Depression, too

I wrote this in 2021, and it’s been a draft since then. I found it interesting to reflect on that time, when I was still getting used to being unemployed and deeply into unacknowledged grief. I was living as though I was in a crack house, with junk and clutter everywhere, moldy cops of coffee dregs, and couldn’t find my own ass with both hands and a flashlight. Things are decidedly better at the moment, although I still experience depression “spikes” and down periods. I believe what I described here in 2021 was a far lower bottom than anything I have experienced since then, but it’s worthy of note.

I am depressed at the moment, in what I call a depression “spike”. It seems that I always rotate a little under the level of normal/well-adjusted/cheery, but every once in a while it’s palpably worse. This is one of those times.

When this happens, I check to make sure I’m current with my meds, and I am. I’m so tired of having to keep track of that sort of thing, however. I got rejected for another job online, which isn’t all that big of a thing, but yes it is all that big of a thing right now. I can’t say I’ve been applying for armloads of jobs, but every rejections seems to be a big deal. A bigger deal than it’s worth.

There is a small gathering tonight for my Artist’s Way group, to remember one of our members who passed away recently. She was a retired art teacher, a very simple and gentle soul I will miss her, and I will remember her in my own way. I just can’t do a gathering tonight. I just can’t.

Since the sleep study was a big goose egg, I was offered a CPAP if I just wanted one, and I don’t just want one. If I had been diagnosed with apnea and it was prescribed, I would gladly have followed my doctor’s orders about using it, but that’s not the case. She left it up to me, because there’s no indication that I have apnea – the study report said that I didn’t sleep long enough to diagnose that.

For me to keep waking up throughout the night is kind of odd for me, so I am thinking something else is going on that might not be physical. Everything is just really making me want to throw up my hands and say “whateer”. There’s a little part of me that says that no matter what I do the results will be the same, and I will not succeed at what I am trying to do.

I hate these kinds of moods. The recovery side of me says get out of the self-pity, do something for someone else, be grateful for what you have. Yeah, I will get right on that.

The second drone I bought was delivered the other day, and it seems to fly just fine. However, the camera doesn’t seem to work. Damn. I am thinking that if I really want to start flying a drone, I will just need to save up and buy a full-priced one. Sometimes you get what you pay for, and since I didn’t pay very much for this one, I’m not getting very much. This one is still classified as a toy, so whatever.

I’m tired. Tired in more ways than just not getting enough sleep. I’m tired of feeling as though everybody else is getting more of life than I am. Whether that’s true or not is irrelevant, but it’s how I feel at this moment. That’s not a new sentiment, and is usually a function of something chemically off in my brain. Lucky me.

Depression is one of those conditions that is generally invisible to everyone outside of your body. It’s different for everyone, but I know that I’m not a depressive who is prone to action. That means I’m not going to be beating people up or kicking the dog, I’m not going to be attempting suicide every night. It does mean, however, that I feel absolutely and unabashedly lousy.

When I am feeling this way, it’s kind of risky to be out amongst folks, because the first person who points out to me that I have nothing to be “sad” about and that I am thought of so highly by other people is gonna get a harangue that cannot be repeated in polite company. After which I will probably curl up into a fetal position and sob.

Depression is an odd thing. Brain chemistry is an odd thing all on its own, and the more science knows about it, the more they know they don’t know. When my mother was demonstrating some aberrant behavior and way of thinking, there wasn’t any Prozac or anything like that. There were only narcotic “tranquilizers” with addictive potential, stuff that could make you drool on yourself in high doses. My mother refused to take medication like that, and I kind of understand her posture on that. Of course, when there were better non-narcotic medications on the market, she refused to even try them, forcing everyone else to deal with what may well have been bipolar disorder.

Since I’m supposedly in the charmed circle of modern psychiatry, I take what I need to take in order to survive. On days like this, I am grateful for that because I might be prone to doing something that cannot be reversed, a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I am not so much wanting to kill myself, but wanting to not be here just the same. Those are two entirely different things.

