Recognizing something and changing something are not the same thing

I’ve discussed my depression before with regards to events in my life that contributed to my depression, I mentioned that I was going through a depression in one of tam’s recent posts (an awesome post and discussion by the way) but this will still be a first for me.  I am going to describe some of what goes on in my mind and my heart when I am in a depression.  Please be gentle.

A deep well of sadness has erupted inside me.  There is no real connection between my feelings and what is happening to me.  For no reason at all I feel as though I’m about to burst into tears.  At random times throughout the day I’ll feel my heart constrict and next thing I know I’m blinking away tears.

Am I depressed?  Yes

Do I have the big “D” Depression?  Yup, never officially diagnosed but for this I don’t need a doctor to tell me what I already know and given my familial history it’s not a shock.  I can pretty much trace the rises and dips of my moods, a continuing roller coaster of ups and downs with the occassional corkscrew.  I can pretty much predict how it will go – on the upswing it’s fairly normal, my responses are normal, my reactions to people are normal, things are blessedly normal then I hit the top.  And I have to work at holding on to myself.  My heart hammers away with ecstasy and I feel as though my soul will leak through my skin in white-hot joy.  I walk around with my hands clenched for fear that I’ll float away.  I feel like Johnny Depp’s character Captain Jack Sparrow – touched or fay, if you prefer.  Then *boom* I hit the bottom.  Anger, sadness, deep depression, exhaustion, lack of interest or passion, at it’s worst, thoughts of death-dying.  Everything is cause for despair, panic and rage.  Nothing can go right, I have small moments of faux peace – sort of a surface quiet, a peace which is dark in a bad way and hurts deep down in my soul.  It tears me.

Sometimes the ups and downs are gentle.  And sometimes it’s like scaling and then leaping off of a pyramid without climbing equipment or a parachute.  I prefer the gentle ups and downs.  Those I can handle.  It’s the others that damage my soul, my friendships and my relationships with my family.  I know I should probably have some chemical “help” but I’m more scared of that.  I went on anti-depressants once – n.g. (no good), if I can help it I will never do that again.  It made me feel like an alien in human skin, I would find myself staring at my hand trying to convince myself that it did in fact belong to me.  But worse than that it actually caused me to have suicidal thoughts – I spent a whole day keeping myself from leaping into traffic.  I stopped taking them after that.

It’s not always so bad.  Most of the time I do okay it’s just sometimes it goes beyond my ability to control.  I have times where I recognize a certain turn of my thoughts or my emotions and I can stop it from going down that road.  Sometimes, sickeningly, I don’t want to stop it.  I’ve had moments where I realize the road my thoughts are leading me down and I can hear His warning or His attempt to knock me out of it and my response is “Leave me alone,” “I can’t help it,” or “I’m aware, thank you.”  Why?  Because sometimes I don’t want help, I don’t want to feel normal – I want to wallow in anger or self-pity and not be responsible.  I hate that about me and have been working at putting a stop to this behavior.  I don’t talk about feeling convicted on things much, mostly because it isn’t the language I want to use, but on this I can tell you that when I allow myself this course of action I feel convicted.  I know it’s wrong and I know that He knows that I know it’s wrong.

Then there are the times I can’t control it, it spirals away from me and all I can do is hang on.  I have moments that tip me off, I see it happen and I think to myself “here we go.”  I can’t get the bag of cereal open so I explode into a rage and scream curse words and punch walls, I drop my mac&cheese on the floor and suddenly I feel like the universe is against me and I want to dissolve into tears, I’m driving in traffic and I make it through the yellow light just in time and suddenly I feel invincible and untouchable and drunk-giddy, I wake up and experience a moment of disorientation and suddenly I feel one step removed from the world for the rest of the day, I get a rude customer at work and suddenly I’d love nothing better than to go home and sleep for several days.  I don’t like it.

Now it’s true that I’ve used the gentler ups and downs as creative outlets.  I’ve given my characters some of my rage and despair or I’ve used those feelings to charge the language I use to describe them and their surroundings.  And yes, sometimes I allow myself a bit of melancholia in pursuit of my writing, but again it’s something that I exert great control and caution over.  I know when it’s enough and I know how to shake myself out of those small moments of melancholia.

