Depression

Zemanta Related Posts ThumbnailI’ve been feeling pretty messed up for close to two weeks now. Either my body isn’t making enough serotonin or my brain has just forgotten what to do with it. I thought I was getting better over the weekend, but then things took another nosedive on Monday. I think it’s a vicious cycle at this point, since the depression is interfering with both my appetite and my sleep.

Words can’t express how awful depression feels when it’s out of control. I can’t remember ever feeling this bad. The only upside is that it’s cyclical rather than constant: in between the bursts of gloom or anxiety, I’ll have lulls of 2-3 hours where I feel better. Even then, I don’t feel great, but it’s better than feeling miserable.

I really hate my faulty genes.

Anyway. I hauled myself to the doctor this morning and she’s increasing my medication. I’m not entirely thrilled with that option since the antidepressant gives me TMJ problems and the higher dose will likely make that worse, but as she said, relieving the depression is priority one, and this is probably the fastest way to do it.

So. I’ll probably be quiet here for a while, but please don’t forget about me. Comments and well-wishes are more than welcome, as are photos of Richard Armitage or Benedict Cumberbatch. Until later…

Sickness, lunch, and wrecked plans

So, I’m sick.

I hate being sick. I always have this fantasy that it will be endless hours of watching movies and eating chocolate, when really it’s just sleeping tons and feeling too lousy to enjoy anything.

You can tell I’m truly sick because when my parents suggested we go out to lunch today, I didn’t grab my coat and purse and run for the door. You see, I love going to lunch. It doesn’t matter where we’re going. We could be going to McDonald’s. I’ll still get excited about it. Going to lunch is pretty much my favorite thing in the whole wide world to do. So if you suggest going out to lunch and I’m not excited, you know I’m really sick.

I’m particularly annoyed about being sick right now for two reasons. One, I’m having a birthday in a few days and the idea of being sick on my birthday is just cruel. And two, I had things that I wanted to do this weekend! I wanted to finish the first draft of the flash fiction piece I started writing Thursday night. And I wanted to play Pandemic, and I wanted to read my book. And I wanted to go the The Loft and use my birthday coupon to get myself a new shirt. And now I’m under the influence of cough syrup and don’t have enough functioning brain cells to write fiction or play Pandemic, and I’m too achy to shop. I can still read, but the cough syrup makes me sleepy, so I tend to lose track of the plot. (Admittedly, the plot of this book isn’t terribly complicated, but still.)

I also think the cough syrup makes me depressed. I watched Doctor Who (Girl in the Fireplace) last night and almost cried at the end. Then again, I suppose that doesn’t necessarily prove anything.

I’m going to wrap this up, since I am going to venture out to lunch after all. Hopefully I won’t cough up a lung along the way. That tends to spoil the appetite.

Happy weekend, folks. Over and out.

Depression: helping each other

Depressed womanSo, yesterday I was on another person’s blog, and this person was talking about struggling with depression and anxiety (which I also have). I left some comments that I hoped would be helpful — suggestions about things that helped me and things that had tripped me up in the past. I pointed him to one of my articles about healing music and wished that I had gotten around to writing an article about a book that’s helped me called Eat Your Way To Happiness. I briefly explained how the book had given me some great tips about useful supplements for depression, but there’s only so much you can say in a comment field.

This morning, I couldn’t help wondering why I’d never gotten around to writing that article about the link between depression and food — even though I’d planned to write it roughly a year ago. I’ve certainly found time to write about other things (mostly board games, I suppose). I guess part of the problem is that I still struggle with my depression; most of the time I’m okay, but there are still moments or even days when I feel like I just can’t function, and who wants advice about depression from someone who still has it?

On the other hand, maybe that makes me the perfect person to write about it, since I almost certainly know what the reader is going through.

I suppose the other issue is that it’s just plain hard to write about your problems, particularly when it’s something like depression that you can never solve or cure; it may go into remission, so to speak, but the potential for it to return is always, always there.

Anyway… maybe this post is an important first step to facing my fears and reaching out to others. I hope so. And if you’re suffering too, I hope there was something here that helped.

(Photo used under license from iStock.)

The Time is Now


This blog post almost didn’t happen.

I sat down yesterday and tried to write a post about all the unhappy feelings I’ve been having the past week about my weight. I started writing about the first time I packed on 20 pounds without realizing it (until, predictably, none of my dress clothes fit). Then I thought, “Okay, nobody wants to hear the tall girl complain that she’s put on a few pounds.” So I stopped.

But the past week, there have been three occasions where I wanted to look nice and I pulled one thing after another out of the closet, and the items I really wanted to wear just didn’t fit. Oh, I could get into them (although, in one case, sitting down was probably not an option) — but they didn’t fit right and they sure didn’t look good. The first time this happened, nine years ago, I said I wasn’t going to let it happen again. But I did.

The worst part, though, is that I haven’t bounced back from it. Nine years ago, as soon as I recognized the problem, I jumped all over it and I lost the weight. This time, I made more excuses than efforts.

Admittedly, they haven’t all been bad excuses. Mostly it’s been an issue of timing. I keep thinking, “I’ll work on my diet after…” And so it’s been a progression of procrastination: I’ll do it after this deadline, after this project, after the busy season, after the move, after the holidays. But this week it finally hit me that I’ve now spent years putting this off. And it’s time to stop.

There’s always going to be another project, another deadline, another holiday, another reason I need a candy bar or a cookie or whatever. If I keep putting everything else before taking care of myself, I’ll never lose the weight.

So — holidays or not, stress or not, the bonbons stop here. I may not be able to overhaul my entire diet right now, but I can make a start.

[ Scale photo courtesy of vendor site. Also, that’s not my real weight. ]