A Bad Beginning to the Week
Mar. 3rd, 2008 12:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sensiblecat"I start to get the feeling that something is really wrong. Like all the drugs put together......can no longer combat whatever it is that was wrong with me in the first place. I feel like a defective model. I start to think that there is no cure for depression, that happiness is an ongoing battle, and I wonder if it isn't one I'll have to fight for as long as I live."
Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
It's really difficult to convey to anyone who hasn't experienced it first-hand the sheer exhaustion of chronic depression - how the fact that you visibly achieve so little masks the huge amount of effort it takes to achieve anything at all, from getting out of bed in the morning onwards. One reason why depressed people get suicidal, I suspect, is they just feel so useless. They feel that they ought to be able to deal with this thing.
For many years my family just didn't understand or have much sympathy at all. If anything, the fact that I was an in-patient on a psychiatric unit for seven weeks made things worse, because nobody wanted to discuss it, and also hospitals are meant to cure people, so there was even less tolerance when I was discharged. Gradually that did improve, and we reached a point where I could articulate the things I needed to keep well and demand them, most of the time. Regular bedtimes, physical exercise, a healthy diet and plenty of peaceful time alone. Also complete abstinance from alcohol, which stops my medication working.
Trouble is, you can do all that, and it does inconvenience the family, no doubt about that, and still get ill. Frequently. I rarely experience a week where I wake up more than twice feeling glad to be alive. I can tell myself rationally that I don't really want to give up, and it's just a sensation caused by chemical imbalances in my brain, but it still hurts and needs an enormous amount of self-discipline to manage. And women feel selfish demanding things for themselves, especially when other folk in the family get tired and ill and the cultural pressure is to sublimate your own needs to look after others.
I've thought time and again about therapy, but I'm a pretty analytical person anyway and I can usually define my own issues - the struggle is fixing them. I'm also an addictive personality and I self-medicate by getting far too invested in activities that help me escape. The Internet is one, and I've been working hard to try and cut down on my fandom investment lately and get more into RL. Also, I've been struggling not to overeat, since I now tip the scales at almost 90kg. Trouble is, those two things were keeping me functional, maybe even sane.
Now I feel very close to falling apart and if I go back to my particular crutches I'll hate myself even more than I do already. I'm having another "do" - last week I went high and did some silly things, including winding up my latest WIP with a chapter I hate myself for posting now - and I really should have spotted the symptoms of a crash down into gloom again. But my husband is busy, grumpy and stressed, and I didn't feel I could demand that kind of attention.
And then, this morning, a silly little incident just made me explode. We had our daughter and her two friends already waiting in the car for a lift to school when it turned out that my son had a sickness bug. DH found out and offered him paracetamol for his headache, but we only had capsules in, not tablets, and capsules make Tom gag. So DH blamed me. Said he'd told me numerous times that I ought to buy the tablets, not the capsules, which I just don't remember him doing.
I was actually in the pharmacy three times last week, getting prescriptions filled for others in the family when I felt pretty rough myself, but then I feel rough most of the time. Every time they made me wait, because they seem to be incapable of reserving an item for you to call back and collect later - they just dig out the scrip when you show up, and then ask you to come back because their two packs of whatever you need were handed out earlier that day. So I'd spent an hour in the pharmacy, and being told I'd fouled up on the paracetamol pissed me off big-time.
But the funny thing was, that wasn't what made me lose it. Nor was my daughter demanding my house keys so she could go and sit in the car, and leaving them in the back of the back door, so when John finally showed up he immediately locked me out of the house (he's a security junkie, incapable of passing through any door without locking it, even if you're standing right there asking him to hand you your keys first. Then, of course, it's your fault for not having your keys with you at all times). By then we were running almost 15 minutes late, and he got out of the car again to shut the front gate. I expect the milkman had left it open again. I hadn't - I always go round the back.
And I let rip, "COULDN"T YOU JUST LEAVE THE FUCKING GATE OPEN, THIS ONCE?"
Of course, he has a thing about gates being left open. Says it wrecks them and he ends up having to fix them (I thought we got men in to do that kind of thing, but anyway). And then my daughter reamed me out for swearing in front of her friends, and I felt I couldn't do one single thing right if it killed me.
