Fuck You, Depression (subtitle: i shed you)

Just when I think it can't get any worse, it doesn't.

I pull.  I kick.  I scrape at my skin.  And you eventually fall off and I notice very suddenly that you are no longer there.

I can eat again.  I can enjoy everything again.  I can sleep.  Oh, how I slept.

I am me again.  You don't own me.  You can't keep me in your grasp.  I have escaped you.  Until we meet again.

The Dark Cloak Is My Shepard (subtitle: reach for me)

You creep upon me.  Clinging to my every thought.  Dragging me down.  Clutching my heart.  A deadening in my chest.  I weep for you.  I beg for your release.  I try to shut you down.  But you won't let go.  I force myself into a sleep and I quietly wish you away with a mumbled prayer.  I try to flush you away with my tears until my mind gives up.

But in the morning you are still there.  I feel you.  I sense you in my every thought.  My body aches.  My blood boils.  They all see you.  I try to hide you from them.  And they all wonder why I won't just remove you.  I wish I knew how.

So often I reach for you.  I want so badly for you to reach for me.  I clumsily give you the opportunity.  I set you up.  I wait for you to come to me.  But you don't.  And those awful thoughts that I whisper to myself all become true.

I Hate You Journal (subtitle: the front of creeping rejection)

I hate you journal.  Because as much as I try to bury my thoughts, they pour out of me.  And you are the only one that cares.  And so I let you feed on me.  I pour my soul into you.  A rambling string of bullshit fed directly from my mind.  I want to write down these thoughts and burn them.  Instead I put them here.  I find them later.  And I wonder what the fuck is wrong with me.

I offered myself to you this morning.  And you passed.  It was awkward and hurtful.  Depression creeps in from everywhere.  Now, here I sit.  With a crushing pain in my chest.  Eyes swollen.  My brain castrated from the effects of the Depakote.

Sometimes I turn back on my thoughts and replay them in my head.  I read old shit that I wrote.  And it seems silly.  I want to believe that the feelings of rejection are not real.  That they are just a depressive episode where I am turning on myself.  I want to believe that I am being unfairly hard on myself.

But I know you very well now.  I know that you would rather have sex alone than with me.  And I can't fix that.  I have tried to create an environment where you can explore yourself sexually, and I can bask in it as an outsider.  But I just end up feeling excluded and strange.  And I can't help but think that you have your mind on other men.  That you think of other men while you are with me.  And I am just your friend with benefits.

I was never what you wanted.

Tonight I will scrub down the bathroom.  I will zip my my winter coat and work in the yard.  I will do my best to impress you.  To earn your attention.  And then I will bury my emotions until they come pouring out of me and run down the drain in another late night shower.

And then I will lay awake and watch you sleep.  And wonder what you dream about.

I sometimes put my arm around you at night, and you unconsciously shrug me off.

And I know that the rejection is real.

I'm Lucky To Have You (subtitle: my brain is mush)

Last night I dreamed I was waltzing through a beautiful hotel lobby.  It had that Roman architecture and a glass ceiling that gave view to the stars overhead.  I don't know what I was doing there.  Suddenly I heard gunfire, and I sprinted toward the front door along with another guy who just happened to be walking that same direction.  But we were mowed down in the gunfire.

As we lay there bleeding, we were tied up to a big ornamental metal table with some fake flowers on it and we were assigned a henchman to watch over us and make sure that we didn't escape.  I made small talk with my fellow captor, and at one point the two of us looked up at the stars and remarked about how beautiful it was.  And as gunfire erupted in the distance (presumably from people being shot dead), and as we lay on a marble floor and slowly bleed to death, I couldn't help but think what a nice ending this was.

I'm not sure what that dream means exactly.  But I have had a series of these dreams lately where the world is falling apart around me and I just give into it.  And it feels so peaceful.

And now some apologies about this weekend:
- I'm sorry I was so fucking needy.  You don't deserve that.
- I'm sorry I stayed up until midnight and sent you a dirty video with my phone (what is wrong with me?) -- even though I think you kind of enjoyed that
- I'm sorry for all my strange jealousy and paranoia
- I'm sorry that I woke up in a horrible depressed funk and stayed in bed to cry for several hours wasting a perfectly good Saturday morning

Thank you for tolerating me.  For always being there for me.  For giving me the love that I so desperately need.  For trying to understand me.  Even when I don't understand me.

