My Lying Mind- Learning it's the Depression Talking

I’m so tired.  Like my brain and soul are tired.  Like blinking makes me sad because I don’t know if I have it in me to re-open my eyes.  Though it’s Thursday, I have been completely unable to recover from last weekend (death, fire, bears…  I’ll fill you in sometime).  And my mind keeps helpfully telling me a lot of things about myself.  It keeps telling me I’ll fail at school.  It keeps telling me I’m worthless.  It keeps telling me how much everyone hates me.  It keeps telling me I’m about to have a panic attack at any second.  It keeps telling me how socially inept I am.  It keeps telling me I’ll never become the things I want to be.  It keeps telling me there’s something seriously wrong with me.  It keeps telling me I have no right to smile.  It keeps telling me lies.  And I’m learning to recognize them as lies.  I still don’t like hearing them.  And I’m still tired.  I’m almost too tired to fight my mind.  But if I whisper back, “You’re wrong” when it tells me those lies, maybe someday I’ll believe myself.  Maybe someday I’ll be able to shout it.  Maybe someday I won’t even have to say it anymore because my mind will stop lying to me.  For now, though, I’ll just keep whispering like I believe.

Learning to Live with my Depression

                Depression and I are trying to strike a balance.  I can’t go all out and get things done like I want to.  But depression can’t hold me down in the gutter like it wants to either.  Because I won’t let it.  Depression doesn’t want me to get out of bed.  I want to get out of bed and then go to class and then go shopping and then go to a party.  We compromised.  I made it to class.  Depression doesn’t want me to communicate with my best friends.  I want to skype with them for hours.  We compromised.  I sent some of them short facebook messages.  Depression doesn’t want me to do any homework.  I want to do the homework that has to be turned in and the optional readings and study extra.  We compromised.  I did the homework that had to be turned in. 

See, I’m learning that sometimes my “best” is less than I want it to be, but that doesn’t make it any less of a gigantic effort.  And it doesn’t make it any less acceptable.  So I’m trying to re-work my life.  Re-work my expectations.  Re-work… the way I work.  Am I giving in?  I don’t know.  But I know I’m not giving up.

Worsening Social Anxiety

                In order to pay for my cocaine addiction college education, I work at a ranch during the summers taking guests out on horseback rides.  It. Sucks.  OK, it is the best summer job you could ask for, but my social anxiety is getting to the point where talking to different groups of strangers at two hour intervals all day every day is completely. Exhausting.  I’m constantly worrying that I’ve said something stupid or offensive or unintelligible or boring or any number of other adjectives that shouldn’t be used to describe tour guides.  And when I’m not with guests, I’m worried that my coworkers hate me and only put up with me because they don’t have the authority to fire me.  And when I’m not doing that, I’m…  Oh wait.  Yeah, I’m pretty much consistently worrying about one of those things.  So when I get home at night, all I want to do is hide in my bedroom.  But my family wants to spend time with me.  So I either find myself hiding from them and feeling guilty or spending time with them and wishing I were hiding from them and feeling guilty.  Insert the comma wherever it makes sense to you- I’m sure it applies.  And you know your social anxiety is getting worse when you get home from work and find yourself hoping your horse won’t walk up to the fence hoping to be petted.  That happened today.

Stop Nagging me, Depression!

Does this nagging feeling ever go away?  It’s the, “Life is pretty good right now, but at any moment it could all slide down the rabbit hole again” feeling.  I mean, in the last week or so, I’ve only lost a couple of hours to hiding in my bedroom feeling pathetic.  Which seems like a miracle.  In fact, not only have I not been hiding in my room, but I’ve been enjoying the time spent outside of it.  A lot.  But there is this feeling that’s following me around like a shadow.  It’s always there and often nearly imperceptible, but nothing can coax it to leave.  No matter how much fun I have, I always wonder how long it will be before I’m back to being curled up under the covers wishing everything would just go away.  And so I repeat the question:  Does this nagging feeling ever go away?

26 and Still Depressed?

                Today I turned 26.  Without a Bachelor’s Degree.  Without even a major I’m sure of.  Without a full-time, year-round job.  Without an apartment or home of my own.  Without a boyfriend, much less a husband.  With severe depression.  With an increasingly serious anxiety disorder.  With strained relationships with my best friends.  With a lot of self-doubt. 

                But today I laughed a LOT.  And it was enough.

Panic. Attack.

                I have “Generalized Anxiety Disorder.”  That means, sometimes I have panic attacks.  Other times, I just get really really really really anxious and feel like I might throw up.  Other times I get anxious and then the depression kicks in and convinces me whatever I’m worrying about really is going to be the end of the world, so I may as well be really really sad about it.  Sometimes it’s just a tight feeling in my chest that I can’t shake no matter how much deep breathing I do.  Sometimes I fly to London and get a combination of all four.

                A couple of weeks ago, I did something brave.  I flew to London to visit a friend.  I had never been overseas before, but I figured that since I would be going to an English-speaking country and I had a friend there, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  It started out with garden variety nervousness the week before the flight.  It culminated with me shaking and crying on my friend’s couch, certain that the horrible panic feeling wouldn’t go away unless I found some way to get back home immediately.  Which was not likely to happen. 

It’s hard to pin down what exactly was so terrifying.  I had never been through customs before, but there were big signs everywhere in my native language.  I was in a strange city without a phone, but I did have my friend’s number and access to payphones.  My debit card wasn’t working, but it was allowing me to withdraw money from the ATM.  I’m not used to using public transportation, but my friend had written out a very detailed list for me, and I was pretty confident of my ability to follow it.  Really, those were my only concerns, and none of them were remotely insurmountable.  And still, I felt like throwing up the moment the plane landed. 

I thought it would be better once I met up with my friend.  It wasn’t.  I thought maybe things would improve once we got to her house.  They didn’t.  She had to go to work shortly after dropping me off at her place, but frankly, that was good because I was losing it and I wasn’t sure I could hold it together enough to be around people.  So I was grateful she had to leave.  I felt so awful I wished I could die.  Literally.  I wished it was over.  And I was still certain I would not be ok at all until I got back to the USA.  Which was two weeks away.  And the temporal concept of two weeks just sat there on my chest crushing the air out.  I was afraid I was going to spend two weeks curled up on her couch wishing I were dead.  Surviving that long didn’t seem possible.

I tried reading for a while.  No better.  I tried watching TV.  Nada.  I tried facebooking.  Still nothing.  Eventually I was able to take a nap.  It was one of those naps where nothing changes at all but when you wake up, you’re at least glad some time has passed.  When I woke, I kept breathing in and out.  Shallowly.  I couldn’t even really cry to release the despair and terror.  I was safe as houses, had a good internet connection to contact home, and one of my dearest friends (who understands things like depression and anxiety) was going to be home in just a couple of short hours to help me through.  I had even managed to call the bank and sort out my debit card.  But nothing can shake panic like that.  Nothing. 

Somehow (slight overdose on my anxiety meds combined with an over-the-counter sleep aid), I managed to get to sleep that night.  And when I woke up in the morning, it was like nothing at all had happened.  I was fine.  It was gone.  And I completely loved my time in London.  And when the time came to fly to Germany to visit a couple of other friends, the accompanying panic was milder.  I didn’t die.  I did make it the two weeks until I got back home, and enjoy them too.  When I think back, half of me is proud and convinced I can do hard things.  The other half is way too scared to try anything like that ever again.  I honestly don’t know which half will win.  I don’t know if I’ll ever do anything scary and fun again.  But I might.