I would just so like to feel well. To be able to clean out a cupboard or plan a holiday trip without it feeling like climbing a mountain barefoot. To feel useful. To feel my kids weren't embarrassed to bring their friends home. But it's not to be. And sometimes, just for a while, I wish it would all just stop.
For many years my family just didn't understand or have much sympathy at all. If anything, the fact that I was an in-patient on a psychiatric unit for seven weeks made things worse, because nobody wanted to discuss it, and also hospitals are meant to cure people, so there was even less tolerance when I was discharged. Gradually that did improve, and we reached a point where I could articulate the things I needed to keep well and demand them, most of the time. Regular bedtimes, physical exercise, a healthy diet and plenty of peaceful time alone. Also complete abstinance from alcohol, which stops my medication working.
Trouble is, you can do all that, and it does inconvenience the family, no doubt about that, and still get ill. Frequently. I rarely experience a week where I wake up more than twice feeling glad to be alive. I can tell myself rationally that I don't really want to give up, and it's just a sensation caused by chemical imbalances in my brain, but it still hurts and needs an enormous amount of self-discipline to manage. And women feel selfish demanding things for themselves, especially when other folk in the family get tired and ill and the cultural pressure is to sublimate your own needs to look after others.
I've thought time and again about therapy, but I'm a pretty analytical person anyway and I can usually define my own issues - the struggle is fixing them. I'm also an addictive personality and I self-medicate by getting far too invested in activities that help me escape. The Internet is one, and I've been working hard to try and cut down on my fandom investment lately and get more into RL. Also, I've been struggling not to overeat, since I now tip the scales at almost 90kg. Trouble is, those two things were keeping me functional, maybe even sane.
Now I feel very close to falling apart and if I go back to my particular crutches I'll hate myself even more than I do already. I'm having another "do" - last week I went high and did some silly things, including winding up my latest WIP with a chapter I hate myself for posting now - and I really should have spotted the symptoms of a crash down into gloom again. But my husband is busy, grumpy and stressed, and I didn't feel I could demand that kind of attention.
And then, this morning, a silly little incident just made me explode. We had our daughter and her two friends already waiting in the car for a lift to school when it turned out that my son had a sickness bug. DH found out and offered him paracetamol for his headache, but we only had capsules in, not tablets, and capsules make Tom gag. So DH blamed me. Said he'd told me numerous times that I ought to buy the tablets, not the capsules, which I just don't remember him doing.
I was actually in the pharmacy three times last week, getting prescriptions filled for others in the family when I felt pretty rough myself, but then I feel rough most of the time. Every time they made me wait, because they seem to be incapable of reserving an item for you to call back and collect later - they just dig out the scrip when you show up, and then ask you to come back because their two packs of whatever you need were handed out earlier that day. So I'd spent an hour in the pharmacy, and being told I'd fouled up on the paracetamol pissed me off big-time.
But the funny thing was, that wasn't what made me lose it. Nor was my daughter demanding my house keys so she could go and sit in the car, and leaving them in the back of the back door, so when John finally showed up he immediately locked me out of the house (he's a security junkie, incapable of passing through any door without locking it, even if you're standing right there asking him to hand you your keys first. Then, of course, it's your fault for not having your keys with you at all times). By then we were running almost 15 minutes late, and he got out of the car again to shut the front gate. I expect the milkman had left it open again. I hadn't - I always go round the back.
And I let rip, "COULDN"T YOU JUST LEAVE THE FUCKING GATE OPEN, THIS ONCE?"
Of course, he has a thing about gates being left open. Says it wrecks them and he ends up having to fix them (I thought we got men in to do that kind of thing, but anyway). And then my daughter reamed me out for swearing in front of her friends, and I felt I couldn't do one single thing right if it killed me.
I would just so like to feel well. To be able to clean out a cupboard or plan a holiday trip without it feeling like climbing a mountain barefoot. To feel useful. To feel my kids weren't embarrassed to bring their friends home. But it's not to be. And sometimes, just for a while, I wish it would all just stop.