My love for you is eternal.

What am I to you? (subtitle: less than a housepet)

I look into your eyes sometimes and I quickly look away.  I see how you look at me.  What am I to you?

The way you hug your animals.  Carry them around.  Squeeze them.  Rub their bellies.  You love them.  You cuddle them.  They warm your heart.

I caught a glimpse of that.  I experienced it only for a brief moment.  But your mind was somewhere else.  The perfect concoction of chemicals twisting your thoughts.  We held each other.  We laughed.  But it passed.  Morning came.  The chemicals successfully leaving your body like a hangover.  I will always remember that night differently then you.  Because for a fleeting moment, I meant everything to you.  And it felt so real.

I chase you around.  Beg for your attention.  Like the pet that won't leave you alone.  And you tolerate me.  You pat me on the head.  I bring you things.  Cook for you.  Try to surprise you.  And sometimes you let me have my way.

But I will always be at arms reach.  Never in your heart.

In the twilight hours.  Before your mind is awake.  I embrace you.  And sometimes you pull me toward you before you wake up.  I wonder who I am to you then.  With your back to me.  My arms wrapped tightly around you.  What man in your life do I become in your mind?

And then it's gone.  You are up getting your coffee.  Obsessively scanning over the same facebook posts over and over.  Looking for a mental escape from me.

I am your platonic lover.  And as much as I try, I will never be your pet.

JESUS CHRIST WTF HELP (subtitle: i am not okay)

While I think the meds may have successfully numbed my brain, I can still feel my manic episodes coming on.

I am paranoid (why aren't you talking to me?)
I am jealous (why don't you want to spend time with me?)
I am angry (why do I feel like this?  my fucking face is red!)

How soon until the depression comes back.

Jesus, what will that feel like?

I am so awake from the coffee.

So asleep from my drugs.

I just want to throw up.

I want to scream.

I want to tear off my skin.

Operator, I need an exit.

Whiskey Regrets (subtitle: barely awake)

Using divalproex sodium together with ethanol can increase nervous system side effects such as dizziness, drowsiness, and difficulty concentrating. Some people may also experience impairment in thinking and judgment.

 I guess I should have looked this up before consuming a little whiskey last night.  I am a mess this morning.  I can't think.  And coffee is not helping me.

I saw a cop this morning and looked down to see how fast I was going.  20.  I was going twenty miles an hour.  Holy shit.  Wait --- did that even happen today?  Or was that yesterday?  Holy fucking God.  What is happening to my brain.

I almost fell down walking into the office because my foot missed the curb.  Oh Jesus.

And now I am really paranoid that this is noticeable.  I tried to tell one of my co-workers about this movie I watched.  But my mind went blank.

And I have this horrible feeling like I was up all night crying.  I'm not sure if this is a nagging depressive episode trying to come out.  Or just the horrible effects of the alcohol combined with my paranoia and brain mush.

No more whiskey for me.

Depakote has cured me (subtitle: my brain is runny eggs)

I rushed to the pharmacy yesterday to pick up my new manic depression drug, Depakote.  The doctor told me that this would help stabilize my moods (but likely would not help with depression).  It's an experiment.  And I was so ready to get started on this, I walked into the house and swallowed one.

Within 15 minutes I felt like the wold was slowing down.  I sat down.  I took deep breaths.  And I felt a calm warming over me that I have never known.  I found myself checking myself for a pulse.  I felt my own heartbeat and I wondered if that was different.  Suddenly, I didn't give a shit about ... anything.  And it felt wonderful.

Last night I laid down in bed, and didn't get out my laptop.  I didn't need to.

I watched some football.  But I didn't really care about who was playing.  So I got on my laptop.  But I didn't really care about checking my email.  I put my laptop away.  I turned off the TV.  And I decided to go to sleep.  And I went to sleep.

And I slept.  Harder than I can ever remember sleeping before.

I have awoken to a new world.  I feel like a vampire who has been roaming the earth hungry.  But was just freed from his nightmarish desires.

I feel like I pulled out a part of my brain and castrated it.

