yet I could not work up the energy or the motivation to do any of it.  Peggy emailed me at 3:30 asking when I was going to finish her October billing, so when I got home from the store, I just buckled down to get it finished.

Even though I got that much done, managed to chip away at what I needed to get done, I felt no relief at all.  I still felt - still feel - incredibly stressed out.  Like I can't handle what I need to do.  It's such a helpless feeling.  What I imagine drowning feels like, I suppose.  As though I can't grab anything to hold on to, in order to steady myself, or pull myself out of the water.  So out of control.

I'm not sure what is worse.  Feeling anxiety like this, or feeling sad the way I've been feeling.  Though they both make me feel terrible, each feeling makes me feel terrible in a completely different way.  I don't ever remember feeling this anxious ever, before, in my whole life.  At least not for such an extended period of time.  No doubt the anxiety I'm feeling today should at least begin to dissipate by tomorrow, but for now I feel very stuck.  It's a horrible feeling, and it makes me absolutely miserable.  Like I'm trapped, and there's nothing I can do about it.  And I cannot get out of my head.  I can't stop the thoughts that make me feel so incredibly inadequate, like no matter how hard I try, I will never be able to do what needs to be done.  And the thoughts just keep coming and coming.  I can't stop them.  I feel simply paralyzed.  The worse the anxiety gets, the harder it is for me to pull myself out of it.

I don't want to keep taking the Ativan when I feel like this.  I am not dependent upon it but I know that it does give me some relief when I need it, and that's a pretty valuable thing on days like this one, but I so worry that taking it, or relying on it, will prevent me from making any progress and being able to just tough it out the way I was forced to today.  I understand that I have the prescription just for when I feel like this, but I so worry that I will become dependent upon it and I so don't want to be.

I just want to feel like I can relax, and like I am capable of actually getting the things done that I need to get done.  And not being able to achieve that relaxation is just one more source of intense stress.  It just makes me feel worse.

I said it before but I feel so utterly helpless right now.  I don't know how to fix myself, and I can't bring myself to fulfill the obligations I have, which I keep thinking will help me to feel better.  The only thing I feel capable of doing is curling up into a ball on my bed.  But I can't even hold still long enough to do that.

The thought of having to go into work tomorrow makes me want to just vomit.  Thinking about how much I have to take care of, how much I have to do, seems almost entirely impossible.  Which again, just makes me feel worse.

I also feel like I'm not even writing about my honest feelings on here lately.  I feel like I am hiding so much of my true feelings because I fear my audience.  I haven't written that my involvement with my friend Ethan has gone further than friendship and I haven't written about my massive apprehension about it because I am trying hard not to over think everything.  I'm trying to just let his feelings for me be something wonderful in my otherwise current shitty existence.  I'm finding that it's much harder not to fight against my apprehension than I would have imagined.  Normally I just freak out, let myself freak out and run away.  I had to try really hard to let things just happen with The Ex, and even though it didn't work out in the end, I feel like not running away when I wanted to was a good thing.  Ethan is not my normal type, and he knows it.  I've told him.  But I haven't found success with my normal types anyway, so I'm trying to just go with it.  Let things progress with him.  Let him be nice and sweet to me.  But I'm really struggling with that.  And it's just one more thing on top of everything else that is stressing me out.  Unfortunately it's so easy to grab on to someone that cares and talks to me that I worry that I'm grabbing on just because of that.  And that's not fair to him.  But the thing is that I don't actually know what I'm doing because I'm trying so hard to just let it happen.

My face is broken out from stress and I can't seem to stop touching it which is just making it worse.  My neck and back hurt and are so tense all the time.  I can't seem to get my shoulders to relax.  The tooth I have the crown on needs a root canal but that's a $600 expense that I can't justify even though it hurts an awful lot most of the time.  I think my body is fighting off whatever cold is going around and I'm just bound to get really sick any day now.  I'm just uncomfortable in every possible aspect of my life and I don't know how to maneuver so that I feel any kind of comfort at all.  I feel like I'm headed towards a breaking point instead of making any significant progress.  It's two steps forward and then one step back, all the time.

I also feel like I very suddenly don't have any of my close friends at my back anymore.  I haven't talked to either Kate very much at all, and Tiffany has been at Disney World and now that she's teaching she doesn't have the time to talk to me very much.  Colorado Kate has expressed to me recently that because I struggle so much and so consistently that it brings her down, so I have stopped reaching out to her.  Other BFF Kate has an awful lot going on in her life and she doesn't do emotional crap very well and so I don't really reach out to her because she's not super receptive.  Even though I went over to my parents house on Saturday, I haven't really talked with them about anything.

I just feel so lost and so alone.  I wish I could find anything positive to focus my energy on for any significant amount of time.  And I'm confused because so much of the time I want to just be left alone by everyone but at the same time I want people to pay attention to me and help me feel like what I'm going through isn't going to actually kill me.

I don't know what to do.  At all.  I don't know how to resume any kind of normal function.  I feel like when I am trying so hard to be positive and make progress and take steps to feel better that I'm just covering up how I actually feel deep down which is mostly completely hopeless.  I have a lot of trouble just being honest with myself, I think.  When I am, I am just plain sad about it.

I gotta stop writing.  I feel like I'm just writing myself in circles and not doing myself any good.  And I sort of want to lay back down and do nothing for at least a little while longer before I force myself into unconsciousness.  Maybe I will be able to turn my brain off long enough to actually fall asleep.  

Two Day's Worth of Posts

Well, it looks like I completely forgot to write anything last night.  I put in 5 hours of work yesterday, all told, and I think by 11pm I was tired of being on the computer and literally just did not think about writing anything.

Yesterday wasn't that exciting anyway.  I slept in until 11:15am and then when I did get up, the only thing I did was finish payroll for work.  When I finished that, I thought about doing a few things like sweeping up the leaves that are all over the place out front, and taking the dogs to the dog park, but then I decided that taking a nap was a better idea, so I laid down for like two hours.  Then I went to my parents house for dinner, spent some time with the kiddos, took little S girl with me to wash my car for the first time since camping, and that was that.  By the time I got home I was pretty tired but I needed to do some work for the attorney that I do some bookkeeping for on the side - mostly just time entries - so I got through the entire month of September for her and then did some extra housekeeping on a few accounts and called it quits.

