Tag Archives: depression

Listening to the Silence

23 Tuesday May 2017

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I have left my noisy urban home for a few days, and am now in a very quiet place. All I can hear other than my own little noises is the dripping of my friend’s cat bowl, which makes a teeny recycling fountain to keep the water fresher. Strange to tell, instead of being relaxing, all this stillness has done is underscore my own disquiet, which I tend to keep buried like a secret shame.

When I realized Things were burbling up from my inner cesspool, I opted to turn off Pandora and stay with the cat bowl and what I call “microcries:” bursts of blubbering that last about 15 to 30 seconds. It’s sort of like crying constipation–that’s all I can get out at a time, although I feel myself to be a very cistern of tears.

As previously noted, I’m a random crier at the best of times, and I’m getting closer to deciphering why, or at least a maybe-why. I think that when it’s triggered by something heartwarming, it’s because my heart is in reality feeling cold and lonely; if the trigger is heroism, I am afraid that I myself am weak and helpless.

I do many things. I sing, draw, make jewelry, mother, befriend, love. But I feel as tottery at most of it as I do when my physical therapist cajoles me into trying to stand on just my right leg. (Almost everybody is a little lopsided at this, but I’m a champ at lop.) The only thing I really have is the writing. The sheeping writing, which fails to make me any money or gain me any renown, and which will likely continue to fail to do either.

All I am is the writing. That’s what’s at the bottom, behind the tears, underneath the depression, and despite the failure.

During this quiet afternoon, I went to the extent of Asking for a Sign, first in what passes in me for silent meditation, and then just talking out loud. So many people tell confident stories of hearing a Voice, either from outside or within–why not me? Although my faith isn’t what I’d call strong, my belief in the possibility of a Higher Power is stronger than my fear that #45 will turn America into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and that’s something, isn’t it? But nobody came to my outreaching self-pity party, leaving me to confront what I have, what I know.

Perhaps all I’m really for is the writing. Maybe one or two people will be reached by the words that start at my core and ooze from my fingertips. They will laugh, cry, feel less alone or freakish; they will feel a kindred spirit. My fiction will keep them company for a bit.

What I hear, what I know, is just the writing. And sometimes it is barely enough, but it remains.

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Back to the Grindstone

28 Saturday Nov 2015

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Now that the pleasant obsessive flurry of NaNoWriMo is over (at least for me, ha ha!) I went back to Max, who needed a few stitches as I ported over the wrong version from the machine I needed to reformat last week. This meant tweaking all his agent files, including taking out scraps I just thought were stupid and the piece bragging about his sequel, which my main beta reader pointed out at length is pretty sucky and needs a lot of work.

All this took only about half an hour, and yet my brain hurts and I’m tired. Why? At which point does writing click over from being fun to being work? That word again.

I think for me, at least part of it is tied into (let’s be honest here) my illness. I have no idea what part of my complex of diagnoses it is, but I have a morbid phobia of anything like filling out forms. I have a simple and important one going to the IRS out in the living room now. So far, I’ve filled in my name and the first part of my address. This form is not scary. In fact, seeing as it clears up a minor misunderstanding, it’s un-scary. But it makes me hyperventilate. I don’t know why. I can fill out forms for other people, but as soon as I’m involved, my gut tightens.

And, Best Beloveds, sending out query letters to agents is the worst sort of form-itis I know. I have a neuronormal writing buddy who can pump the things out like popcorn. I just don’t get it. It would be bad enough, knowing that 99.9% of all these people are going to reject me–and only about a third of them will be polite enough to tell me so–but they all want something a little different. And this makes my ADHD brain go into whimpers and curl into a fetal position. (Maybe the form phobia is just ADHD, mixed with the PTSD of having had to fill out SO many to get into The System.)

