Tag: depression and anxiety

Sickness, lunch, and wrecked plans

the Tall Girl # # # # #

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

the Tall Girl #

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.)

Silence and darkness

the Tall Girl # # #

So, you may have noticed that I’ve been pretty quiet lately. Obviously I’ve been very quiet here — no new posts in months. But I think I’ve been more quiet on other platforms too.

I’ve been a little depressed.

We finally moved to Tennessee in September. It was a hard move, and the less said there, the better. Tennessee is lovely but I’m afraid that I expected a bit too much, after so many years of being forced to wait and wait before we could get away from South Louisiana. I wasn’t expecting to run into new challenges and problems here — at least not right off the bat.

So anyway, I’ve been feeling blue and a bit lost. I had really high hopes for 2011, and it let me down time and time again. I’d like to think that 2012 will be better… although frankly, I’m almost willing to settle for things simply not getting any worse.

You’re probably saying that 2011 couldn’t be all bad. And it wasn’t. I lost a lot of weight and I finally got a decent haircut. And I threw out tons of old paperwork and clothes and other things that were weighing me down.

I wish it were that easy to get rid of bad feelings.

I’ll close here since I’m not sure what else to say… other than I’m still here, for whatever it’s worth.

Random Updates from Miss Cranky Pants

the Tall Girl # # # # #

Hi friends! I’m way too tired & cranky to do any more work this afternoon — the project I’m wading through has pretty much sapped the life out of me for today — so I figured I’d do something semi-productive and write a blog update. I’ve been meaning to put out some news for at least a week now but never quite got around to it. So here’s some random stuff about my life at the moment.

Grandma is doing surprisingly well. Despite the lung doctor’s pronouncement that she has two to three months to live, we’re still not seeing any change in her condition. Of course, that may not mean anything, but we’ll take whatever good news we can find. I’m particularly relieved since we’re almost out of September and (dare I say it?) no hurricane threats yet this year! Once we hit October, the threat level goes way down, so I’m feeling pretty secure that we won’t have to evacuate this season. Last year’s evacuation ahead of Gustav was just grueling — by far the worst I’ve ever been through — so it’s a huge blessing to think we won’t have to do that again any time soon.

Overall, I’m doing better health-wise. The new medicine is working, and between that and higher quality vitamins, I’m feeling better, being more productive, and not needing quite so much sleep. As a result, I’m watching a lot less TV and reading more — both big goals of mine for this year. (I’m currently reading The Black Company by Glen Cook and being pretty darn impressed by his attention to detail.) I’m trying to start easing into creative writing again but haven’t made much progress yet; I did some short fiction exercises one day last week and never got back to it. I guess that would have been a good thing to do instead of this blog entry, wouldn’t it? Oh well. Maybe another day.

The choir situation has improved. I’m much less frustrated with our new director and I’m no longer thinking about quitting. So that’s good. Which is not to say that I’m totally happy — we’re taking part in a choral concert next month and we still don’t know what our second selection is going to be; our original choice got scratched because we don’t have enough time to learn it. Oh, and I don’t really like the piece we’ve been rehearsing so far. But you can’t have everything, and I’m mostly managing not to get too worked up when things don’t go quite right.

I have a new toy: an adorable faux-leather storage ottoman I ordered online from Wal-Mart. It’s actually really nice and a steal for $35 + tax. (The picture is from their website, since I’m feeling lazy.) So now I have someplace to prop my feet up when I’m reading! (I’m convinced that I’d read more if I had a comfier reading setup.) And having the storage compartment is just great — clutter drives me nuts, and this way I can hide all DVDs and CDs in the ottoman and still have them close at hand. Win-win!

Hmm… what else? Oh, I’m in love with a cute little Italian greyhound named Phoebe. Her owners post videos of her on YouTube and I’m vicariously satisfying my desire for a dog by watching their baby. I think this video is my favorite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0n_QtWO4r8

And, while I’ve never been a fan of country music, Christian Kane is starting to make me reconsider. I heard a couple of his songs this week and love The House Rules. You can hear it on his MySpace page if you like: http://www.myspace.com/christiankane

Okay, I think that’s about as interesting as I can be today. Further bulletins as events warrant or as the mood strikes.