This morning I had plans to get some breakfast with my friend Ethan, so I had to get up before 9am in order to get ready.  We had breakfast at a really cute, and very popular place in Old Town Louisville, and then decided to take the dogs to the dog park.  We took them for a nice long walk around the loop at the big dog park in Westminster, then took them to the do-it-yourself doggie-wash place on 287 on the way home because Nali was already so stinky and she had a lot of fun just laying straight down in the nasty pond at the park both when we got there and after we walked the long loop.  After watching both puppies down nice and thoroughly, we headed home and just sat and had some margaritas and talked while we watched Napoleon Dynamite in the background.  Before we knew it it was 4pm, so we went to the liquor store to get some more to drink (he makes a drink called an Angry Fireball - it's Angry Orchard cider and Fireball whiskey and it's DELICIOUS), and decided to try and get him all caught up on Walking Dead before the new episode tonight, which we did!

We ordered some Chinese food and Ethan ran to get it, and then spent the rest of the evening on Walking Dead and it was nice, and relaxing, and altogether just glorious.  I feel like I finally relaxed.

And now I have tomorrow off.  I don't have to go in to work, though I have some work to get done.  Since I didn't finish the billing for my attorney lady, I need to get that entered, and I have some Hapa work to get done too.  The weather is supposed to get yucky tomorrow so it's a good day to sleep in and just work from home.  I'm not going to get this week's homework done tonight, either, but I can do it tomorrow.

That said, I'm kind of exhausted from today and I really want to get to sleep so that I can try and wake up at a reasonable hour tomorrow and get a lot of stuff done, or at least start chipping away at it as best I can, since that's really the best I can do at this point...

Today was a good day, though.  I felt pretty relaxed most of the day, though when it hit me how much work I had to do for the attorney, and work, and homework, I had a momentary breakdown, but it passed because we were on our way to the doggie-wash place and I didn't really have a choice, and it helped a lot to have something else to focus on (washing the dogs), and I was able to move on from that.  Chinese food was super yummy.  Walking Dead was good.  Now I'm gonna snuggle into bed with my pup and get some good sleep.  Here's hoping this week is at least a step up from the last one.

I think it's the Anticipation

Hopefully this will be a quick one because it's late, it's been a long day, and I'm tired.

I got up to get to work around 8am so that I could get as much done to prep for payroll as possible before the stores submitted it.  I ran into a problem right around noon when one of my managers called me saying that he'd received a call from Xcel Energy saying they were going to be shutting off the power at 4pm for non-payment of a bill back in September.  He gave me a number to call back to get more information.  They guy I talked to said that they did an update of their billing system and that we were supposed to have received notification of it, but that in doing this update, they were not able to honor the check we sent in for our September payment.  They said that in order to keep the power on, they needed payment TODAY, and they'd allow us to make a partial payment, but to do so, we would need to go to a specific location, like a Walgreens or a Circle K, and buy something called an Express Pass and load it with the money that we owed for payment.  Once the card is loaded we were to call them back with a registration number for the card and they'd keep the power on.  I freaked out on the guy, saying that they were shutting our power off because of a fault in THEIR system, and that now I had to go way out of my way to make a payment because I couldn't make a payment over the phone or online, or they were going to shut the power off to one of our restaurants?!  I actually said, "You have got to be fucking kidding me."  They said that I could only pay for this card thing with cash, and I said that I do not have access to cash, to which I was told that I had better get in touch with someone who did have access to cash. At this point I'm really starting to freak out because my boss wasn't in the office and I was on a really tight schedule for the day and wouldn't have time to go out and do this crap, and I didn't know what to do.  So I took a phone number so I could return the call, and then left my boss a message, essentially freaking out, and then called Xcel directly to see if I could verify that we were behind a payment.  I had checked our online statements and it said that we had $0.00 due and were all up to date with our payments, which I had already been fairly certain of since I'm the one that sends the checks out.  By the time my boss called me back I began to realize that this was probably a scam, since they were asking for a cash payment only and the phone number they'd given me didn't match anything I'd seen on the Xcel website.  We decided that it probably was a scam, but that I needed to get in touch with Xcel anyway just to make sure.  Sure enough, our account was perfectly fine and up to date on all payments.  So I told the woman that I had received a call from someone claiming to be Xcel asking for money, and she took down the details because apparently scams like this have been happening all over the country and they have received other complaints of similar calls from other customers.  She said that they're doing their own internal investigation and that I should perhaps call local law enforcement to relay the information because some departments are doing their own investigations.  That all taken care of, I called the number back that the scammers had given me and said that I was fully aware of what they were attempting to do, and that they could go fuck themselves, and that I'd already reported them to Xcel and would also be reporting them to the police as well.  They hung up on me.

So there was that little bit of excitement in my day, aside from the usual catastrophe that payroll always is.  I wasn't even able to get all of it done before I had to leave, so I will be finishing it up from home tomorrow morning.

I spent much of the day, including the drama with the phone calls, feeling like a basket case, full of anxiety about the upcoming evening.  I did the best I could to just breathe and ignore it, but ended up popping a couple of Ativan on the way home from work.  I got ready and headed to Denver.  I looked super cute if I do say so, myself (thanks to Meredi playing dress-up with me).  I used the valet parking at the restaurant and ran straight into my friend and his girlfriend.  Turned out there would only be 6 of us at dinner, and then 8 for the show, with a couple of extra tickets.  Dinner was spectacular.  I had a couple of glasses of champagne ($12/glass from a $15 bottle but oh well), and then I had broiled jumbo scallops cooked Oscar style with jumbo lump crab meat, over steamed asparagus and hollandaise sauce.  It was melt in my mouth oh my god mouthgasm delectable amazing.  I do so love scallops.  And crab.  And hollandaise sauce.

With a couple extra tickets, I decided to invite my friend Ethan, who I'd last seen when we went camping.  I've been keeping in touch with him a lot, talking over Facebook and stuff, and he'd mentioned wanting to see the show, so I asked the folks I was with if I could invite him if he'd pay for a ticket, which was fine.  So he popped down to Denver and met us for the show.  I had only heard that Book of Mormon was a funny show, that had won the Tony award for best show last year, and otherwise I didn't know what it was about.  It was kind of silly and absurd with undertones of seriousness, and many very musical qualities.  I think I need to let it sink in a bit, but it was really funny and I had a very good time.