It’s when it comes on unexpectedly, without warning, with no external stimuli and with no control that I am afraid and desire to feel normal or some semblance of normalcy.  I don’t like the way I react to things or the way I treat people or the direction my thoughts go.  It isn’t pleasant.  Frankly, it terrifies me deeply.

The depression is the worst.  The anger explodes like a flash but doesn’t last, the ecstasy vibrates like a tuning fork and eventually settles down but the depression hammers down relentlessly taking all that I have, all that I am until there’s nothing left but me bleeding on the floor, gasping for air and pleading for it to stop.  In moments like that I know how easy it would be for me to take my life in my hands.  But I have made promises to certain people to not do that and I hold myself to keep those promises forever.  No matter what happens I can’t break those promises.

I am such a mass of contradictions.

And a mess of emotions.

But I try – to maintain equilibrium, control and if I can’t do that then I just maintain.  And try to hold on to some emotion because the only times I’ve seriously considered suicide are the times when I felt hollow and numb.  “I’d rather feel pain than nothing at all.” ~ Three Days Grace “Pain.”

morally gray

So after watching the movie Hitman I’ve got all these moral questions floating in my mind like, am I watching too much violence, is the main character a good man, is he morally questionable and do I watch too many movies with these sorts of question floating around in them?  And then I start thinking about one of my stories and it’s main character, Toby, and how morally gray she is and I still can’t decide if I’m okay with that or not but I love Toby and desire to help her along her road to ‘redemption’ so-called.  So how does one who believes strongly in good and (mostly) clear morals deal with morally gray?  And what does/is this (going to) say about my belief system?  Isn’t that what life’s all about dealing with morally gray and trying to find your way through the fog or taking a stand one way or another, or is it simply examining the morally gray and saying “hmm, that’s interesting, wonder what it means?”  No, no, if you’re going to examine something like that you need to find an answer of some sort make a decision.  I think that the way the McManus brothers in Boondock Saints dealt with their world was wrong, might makes right is never, ever right and trying to make people behave through fear will backfire, but it makes for an intriguing and dynamic relationship between the brothers.  I believe that what Mal did in both Serenity (the Big Damn Movie) and Firefly (the original TV series) was right and that he did what needed to be done to expose a corrupt and hurtful system and protect his crew.  I believe that the Hitman (in Hitman) crossed the line in many ways however, I do believe in doing just about anything to protect your loved ones.  I believe that the main character (drat, what’s-his-name) in Running Scared did the right thing, I believe that both the characters in The Prestige were wrong to the Nth degree, I believe what happened in both Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels though presented in a very humorous way was wrong but necessary (in that world) to survive, I believe that Mr. and Mrs. Smith is a disturbing example of spousal abuse and barely funny while being an interesting look at what split loyalties will do to a person, I believe Crash raises all the right questions, I believe that the piracy presented in The Pirates of the Caribbean was wrong and reprehensible though I can (and do) relate to the desire to be free.  I believe that all these movies are fantasies in one way or another and that it is okay to laugh or cry or scream as the movie allows, it’s escapism and I believe that it is necessary in this insane and inane world.  And I believe that it is okay to examine and present morally gray stories like Toby’s without answering any of the morally gray questions raised, that isn’t my job, my job is to simply raise the questions and examine them in the way I think is best and if anyone else reads it, it is up to them to answer the questions in their own words.  After all that is what writing is about (in my opinion) it’s about getting people to look beyond themselves or to question things or to simply escape but it isn’t about telling them what life is about or the answers or blatant reality.  The reality is hidden in the fantasy and what a frightening reality is is, one that can’t be approached head-on, it must be approached and examined and possibly answered and changed in a sideways fashion and that is what writing is about.  Like previously stated it’s not my job to answer your questions, it’s simply my job to raise them and plant them like a beacon or a flag bright and huge in your mind and make you confront it and answer it for yourself.  After all it is like the Mercedes Lackey character, Diana Tregarde says, “…the only answers worth having are the ones you find for yourself…”