I don’t usually get the holiday blues. I’m not sure why they are kicking in this year. I rarely celebrate Christmas or the Winter Solstice. I don’t often have holiday parties or extravagant work parties.
If I seem off to you, I’m sorry in advance. I seem to be having a blue Xmas.
💙
The other night I couldn’t sleep. My brain was busy running every angle of a scenario through my head. I didn’t have the ability to relax my brain until this was solved.
What was this critical scenario that my brain was trying to decipher? Well, I’m glad you asked. If I was sent to prison for 9 months, how would I go about choosing my alliances in order to stay safe. Obviously I couldn’t defend myself.
Would I go for the toughest guy in prison and sleep with him no matter the appearance? If so, how does one determine which guy is the toughest.
Would I hold out for a really tough guy that might also be at least a bit attractive? This could make it a bit easier to deal with the need to pimp myself out for protection.
And what if I chose wrong or made a bad alliance. How does one recover from that. What if the toughest guy is a Nazi or White Supremacist. Are morals allowed in prison?
These are the kinds of things that keep me up all night and make it difficult to focus during the day. Depression isn’t just sadness or issues with emotions. Depression twists your subconscious into such tight knots that it can take your conscious brain ages to undo it.
Depression sucks.
I am so tired these days. It seems that no matter how much I sleep, I wake up exhausted. Getting out of bed almost requires a crane.
I have an appointment on Monday. I’m guessing that my meds just aren’t working as well.
My brain has two functions these days: hyper drive and fog city. Either my brain is in overdrive thinking about everything while accomplishing nothing, or I feel like my brain is just done for the day.
I need an energy boost that doesn’t come from coffee or espresso. Maybe a brain injection.
Sadly, as I’ve mentioned before, the one thing that usually helps is a glass or two of wine or mimosas. 😞
“Like a drum baby, don’t stop beating”.
You love me for who I am.
You love me for me.
Do you know who you are loving?
Do you know the depths to which I sink every day?
Do you know the levels of schmazy that I go through?
You love me for me.
Do you know where my brain takes me?
Do you know where my mind drags me through?
Do you know where every laugh, every noise, takes me?
You love me for me.
Do you know me?
I don’t have the energy that I used to. It’s not because I’m older, although I’m sure that plays a part. It’s not because I’m lazy. I am just exhausted. I think the medication is making me tired, as well as the depression itself.
This frustrates me because as I sit in my new(ish) job, I am gaining weight. I want to join a gym to knock off at least a few of the pounds, but I need to save my energy for more important things like grocery shopping, cooking and the like.
My doctor put me on yet another medication. This should kick-start the other medication into controlling my depression better. We’ll see I guess. So far it has helped my focus, but not my energy level. Every three to four hours I start yawning considerably and I feel like I could fall asleep standing up. I actually fell asleep on the bus home, which I do not like doing.
Caffeine helps, but too much puts me to sleep as well. That is one of the weird quirks with my body. I have never heard of anyone that gets sleepy from too much caffeine. Maybe I overdid it when I was younger and trying to finish one more level on whatever game it was that I was playing, keeping myself up all night with Jolt cola.
Who knows. I know that I am tired.
One of the most frustrating things for me on a daily basis is my career. I am capable of doing so much more, but I need extra flexibility in my scheduling. I’m an intelligent guy with great data entry and deductive skills. I can work 50 to 60 hours a week, but I need to be able to do them on my own schedule. Some weeks it might be easier to do seven 8 hour days, while others it might be easier to work four 14 hour days.
I need to find a career that will fit with my scheduling needs, while also being able to pay the bills. Living in Oakland isn’t exactly cheap.
Thoughts?
I don’t understand medication. If I have a headache, I take aspirin or Motrin and it goes away. Or I have a glass of Coke. These are consistent. If I have a rash, I use an ointment. It goes away. When my eyes are dry and itchy, I use the same eye drops and they feel better.
After 6 months of having great success with my current anti-depressant, I started to feel not quite as good. Each week the medication seemed to be less and less effective. This week, I finally bit the bullet and called my doctor to see about getting a new medication.
Getting out of bed in the morning is getting harder and harder. Some days it takes me two to three hours to finally get up. When I lay down, my heart races and my mind goes wild thinking about everything in the universe that could go wrong, that needs to be done, or that I messed up. It takes a couple of hours to finally fall asleep, but then I only stay asleep for a few hours at a time. I was exhausted all week with barely any sleep.
So now I get to start a new med with fun new side effects and see what behaviors pop out of me. Why can’t anti-depressants be like aspirin and just freaking work?
I often bottle up my emotions, thoughts and feelings. This isn’t the greatest idea because they often burst out at inopportune times. Lately I have been bottling up a lot of anger and that has simmered over more than once.
I’m a fun going guy most of the time. I like to have fun and make sure that those around me have fun. I enjoy having a drink on the ferry as I head to SF. I enjoy walking through the woods or floating down the river. I enjoy museums, aquariums and many other things. None of these help to control my bottling.
Depression isn’t just hard on the person that suffers from the disease. It takes its toll on those around you as well. I’m not saying this to increase anyone’s guilt, but it does. This is why a network of friends is critical. Relying too much on a single person can overburden that person. I grew up with the swings and misses of depression; the people around me are getting random spits.
If I am acting out of character, or weirder than normal, let me know. Sometimes I don’t even realize when things are getting out of control. Sometimes I need my friends to help me. And sometimes I just need to have fun.
I have spent most of my life mislabeling my attacks. I thought an anxiety attack was caused by outside forces (crowds) while a panic attack was random. This may have caused some confusion with doctors.
When you have an attack caused by large crowds, daunting places, or anything else that you can pinpoint the cause, that is a panic attack.
When you are in bed, minding your own business and suddenly your heart rate jumps to five hundred beats per minute, that is an anxiety attack.
Understanding the difference can be crucial for the proper treatment, whether you do home remedies or Western medicine.
When it comes to depression, doctors recommend avoiding alcohol. With anxiety, however, alcohol can relax your mind enough to have fun and enjoy being around people.
This causes a difficult balance with you have both. Trying to have a few drinks to soften the effects of your anxiety can deepen your depression. But not always. Avoiding alcohol can help reduce the effects of depression, but social functional can wreak havic on your brain as your anxiety cranks up.
Avoiding social functions can lead to increased depression and feelings of solitude and defeat.
I often feel that I’m in a constant juggling act, but I also feel that I handle these struggles pretty well. But when I slip up, ugh.
Confessions from Depression 