The night itself was pretty nice.  It was a little tough to get conversational at first, but I relaxed into dinner and by the time we got to the theater and Ethan showed up, I felt pretty normal.  I'm really glad I made the decision to go, I am really glad I got to see my old friend, I'm really glad Ethan was able to come, and I'm really glad I followed through with my plans.  I always feel better about myself when I follow through with something.

Over all, though it was a long and incredibly emotionally stressful day, I did have a good time this evening and I'm tired and have lots to get done over the weekend.  I plan to sleep in tomorrow and get as much work done on the computer as possible so that I can do some other stuff around the house.  The place is filthy and needs a lot of attention.  I also need to wash my car and vacuum it out from camping, plus I have some homework to get caught up on.

And now it's time for bed.  Here's hoping things continue to look up.  I'm glad tonight is over and done with.

Once Upon a Time, Thursdays Were My Favorite Day Of The Week

Right now, this very minute, I feel awful.  Like something is really wrong.  Like I'm missing something, or forgetting something, or not doing something I should be doing.  It's a feeling in the pit of my stomach, like a heavy rock.  I'll try and go through the things that it could be....

It's Halloween.  I've never liked Halloween.  It's cold out there tonight, and it's windy.  We're not giving out candy, which I feel super guilty about.

I worked until 6pm to try and get some stuff out of the way today so that I don't have to worry about it tomorrow.  I had considered going over to my parents house to hang out with the kiddos and watch them get ready and stuff.  I went ahead and agreed to go along with my friend tomorrow to see the Book of Mormon, and the plan is to go to a fancy dinner beforehand, so I have to dress up.  I wanted to figure out what to wear ahead of time, so instead of going to my parents house, I came home and had Meredi help me pick out what to wear.  But in doing that, I missed Halloween with the kids.  I think that I feel the most guilty about that.  I'm not their parent, I don't need to be there for it, and I hadn't promised them I'd be there or anything, so I don't know why I feel so guilty.  I feel like I purposely miss spending time with the kids because I so dislike having to spend time with my sister.  I feel really guilty about that because the kids really love me a lot and love to have me around.  I guess I feel like no amount of time with them is enough, and when given the choice to spend time with them, or spend time doing something for myself, I more often choose to do my own thing, and I feel like that's really terrible.  But they're not my kids.  They're not my responsibility and I have no obligation to be around for them.  I don't want to feel like I have such responsibility or obligation, but I do, for whatever reason.  I suspect that it's that I don't trust my sister to be their mom.

I have payroll to process tomorrow which could take a really long time, and in order to get ready and everything I need to leave work by 2:30pm so I probably have to get there at like 7:30 or 8am in order to get my hours in and have enough time to do everything that I need to do.  I tried to get as much done today that I could do today (I can't begin payroll until the stores submit their files to me on the 1st of the month), but I don't really feel like I did enough.  I wanted to leave enough work for myself to have something to do in case the stores don't submit their files until like noon - which is their deadline, though they almost always submit earlier than that - but I feel like I should have done more, I guess.

I'm super anxious about going to dinner and the show tomorrow.  I won't know anyone and in my current state, trying to make conversation with people I don't know well is downright painful.  I'd much rather just spend time by myself than attempt to be social with new people.  That's not to say that that's the case all the time.  If I were feeling fine, I'd be really looking forward to seeing my friend, meeting his girlfriend and meeting some new people.  At my age, any chance to get to make new friends is welcomed.  In your late 20's, it's not as easy to make friends as it is in high school, when you see all the same people every day of the week.  I generally enjoy going out and being social and meeting new people, as long as things are within my realm of comfort (no dancing, no karaoke, nothing really out of the ordinary), and I feel like I at least owe my friend the effort of going to an event that he's sort of put together since he came to our Christmas party on Christmas Eve last year.  I wish I knew why I feel so anxious about a social event.  I haven't felt anxious like this about a social event in years.  I'm a really likeable person.  I know how to ask good questions and make conversation with people I don't know.  I don't mind being the center of attention.  I don't mind talking and telling stories and getting to know people.  I know it's going to be okay, and that I'm going to have a great time, and I get to have really good food that I've been wanting to try (we're going to Oceanaire, so it's good quality seafood, which is surprisingly, a different thing than sushi), and Book of Mormon is supposed to be really good and funny...and I get to sleep in on Saturday and I only have one mountain of homework to slog through this weekend instead of two....

So I don't know why I feel like this.  I was really hoping that writing it all out would make me feel better, but no such luck.  I'm really trying to avoid taking any more Ativan because my mom has me really freaked out about getting addicted to it, plus I think that because I took some before bed last night, that's why I had such a hard time getting up today.  I didn't make it into work until 11 because I was just soooooo sleepy and had a really hard time waking up when my alarm went off.  I NEED to get in there early tomorrow so I can't afford another morning of hitting the snooze button a bajillion times and I worry that taking the Ativan will cause that.  Though I don't really know, and I'm getting to the point of feeling sick of feeling anxious like this, so I may just take a couple anyway.

Also, I haven't eaten anything today.  I am not hungry and I don't really want to go to the effort of trying to eat something and then not liking it or not wanting to eat it.  And of course, there's a little voice in the back of my mind telling me that if I don't eat, maybe I'll lose weight.  Which is a really wrong thing to think.

And I need to take a shower and shave my legs but I really don't feel like doing that right now.  But I'm going to feel even less like doing it tomorrow morning.

Damn this feeling.  Damn it.

A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

Today I felt pretty good.  I had appointments to get to today, and although I didn't want to get out of bed this morning at all, I did anyway.  First thing was the laser hair-removal appointment that I bought with a Groupon for my "underarms" (I just call them armpits but that sounds so unladylike).  I had just enough time to come home in between that appointment and my two on campus to get a chicken out of the freezer to start defrosting it on the off chance I wanted to actually make myself dinner tonight.

Then I had to go to Denver to see my new counselor and psychiatrist.  I cried A LOT during my session today.  We talked about how I've been feeling and why I have such hatred of school right now.  We talked about why I feel such guilt over the smallest things and why I have such high expectations of myself.  I told her about my experience with my mom yesterday and eventually all of it came back to how I was raised and how I have rarely felt like I have choices in the things that I've done, like playing soccer and taking piano lessons.  It's really a lot to get into and I am actually feeling kind of sleepy already so I kind of just want to take the evening and watch movies without being on the computer and get to sleep before midnight.  Maybe I can really write about it more another time.  I'd definitely like to be able to work it out in writing just to have for myself so I can look back on it and have some clarity later on.

