Category : depression

Rewriting the Story, Part 2

A little nerd history: Champions, a superhero tabletop role-playing game, was one of the first RPGs to have characters that were created by spending an allotment of points, instead of rolling dice to randomly determine characteristics. You could get more points to spend on your character’s attributes and powers by taking disadvantages. The disadvantages could be things like having a secret identity or being hunted by a particular organization or villain. They could also be physical limitations, like being blind or having a heart condition, or psychological limitations, like having a severe phobia or depression. Disadvantages were only worth points if they caused real complications in the game, so if having a secret identity didn’t really matter to the story, it wasn’t worth any points. But having a physical or mental condition that got in the way of your character living a “normal” life? That would give you points you could spend to have better superpowers.

I’ve written about how growing up with ADHD–and living with cyclothymia and anxiety on top of that–can do a pretty fantastic job of screwing with your self-esteem. I recently had to leave work early because I got hit with a migraine, something I’m prone to (like my brother, my mother, my grandmother)(yay, genetics!). Because I’ve had to miss work due to anxiety attacks and depressive episodes, missing work when I’m physically ill makes me feel guilty. It’s not enough I miss work because I’m crazy, I also have to miss work because I’m frail? As I drove home that day, my sunglasses didn’t just shield my migrainey eyes from the too-bright sun, they hid my tears. I was letting my co-workers down. I was failing everyone. Because my brain and my body are broken.

But what if I’m not broken? What if that’s not my story? What if…?

My girlfriend recently posted this piece by Bunmi Laditan to my Facebook wall. It resonated so strongly with me, I cried reading it. And this part was like a flash of lightning in my mind, illuminating everything I’ve been thinking about lately:

People with mental issues, I’m talking to you. I know we’re in mixed company with the normals, but this for you. What if we’re special? Yes, it hurts. Yes, we get sad. Yes, we’re tired of being in body that tortures us regularly, but what if we’re special? What if there’s a reason?

I don’t want to bring Marvel into this because DC Comics is superior, but what if we’re like X-Men? Take Cyclops. He has to wear those special glasses or he’d burn holes in everything with his laser eyes which must be hard, but he’s also used them to save lives on missions. And Rogue. She hated her ability to absorb powers and longed to be able to do simple things like touch her boyfriend without possibly harming him, but through her interactions with Wolverine and Magneto, we all learned how amazing her gift is. Eventually, she learned how to hone and better control it.

What if we’re like that? What if our brains that cause us so much torment, have hidden potential. What if we’re special?

(For the record, I don’t think DC Comics is superior to Marvel. I’m an equal opportunity fanboy.)

And so. What if my depressive and hypomanic episodes, what if my anxiety and panic attacks, what if my lack of time sense, my distractibility, what if all of those things are side effects of my superpowers? What if I need the points from those disadvantages in order to have my talents and powers as good as they are? What if I would be too much awesome for people to handle if I didn’t also have to deal with my mental health issues?

I know I’m tired of feeling broken, fucked-up, a failure. I know I’m tired of seeing so much of who I am as a negative. I know I’m tired of apologizing for being daydreamy, talkative, socially anxious, loud and dramatic, imaginative and unrealistic, nonlinear, and emotionally sensitive. I know I’m tired of beating myself up for not being “normal” when I’ve never really wanted to be “normal.” I want to be a superhero. And being a superhero means accepting your weaknesses as well as your strengths. It means realizing that your disadvantages just make your advantages more amazing.

I’m ready for my story to be amazing.

8-04-2016 |

Self-Diagnostic 2

I’ve written about going off of my anti-depressant and how I tend to get summer seasonal depression, so I thought I’d do another self-check to see how I’m handling all of this opposite-of-thrills-and-pills, and then write about it because that’s what this blog is for.

Short answer: I’m doing okay.