Part of me died yesterday.  I buried it.  And I don't think I care. 

But then I have only been on this stuff for 14 hours or so.  Let's see if I can get through a work day on this shit.

Faking Normal (subtitle: The stars were nice)

Another late night of standing in the dark and staring at my hands.  Another early morning of pretending to be asleep, but I can't stay still.

I get out of bed and shower.  Get dressed for work.  I put on my tie.  I feel normal when I am dressed like this.  I can be awake.  Staring at my screen.  It's normal.

I leave before sunrise.  The stars were beautiful.

Everyone asks me why I am here so early.  I wish I knew.

Here I am again (subtitle: It's getting late fast)

I made the mistake of taking a nap today.  I felt so happy.  So relaxed.  And I was tired from the night before when I was so awake.

And now, I am awake again.

Waiting.  Watching.  Trying to make my brain break the silence.  Trying to make my hands do something.  Clean something.  Create something.

Don't wake anyone.

And it's so dark.  I just want to talk to someone.  Anyone.

A shitty poem (subtitle: at least I'm writing)

You are my only friend.

And there are so many things that I feel I cannot tell you.

So I imagine the conversations that we don't have.

But they are all of just me talking.  I never try to imagine how you would react.

You wouldn't understand.
 

Consult Your Physician (subtitle: ask your doctor if you are out of your fucking mind)

I had to sit down with a new family doctor today and have a very uncomfortable conversation about my mood disorder.  Well, I didn't *have* to talk to him about it.  But shit has been really bad lately, and I think it's time that I start getting some help.  This was just an introduction visit more or less so that I could have a family doctor to see.

I had filled out some pre-admission paperwork and there were some boxes that I checked, namely anxiety and depression.  That was step #1.  Step #2 was "tell me about your depression and how thats effecting you".

I probably rambled for about fifteen minutes, and I left nothing out.  It was just a dump of the past 20 years or so.  How I have tried to build a career out of my problem of needing projects to work on.  How I can actually witness myself behaving in these ridiculous ways, but still feel powerless in dealing with it.  He asked if I have witnessed this behavior in my family, and I told him pretty much everyone on my mother's side.  He asked if I had problems with insomnia.  Yes.  He asked how the depression comes and goes and how it affects my job and my family.

After all of that, he asked when I was diagnosed and what I was taking and I explained that I had diagnosed myself - and that I was prescribing myself whiskey to deal with the highs and lows.

With that, he wrote me a prescription for an anti-seizure medications.  He says that this will flatten out my moods a bit and land me somewhere in the middle.  I am a little nervous about taking the drug because I feel like it's going to crush the only elements of this disorder that I like (the 'highs').  But I have a six week follow-up to see how this works.  He has also said he would give me something for the depression if I need it.

I am a little relieved already.  Because I told someone about my problem.  And it's the first time I have ever had the courage to do it.  And he understood.  That's a step forward I think.

Inevitable Loss (subttitle: dark days to come)

Every time she gets sick and I see her getting better, I die a little inside.

Because the relief of knowing that she is okay doesn't outweight the thought that one day she will not bounce back.  And I will watch her slowly slip away from me.

She is the love of my life.

And I will lose her.

And I will have so many years yet to live.

Alone.

I reach for you at night.  And sometimes you catch me.

I wonder what you're thinking.

Tracking My Illness (subtitle: Microsoft Outlook was not built for this shit)

Okay.  This is going to sound stupid.  But at some point I remember saying to myself, "you may have a problem and you should do something to monitor it".  I often tell people that I have no concept of time.  Like a dog that is excited to see you after you have walked out of the house, and come back inside because you forgot your keys.  This makes it dificult for me to remember where I am in the whole manic-depression process.

Did I just complete an episode of mania?  When can I expect this depression to end?

I must have seen something on TV or heard a conversation related to tracking a menstrual cycle.  And I thought it would make sense to do the same thing with my mental illness.  When you think about it, it's almost for the same reason that a teenaged girl might want to track her period.  So that when you start to feel like you might be headed into that dark place, you can look at a calendar and say "aha - well, this was to be expected".  Maybe I could even plan around it.