After my session with my counselor, I had about an hour until I was supposed to see my psychiatrist, so I decided to sit in the student center and get some more of my book read.  I found a nice comfy purple armchair on the third floor and read for just a few minutes when someone walked out of an office and asked if there was anyone out in the hallway that wanted to participate in a granola taste-test.  I said sure, why not, and so did a few other people so that took about 15 minutes.  It was being performed by a student newspaper for CU called The Advocate (of which I had not heard).  After that, I sat back down and read some more of my book.  I actually was able to concentrate on it for the first time in weeks, and that felt really refreshing.  Before I knew it, it was time to walk across the sidewalk to the health center to see the doc.

I really like this doctor.  I think I already wrote that she reminds me of my mom, but I think she's really thorough and I feel like she genuinely cares about what is going on with me and wants to help.  She takes great notes and has a great memory and is just plain super nice.  Best psychiatrist I think I've ever had.  I feel like I can be totally candid with her for some reason.  She asked how I was feeling (obviously) and I said that I think the Pristiq is starting to kick in because I am feeling just an iota of relief sometimes.  We talked about some of the positive things that I'm doing to keep my spirits up, and she was really concerned about how I'm going to be able to handle the holidays coming up and I realized that I had really not given it much thought.  I definitely dread the holidays.  Not because I don't like my family or because I have to travel, but I really stress out about gift-giving.  I always want to find the PERFECT gifts for people, and I always end up spending WAY too much money on gifts and then have to struggle to catch up financially for a couple months afterward.  We talked about what I could do to prepare for the holidays ahead of time and avoid the stress of trying to find the perfect gifts for everyone and avoid spending too much money at the same time.  So that's something that I'm going to be working on starting exactly now.  Before November even starts.

I hate that tomorrow is Halloween.  While I love Halloween-time, and all that goes with it, and the beginning of fall (despite that I cannot stand winter), I have always hated Halloween night.  Even as a little kid.  Especially as a little kid.  Halloween scared me, and when we moved to Colorado from Florida I hated that my costume got ruined because I had to wear a coat since it was always cold on Halloween.  I didn't like trick-or-treating because there were always too many kids out and there was always some house that was too scary or had some dad outside waiting to scare kids, and I didn't like being scared as a kid because I was always scared.  I was a very anxious child.  I used to have panic attacks if we left a minute too late for school in the mornings.  I once had a panic attack because my 6th grade class was kept after the bell for each minute we wouldn't stop talking when the teacher asked us to because it was my job to pick up my little sister from kindergarten.  Anyway, a lot of that comes rushing back when Halloween actually hits.  I find it to be an enormous pain in the ass to answer the door and hand out candy, especially having two dogs that bark at the movement of the leaves falling off the trees much less the doorbell ringing off the wall.  The first year I lived here, I just left the porch light off and didn't buy candy.  Last year, we handed out candy but I don't think we got that many trick-or-treaters.  This year I'd like to avoid it altogether, but I'm not sure that's an option.  Especially because we just had our block party and met all the neighbors.  Luckily there aren't a slew of kids in this particular neighborhood, though there are some.

And then the phone call I just got.  Over the summer, when I was still dating The Ex, I had a friend call and ask if we wanted to accompany he and his girlfriend to Book of Mormon when it came to town, and I said SURE!  Not thinking at the time that by the time the show actually rolled around, I wouldn't have a boyfriend.  Well my friend just called me to tell me that the show is actually this Friday, and wanted to see if I still want to go.  Here's what complicates things.  This is my oldest friend in the world.  We actually knew each other in the womb.  Our parents were friends before we were even born; our moms were pregnant at the same time.  His dad was the pastor of our church in Florida, and then we moved here in 1990, and they moved out here several years later so he could be the pastor of our old church (we had split off to be part of a mission church).  Our families stayed in touch, and we used to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners together, until about 10 years ago when we sort of lost touch.  I don't know what brought it on, but I started talking to this guy again around Christmastime of last year, and we hung out for awhile, and it became sort of obvious to both of us that we were attracted to one another and could date each other, but then he revealed that he was actually attached to a girl that lived in Alabama that was planning to move here to Colorado early this year to be with him.  That really stung.  Once he moved out of his parents house and down to south of Denver, and his girlfriend moved out here, we pretty much stopped talking except for his invite to the show during the summer.  That said, I would feel kind of awkward going to this show without a boyfriend, with a potential love interest that had been essentially taken right out from underneath me by someone I don't even know, and having to meet this person AND attempt to enjoy myself all at the same time.

Just one more thing to stress about.

OH!  And I found out today that a girl that I used to play soccer with has just been diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma, and that REALLY SUCKS.  Even though that kind of cancer is really treatable, the fact that it's happened to her and now she has to go through all the pain and agony of the treatment itself, is shit.  All I can do is shake my head and wonder how such shitty things can happen to such good people.  Luckily for her she has a really great support system and is staying really positive and optimistic and she will probably be okay.  It still sucks and it's not fair that she has to go through any of it in the first place, though.

This news really makes me feel even worse about all the complaining I do and what feels like suffering to me, when it's just in my head.  It's just a chemical imbalance.  I'm pretty much perfectly healthy - in the sense that I don't have any physical ailments that prevent me from doing anything substantial - and I feel like absolute shit most of the time, when nothing is really wrong with me, and there are people out there who are experiencing very real, very scary diseases and illnesses.   I just can't get out of bed because I can't get my head on straight.

Anyway, I think that's it for tonight.  I don't feel like writing anymore and I would like to lie with my face in a pillow and cry for a few minutes for the sorrow I feel for myself and my friend.  I know I ended my post yesterday on a positive note, but I already went through my positive stuff of the day with my psychiatrist.  I don't have to do it here, too.

It All Comes Back to Our Parents

Today was almost easy.  I woke up, got up, showered, actually blow dried my hair, and made it to work.  I thought I would be there by myself today, but my boss came in with her lovely baby and made my day a little more interesting.  It was really nice to have someone there to talk to, and it was really fun to have a little baby around, and I felt sooooo close to normal again.  I had to leave by 3:30 to pick up my mom from work since my dad had their car today, and that's where things took a turn.

