2012 is for Enduring: A Depression Post

Depression still has a serious stranglehold on me.  I’ve been feeling better of late, yet it’s misleading this feeling.  My physical well-being is a bit better.  I no longer hear suicidal whispers or feel drawn to my firearms.  I haven’t wanted to medicate with copious quantities of alcohol.  Okay, that’s a lie.  I’ve wanted to climb in a bottle of cheap whiskey and get stinking drunk for some time now.    Deep sea diving in the stuff, if I’m honest with myself.  However, I know that my responsibilities are too many to do that.  To be that selfish, to damage myself so obviously.

I brood.  I watch an astounding amount of television.  Movies, crime dramas, sports, and I stare at my notebooks desperate to write, but not able to.  Okay, that’s a lie.  I think about staring at my notebooks.  They sit in my bag, safe and hidden away.  I resolve to stare at my notebooks and perhaps to possibly open one and write something, anything in one.  Not all of them, one of them.  Just a sentence.  A few words.  An ink blot…and it doesn’t happen.  It just doesn’t happen.

I wanted to Reverb last month.  I think I got a half dozen posts actually written down.  A lot were answered and composed in my head, but my fingers never shared the words.  I’m pretty certain it was a lack of the seat of my pants in the seat of my chair at my desk.  Making an indentation in the sofa cushion for the past few months puts a serious damper on writing.   I got to playing on the iPad, from the couch, and made bargains with myself that I never kept.  I’m pretty certain I never intended to keep them in the first place.  It was simply lies to make wasting my life on the couch palatable to my psyche/demons/voices/Depression/ego, whatever.  Worked to.

Sadly, it has a nasty after-affect.  What is also called an unintended consequence (or as economists would say, a negative externality) and that is it made the Depression worse.  Which makes it harder to get out of the couch (not off, but out of) and DO something besides watch TV shows that I’ve watched more times than I’ve made excuses.  I’ve made lots of excuses, you see.

I wanted to write a fabulous and heartfelt post this past weekend spotlighting all the wonderful people who have been supportive, kind, thoughtful, make me laugh and a couple that may not even know how they touch my life.  Didn’t happen.  Makes me mad at myself, which adds another log to the pyre of self-loathing.  I tend to get this feeling that’s all I’m really good at, building that pyre.

In the big picture, it really pisses me off.  Talking to myself while driving mad.  YELLING at myself while driving mad.  Probably scaring people in passing cars.  I’ve been told I look very scary when I’m angry, and I’ve been very angry about this recent Depression for a while now.  It interferes with every aspect of life.

I’ve not “shilled” for my book or chapbook because I get terribly despondent when I do and don’t sell a copy.  Or even get interest.  Silly, I know  because it is an unrealistic expectation.  I know this in my head, but my Depression croons that it means I’m no good, can’t write, people won’t buy one because I’m a loser, they’re laughing at me, I have acne that can be seen through the computer and the bananas are spying on me.  Okay, that’s a lie about the bananas but you get the idea.

I forced myself to write something in my paper journal today.  Forced myself, you see.  The bargain I made for myself was I could go pee if I filled a page.  Didn’t have to be anything fantastic, but I had to do it.  My bladder was voicing displeasure at having to wait and I am old enough and sufficiently with it enough to still be embarrassed by peeing myself in public.  I was in a restaurant, y’see.  So, I filled a page with words, sentences and even paragraphs.  It even sort of hung together and made sense.  Then I peed.

I need to force myself out of this malaise.  This continuous ennui, this horrible Depression.  I need to listen to the voice of outrage that sounds two counties over and struggle though the gauze the Depression wraps around my eyes.  I’m writing out Small Stones and posting them daily on a Posterous site I created for the purpose: A Tree Out of My Window.  The main idea is to make myself observe and record the world around me and to do so in a creative fashion.  If that is the only creative thing I do this year, then I shall be content with that.  Okay, that’s a lie.  I won’t be content with only that.  It will be a start.

The worst part of Depression for me is the Pity.  People feel pity or worse, they feel like you’re making shit up.  They tend to feel that taking my medications will make it all better, make me all “Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!” and remind me of how close I came to getting fired, killing myself, and “Oh, you should be…” fill in the mother-fucking blank.  All I wanna say to them is, “Give it a rest, wouldja?  I know how fortunate I am, and while I am trying to pull myself up by the bootstraps, I don’t WANNA pull myself up by the bootstraps because I’m a lousy piece of…” again, you get the idea.  It’s a daily, sometime hourly lather/rinse/repeat occurrence.  It’s maddening, which feeds into Guess What?  You said “Depression” didn’t you?  You’re learning!  (sorry for the snark)

The thoughtful and wonderful @whollyjeanne asked a day or three ago what our “Word for 2012″ is going to be.  I had to give this a bit of thought because my first impulse was filthy and would have been meant totally in jest.  It also would have been totally inappropriate and disrespectful to Jeanne’s question.  After a bit, I came up with Endure.  Because giving up is not an option.  In order to endure, I must do.

So, I shall force myself to write.  I am stating this publicly to make myself accountable.  To make it more real, more of a commitment.  I must do to endure, because giving up is not an option.  Too much is riding on it.

Thanks for reading.