Longer answer: I woke up last Friday feeling exhausted, groggy, cranky. I’d gone to bed at a decent hour the night before, and I slept well through the night, but I was having a hard time waking up and was feeling petulant about having to wake up at all. I’d been feeling that way all week, waking up feeling sleepy and grumpy (and probably dopey, too), wanting to go to sleep almost as soon as I got home from work. But on Friday morning, I felt this sudden out-of-body, looking-at-myself-from-the-outside experience and I thought, “Oh, duh! I’m depressed!” Then I wondered if I should call my doctor and ask to go back on the ol’ Celexa. But unlike in the past, I can recognize that this is depression, it doesn’t feel anywhere near as bad as it has in the past when I’ve been unmedicated, I’m still on my mood stabilizer, I have a psychological toolkit to deal with it, and I know it won’t last.

Seeing it, identifying it, and viewing it as a relatively small thing that I can handle made me feel strong, stronger than the depression itself. I’ve usually felt overwhelmed by it (and I still feel overwhelmed by my anxiety more often than not), so it’s pretty fucking great to feel…if not underwhelmed, at least, um, whelmed. Take that, depression!

Whelmed

In other self-care news: I still haven’t found regular exercise that I’ve been able to get myself to do, but seeing as how I’m dealing with a medication change and my least favorite season, I’m not beating myself up about it (too much). I installed the Google Fit app on my phone, set-up a daily goal of 30 minutes of walking exercise, and have hit that goal at least one day a week just by working a typical day at the library. I’m aiming to level up to hitting that 30 minute goal more often by walking around more during the day, but that probably won’t happen until the weather gets cooler.

But even a little progress is progress, and I’m happy with that.

7-19-2016 |

A Season in Heck

I have a tendency to forget that summer is the worst time of year for my depression. I think it’s a combination of me not dealing well with heat and humidity, an increase in daylight hours, and my allergies getting worse. Maybe it’s just that this time of year plays havoc with my brain chemistry more than other seasons do. I talk a lot about not liking summer, but it’s often only when I’m deep in the muck of bad mood swings, melancholy, lethargy, anhedonia, and a difficulty reading and writing with any consistency that I remember that summer is my kryptonite.

This weekend, I did my usual hanging out at my local, favorite coffee shop, where I do a lot of my writing. I skimmed a few chapters of a few different books, I wrote a few lines of poetry, but I mostly sat in front of my laptop and…just stared. I’d bop around on Twitter and Facebook, read some entries on TVTropes, and then go back to trying to write and not writing anything. I got home on Sunday evening and felt…I’m tempted to say “awful,” but it was really more like “MEH.” I couldn’t even get my emotions cranked up enough to be upset at not having written anything. I felt blue, but it was a beige kind of blue.

But then the sun went down, and I sat down at the desk in my living room and said to myself, “Self, how about you don’t write anything, you just…write nothing. Nothing of consequence, nothing of sense. Don’t try to write. Instead, play a game. A game called ‘automatic writing.'” I opened a new browser window (instead of opening a new tab, because a new window meant I could obscure my other browser window and not see if I was getting new emails or new Facebook notifications or be otherwise distracted), went to 750 Words, and just started typing furiously, whatever came into my head. I stopped at 758 words and realized I felt good. Not great, but good. Good enough for a summer Sunday night. Better than the beigey blue I’d felt before. It was the brain equivalent of feeling physically better after getting up and exercising. Maybe I’ll do something more with what I produced through automatic writing, maybe I won’t. The result isn’t the point, just the doing.

When my strength and energy are being sapped by the kryptonite of summer, I’ll take whatever constructive and creative salves I can get, and I think automatic writing is one of those. So lap on with the swordfish underpants of thine most instructive dessert and high tide the coconut dragoons exclusively pitterpatted with sticky buns!

7-12-2016 |

Up and at ‘Em

I’ve been meditating for years. Not consistently, mind you. I always intend to do it consistently, but for one reason or another it always ends up being a sporadic thing. If there’s one thing I’m consistent at, it’s being sporadic.