For quite a long time, suicide has no appeal to me. First of all, I could be wrong about whatever the causal factors are. Second, I could be entirely wrong about the afterlife and what it does or does not hold, or if there really is an afterlife. Finally, I am somewhat convinced that I would be attempting to punish those remaining here, in this life. I don’t believe that’s true of every suicide, and they are all different. But for me, I really do have the inkling that I might be wanting to sentence people who have disappointed and betrayed me to years of wondering if they had anything to do with it, or could have done something to stop it. That’s overwhelmingly self-absorbed, which somewhat disgusts me. So, at this point, I’m not willing to entertain suicide as an option.

Depression can make the world seem bleak and gray on the sunniest of days, can make life seem pointless at the pinnacle of your success. Or the depths of your greatest failure, it doesn’t matter. Something in the brain is out of balance, and distorts what you see and hear. Medication can help to alleviate that in many cases, but not all. Sometimes it’s just a constant battle to maintain some kind of equilibrium.

The most important point of any conversation I have with people who do not experience depression is that nobody is qualified to judge a person who does experience that, so shut up. The judgments can amplify the feelings of worthlessness and uselessness and sadness that a depressed person is feeling. For me, the judgments cause a great deal of anger in me, and then I’m feeling as though I have failed yet again to not care about what other people think.

It is what it is. And it’s sometimes what it’s not. I suppose my only goal is to deal in absolute reality. Just the facts, ma’am. What am I seeing, what am I hearing, what am I feeling without any shading or assumptions I may want to add. If I see the dog has pooped on the floor (which she did earlier, the little shit), that is all it is. The reality is there is dog shit on the floor. It’s not reality to presume that I am being intentionally attacked or challenger for dominance. I get into trouble is attributing that behavior to intention on her part, and failure to train her on my part. If I truly believe that she intended to piss me off, and truly planned to hold her poop when she was outside in order to piss me off by doing it inside, I will eventually resent her so badly that I might treat her less optimally than usual. She’s a small dog with a brain the size of a plum; she doesn’t have the mental capacity to be planning how she is going to irritate me. She has a bad habit, probably from her puppyhood in another household (or on the street) and circumstances in which I had no part. It is what it is.

Because I am leaving this as a draft, I will say that I have no fucking idea what the hell I am doing at this point. I do not want to be here. The only problem with that is there is no other place to go. This is par for the course, because I never have any other place to go. I thought I did, when I came here, but that’s all just a puff of smoke fast dissipating in the breeze.

Every damned thing is going wrong – all of the warnings I was given, advice, suggestions, recommendations of my youth have now come back to slap me in the face and kick me in the ass. Go to grad school soon after undergraduate school – you wont want to go later. I didn’t do that, and I didn’t want to go later, but now really wish I had. Get hold of your weight issues while you’re still young enough to adapt, it will be harder if not impossible when you are older. Well, now I’m older and it is impossible.

I am not going to find a job, unless I do something totally ridiculous like customer service for some capitalist fascist pig company. That is probably what I will do, because I need the money and the benefits. The pathetic part about that is that everything I worked for, every word that I bit off, all the times I held my tongue and settled for inept bosses who couldn’t write a complete sentence – all of that has been a total waste of time. I have nothing to show for it now.

Some of us are not meant to get satisfaction, to get what we want. The unpretty ones, the fat ones, the ones of us who march to a different beat and sometimes need to rest in between…we don’t get what we want. Ever. Maybe for little things, but not for that which feeds our souls. If this sentiment is expressed, it will be decried by caring people who assure us that it’s not what we think, it’s not what we are seeing, things aren’t the way we see them. Bleh. Keep your platitudes.

This is over with. There isn’t anything more, just the conformity and the not rocking the boat and the settling for less. Settling for SO much less. I’m tired of that, but there isn’t anything else. I don’t have the energy any more to have expectations, or dreams, or hope. I am done. This is going to be a solo act until the end, whenever that comes.

I am not particularly in the stance of making the end come any sooner that it’s going to come without my intervention. Suicide is a big fuck you to everybody who’s left, and I really don’t want to be remembered for that. It would be far better to be forgotten.

Nobody should extoll my alleged talent for anything because I am simply too mediocre to be a total failure. I am dangerously mediocre. I can fake enough of the opening lines of things and the familiar beginning of a riff to get people excited, but it’s a house of cards. I am never going to live up to the first blush of real talent.

