So my yearly bout of depression came on last night. Well, that cannot be true, because I knew it was coming on. i knew on Wednesday it was upon me, and even by last Friday I mentioned to somebody that it seemed like an angry one this time. Perhaps it has to do with my mom being gone, or with the financial insecurities that continue to hound me. Even the fact that it is about 5 weeks now without a cigarette. I have a whole list of excuses to be angry.
So I sit here now trying to grasp where and when my yearly bout of depression hit me this time around rather than type about why I am here typing anyway; the trigger that supposedly set it off last night. Rambling. Semi-coherently. The whole reason i blog anyway is to come here, not with formed ideas and sentiments, but to discover exactly what is being established between these connected or even random thoughts. i would not call it stream of consciousness, per se. I do sometimes get into this zone where I am not completely aware of what i am typing, yet even then I manage to fix most typos along the way, to pause and to backspace once in a while to keep things organized.
Maybe I come here to be organized? Maybe I show up here (more and more rarely, by the way) in order to organize these ideas and thoughts and to flesh out the roots of my troubles or the fruits of my labors, whichever is more pertinent at the time. Maybe I am in here solely of maintaining sentences chock full of three syllable words that i do not use in typical conversation. Maybe i write because I have to. Overwhelmingly that remains the entire reason for this (and the thousand forerunners) blog. Because I need to write.
So about my story then. Because I cried last night and even though the circumstances seemed appropriate; in other words, the trigger that lead to my thoughts seemed legitimate; it was still out of place. So even as I knew my depression was coming along beforehand, now that it was here it still seemed mistimed for some reason. I know, none of this is making sense to me either. I am going around in non-metaphorical circles here, and trying to finish out the workday as well, writing on lunch and on quick breaks and not lose my train of thought.
Failing miserably, it seems. Although only once or twice in my life have i ever failed joyously.
So i suffer from some type of depression every year, right around this time. I have written plenty about it, and am trying to write only about this years particulars, not about my past occasions nor my issues in general. It comes on and perhaps it comes on because I plan for it; expect it; maybe even encourage it. I isolate and feel left out and lost and it comes every year and I am not sure what, if anything, I need to do about it. And like I stated, it seems this year I have plenty of valid reasons for sadness, or at least for feeling emotional.
That's what I almost posted to FaceBook last night, too. That instead of referring to this as a depression, I would instead call it my 'time of enhanced emotions'. Because i am honestly not depressed. Just melancholy. And nothing in particular brings it on, I just get more emotional. I like to cry, in case you didn't know that about me. I don't mean I am susceptible to LifeTime TV movies or that no matter what's going on I need to cry to feel emotions. but if I am sharing in a meeting i do get a tear stuck in my throat when the rgatitude overcomes me. When I watch a tear jerker movie (well, a quality story anyway), a movie that's supposed to pull at your heart strings, I let it and I can find a tear rolling down my cheek. I watch Grey's Anatomy in order to cry sometimes. That's a great show to turn on, especially when you know the characters and feel for their issues, and just bawl away for no particular reason. It's a cleansing process.
So my yearly bout of depression kicked in last night. I knew it was coming on and it was in a sense already here. I know by the way I am reacting to annoyances. I know by the way i am quick to throw up a defensive. And I know I have things going on, fears real and imagined, that can lead me toward the depression quicker, but that all seems like an aside to the fact, as it does every year. i mean, more of a reaction than a cause. i was flipping stations last night, actually had Grey's on for a moment (after the Office, of course) and thought about tuning in in order to get emotional. But I kept flipping, and after another hour or so got to an old documentary. "The Mayor of Sunset Strip", about Rodney Bingenheimer. 'Rodney on the Rock' to those of you in Los Angeles during those formative eighties. And yes I miss LA, and yes he dumped his mom's ashes into the sea, and yes he seemed like he was lonely through much of his life, even surrounded by people more often than not, and I related completely and understood my reasons for crying last night and letting emotion take over me for a while. But I did not understand what warranted a blog post about it. I didn't know at the time why I did not do a quick FaceBook status update and leave it at that, rather than wait until today in order to type a bunch of nonsense and force feed it to you, my reader, through begging and linking and generally cajoling you into my blog. I mean, why is this worth the effort of all this, when I know I can share it, under darkness of candlelight, in another few hours, in a general way, and be okay about it.
Then I saw a link this morning: Hyperbole and a half,
a comic I sometimes catch up with (and the unintentional creator of the "do all the things" meme), who suffered her way through a depression for no particular reason. And the entire post struck such a familiar chord with me that i felt I had to share it with you. Even so, wouldn't a link to her blog be just as well? Better, in fact? Yeah, of course. But perhaps because I have a friend trying to blog, and I wish to lead by example. Perhaps because I am embarking again on Nano and needing to write 1667 words a day to keep up (this document here just over 1150 by the way at this point), and perhaps because I feel like I didn't want to be alone. More than relating to the blog I mentioned I wanted somehow to share in a part of it, to become a part of the community and perhaps even to bring you along with us, should you want.
More than anything it comes back to writing. I need to write. I am lost without writing and i have spent too much time this year avoiding it, like an ex girlfriend you really don't want to check up on but keeps showing up on the friend suggestions (you have 400 friends in common!), when in reality my writing is my life blood, by nutrients and my all important well-balanced diet. I miss writing and I think the whole reason for this blog lies in that fact alone. So it's nice to be depressed, i guess, and to share another blog about depression (as is misery loves company, I suppose), and to bring you all down to my level here in the muck and the mire* for a chance to type words on the screen and hit the post button rather than the edit button. And for that, my friends, i really thank you for reading.
*I still forget how invisible sarcasm is within the written blog. In case you are worried I am depressed suicidal even slightly saddened I can only assure you by stating 'no more than usual'.