I know there are physiological reasons why meditation can help with depression and anxiety, and it just plain feels good to do it regularly. But I got to thinking recently that for someone with ADHD, sitting still for long periods of time may be, in a certain sense, fighting against the tide instead of surfing it. I wondered if perhaps a more active form of meditation would work better for me. And then it dawned on me: “active meditation” is a way of describing physical exercise.

Here’s a thing: in the past 10 years, I’ve put on about 50 pounds. Every time I see my doctor, I’ve put on another pound or two. I’m not close to being morbidly obese and I know that weight is not equal to health. Still, I’d like to lose a little weight, if only for my self-esteem (that weird, fragile thing that sits on my shoulder and whispers things good and bad into my ear), and I’m very clearly out of shape.

So I need to exercise regularly. As much as my lazy, sofa-loving, PE-hating self would like to deny it, if I want to lower my slightly-too-high blood pressure, decrease my expanding belly and chin, not get out of breath walking up a flight of stairs, and develop a meditation that uses the gift of my energy, I need to exercise regularly.

I should mention that after I spent a day walking all over the convention center at Planet Comicon, my muscles were sore for a few days…but in a way that felt good. Which encourages me to get into a regular exercise routine. But there are some psychological issues that are putting up barriers to exercising.

Mostly, it’s kind of a social anxiety thing. I feel very, very self-conscious and uncomfortable exercising where other people can see me. The thought of going to a gym terrifies me, even if accompanied by a friend. Even the thought of going for a walk around my neighborhood makes me feel weird enough that I find it terribly hard to motivate myself to get up off of my ass and move. I’ve done some yoga before, but I can’t afford to take actual yoga classes and, again, the thought of doing it around other people makes me uncomfortable.

I don’t want to let my anxiety and neurosis stop me from exercising when I know–I know–that it’s good for me and will make me feel better in a bunch of different ways. But I also don’t want to push myself so hard that it colors the exercise experience a dismal grey. It’s just too easy to give up, so I need to find a way to get exercise that’s comfortable and fun and makes me want to stick with it.

6-07-2016 |

Sly Cares Excel

I recently went off one of my meds. I mean, I didn’t just stop taking it cold turkey, flushing the leftover pills down the toilet. I’m not that crazy and reckless. But after being on a mood stabilizer (Lamictal) for almost three years and dealing with anxiety and hypomanic episodes far more than depressive episodes, I decided I wanted to wean myself off of my antidepressant (Celexa), which I’d been on for almost eight years. My doctor and my therapist both agreed that this made sense, so over a course of three months, I slowly reduced my dosage and have been completely off of it for a couple of weeks now. While I was tapering off of it, I didn’t notice any adverse side effects (and I noticed one good side effect, an increase in libido, which the Celexa had been messing with since I started taking it), and now that I’m 100% off of it, I feel as good as I did when I was on it. Maybe even a little better, which I assume is because the mood stabilizer regulates the cyclothymic swing between depression and hypomania better without the added antidepressant in the stew.

Well, except for one thing. I don’t know if this is a side effect of going off the Celexa, I haven’t found anything online that mentions this, but…everything, and I mean everything, brings tears to my eyes. I watch the season finale of The Flash, I bawl. I watch the season finale of Arrow, I get all choked up. I watch the season finale of The Flash again and I get blubbery A-GAIN. Movies, commercials, the teary confession of a teen contestant on So You Think You Can Dance, my daughter ending her first year in college with an A average, it all makes me cry. Not sad crying, just “Oh my god, this is so moving!” crying. I’ve always been easily moved to tears, but this is pretty extreme even for me.

Maybe it’s not fallout from the Celexa. Maybe my emotions are just riding high these days. I think the obvious answer is: going off the Celexa is making my emotions run higher than they have in quite a while. As side effects go, it could certainly be a lot worse. I’d rather cry a lot over things that move me than experience “the zaps” that I’ve read about–or have a surge of depression come at me. I’m definitely not complaining.

But if you see me, maybe offer me a tissue before you tell me about your beloved pet dying or about the wonderful thing your partner did for you recently or before you show me a particularly pretty flower. I’ll probably need it.

5-31-2016 |

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