Recovery

June 30th

Boy, am I looking forward to therapy today! It is much needed after a couple weeks of some pretty intense nightmares and daytime stress.

I have about an hour before my session, and had an appointment about a half hour earlier, so rather than drive home only to head out again right away, I stopped by a local lake to write for a while and maybe walk barefoot through the sand on the beach. It's summer, and two things that have been lacking from my summer life could be addressed if I started coming here more often: tanning and swimming. I tan ridiculously easily and rarely burn, and I will always look for an excuse to get some more vitamin D (really can't sing its praises enough), so long as it's even and not only my arms that show it. And swimming. Swimming. I'm by no means a great swimmer, but there is something so freeing about being in the water and playing like a kid. I want to stop by the beach before I go, and plan on writing more after my session, so I'll have to check out the spot that's watched by the lifeguard and see what it's like.

Something I've noticed after long or heavy bouts of/with depression is when they start to recede, and I feel like myself again, it strongly resembles the recovery time after a cold. I feel tired from tearing myself apart for some time, I forget how to do simple things (with a cold, it's usally breathing without a stuffed nose or a wicked cough; with depression, it's working out or enjoying some down time), and I feel like there's a chance I could pass it along to someone else if I'm not careful. I find it amazing that people have been around me without catching it, or at least without catching it to the same severity I had. Say what you will about most communicable diseases, but in my experience, depression is the worst unofficial one. Think about it: the symptoms of it affect its subject so completely that it distorts their reality and everyone connected to it; long-term exposure to it wears down the immune system, usually leading to more dis-ease, especially in the physical body; and mostly, a person in a funk can so quickly taint a room or a space that is shared with others.

I'm going to take a break for now and wander over to the beach before my session. Write more later.

*******

July 1st

Well. Guess the day got away from me!

Turns out the swimming section of the lake is mostly for little kids, and is so small that I could stand at its deepest section and have half my body still above water. Eh. Not worth it.

Good session with my therapist. With so much happening in the over the last two weeks, it was a relief to get the emotional residue out of my system. I'm heading over to a temp agency that I've worked with before later this morning, and will hopefully have a placement soon so I can get money coming back in. That will free up a lot for me, and may help me figure out what my next step is when it comes to getting what I want. I also have to finish my resume and headshot for my agency in Denver, because I've put that off for about a month now, and the sooner I finish it and send it in, the better.

For fun, I saw "Jurassic World" last night. Nothing like a blockbuster to take your mind off things! It's pretty hard to be stressed about your daily life when you're burying your face into the crook of your arm to protect you from squealing at the dinosaur that is about to eat a crouched security tech.

Part of the EMDR technique is a tool called Light Stream, which was something that I was coached through yesterday. I'm going to write more about it later, but for now I'll say that it's brought up emotion regarding a theme that has been present in my life for a long time now: where I fit in in the grand scheme of things. Like I said, that's for another entry.

Distorted Thinking

Taking action when you have depression can quickly become the hardest thing known to man or beast. It's one thing to recognize when you have a problem and understand how it's affecting you and identify the means to change that problem into something that brings you good things instead of keeping you in a box of misery with more depression oozing down its sides. It is another thing entirely to try making those changes.

A few years ago, when I hit my absolute lowest, I did make several changes: for the first time since I was a teenager, I tried medication; I altered my diet by going Paleo (or as Paleo as I could afford); I opted for HIIT workouts, so that I would lose weight I was dragging around and gain strength and flexibility; I changed the nature of my relationship with some people I knew to be toxic. These changes were marvelous, and while they took time to impliment and time to see the results, I noticed.

Most of these lifestyle changes stuck well for a long time, but in the last few months, I've noticed how lax I have been with almost all of them. I worked hard to get off medication, and use a large daily dose of vitamin D to keep myself steady chemically. I also added a small dose of melatonin each night to help me feel drowsy and actually want to go to sleep, because insomnia plays a HUGE role in my depression. But I've become very lazy with the others, especially my workouts. As a result, I've gained back twenty pounds that I thought I had eliminated for good.