I asked the new psychiatrist – which she is not a psychiatrist, she is a P.A. – if she thought I was nuts. She said things about oh, we don’t use those words any more, but no she didn’t think I was nuts. Well, I don’t care what she thinks, but I think I’m nuts. That’s a term I would assign to people who find it impossible to fit in anywhere, and that is exactly where I am. I simply cannot comply, cannot act “as if”, cannot even make sense from time to time. I belong literally nowhere, and that is exactly where I feel that I am. Nowhere.

So be it. Welcome to nowhere. Make yourself at home, put your feet up, get comfortable. This is the final destination. In a way I suppose that’s really just fine, because now I don’t have to make the effort to conform or fit in. I don’t have to watch my tongue or not rock the boat. It doesn’t matter. It never mattered. I just bought into the lie that said I would be rewarded for driving myself into the ground for the comfort of others. I am not going to do that any longer.

To keep down the resistance – and there will be resistance – I will just keep to myself. If I can get back at least some of my bodily function, I will wander the trails and the paths alone. It is better that way, because even though people say they care about me – and they may truly believe that – it’s not like I’m part of their family or anything so there’s always a line drawn. A line that I can never cross. So bet it. They’ll never cross my line, either. The line that keeps my true self from everything and everyone else. No more showing myself, no more exposing my soft underbelly. No. More.

I have to resign myself to the fact that I’m never going to get what I want out of this incarnation. There will be no love interest, there will be no one who accepts me for me, warts and all. There will be no book that I write or song that I compose, no saving grace. People want pretty things, and there’s not enough plastic surgery in the world to make me pretty. The truly unfair part of that, however, is that people with far less skill than I, who are not pretty either manage to get what they want. Just not me. Fine. So be it.

I have got to get about the business of accepting this condition, this position, whatever the fuck it is. I always have this annoying bit of hope that always peeks out and wonders is this the one? Is this the group? Is the the time you get to be accepted and fit in like people do with a family? But it never is, and I need to stop hoping for that. The hope is killing me, or at least the repetitive dashing of the hope is.

Another fucking night of being nowhere, with nobody, and nothing. I have nothing. I am nothing. I suppose I’ll just go to sleep, if that’s even possible. I will probably wake up multiple times with these thoughts on my head and start this shit all over again. Whatever. What the fuck ever.



I am depressed at the moment, in what I call a depression “spike”. It seems that I always rotate a little under the level of normal/well-adjusted/cheery, but every once in a while it’s palpably worse. This is one of those times.

When this happens, I check to make sure I’m current with my meds, and I am. I’m so tired of having to keep track of that sort of thing, however. I got rejected for another job online, which isn’t all that big of a thing, but yes it is all that big of a thing right now. I can’t say I’ve been applying for armloads of jobs, but every rejections seems to be a big deal. A bigger deal than it’s worth.

There is a small gathering tonight for my Artist’s Way group, to remember one of our members who passed away recently. She was a retired art teacher, a very simple and gentle soul I will miss her, and I will remember her in my own way. I just can’t do a gathering tonight. I just can’t.

Since the sleep study was a big goose egg, I was offered a CPAP if I just wanted one, and I don’t just want one. If I had been diagnosed with apnea and it was prescribed, I would gladly have followed my doctor’s orders about using it, but that’s not the case. She left it up to me, because there’s no indication that I have apnea – the study report said that I didn’t sleep long enough to diagnose that.

For me to keep waking up throughout the night is kind of odd for me, so I am thinking something else is going on that might not be physical. Everything is just really making me want to throw up my hands and say “whateer”. There’s a little part of me that says that no matter what I do the results will be the same, and I will not succeed at what I am trying to do.

I hate these kinds of moods. The recovery side of me says get out of the self-pity, do something for someone else, be grateful for what you have. Yeah, I will get right on that.

The second drone I bought was delivered the other day, and it seems to fly just fine. However, the camera doesn’t seem to work. Damn. I am thinking that if I really want to start flying a drone, I will just need to save up and buy a full-priced one. Sometimes you get what you pay for, and since I didn’t pay very much for this one, I’m not getting very much. This one is still classified as a toy, so whatever.

