Human

^{**Trigger Warning**
This post contains descriptions and personal experiences of severe clinical depression. I’m including this content in order to demonstrate to others that they are not alone and educate those who do not understand true depression.}

Because apparently, trigger warnings are a thing we do now.

I’ve been quiet, I’m aware. Nearly 2 months of quiet, but I have my reasons. I don’t know if they are good reasons but that would be why I qualified “reasons” with “my”.

I’m fairly certain this will not be a funny post, but it will be real and at the end of the day, that’s really all I want to accomplish with this. Writing to be funny again is something I aspire to. It’s something I used to do with a fair amount of ease and a skill I seem to have lost for the most part, so I guess “funny” is more of a goal than the point of this blogging exercise.

My depression has been kicking my ass lately. I don’t know how many of you can relate to this, but statistics indicate that there are more of you that can than most people are aware. Maybe some of you relate because you suffer from Seasonal Depression, which is pretty common during the fall and winter months around the big holidays. The weather effects depression. Significant losses or other traumatic events that occur during the holidays are more enhanced because of them happening near the holidays. Finding yourself having to associate with family members that you’d rather not, happen during the holidays.

I mean, if we’re being honest, we celebrate the holidays at a really shitty time of year, don’t you think?

Think about it.

If we celebrated Thanksgiving in August, we could have our family gatherings in the back yard. Big ‘ol turkey in the smoker. Baked ‘taters wrapped in foil on the grill with some corn on the cob. Stuffing and green bean casserole baking in the kitchen. No table with everyone crammed into too small a space, just everyone hangin’ out in lawn chairs with heavy duty paper plates full of grub (or those wicker paper plate holders from the 70’s/80’s, remember those), sitting with who you want rather than with every asshole ever that you’re related to, some of those relations being highly questionable. That one jackass that ruins the holiday every. goddamn. year. experiences a premature death immediately following a “Watch’is ya’ll!” incident and then once the coroner leaves, it’s time for pie.

As for Christmas, enough people are already celebrating it in July, so just leave it there. No literature in any form, from any time frame, written by anybody, states that Jesus Christ was born on December 25th, for those of you that believe such a creature existed. Then all you have to do is adjust the story of Rudolph so that his red, glowing nose comes from severe pollen allergies, give December 25th back to the pagans that it belonged to to begin with so they can celebrate Saturnalia in peace, and poof, Christmas in July and then it’s still just 1 month before you have to see your whole mental institution of a family again at the August Thanksgiving barbecue.

Leave Halloween the fuck alone. It’s right where it’s supposed to be.

Seasonal Depression is a real thing and I completely empathize with those of you that suffer from it, and at the same time, it irritates me that ya’ll get to have a REASON to be depressed. Clinical Depression, which is my documented diagnosis, is a bit of a different animal, and when you tack on the comorbidity with social anxiety, it becomes exponentially worse.

Don’t misunderstand me, I have a few hundred reasons to be depressed. Maybe 4 of them are valid, but not really the point. In most of my depressive events, there is no reason for it at all. It just . . . . is. It doesn’t care what season it is or what holiday is coming up or even if there is a holiday coming up. It doesn’t care if my life is falling apart or if everything in life is going exactly as it should. It doesn’t care that I have friends and family that are concerned and want the best for me. Depression doesn’t care about anything at all.

It just . . . . is.

One of the most frustrating things about it are the people who tell you they understand it and that they “get it” and “want to be there for you”, then they see it at its very worst and then they go “well I don’t know what the fuck that’s all about” and bail out and leave you hanging. It happens more than you think and has happened to me even fairly recently, by someone I cared about very deeply. I don’t think I need to tell you, but I will anyway, that doesn’t help matters at all. When things like that happen during a depressive “episode” (another term the docs seem to enjoy), it makes things much worse and to those on the outside it looks like the original reason for said “episode”, when it isn’t. The episode had already begun prior to the event. For no reason. Just, one day, I’m depressed, and it sticks. Often for weeks, and nothing caused it.

It just . . . . is.

I am but a collection of particles. Atoms that choose to suffer in unison.

-Shawn Coss

I’ll do my best to tell you exactly what it feels like. I don’t know how eloquent it will be, but it will be truth and any one of you that also suffers from depression will spend a lot of time going, “Holy shit! Yup! That’s exactly it!”, but this isn’t really meant for you. It’s meant for those of you that don’t suffer in the hopes that maybe you truly will begin to “get it”, or at the very least, understand it when someone close to you is suffering.

I’m going to personify it a little bit and describe it as an unwelcome guest that moves into your head surreptitiously and starts removing little pieces of joy, one at a time. A kind of mental poltergeist with a dark, sick sense of humor. In my case, one of my favorite things to do became a chore – cooking. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to try anything new just to see if I could and it became a thing I had to do just to sustain life, so I resorted to “quick and easy” stuff, and then only once a day, if that, so yeah, just eating became a chore too, so I didn’t do it as much. This turns into a complete lack of energy. When I’m not in bed, I’m on the couch watching television or playing a video game. Ordinarily, I’ll play a game while talking to my brother or son online, but I didn’t want to talk to anyone at this point. Just left alone to play and not anything really fun, just an obsessive thing about completing a game I had never completed, even if it’s repetitive as hell.

At that point, I have become aware that the poltergeist has moved in and there is nothing I can do about it so he just starts wreaking havoc. I pick an “issue of the day” to be depressed about. One day it’s the frustration of not being able to find a job that won’t disqualify me for disability. The next day it’s the frustration that it’s going to be a year before I even hear anything from disability and the fact that they won’t let me earn more than $1500 a month until they make a decision, making the job search even more difficult.