With that I set out to start tracking what I was feeling.  Once a day, in the morning, I would place an event on my Outlook calendar at work.  But then, this calendar is shared amongst co-workers.  And I don't want them knowing how fucking crazy I am.  So I started coming up with acronyms that I could use.  I would have to match these up to symptoms of manic depression (or Bi-Polar II as they are calling it these days) so that I could look at these markings later and make sense of them.

Day one: ESF+ (Extreme Sexual Focus, the plus meaning a lot)
Day two: ESF+ (still, extreme sexual focus, still a lot)
Day three: ESF (still, extreme sexual focus, but not as much)
Day four: EWF (Extreme Work Focus)
Day five: ???

Shit.  I stopped recoding it.  Somewhere along the lines I forgot to keep track, and I didn't remember that I had even started this until I hit the depression a week or so later.  I pulled up the calendar to see when I started to take the turn and that damned calendar was worthless.  Fuck.

I have accepted now that tracking my illness this way was a stupid idea to begin with.  So what if there is a pattern?  What am I proving?  How am I really helping myself?  And who is to say that I won't become one of those people that starts trying to treat themselves for conditions that they never really had?

I have a new doctor that I see this week.  I need to work up the nerve to explain some of these feelings to him.

I need help.

Blogging Once Again (subtitle: sometimes I want to go stand in the rain)

It was many years ago that I started my Blog.  Back when blogging was "cool" and there were a few hundred options.  I guess I must have picked a good one, Blogger, because it was picked up by Google and kept alive while so many competive services have vanished along with their content.

My mission for the past few days has been to find a new blog that is more like a journal.  I wanetd to find something new.  Something separate.  So as not to do what I have done in the past, which is to combine my technical exploits and my manic depressive episodes into one large senseless blob of text.  After spending an hour or so trying to find a new service, I have decided to just make a new blog on this existing account.  Because at the end of the day, I guess I don't give a shit if people that I know read this.  I shouldn't really feel awkward about expressing these bizarre episodes.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

A few weeks ago I was starting to feel fat.  Wait - it didn't start there.

A few weeks ago, I was feeling very insecure about myself.  My wife seemed disinterested in me, and I began to doubt everything about our relationship.  Is she even attracted to me?  I was never really 'her type'.  And sometimes I can't help but wonder if I was friend-zoned, but I am just so nice to her that she keeps me around (for the security, and to have my friendship).  Anyone who knows me - or us - would probably find this amusing.  But these are the little insecurities that break into my head constantly like an uninvited and unexpected guest.  And sometimes ... a few days later when I think I am going to break, I realize that I am having an episode.  But it doesn't matter.  It can't be stopped.

One such episode lead me to hide money in the back of my wallet.  My plan was to use this money for the good of my self improvement.  To make myself look more appealing, I guess.  I started researching diet drugs.  Not good stuff, but the kind of shit I could but at Wal-Mart without any notice of money disappearing to such a thing.  I had to keep this a secret.  After reading a lot of polarizing reviews, I decided that I would buy some green tea extract pills.  I could get an entire bottle for around ten bucks and they would last a full week.  My thought process was that if I was thinner, I could gain muscle tone a little easier.  And look more like the sort of person that my wife would be interested in.

Day one: I took the suggested amount of two pills in place of breakfast.  By the time lunch rolled around, I was abosolutely starving.  But the energy was a real rush.  After a couple of days of sneaking these pills into my routine the weight started falling off at about a pound a day.  Meanwhile, I entered the "manic" phase of my manic depressive episodes.  The feeling was sensational.

I found that caffiene pills excellerate whatever your mood happens to be at the moment.  At the height of the manic side of my manic/depression, it was great.  I took some for breakfast one morning, and then decided to skip lunch and have a couple more as a second meal.  Shortly after dinner I began sipping whiskey.  The rush of the caffiene coursing through my veins clashed with the deadening inhibitions from the alcohol and after about two hours of this happening in my body - I felt like Superman.  I could type faster than ever before, and without typos.  I could run, jump, cook, and clean faster.  Suffice to say, I could probably fuck better too.  And so I took a stab at arrousing my wife, who was just not feeling it.  By this point, the subtlty was probably taking a back seat to my caffiene rage - and she was probably looking at me with concern.  And I started to turn on myself ... and all those insecurities came creeping in.