I just have to get to the bottom of my agent list, and then I can give up, admit I’m a professional publishing failure, and self-pub poor Max, who will then be bought and read by fewer people than have beta read him. Depressing or what? I know I have to change my attitude, but you see, it was a dream, back when I was brand new and naive. I thought of course I’d find an agent–I actually thought a Famous Professor from school would be glad to help me–and then I’d be catapulted to fame and fortune at last.

None of that happened, nor, statistically speaking, is it likely to. Depressing, or what?

Or what. I have to change my attitude. I’ve done it before; I can do it now. Sempers toujours, as Podkayne says.

 

 

 

 

Working and Playing

19 Thursday Nov 2015

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Sorry to be so silent for so long, but I’ve been grappling with a huge chunk of depression and writer’s block. I was half-afraid to even try to come here, expecting that it would just turn into a clod of whiny crud that I would only end up deleting at some point, the sooner the better.

My daughter, who is wise, has been telling me for several months now that I need to quit my day job. (Or at least the main one.) Being at heart a Worker Bee and a Brave Little Soldier, I resisted. Then my desktop computer in my office blew, and so did something in my brain. It wasn’t that I was using it for immoral purposes or anything; pretty much anything I did on it I could do in the receptionist area. But there was also this petty political foo-foo going on–and I finally realized that I hated my job.

Not when I showed up, partly because since my knee blew (more on that later), I’ve been using paratransit and that entrance is the one that doesn’t smell like pee. No, it would hit later in the day, after I’d put out the usual fires (when you’re the boss, even a little one, there are always fires). I used to live to put out fires. What happened?

I think it was because when my computer blew and they didn’t replace it because of a completely different chunk of sheepness, I realized how little my employer (Huge Faceless Hospital) valued my job. That the only reason HFH knows I need a TB test is because the timer on their HR software went ding; not because I’m assdeep in homeless people all day and others with questionable coughing hygiene.

I realized that instead of being a valued professional employee, I am a paid volunteer. The last time I ran into that concept was when I was in another sheepish job similar to this one, and the local Girl Scout leaders were being paid to lead their troops. Having done my time in this particular gig myself as just another mommy, I was kinda furious. But it was the only way those little girls were going to get any scouting at all in that depressed neighborhood. So it goes here too.

Everybody talks about how little we spend on or care about mental health, and as a peer specialist I see it from the bottom of the sheep pile. We are only now beginning to be billable; i.e., major insurance and Medicaid/care is seeing us as a valuable and exploitable resource. We give provably comparable or better support, and because we “aren’t professionals,” we’re paid and treated accordingly.

Enough of that: I took the week off, and will go back after Thanksgiving for as long as I can hack it/until Christmas/or my knee surgery. Then I will slip into being JUST their webmaster and graphics person, where I don’t have to do any direct service, and can stay home, where the only shenanigans my computer gives me is turning off when I play WoW. (Either the Powers are trying to tell me something, or it’s a fan problem.)

Meanwhile, I walk with a cane now because I effectively no longer have a meniscus in my right knee. Time to be a cyborg! I was lucky enough to listen to the Second Opinion Club (thank you, all of you!) and found a doctor who is willing to operate on a fat person. I see him on the 9th of December and VERY hopefully will be scheduling the surgery at that point. No idea when, because he might well be booking two months out. More on that as it develops. I am already working out and doing physical therapy to prep the knee and the rest of me for the rehab period. (I already know it’s a bear, but I am Kidney Stone Lass, and have a high pain tolerance.)

Anyway, I spent the first day off sleeping and writing (NaNoWriMo time!), then went back to the writing today instead of so much sleeping–and I realized I am no longer depressed. Whoa. I need to pay attention to this. The reality about my recovery from Major Mental Illness (primarily Bipolar Disorder I) is that some things are more important than others. My brain has been saved through a combination of miracles and a lot of hard work, and I can’t soak it in the smell of pee until it regresses into illness again. That would be stupid.

Having been raised in the Protestant Work Ethic, this scares me to death. (There are no peer specialist jobs that don’t smell like pee, and very few of them are part-time.) Guess we are in Wait and See Land.

Doncha hate that?