Here's the tricky part: I see this as failure. Instead of knowing I have changed myself before and can likely do it again, I see that I tried to get better and it didn't last, so it therefore did not work, period. That's dangerous. It leads to thoughts of having to start over, and "why should I try if I'm just going to screw up again", and "I'm not worth it if I'm going to fail". My therapist calls this "distorted thinking", and encourages me to take a moment when these come up and challenge the thought process. I've been doing this consistantly for over a year, and it's effective. It's just overwhelming at times to see how deeply that distorted thinking has woven into my life, knowing that at some point, I have to challenge all that has been warped. It's like relearning my entire life.

Today, I have at least three things that I want to accomplish: a good workout, a perosnal project, and possibly time to keep training my new dog to get over her fear of a bath. It's about 12:30pm now, so that gives me a little under 12 hours to go these things. Let's see how it goes!

The Next Step

For me, a big part of having depression means constantly second guessing myself and feeling like a failure. I can get bogged down in a quagmire of doubt and self-loathing so quickly that I sometimes can't retrace the steps that got me into said quagmire in the first place.

I live in Colorado. I hate living in Colorado. I grew up in Michigan, and most of my family (myself included) is from Ohio, and many of my friends and extended family are still in that area. I've been trying to make good choices while living out here, but as of right now, every single one of them seems to have fallen apart, taking my confidence and self-esteem with them and shattering them into pieces of grit that could have been scattered anywhere by now. I'm at a point where I feel like I need to take a chance on myself and make a big change, most likely, a move; Colorado was a family decision, and this would be my own choice, something I should have done ten years ago. Trouble is, I have no idea how to do it. I'm scrambling for solutions, and that's making me feel even more terrible.

Over the last couple days, I've had conversations with a few family members about what I should do, but they dissolve into pointing out what's wrong with me or where I've made mistakes, and I end up feeling worse than ever. I am the first one to admit that I am harsher on myself than bleach on mold. My family is not any better. It might come from a place of love and concern, but it has never helped.

What I really want, and I ashamed to admit it, is money. Right now, money is freedom. I feel so trapped, and working the jobs that are available to me will only keep me stuck. I want enough to make an investment in my future.

Bad Dreams, But Good News

Last night, I swam through a body of water that was haunted by the ghost of a Victorian-era girl that was drowned by her guardian when she refused to be his lover, and the ghosts of subsequent girls that this man tried to take on as his ward-with-benefits with deadly results. Very Sweeny Todd feeling, very Guillermo Del Toro in the look of the dream. And that was after the portion of the dream where I slept with my former roommate, an overweight and unattractive man that thought if he paid for things, I would love him. I still have no idea why I slept with him in my dream, because it sure as shit never happened in real life, and even in the dream, I felt horrible, in fact pressured, into it. After swimming through the watery graves of decaying murdered girls, while I was naked (something that seems to be coming up a lot lately), I ended up in a creek that was much more shallow and I was terrified to touch its bed because I thought I'd be scraping through bones. I let the current take me a bit further, and stopped in a spot with smoother sand while Old Roommate picked the fragments of bodies and waterlogged Victorian lace off my crouched and naked figure. That was more than enough of a reason to wake the hell up! (And the sex was bad, too.)

And then I checked Facebook. So many friends and family members absolutely ecstatic about the Supreme Court ruling on ending the ban on gay marriage that it's nearly impossible not to feel some of their joy rub off on me. It's gratifying to know that as of today, I no longer live in a country that legally defines love for its citizens by saying who can commit and have it recognized by any governing body in the union and who can't. As a straight ally, it feels glorious to know that my friends and my relatives that have been in committed relationships for years and have children and work just as hard to keep their marriages going as any straight couple you'd ever meet are being recognized as the people that they are... people! People that have just as much of a right to declare their love as anyone else.

And, news from my mom, family friends of ours are celebrating the birth of twin girls! My mom and this family's matriach have been friends since high school and have lived near each other in three different states. The daughter, who is a few years older than me, has three kids from her first marriage, a marriage that was disasterous on so many levels. She remarried the sweetest guy, who included her kids in their ceremony and actually had vows for each one of the three, giving them special necklaces as he promised to be there for them. Their girls, Noelle and Nora, were born three weeks early this morning, a little under weight and one needing oxygen, but otherwise healthy and ready to go, fully cooked and no longer gooey in the middle!

