Tag Archives: depression

by

The Tragedy of the Hats

So I made a mistake.

I ordered some hats online. I had good intentions. I had ideals. I had these notions that if they were going to sell hats, they knew what they were doing. I figured the hats were pretty and the thing I had to worry about most was them fitting my head, right?

Oh, no. No, I was wrong.

I waited. Waited. And waited.

And then I finally come home after a really rotten day of work, see packages in the mailbox and on the porch and get excited.

The porch one was Whim’s proof, wrong again and making me feel like burning it in frustration.

Still, that was somewhat less of a let down than opening up a bag to find it is full of hats. Yes, my hats came in a bag. Three of them in individual bags, placed in a larger bag. This had the effect of knocking off their decoration, if it was ever on, causing one to look like a bird had died, with its feathers all mangled. Still, I could have lived with broken decorations.

The hats themselves have been smooshed so badly they’re bent with a permanent crease and several indentations that won’t come out. I’ve tried to fix that, but I can’t.

My hats are misshapen lumps. Worse still is that I bought one to replace one that was already damaged/misshapen, and now its replacement is misshapen, too.

I am so depressed by this. I love hats. I never managed to do the hat challenge I put to myself years ago, but I still love my hats.

Only… these are ruined and I can’t wear any of them tomorrow like I would have.

And I keep asking myself, “who ships hats in a bag???”

*sigh*

I need new hats. I wish it was worth trying to return these, but it’s not, so I am stuck with misshapen lumps of hat and a very strong need to cry.

by

The Ability to Wreck Nearly Everything

So I have talked a bit before about depression and how it affects me, not in any great detail or anything, but I think people are aware that I have it. It’s something I’ve been officially diagnosed with for fifteen years now, but it probably goes back further than that. It’s also not alone.

I have depression with anxiety. What does that mean?

I’m not going to give the medical explanation, that’s something google can tell you. I’ll tell you what it means for me, though.

Nothing I ever do is good enough.

For a writer, this means that even things that are published are not worth it, should never have seen the light of day, should be burned in protest of how horrifically bad they are. There are thousands of other ways this has manifested itself by either cause (depression or anxiety) but as relates to the writing, it’s a hard thing to finish anything, harder to edit it, and publishing can be nearly impossible. The amount of stress going along with publishing usually means actual physical symptoms, showing up in stomach trouble, migraines, and insomnia. There’s also some very, very dark thoughts that go with it.

Being around people is incredibly stressful.

I am an introvert, and people are draining on my best of days. That said, I am also socially backward, and while I can occasionally fake being okay, ninety percent of social interaction makes me want to panic. Meeting new people is terrifying. Being in crowds leads to panic attacks. I’m constantly on edge and tense around people. As my main job these days involves retail, I have pretty much nothing left when I get home, even on days with a short shift.

Obsessing over past mistakes or criticism is endless.

I have a tendency to remember the bad, not the good. And the bad will come up and replay with all the same emotions that it had at the time. Did I embarrass myself twenty years ago in school? Yes, and I can still feel every second of it if that memory surfaces. If someone says something harsh about me or my stories, I can almost always repeat it word for word. That thing you said you thought was helpful? Not so much. It’s been rattling around my brain tormenting me for fifteen years, so thanks for that.

Adding the social missteps to the obsessive bit creates huge problems.

I am a lightning rod. I don’t mean to be, but I am. I don’t tend to speak up at first when things bother me. (When ninety percent of what goes on bothers you, there’s no point in saying anything.) I try to let things go or get some distance from them if I can. However, that thing that got said that hurt and damaged me… that never went away, and so then it can resurface, and if it does and I’m talking to you… Then there’s a good chance I’ll make things very much worse, whether it’s about that or not. And since I’ve buried other things, they can add to it. I might lose my temper. I might lash out. I might just crawl off to hide and cry bitter tears because I can’t handle it anymore, but usually the hiding comes after I realize I’ve done a bunch of hurting others myself, and it wasn’t what I wanted, but it happened.