My mom used to be my closest ally in surviving Depression.  She asked me if I had begun my outpatient treatment yet, which obviously I haven't, and we talked about why I don't want to do it.  I think what pissed me off the most was when I said that I feel like I should get a medal for getting up and doing normal things like going to work and running errands, and she said that no, I shouldn't because everyone has to get up and do things like go to work and stuff.  I said that I meant that when I'm feeling my absolute, very worst, it's miraculous to have been able to get up and get to work and get to appointments with doctors and everything.  She told me that I have to figure out a way to get out of my head because as things are right now, I'm really my own worst enemy.  We talked, at length, about what my thoughts are for a future with law enforcement, why I'm in school in the first place, what happens if I "drop out" of school (which I put in quotation marks because that's how she and my dad put it), why I feel so hopeless about grad school and working in law enforcement, and what my thoughts are for what I might do to make myself feel any fulfillment later on, if at all.  The whole conversation really brought my mood down.  This is all stuff that I've thought about, and written about, and maybe even talked with my therapist and/or psychiatrist about, but I haven't been judged, or felt judged about these thoughts yet.  To hear her opinions about all of it, and to hear her tell me that some of what's wrong with me is in my head was hard to hear.  She's my mom.  She's always been the most sympathetic, and the most understanding because I thought she'd been in my position at least a couple of times in her life.  But it was a real eye-opener to hear that maybe she doesn't believe that things are as bad for me as they are...or have been.  She asked me what I'm doing that gives me any enjoyment, and I told her that I've started writing again, which I sometimes enjoy, and that I don't enjoy anything else, at all.  That I've lost all interest in anything, which is the honest truth.

We got back to my parents house and continued taking a little bit, and I told her that my aunt had emailed me and how I felt about that.  She showed me the costume she's made for my nephew - it's Eye Man from Power Rangers - it's a costume covered in eyeballs, and she's done a really spectacular job of it - and I decided to stay for dinner since I had Phoenix with me and if I had gone home I'd just lay in bed and watch TV.  I wanted to see the kids, too.   It was good to have a home-cooked meal and spend some time with the little monsters.

I have purposely avoided talking to my mom this time around, I think, expressly because I didn't want to hear what she has to say about where I am emotionally and how I'm feeling.  Which is weird to actually acknowledge.  I really like my parents, as people.  As parents, I don't necessarily agree with all of their choices, but since they're adults, and I'm an adult now, I am allowed to disagree with them.  As people, they're really the nicest people out there, and they treat me really fantastically as an adult child.  They're pretty good about not being too judgmental of some of the decisions I make, and they do care about my well-being.  They're awfully generous and kind-hearted and I love them dearly.

I get so much mail at my parents house, too, and I make a point of making sure I grab everything each time I go over there.  This time I had a $275 bill for the MRIs I had done which I was kind of shocked about.  When I had my MRI's done in the summer, I paid $550 out of pocket for them, and after they were done, they called me back and said that the MRI doc wanted to see another angle so I needed to sit in the machine for like 15-30 more minutes.  I was frustrated at the time because the first set of images took about an hour and a half which was longer than anticipated, and I didn't want to have to go back and sit in the tube for another 30 minutes, but when they didn't mention anything to me about having to pay for more images, I figured they already felt bad about inconveniencing me enough by having me come back to the place that there wouldn't be additional charges for the additional images.  Not the case, I guess.  I'm definitely going to have to make a phone call for this one and I'm NOT looking forward to that.  I'll have to save it for a day when I'm feeling particularly strong, which is going to have to be spur of the moment since I never know when that's going to happen.  It doesn't help me to have shit like this hanging over my head.  I'd really like to stop spending money all the freaking time, and it doesn't help me to have big-ass bills like that just popping up from something I thought was over and done with.

When I got home tonight, I was overwhelmed by the stench of something burned, or burning.  New Roommate was messing around with the programmable thermostat and there was a tray of pumpkin seeds on the stove, so I just assumed she either burned a batch of those, or really doesn't know how to cook them.  I tried to hole up in my bedroom, open a window despite the 40 degree temperature outside, turn my fan on and light some candles.  Coming home to a smell like that certainly doesn't help my mood at all.

So, to sum up, I want to come up with some positives for the day so that it doesn't end on the sour stinky note it's currently on.

-I got to see my boss and her baby today.  Despite the fact that she's my boss, I think the world of her, I respect the crap out of her, and I just plain like her.
-I woke up feeling pretty good for a change.
- My hair looked good all day long.
-I got to see my sister's kids, and got kisses from all of them, and got to talk to them about their Halloween Costumes.
-I got to see my parents and help them out on a day when they needed my help.
-I got to spend the entire day with Phoenix - every waking moment.  I took him to work with me because we were having people come to blow out the sprinkler system today and didn't want him flipping shit or biting anyone.
-I didn't have to cook myself dinner or spend money on it.

There.  Now I can go do bed and not be in a crabby mood.

And So It Was a Monday

Today.  Didn't suck.  Not that it was great, but it was a vast improvement on most of the days I've been having.  I had a really hard time falling asleep last night (obviously, based on last night's post), so I took a couple of Ativan and then drank way too much wine so when my alarm went off at 8 this morning, I felt like crap so I just turned it off and went back to sleep.  When I finally did decide to get up, the first thing I felt the need to take care of was getting my car registered and plated so that when I go to campus on Wednesday for therapy and stuff I don't get another m-f-ing ticket from those bastards.  I got the Adopt a Shelter Pet license plates because I totally advocate getting animals out of shelters instead of from breeders.  I want other people to do it that way, too.  The greatest thing in my life came out of a shelter.

Right now.  At this point.  I feel like I can actually handle all that's going on in my life this week - which isn't really much.  I don't feel like I'm necessarily drowning anymore, though I feel like my head is barely above water.  Looking forward, I don't feel like anything will happen that I can't wrap my head around.  Which is how I've felt a lot lately.  Like I can't comprehend what is going on around me.

I hope that I keep feeling okay like this.  I can settle for feeling okay.

I definitely feel nowhere near where my normal baseline might be, where I'm functioning regularly and actually making it through the day without staccatoed naps throughout.  I feel like I can actually go to work tomorrow, and accomplish everything that I need to accomplish and maybe make it through the day without crying from sorrow or loneliness or frustration.  I have some hope.