The problem with a manic episode is that you cannot observe yourself behaving this way.

I once read a book by the Dalai Llama.  In it, he expresses the importance of treating your mind like a muscle.  It may seem like things are 'just happening' there in your brain, but it's important to remember that your brain can be controlled like every other part of your body.  It's dificult, but possible to be conscious of your thoughts (where they come from, how you react to things, etc).  In a manic episode, these controls go right out the window.

Suddenly I went from a caffiene fueled party mood to some of the absolute worst depression that I have ever experienced.  My wife and I were watching some awful movie that I had downloaded.  When I felt my 'mood' starting to slip, I walked into the kitchen for a glass of water and didn't bother to pause the movie.  Neither one of us wanted to prolong the credits.

It was raining that night, and the cool damp air was sneaking in through every open window.  I stepped onto our deck in my underware and leaned against the house to watch and listen as the raindrops fell into the dense woodsy area behind my neighbors house.  And then I slumped down there in the rain, realizing that I was alone and it was okay to let go.  And I wept, quietly and peacefully in the rain.

After 20 minutes or so, I was collecting myself and preparing to go back into the house when I saw the light come on inside of the back of my house.  I looked inside to see my daughter raiding the snack cabinet.  She looked out the back door to where I was standing on the deck and I gave her a little wave.  She then locked the door, flipped off the switch, and headed inside.  I guess she didn't see me there in the dark.  Oops.

40 minutes or so later, the rain picked up and I found myself fumbling to operate the electronic lock in the dead dark of night.  It was a hopeless effort.  And so I sort of leaned back and let the rain roar past me, shooting off my feet and dampening my underware from the ground up.  I so wanted to step out into the rain and let it wash over me.  But how would I explain this to my wife when she found me?   I don't want her to know I'm crazy.  Soon after than, the movie we had 'sort of been' watching had come to an end and she was coming out to smoke a cigarette when she found me there.

I explained that I had stepped out to watch the rain and was locked out.  But I sense that she sensed that I was experiencing some unpleasant thoughts.

The following morning, I made a conscious decision to stop taking the green tea pills.  I blamed the episode on the pills.  But I know now that the 'crash' that I experienced was just accellerated by the pills.  Not caused by them.

Over the next few days, I couldn't kick the wrestlessness.  I found myself laying in bed at night with a fire burning inside me.  I would put on a movie.  Wait for my wife to fall asleep, and then stare at the walls.  Some nights I would sneak out of bed and walk around the house for an hour or more staring out the windows.  The feelings of rejection are intolerable.  There are those moments that I am able to recognize the familiarity of what I am feeling.  I tell myself "you're in that place again - this is in your head - and it will pass like it always does".  But I can't imagine ever feeling better.

I recall one night that I was laying in bed staring at the Netflix screen.  I didn't really want to watch anything.  I considered slipping on my shoes and going for a walk, but it was very late.  And I knew if my wife woke up and caught me slipping out the back door she would probably want to have a conversation about it.  I went looking for something that I could put on that would feel 'right'.  Something short, and repetitive, and meaningless.  And then I found a "sample clip".  It was a loop that spanned several hours and the first 10 minutes or so was just a running fountain.  That was what I needed.  So I watched that sample clip up to the point that it switched to some guy running around trees, and then I would restart it to watch the fountain again.  And I did that for about two hours.  And then I grabbed a pillow, and I hugged it, and I pretended it was my wife.  And while she slept I laid weeping quietly into that poor pillow.

Every morning I awoke, and stared at myself in the mirror, and wondered if this was the end of it.  And every night I would come home and sip whiskey and force myself to be in bed by 10:00PM.  Because I knew that if I was still awake at midnight, it would be that much more dificult to get to sleep.  And then the day came where I caught myself being energetic at work.  I had engulfed myself in a project.  I was now two hours into this long thoughtless process that would probably take days to complete.  And even while I recognized this as a manic episode, I knew that the period of depression was finally over.

It seems that as I get older, these swings of mania and depression get closer together.  Like a clock pendulum that is starting to tick faster each day.  Or a sine wave where sometimes the tides and valleys almost touch one another with no space for normalty inbetween.

And that's all I have to say about that today.