week in a flash (week 18)

1. Was talking with a friend the other day and she said something that struck me – “it’s hard to stay mad at someone when you are praying for them.”  Pretty cool huh?

2. Days to graduation =54

3. My Lit Crit professor referenced a modern author yesterday and I had no clue who it was and then a few minutes later he referenced Percy Bysse Shelley (a Romantic-Era author) and I knew exactly who that was and it struck me that I know more (and more about) authors that are dead than the living ones…that’s what you get for being an English major.

4. I watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance today…yeah I’m not sure I liked Jimmy Stewart’s role in that movie…I don’t know, I’ll have to think about it.

5. Yes, I know I’m late on my “week” but that’s because I was working on homework, it happens.

6. Read something for my Am Lit class called “Rationalizing Religion,” it really pissed me off, it talked about how these “enlightened” men of the 1700 and 1800s basically deconstructed and dismantled Christianity.  The reason they it did was noble, they did it so that people would have a way to avoid being duped by charlatans claiming to be priests and whatnot by relying on their senses and logic.  But the way they did it just…ticked me off, things like denying the Holy Trinity and claiming that the reason Christ came to the earth was “not to reveal new truths but to ‘republish’ those obscured by evil and error.”  (This “enlightened” man compared Christ to Socrates and edged towards the denial of Christ’s divinity).

7. Reading this also caused me to re-evaluate certain things.  These “enlightened” men were very harsh towards the priesthood and it bothered me.  For a number of years I have ascribed to the belief that the structure of the modern church is flawed, that we give too much power to pastors and priests to sway our beliefs and opinions and outlooks on life and perhaps that is true…but in reading this I’ve begun to question the hardline manifestations that belief has brought out in me…after all isn’t part of what pastors and priests are supposed to do is offer wisdom and help you find answers to questions you have?  I often go to my parents when I have a tough question about, well, pretty much anything.  My parent’s site (Topics of Conversation) is based on the premise of me and my bro (and even my parents) bringing forth questions about beliefs (and sometimes prejudices, social topics, politics, etc.) and figuring out why we think or believe a certain way using Scripture and personal experiences – is that any different from the relationships that exist between some congregations and their pastors?  Plus I’ve been reading a Pastor’s blog for about a year now…and my views have been changing………I don’t know, I’m going to have to think on this one a bit……  (Just in case you are curious about the Pastor’s blog I’ve been reading I’ll link to it and I really hope he doesn’t mind because I’m presently just a lurker on his site).

8. You know you are a freak when you can spell “macchiato” correctly without looking it up…yep I’m talking about myself…  :D

9. Holy Crow!  September is already almost over!

10. I’m tired.

11. Found a spider building a web in my kitchen sink the other day and it made me laugh…I mean I know I don’t like doing dishes but c’mon I do dishes more often than that!  The really funny thing is I had just done the dishes the day before…unbelievable…Lol!

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.”