I got a really nice email from my aunt today.  I was very touched that she took time out of her day to write to me.  She told me that I am loved and that there are a lot of people out there who are worried about me and who care about me and only want good things for me.  I already know these things, but it definitely helps to hear them from people from time to time.  It really meant a lot to me that she wrote to me today.

So here's to tomorrow being an even better day than today.  Maybe tomorrow I'll feel less underwater.

Existential Questions Late at Night

So the only reason I'm writing now is because I can't sleep.  Perhaps it is because I slept a good portion of the day away, after waking up right about noon.  I'm well aware that my sleep schedule is something that direly needs regulation, and so that's something I'm hoping to get on top of this coming week.

I mostly felt pretty good today, with moments of sadness, for which I took some Ativan, and all that did was make me sleepy.  So I slept.  Didn't really get much else of anything done.  I did get some stuff done for work that I should have done on Friday, but as long as I got it done before tomorrow, I'm in good shape.

What is keeping me up right now, I suppose, is that I hadn't thought of the possibility of applying for a morgue internship with the Coroner's Office, though I have already been turned down for an investigative internship.  With my EMT certification, I should have a leg up on some of the other applicants (how many people actually want to work in a morgue, I wonder?!), and the fact that I've already observed some autopsies without any trouble.  But that's something I'd like to get done this week.  It might help me to feel SOME kind of direction, and it is entirely and honestly something I'm interested in.  If I can't do the investigative part of it (which I know I would have been fantastic at!), I will attempt to do the autopsy tech part of it.  I at least have a better chance than if I apply for the investigative part again (which I plan to do anyway just to annoy them).

Via Facebook, I found out that one of my very oldest friends from way back in kindergarten is now pregnant.  I went to her wedding a couple of years ago, and I'm beyond happy for her, but every time that someone gets engaged or married or pregnant, it just reminds me that I'm not.  That I'm not even close.  I'm not even close to close.  And I'm edging up on 30 here.  Which gets me thinking that I may not even have time to either freeze my eggs, or find a sperm donor and have IVF.  With whatever tiny bit of savings I have left by then.

Literally, these are the thoughts that go through my head, day in and day out.  I do so want to have at least one child of my own someday, and though I'm nowhere near ready right now, I know that I want to have the option SOMEDAY.  And the steps I have to take in order to at least have that option are right now beginning to dwindle.  It's one thing to get knocked up at 23 or 25 and be done with it, but without even so much as a boyfriend, I have to start thinking that if I want my own little family, I have to depend on no one but myself for it.  Part of me is happy being the dog lady, but part of me realizes that dogs have a lifespan WAY shorter than that of a human and that's a lot of heartbreak.  And look at me.  The last heartbreak I experienced sent me into this tailspin.

When I think of my friends that are married or are already parents, I inevitably begin to wonder why, and what it is about me, that has precluded me from that grouping.  What is it about me that has made me unable to maintain a romantic relationship with a man, or even get to the point of engagement?  My deepest, most desperate desire is to be able to get married and have a kid someday, and each and every day that seems to be further and further unreachable.  Jesus, I have done the three biggest things that I wanted to do before I died this year: get a gun, get my motorcycle license, and learn how to scuba dive.  How hard can it possibly be to find a man that I want to be with for the rest of my life; one that I want to procreate with?!   Even stupid people manage to do it!  What is it!?!  About me!?!?  That makes me incapable of this one thing - the one thing that I want above all other things!?!?  I know that my own emotional problems are indeed part of the big problem, but when it comes down to it, I really know myself.  I know myself well, and I have learned to not just accept my flaws, but sometimes I can even love myself in spite of them.  And isn't that part of the key to finding someone to love you?  So what, then?  What else can I do, besides try to just live the best way I know how?

I feel so alone.  It's really easy for other people to tell you they know what you're going through, or to tell me what they think that I should do, but when it comes down to it, I really feel quite clueless.  I just want to make a difference in this world and I don't have any idea where to start.

Just Another Saturday (that didn't totally suck major watermelons)

Nighttime is the worst.  I feel the loneliest of lonely at night.  Everyone that I might normally have to talk to are settled down with their significant others, or in bed themselves, and here I am left with my stupid brain.  You'd think I'd be happy as a clam tonight because AMC is playing good scary movies one right after another and one of my personal faves is on right now - Last House on the Left - but I'm not.

Tonight, we had a block party.  Braden and another neighbor really did all the work putting it together, and it was wildly successful.  Lots of people showed up and I finally met a bunch of our neighbors, which was great.  I did the best I could to plaster a smile on my face and talk to a bunch of people.  I only stayed a couple of hours but I feel pretty proud of myself for even doing that much.  I did everyone a favor and showered beforehand, too.

My day was not entirely a waste.  I did some maintenance work on my beloved Dyson vacuum and she's in full working order, and I cleaned my bathroom and vacuumed my bedroom.  If I did about 3 loads of laundry tomorrow my bedroom would be damn close to clean and organized.  I already feel quite a bit better having put away all that laundry last weekend and vacuuming today makes it feel pretty nice in here.

I wish I were one of those people who lights candles.  I have like a zillion of them, but I never, ever use them, and they'd really add some relaxing ambiance to the room on a night like this, when the room is all clean.

I so wish that I had any sort of direction right now.   My biggest stressor is not knowing where my life is going to go once I actually have the energy and wherewithal to actually do anything.  That's the scariest thing in the whole world to me right now.  And I don't really want to write about it because that will require actually facing it and trying to break it down and I really, REALLY am not ready to do that yet.

I just wish that I had one thing.  One thing.  That I could depend on or feel control over right now.  I feel as though I cannot control any of the things that are going on in my life.  I'd love for one of two things to happen.  Either I spontaneously combust, or I get discovered and can spend the rest of my life acting in really cool shows and movies.  Both of those options have about the same chances of happening at this point, totally independent of my wants or needs.

MAN the commercials this time of night SUCK.  Apparently they don't think that young people can't sleep or stay up late to watch good movies on purpose.  I've seen like 8 commercials for testosterone drugs - oh! make that 9 -  AARP life insurance, lawsuits for bad hip replacements, and the expected commercials for the AMC Day of the Undead promotional crap they're playing all day tomorrow.

I do feel ever-so-slightly-normal these last couple of hours though.  Drinking a few glasses of nice chardonnay in a way that doesn't feel like binge drinking.  That's a really nice change.