When I say I’m fine, it’s more often that I just have no way of explaining the things going on in my head.

I don’t vocalize these things. I’ve tried, and those efforts seem to always backfire spectacularly (not just because I lightning rod, but because people who haven’t been in this situation don’t understand, people who have been and are past it seem to think they know the cure, and others really never wanted that much detail in the first place.) It doesn’t help that I’m a chronic multi-tasker who has the unfortunate tendency to obsess over multiple things at any given moment, whether it be story stuff or personal crises or even the mundane and ordinary.

When it is bad, it is really bad.

There are times when I have absolutely no desire to be in my head. When that stuff scares me. When I shouldn’t be left to my own devices.

So that is a bit of life with depression and anxiety, for me. In the past week, it’s made a real mess of things, again, per usual. I almost didn’t get all the work for my day job done. I had migraines all week. I got into a couple arguments with friends. I just about burned one of the proof copies without even reading it because I can’t get a negative comment out of my head. I stressed out about every step of publishing new things, be it laying things out or proofing them. I haven’t written anything in two weeks. I was supposed to go somewhere important today, and I didn’t make it. I stayed home, and my efforts to distract myself ended up being futile… I broke the sewing machine, ordered the wrong part for my car, and couldn’t fix more than one of the other problems with it even after going to multiple auto parts stores.

And I’d rather die than do a book signing, but I have two coming up.

In spite of myself, there is a new book out in print. It was just an ebook before, but now it’s both. The plan was to have them all done, all the older releases, but obviously, that hasn’t happened. One isn’t quite to the proof stage, and the other is the one I can’t even look at, so… yeah. That’s where things are with me and my ability to wreck just about everything.

by

I Have the March Madness

I have March madness.

 

Not for sports. I don’t actually enjoy sports much, and certainly not watching them. An athlete I am not. There are a few exceptions to this. I’m okay with volleyball and badminton, and I can almost play them. I don’t watch them, though. I enjoy watching figure skating. The others? Not so much. Well, not at all.

 

We’re also not talking about a sales event, either. This isn’t a limited time deal offer or anything to rush out and get.

 

For reasons that I cannot explain, though perhaps it is somewhat seasonally based or something, March is simply a bad time of year for me.

 

The madness, you see, is depression. It has been about ten years now since that diagnosis was made, and the March time pattern is repeating itself again.

 

It isn’t always bad. Sometimes March passes with little incident. Like the lamb in that little poem.

 

Other times, March is more like a lion. More like the insomnia that started a withdrawal from my second semester of my senior year in high school (in spite of which I graduated with an honor’s diploma and in the top ten percent of the class–I was able to pull things back together later. Depression is a cycle, after all, and you’re not always at the lowest point, though sometimes it feels that way.) More like the March where I simply stopped going to my job when the economy was bad and not being able to find a new one.

 

This March has been one long fight to get out of bed, a lot of insecurity when it comes to writing, uncertainty when it comes to publishing, and a not insignificant amount of tears.

 

Part of it might have been the difficulty of attempting to complete a story that began nearly ten years ago. It has been sitting aside, waiting for me to type it and fill in a few pieces, but I have had trouble with that and overcoming a plot hole in the past. I finally solved the plot hole, but it’s still a slow process typing it up, and it does bring back a lot of memories from the past few years.

 

I already know that my word count totals will be down for the month, as it has been a hard month for writing. Between the typing and the way I’ve gotten blocked after one or two scenes despite the fun banter of my “geek” story. Still, without writing, I really don’t know how I’d cope with my particular madness.

 

Part escape, part a way of looking out at the world and solving my issues by exploring the situation in another setting or situation, writing has enabled me to be far more adept at dealing with the lows of depression. It never fails to amuse me how my coping mechanism, my outlet, can also be one of the sources of my frustrations and sorrow. It usually tells me how I’m doing, though. If I can still write, I know I’m okay.

 

Well, I am when the slippers of doom aren’t making more attempts on my life. I cannot believe I fell down the stairs again.