I’m tired. Tired in more ways than just not getting enough sleep. I’m tired of feeling as though everybody else is getting more of life than I am. Whether that’s true or not is irrelevant, but it’s how I feel at this moment. That’s not a new sentiment, and is usually a function of something chemically off in my brain. Lucky me.

Depression is one of those conditions that is generally invisible to everyone outside of your body. It’s different for everyone, but I know that I’m not a depressive who is prone to action. That means I’m not going to be beating people up or kicking the dog, I’m not going to be attempting suicide every night. It does mean, however, that I feel absolutely and unabashedly lousy.

When I am feeling this way, it’s kind of risky to be out amongst folks, because the first person who points out to me that I have nothing to be “sad” about and that I am thought of so highly by other people is gonna get a harangue that cannot be repeated in polite company. After which I will probably curl up into a fetal position and sob.

Depression is an odd thing. Brain chemistry is an odd thing all on its own, and the more science knows about it, the more they know they don’t know. When my mother was demonstrating some aberrant behavior and way of thinking, there wasn’t any Prozac or anything like that. There were only narcotic “tranquilizers” with addictive potential, stuff that could make you drool on yourself in high doses. My mother refused to take medication like that, and I kind of understand her posture on that. Of course, when there were better non-narcotic medications on the market, she refused to even try them, forcing everyone else to deal with what may well have been bipolar disorder.

Since I’m supposedly in the charmed circle of modern psychiatry, I take what I need to take in order to survive. On days like this, I am grateful for that because I might be prone to doing something that cannot be reversed, a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I am not so much wanting to kill myself, but wanting to not be here just the same. Those are two entirely different things.

For quite a long time, suicide has no appeal to me. First of all, I could be wrong about whatever the causal factors are. Second, I could be entirely wrong about the afterlife and what it does or does not hold, or if there really is an afterlife. Finally, I am somewhat convinced that I would be attempting to punish those remaining here, in this life. I don’t believe that’s true of every suicide, and they are all different. But for me, I really do have the inkling that I might be wanting to sentence people who have disappointed and betrayed me to years of wondering if they had anything to do with it, or could have done something to stop it. That’s overwhelmingly self-absorbed, which somewhat disgusts me. So, at this point, I’m not willing to entertain suicide as an option.

Depression can make the world seem bleak and gray on the sunniest of days, can make life seem pointless at the pinnacle of your success. Or the depths of your greatest failure, it doesn’t matter. Something in the brain is out of balance, and distorts what you see and hear. Medication can help to alleviate that in many cases, but not all. Sometimes it’s just a constant battle to maintain some kind of equilibrium.

The most important point of any conversation I have with people who do not experience depression is that nobody is qualified to judge a person who does experience that, so shut up. The judgments can amplify the feelings of worthlessness and uselessness and sadness that a depressed person is feeling. For me, the judgments cause a great deal of anger in me, and then I’m feeling as though I have failed yet again to not care about what other people think.

It is what it is. And it’s sometimes what it’s not. I suppose my only goal is to deal in absolute reality. Just the facts, ma’am. What am I seeing, what am I hearing, what am I feeling without any shading or assumptions I may want to add. If I see the dog has pooped on the floor (which she did earlier, the little shit), that is all it is. The reality is there is dog shit on the floor. It’s not reality to presume that I am being intentionally attacked or challenger for dominance. I get into trouble is attributing that behavior to intention on her part, and failure to train her on my part. If I truly believe that she intended to piss me off, and truly planned to hold her poop when she was outside in order to piss me off by doing it inside, I will eventually resent her so badly that I might treat her less optimally than usual. She’s a small dog with a brain the size of a plum; she doesn’t have the mental capacity to be planning how she is going to irritate me. She has a bad habit, probably from her puppyhood in another household (or on the street) and circumstances in which I had no part. It is what it is.

Because I am leaving this as a draft, I will say that I have no fucking idea what the hell I am doing at this point. I do not want to be here. The only problem with that is there is no other place to go. This is par for the course, because I never have any other place to go. I thought I did, when I came here, but that’s all just a puff of smoke fast dissipating in the breeze.