I gotta say, I love this movie.  Have you ever seen Raising Hope?  Garrett Dillahunt, the guy who plays Burt, is the really bad guy in this movie and he's just terrific.  He plays the scary-ass rapist-killer so well, only to turn around and play the goofy-ass Burt Chance with what could almost be called silly glee.  And he has the best line in this movie.  "You guys did a bang-up job on my brother down there.  He is really fucking dead."

Well the movie's about over and I'm not sleepy, but lucky for me, Scream is on next, and 28 Weeks Later is on another channel so I have options, at least.

Look at that.  I found some joy in something today.

How Much More?

I'm heartbroken.  I think that's part of my problem.  I feel like everything I had hoped for myself is just not meant to be.  I'm not in a relationship.  I'm not married.  I have no kids.  I don't have a career, much less one in federal law enforcement.  I work a part-time job that a 20 year old could do.  Doesn't require much know-how on my part.  I have no specialized training or skills that make me any kind of commodity, aside from a wicked affinity for sleep, and the ability to sleep 20 out of any given 24 hours.

My self-esteem has almost certainly reached kaput status.  I don't care what I look like when I leave the house most days.  I haven't showered since....Sunday?  Maybe?  I know I washed my hair on like, Tuesday, but that's about it.  I've essentially stopped taking care of myself.  I don't eat much, and if I do eat, it's junk.  Yesterday, it was a bag of powdered donuts and triscuits with spreadable brie on them.

I don't know what rock bottom really looks like, but every time I think I've reached it, I realize that there's at least one more level to go, and I keep hitting levels further and further down there.

I don't know how to get better.  And I mostly don't care.  Which is a really, really bad thing.  I don't know what else to do.  I have nothing driving me.  No force.  No one person that I get up every day for.  No real legitimate reason for getting out of bed.  This is spectacularly awful.

I know that I have this option of specialized outpatient treatment, which everyone says is a great idea (but yeah, they don't have to be the ones to go), but it's going to take work to get out there and do it, and I don't know if I have the energy to get out there and make it happen.

Depression makes you hopeless.  I am about as hopeless as hopeless gets.  Depression makes you feel worthless.  I feel about as worthless as humanly possible.  I feel unlovable, unhappy, misunderstood, and overall just plain shitty.  I couldn't summon up care or joy or an iota of happiness if my life depended on it at this point, I think.  Today, I learned that my own "best friend" thinks that I just don't try hard enough to be happy.  And this is after I have explained to her, as many ways as I know how, that trying to be happy is simply not an option.

"Hey, there!  Yeah, you, in the wheelchair!!  Have you tried harder to just get up and start walking?!  Come on!  I know you can do it.  See?  Watch me do it.  It's not that hard.  I just don't think you're trying hard enough.  You just must not want to be able to walk.  I bet you like sitting in that wheelchair..."

If I could come up with any other possible ways of explaining that just because someone else can get through a tough emotional time just with some good ol' drive and confidence, doesn't mean that everyone else can do it the same way, I would.

At this point all I have left in my arsenal is sadness and anxiety and those aren't exactly tools so much as self-destructive devices that seem to only increase in depth the longer they're all that's left.

Just Blah

I haven't got much to write about today.  I got up.  I went to work.  I worked.  I went home.  End of story.

Started Pristiq last night.  Realized that I might not be using the Ativan as much as I could be and so I'm trying to use enough of it to find a baseline feeling of normalcy.  No sadness, no anxiety.  I think I'm finally getting there.  Maybe.  We'll see how I feel when I wake up in the morning.

What I'd really like to spend most of my time doing is watching scary movie after scary movie.  In my bed.  Where I don't really have to talk to anyone but Phoenix.

I thought some more about suicide today, but not as a viable option or anything.  I just thought that I still believe that someday, this depression might actually kill me because I won't be able to take another day of feeling a certain way - the ways I've been feeling most days.  I don't think it will happen anytime soon.  I'm talking way into my 60's or 70's, and especially if I'm still alone and never have a family of my own - which, with every passing day becomes more and more of a probability.

I hate this so much.  I feel exactly the same as I felt my freshman year of college.  Totally lost.  Totally alone.

Just Another Day in the Life of Crazy

$75 dollars is what it is going to cost me to pay the parking ticket I got today while I was legally parked at a meter on campus, but because I haven't registered my car yet.  Those sons of bitches.  $75!  Like it's not already going to cost me an arm and a damn leg to register the thing anyway.

I don't feel like writing much tonight.  So the short version is that I saw the therapist and she seems fine; I go back next week.  The psychiatrist was great, she made me eat crackers and drink juice, and she has officially put me on Pristiq.  I'm super optimistic that I will find some relief on this medication, but we will see.  I'm also very hesitant to be changing medications but I guess I have already felt as bad as I've felt, so what can be worse?

The psychiatrist told me that I should think very carefully about a more intensive outpatient therapy, so she suggested a couple that meet three times a week.  I don't know if they'll be helpful, and I don't know if I'll have the motivation to go as directed.  They're CBT-based, and I'm not a big fan of CBT OR group stuff, but maybe I will be willing to try it.

I woke up at like 3am last night with an intense feeling of agitation.  I kept having numbers run through my head, so I wonder if I was dreaming about work, or school or something, but I felt incredibly anxious so I popped a couple of Ativan and turned on a movie and did my best to just lie there and concentrate on the movie.  I was eventually able to fall back asleep, but when I finally did wake up, I really didn't want to get up.  Same as most mornings.  I'm hoping to go to bed by 10:30 tonight and get up around 7am tomorrow and start myself on a routine so that I stop sleeping as much.  I don't know if I'll be able to do it, but it's (again) worth a shot.

That's it for tonight.  I have wanted to do nothing today besides crawl back into my bed and I'm finally able to.

When The Heart Despairs....

I had a really, really rough day today.  I literally hit snooze for three hours.  I set my alarm for 6:15am and didn't actually turn it off all the way until after 9:15am.  I reeeeeeeeeally didn't want to get out of bed today.  I took as long as I could to get ready for work and I didn't even shower.  I just washed my hair in the tub.

I noticed a difference in my feelings today.  I didn't feel anxious.  I didn't feel like my mind was revolving around and around the same problems, or spontaneously moving from one issue to another, or going back and forth to some problem I was trying to come up with a solution to...I was just.  Plain.  Sad.  Really, thoroughly, sad.  From my toes to the tips of my hair.  My heart was heavy and simply being alive felt painful.  That's not a great way to wake up.  Doesn't make for an easy day.