Other days, it’s just stupid shit. These are fun. The kitchen floor is nasty and needs to be swept and mopped, something I am capable of doing but completely unmotivated to do, so instead I’m just going to lie on the couch and be irritated by my kitchen floor, or the pile of laundry on the loveseat that I meant to fold – a week and a half ago. Other days I just feel like oxygen is being loud and is just out to destroy me, a solid indicator that I’ve been moved into a “just fuck off” phase.

Eventually, there’s just nothing. No motivation. No enthusiasm. No . . . . feeling. Existing on the most basic of levels. To say that I feel “meh” would be overstating it. Either on the couch or in bed and the effort to move from one to the other is something I have to build up to until I finally force myself to do it, unless I don’t and I just stay there. I don’t eat and I’m not hungry either. My sleep “schedule” (in quotes because I am using that term VERY loosely) becomes a wreckage. At one point, I was awake for 72 hours straight and it wasn’t an effort, I just wasn’t tired, until into the 73rd hour somewhere I started to hallucinate both visually and audibly and finally put my ass to bed where I slept for 14 hours. It was right after that that I went into a sort-of schedule of 36 hours awake, 12 asleep. In the last 36 hours, I have been asleep for 24 of them, which means I’ll probably be up all night tonight. I don’t have dreams and I don’t have nightmares. They are something in between, except for one instance in mid January where I had a nightmare so profound that it had me shaken for 3 days, for the most part they are just jarring enough to startle me awake but I don’t remember what it was about.

This week, I’ve been missing my dog, Rocky. I mean, I always miss him, but this week, more than usual. I wake up a little bit in the middle of the night and swear he is curled up against me so I reach up to pet his head and he’s not there and I startle awake. Tears welled up in my eyes just typing that sentence, so yeah, it’s been rough this week. For those of you who don’t know about Rocky, check out my post “Too Much Time On My Hands” from October.

I’ve been telling myself for a month that I need to sit down and write and get this shit out of my head and each time I’ve said to myself, “Ok, I’ll do it tomorrow.” I guess the 37th (or whatever) “tomorrow” is the charm and I honestly forced myself to do it. I know once I start writing, it will come out and it will be fine and the rest will come easily, it’s the getting started part that requires the most effort.

In short, Clinical Depression – I hesitate to call it “my” depression because I am not alone in having it, isn’t caused by an event or a feeling or another person. It is caused by everything and nothing all at the same time and it is absolutely debilitating. The chemical imbalance in the brain is still a mystery to those that treat it and all they can do is throw different chemicals back at the bad chemicals until 1 or 2 of them stick and help the issue. None of them cures it, they just make it a little better. Sometimes. Not always. The depression events still occur. They are just not always as severe and maybe don’t last as long. Then sometimes, it doesn’t work at all, like this time. It happens no matter what you do to prevent it. No amount of medication can stop it sometimes. It will beat you down anyway.

It just . . . . is.

I’ve been reading a book, which is both a book and an art collection written and drawn by a fellow sufferer to help let people know and educate them about various mental health issues. As another who suffers from depression, he gave one of the best descriptions of what depression feels like that I have ever read and the illustration he drew to go along with it was perfect. I highly recommend the book and his website where you can buy it as well as other items – Any Means Necessary His name is Shawn Coss and the book is called “It’s All In Your Head”. You can also buy prints of his artwork.

Shawn’s description – “It’s a terrible mix of self-doubt, insecurities, fear and sadness with no origin, like millions of rain drops pouring down, except each drop weighs 10 pounds.”

His description is absolutely spot-on, but what really stabbed me in the chest when I read it, was “with no origin”.

It really does come from out of nowhere and it is a hateful, cruel, vengeful and most notably, persistant disease. There is a reason it is a qualifying criteria for disability.

This time I had the presence of mind to let my counselor and my psychiatrist know that I was (and still am if I’m being honest) in a dark place and I didn’t know how to get out. At least they had sense enough not to ask me what it stemmed from because they know the deal although they did ask me what my stressors were and I described all the same stressors I had when I was not (or much less) depressed. I have not always had that presence of mind and have chosen less responsible ways to battle the darkness, or give in to it.

A third medication is going to be the approach. I await its arrival in the mail and it’s not here yet so it’s premature to say whether or not it will work. Maybe if we stack enough meds on, eventually I’ll just become an emotionless entity, neither happy nor sad, just performing the normal daily operations required. I hope not but that possibility has been observed in other cases. I feel like that would cause me to lose my creativity and steal away the small joys I have in life like cooking good food, listening to my 80’s vinyl and sitting here, writing. I’ll sit here with my fingers crossed and hope 40 mg of Lurasidone (Latuda, for those of you that watch too much TV and know the commercial with the lady and her smile on a stick) a day will be the answer, because 450 mg of buproprion and 60 mg of buspirone a day isn’t effective enough.

Why not. There’s always room for more pills.

This will pass, eventually, and things will return to the regular, fucked up “normal” that I’m accustomed to where I get up and do things. For now, I’m just holding on, waiting for that shithead poltergeist to get bored and move out.

I mean, he has to everntually. Right?!

I love all of ya’ll. It’s me I have a problem with.

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^{If you suspect you have a disorder or find yourself struggling in day-to-day life and need help, contact a mental health professional. If you’re thinking about suicide, are worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available across the United States at 1-800-273-8255}

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