With depression, there are times that hearing the good news of others feels like I'm in hell and everyone else gets to have cupcakes. It's difficult to be genuinely happy for people that are important to me because I am so far removed from feeling happiness myself. Not today. Today, there is so much good news surrouding me that I will have no trouble feeling the positive stick. Believe it or not, but these good days are just as much a part of depression as the bad days, and it can be an arduous task finding the good, but it is so worth it.

Now Look At Me Like You Love Me

Oh, "Will & Grace". Your brilliance in getting Michael Douglas dancing around like a loon and making moves on Will is highly appreciated after several hours of bad dreams. "Woof".

Alright. What's on for today? I can feel the sprints I did yesterday, that's for sure. Thank sweet merciful God for arnica gel and stretches. Beautiful summer weather means I will likely do another workout outside. That will provide much needed relief, because at some point I have to make two rather uncomfortable phone calls wherein I have to be immovable, and that's tough when my self-esteem is as strong as a building foundation made of Jell-o.

The past few nights have generated some intense nightmares that are hard to stop. I know that my brain has plenty of anger and disappointment stored in it, and at night those emotions are overflowing their bounds. During the day, I'm struggling with my job (or lately, lack thereof, since my boss isn't giving me any projects to work on), and I'm trying to figure out what the next step should be when my career goals are so far away from where I am now, they might as well be on Neptune. I'm also in the process of writing a letter to a family member that has had too much of a negative influence on me, but I know how this person responds to me, and the precaution of anticipating all the holes they'll poke into my arguments and the mistakes I've made in the past that will be thrown in my face out of self-defence are making this letter nearly impossible to write. Training a new dog is going well... right up to the moment that she sees a squirrel, and her leash slices skin out of my fingers. All of this emotional blech in my daylight hours translates to nightmares of having my car broken into and threatening the guy that did it with running him through with my umbrella while I try (and miserably fail) to call 911, or seeing a report that five friends from high school died in a terrorist attack on a plane flying to France, or being naked in a glass-walled bathroom while I'm yelled at and laughed at by the recipient of my letter project.

I have a therapy session next week, which is something I am really looking forward to because we're using a different technique called EMDR. It's become a good habit to remind myself of what's coming up and why variations in my life are better than stale repitition, and I find myself doing this several times a week. Far better than dwelling on the crap. The next phase in treatment will add a couple new tricks to sorting through painful subjects and changing my reactions to them.

For the remainder of the day, I am going to make some efforts to be tough. A fast-moving thunderstorm means my workout will have to be altered, but that's more than okay-- I have a hard time being bored with thunderstorms. Time to make those phone calls.

It's A Start

Okay. Here we go...

For most of my life, I have lived with Major Depressive Disorder, including and especially the times when I didn't even want to be alive. And somehow, I am still here. I have done medication, therapy, dietary changes, exercise, acupuncture, chiropractic, massage therapy, Reiki, and the occasional chocolate binge and movie marathon. Some days, though, I can find the virtue of the straightjacket and the padded walls-- I mean, what could be so bad with giving yourself a constant hug and being able to bounce around like a Weeble?

So why am I writing this blog? Because I need a different way to get some of this garbage out of my head. The therapist I'm working with right now is great, but his schedule is so tight that I rarely get in more than twice a month. I've been off medication successfully for almost a year, and supplementing with vitamin D, which has been marvelously helpful, but I feel like I've been plateauing for a few months. Therapy and regulating body chemistry have been steady forms of treatment for me since I was 14, and I know their benefits to be worth the time and the tears. I've been working out hard again, with lots of sprints and shin splints, and it feels good to tire out from something that's going to keep me healthy rather than tire out from pure mental exhaustion.

I plan to make this a consistent part of my day/week, so I'm going to end this entry and get back to my newly revamped book list. I will end with the thoughts I had while taking my dog to the dog park, right as I looked up and caught a rainbow to the east and a storm cell filled with lightning to the south: I want to matter. I want to feel loved by people I love. I want to feel like what I want to achieve with my life is not so audacious and impossible that I should regret even having the balls to want it. I want to work for the things I want, but not have to stand under Niagara Falls and beg it to go up in order for me to have my work pay off and last.

And I really want some ice cream. Oh, Phish Food, where are you...?