By the time I got to work, I was drained.  I didn't feel like actually doing any work at all.  The only highlight of my day was taking a little break in the middle to go see an old friend from The Registry, who will remain nameless.  I sat in his office and let him talk to me about why I was feeling so sad today, and I cried.  A lot.  I don't think I've even cried that much talking to Meredi over the last couple of years.  And I wasn't even there for a whole hour.  I just couldn't stop crying.

When I went back to work, I felt a very little bit better and was actually able to get all the work done that needed to get done.

I told Meredi during the day that I was feeling absolutely miserable (which I was), and we made plans to take the dogs on a walk around Waneka after work.  So we did that when we both got home from work.  I didn't feel a ton better, but it was nice to talk to her about stuff that isn't ruining my brain and to get out of the house, and out of my bed and stuff.  Being anywhere but my bed is nice these days.

I also had wine tonight.  About 1.5 glasses, which on an empty stomach has made me kind of loopy.  I don't really want to go into all the stuff my old office friend and I talked about because I really don't feel like crying any more, but hopefully it's something I will get into one day in the near future.  I know I shouldn't have had any wine, but all I wanted after the day I had - emotional, and entirely my fault - was a glass of wine.

I generally hate Tuesdays.  Tuesdays are the worst day of the week, but New Girl is on on Tuesdays, and it literally has the power to turn my mood around.  Love that show.

Today, I was able to get the ball rolling on dropping the one class.  I submitted the one form I needed to submit, so now I am just waiting to hear back, I guess.

I thought a lot about going to nursing school today.  I am coming closer to a solid decision on it and I am really liking that choice.  It will have a lot of time which will suck, and I think it will be a really tough two years, but assuming I don't have to go through this crap again (it seems to show up in its most severe form only every couple of years or so), I think it could make me a pretty happy person.  I'll feel like I'm actually making a difference, it will help me avoid the 8-5 Monday through Friday routine, it will give me the kinds of excitement that I think I need in a job, and it will pay me well enough to perhaps live on my own someday.  Anyone in their right mind will tell me right now that I'm in no position to be making serious life decisions, and that's true.  But this is a decision I'm going to be working on for quite some time.

Tomorrow I have appointments on campus to see my new assigned counselor/therapist and the psychiatrist.  I'm not really sure what to expect since I didn't really go out of my way to figure out exactly how much Pristiq would cost me out of pocket.  I just found a 75% off coupon online and looked into their little discount program which isn't really much of a discount after all.  It's just $15 off each prescription.  Which isn't much when there's a decent chance a bottle of 30 pills could be as much as $300.  Which once, is what I paid for a month's worth of Effexor.

Lastly, I LOVE The Mindy Project and Mindy Kaling.  I shouldn't be allowed to drink wine and watch these shows and then write.  All my profundity goes straight out the window.  

I need to be knocked out of this cycle

Well, today didn't go exactly as planned.  I didn't really wake up until about noon today, which is a bad thing.  Poor Phoenix was up a good part of the late night/early morning with tummy upset.  I always feel so badly for him when he has to get up and go outside a bunch.  He gets such strange stomach upset every once in awhile, and it gets all gurgly and noisy and it even sounds like there's even a kitten in there sometimes.  And I feel so bad for him because I know how uncomfortable that must be.  But upon waking up, I didn't just pop out of bed and go downstairs with my computer and begin working on homework.  I sort of ambled down there, taking my time, screwing around.  I finally got around to sitting down to work by about 1:30, and worked until about 2:30, but my mind wasn't really in it.  The work I was supposed to be working on was an outline for a research(ish) paper for my Wrongful Convictions class.  The topic my paper is supposed to be on is the fallibility of eyewitness identifications, and how often they are incorrect and lead to wrongful conviction.  This particular assignment requires the notation of 5-6 scholarly sources, so I spent most of my time looking for scholarly sources that would support the idea that eyewitness testimony isn't nearly as reliable as it is deemed to be in court.   There's a TON of scholarly research based on this topic, so I had quite a bit of crap to slog through to find my 5-6 scholarly articles, so I basically just picked some blindly based on the abstracts and the closest I could find to what I'm going to be attempting to write about.  All I have left is to do the annotations (about 150 word descriptions of the articles), and hopefully I can get through that in the next couple of evenings and get this crap turned in.

I didn't hear at all from the people in my department about dropping my class, so I'm pretty sure that on Wednesday when I'm down on campus for counseling, I'll have to go into the office and actually see and talk to people.  Hopefully that will be the last thing I have to do.

Can I please just reiterate how much I hate being in school right now.  This class is interesting.  This class would be intensely interesting to me if I were in my right mind.  How do I make myself care about this stuff so that I can get through it?

After last night's post, my pal Tiffany sent me a message on Facebook telling me that she's concerned with my drinking, because if I hope to gain anything from being back on medication, all that drinking will do is make the medication less effective and I will feel worse.  So I have to try really hard to stop with the drinking.  I'm not going to put a timeline on it, but she's right.  If I want to feel better at all, no more alcohol.  So I guess I'm down to benzos.  Which I don't like any more than being on anything at all, but if there's something that can give me some relief at all, I shouldn't complain about it.

Something that I have some trouble with on a pretty regular basis - and I fully notice a difference when it happens - is that I feel a lot better when I'm having several different conversations with several different people all at once.  When I'm texting with a few different friends at the same time, and IMming with one friend on Gmail, and messaging a couple different people on Facebook, I just FEEL BETTER.  However, most of the time, I am conversing with no one - like right now - and I feel kind of yucky,  Just alone.  And reminded of my alone-ness.  There's a big huge world out there, and I feel better when I'm out in it.  Except my job right now requires me to work in a small office, all by myself all day long, with very minimal human interaction, and it's not helping me much at all.  But I don't know what to do about it, aside from push to have us move our office back to The Registry sooner than later.  And "later" could be as late as March.  Which seems like an awfully long ways away from here.  I think I might feel better if I had a chance for more human contact.  Plus we really need to have more room so that I can stay organized.

If I could have one wish, right now, I would wish that I would immediately feel better, and that my Depression would be entirely cured, and that I would never have to feel like this ever again.  When I feel like this, I feel like something is slowly ripping my soul into tinier and tinier pieces and that it will take forever for me to find all the pieces and put them back together again and feel whole.  If ever.