Every damned thing is going wrong – all of the warnings I was given, advice, suggestions, recommendations of my youth have now come back to slap me in the face and kick me in the ass. Go to grad school soon after undergraduate school – you wont want to go later. I didn’t do that, and I didn’t want to go later, but now really wish I had. Get hold of your weight issues while you’re still young enough to adapt, it will be harder if not impossible when you are older. Well, now I’m older and it is impossible.

I am not going to find a job, unless I do something totally ridiculous like customer service for some capitalist fascist pig company. That is probably what I will do, because I need the money and the benefits. The pathetic part about that is that everything I worked for, every word that I bit off, all the times I held my tongue and settled for inept bosses who couldn’t write a complete sentence – all of that has been a total waste of time. I have nothing to show for it now.

Some of us are not meant to get satisfaction, to get what we want. The unpretty ones, the fat ones, the ones of us who march to a different beat and sometimes need to rest in between…we don’t get what we want. Ever. Maybe for little things, but not for that which feeds our souls. If this sentiment is expressed, it will be decried by caring people who assure us that it’s not what we think, it’s not what we are seeing, things aren’t the way we see them. Bleh. Keep your platitudes.

This is over with. There isn’t anything more, just the conformity and the not rocking the boat and the settling for less. Settling for SO much less. I’m tired of that, but there isn’t anything else. I don’t have the energy any more to have expectations, or dreams, or hope. I am done. This is going to be a solo act until the end, whenever that comes.

I am not particularly in the stance of making the end come any sooner that it’s going to come without my intervention. Suicide is a big fuck you to everybody who’s left, and I really don’t want to be remembered for that. It would be far better to be forgotten.

Nobody should extoll my alleged talent for anything because I am simply too mediocre to be a total failure. I am dangerously mediocre. I can fake enough of the opening lines of things and the familiar beginning of a riff to get people excited, but it’s a house of cards. I am never going to live up to the first blush of real talent.

I asked the new psychiatrist – which she is not a psychiatrist, she is a P.A. – if she thought I was nuts. She said things about oh, we don’t use those words any more, but no she didn’t think I was nuts. Well, I don’t care what she thinks, but I think I’m nuts. That’s a term I would assign to people who find it impossible to fit in anywhere, and that is exactly where I am. I simply cannot comply, cannot act “as if”, cannot even make sense from time to time. I belong literally nowhere, and that is exactly where I feel that I am. Nowhere.

So be it. Welcome to nowhere. Make yourself at home, put your feet up, get comfortable. This is the final destination. In a way I suppose that’s really just fine, because now I don’t have to make the effort to conform or fit in. I don’t have to watch my tongue or not rock the boat. It doesn’t matter. It never mattered. I just bought into the lie that said I would be rewarded for driving myself into the ground for the comfort of others. I am not going to do that any longer.

To keep down the resistance – and there will be resistance – I will just keep to myself. If I can get back at least some of my bodily function, I will wander the trails and the paths alone. It is better that way, because even though people say they care about me – and they may truly believe that – it’s not like I’m part of their family or anything so there’s always a line drawn. A line that I can never cross. So bet it. They’ll never cross my line, either. The line that keeps my true self from everything and everyone else. No more showing myself, no more exposing my soft underbelly. No. More.

I have to resign myself to the fact that I’m never going to get what I want out of this incarnation. There will be no love interest, there will be no one who accepts me for me, warts and all. There will be no book that I write or song that I compose, no saving grace. People want pretty things, and there’s not enough plastic surgery in the world to make me pretty. The truly unfair part of that, however, is that people with far less skill than I, who are not pretty either manage to get what they want. Just not me. Fine. So be it.

I have got to get about the business of accepting this condition, this position, whatever the fuck it is. I always have this annoying bit of hope that always peeks out and wonders is this the one? Is this the group? Is the the time you get to be accepted and fit in like people do with a family? But it never is, and I need to stop hoping for that. The hope is killing me, or at least the repetitive dashing of the hope is.

Another fucking night of being nowhere, with nobody, and nothing. I have nothing. I am nothing. I suppose I’ll just go to sleep, if that’s even possible. I will probably wake up multiple times with these thoughts on my head and start this shit all over again. Whatever. What the fuck ever.