Category: Depression

Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

Dreams show us how to find meaning in our lives, how to fulfill our own destiny, how to realize the greater potential of life within us.” Marie-Louise Von Franz in The Way of the Dream

Early this morning I dreamed a dream where I was trying to explain to someone what it is like when you are drowning in a depressive episode. Even when you know what it is, that it will pass, and you will be okay if you don’t do anything to fuss with it. It still hurts, it still impedes activities of daily living. and you rarely have the words to express…

This is the example I gave to the dream inquisitor:

I once lived in a town called Victorville. It was high in the California desert where scrub and Joshua trees are the dominate flora broken up occasionally by a bright yellow daisy. In the summer it’s 120 degrees but it would drop down to a brisk 90 at night. In the winter it would be 75 during the day and you’d wake up to ice and snow in the morning. I loved winter there. But the example comes from early spring when it rained. It never rained normal, if there is such a thing. Most of the time it would shower for like two minutes, barely dislodge the dust on the windshield and then the sun comes back. Except this one time when I was out on the street with my companion when the sky darkened ominously and the heavens opened up and dropped water so fast the earth wasn’t ready to absorb it. Within a few minutes, water was rushing down the street like a river. Not deep enough to jump the curb (thankfully) but deep enough to know not to cross the street. Then like a faucet being turned off the rain stopped, the clouds moved and the sun came out again. Within minutes, the water stopped flowing and the overworked storm drains worked according to plan, and it was like nothing happened. Except me and my companion were soaked to the bone.

You’d think I’d say ‘the desert represents the depression’, but no. Yes, depression is a dearth of serotonin on the brain, but that’s not what it feels like. Throughout my life I have had the general sprinkling of depression where it is dark and there are some drops keeping me from speeding along in life until it passes, I mean, who doesn’t. But that downpour where it felt like God Himself was draining his tub onto the earth, is the feeling when, for no good reason, the sky in your emotional landscape clouds over ominously and then it rains so hard and so fast you don’t have time to correct it. You are trapped in a downpour without protection and all you can do is watch as the emotions rush by you trying to pull you into the current. You can’t move, you can’t protect yourself. All you can do is take you social meds and wait. You fight against the urge to step into the torrent and be washed away, but mostly you just wait. You practice your CBT techniques but you wait. People see it as being ‘lazy’, but you wait. Then the drops stop like a faucet being turned off, the light comes back out, and the rushing water turns into rivulets and then disappears. Everything dries up and you go back to the work you left when it all started as if nothing happened in the world, because to the world, nothing happened.

The image is comforting and I now have words to explain what it feels like. It’s a memory of mine which comes up when I see a hard rain. The desert isn’t prepared for a lot of rain because, well, it’s a desert. They trust the water will be quickly absorbed into the sandy loam before anything horrific could happen. Except for those two or three showers a year where the rain falls faster than the absorption rate and the water is flowing swifter than the storm drains can catch. I wish the depression would hold to such a minimalist schedule, but it doesn’t. But unlike Victorville (when I was there anyway), I now have the infrastructure to be like an umbrella. I am able to protect myself from the emotional onslaught of painful, relentless drops. CBT, journaling, blogging and even talking to a family member or a friend can help during the storm. The storm passes, you take a shower and change your clothes and you go back out into the sun and work until the rain comes again. Thus is my life.

Thriving In Action

This is my mission statement for 2026:

One of my action items to prove to myself I’m thriving was to have quarterly get-your-ass-out-of-the-house things to do. My first one was Between the Lines. A play in Castro Valley, CA which was directed by a coworker at One Medical. It was a sweet story of a girl trying to fit in and the characters in a book who were refusing to let that happen. It was a sweet story that touched on some deeper subjects like the importance of fathers in their child’s life and a single-mother’s struggle when he doesn’t. The importance of friends and acceptance in life. But in general, it was fun, well thought out and staged. I walked away from the play lighter of heart and desperate to be able to see better.

Saturday, the 23rd. I singed up to go see Mandalorian and Grogu with a theater full of rabid Star Wars fans. People dressed up and strangers talked to strangers. I won a trivia book for all the Star Wars movies. I am a fan of anything space based, I realized. I loved the TV show The Mandalorian because I would come home from work exhausted and sit on my bed and watch and episode or three and Sammy, who was pissed off at me because I was gone the whole day, would sit on the bed and watch with me. Not cuddle, just watch. I think she had a crush on Grogu: he was small and green too. It endeared the show to me. And the violence. I do love me some fictional, unrealistic violence.

I’m already planning my third outing, I want to go to the opera for my birthday. My birthday being in the middle of the quarter. I can’t afford the choice tickets my friend used to buy but I’m going to go to a matinee on a Saturday and hope there will be tickets available for the cheap seats at cheaper than face value prices. There is Manon and Tosca coming up for that time frame. I’ve seen Tosca but not Manon. I’m looking for a CD player at thrift stores so I can prep by listening to the CDs. I don’t use a streaming service and I mostly listen to books in the car, so my life has been something of a musical desert. I love the way Opera makes me take deep breaths with the arias and then float away on the high notes. It’s very calming.

I realized I’m picking outings where we are all there for a uniform experience. I’m not really ‘socializing’ but going somewhere without someone is a really big step for me. My sisters don’t like musical theater and science fiction/fantasy doesn’t really interest them. The difference between the the first two is the opera will have alcohol, which adds a scary element in the mix for me. I really never figured out why. You just can’t trust people when they drink. There is no argument you can make that will make me believe otherwise. But we are all still there for a civilized cultural experience. My last one might need to be to a Faire (Ren, Dickens or Psychic) where everyone is doing what they want and I need to participate in something other than shopping. If I don’t get a job any time soon, I won’t be able to participate in anything at all. (Sigh).

I’m proud of myself. Even if these are baby steps compared to what my life used to be when I was younger and not terrified of the outside world. I’m happier and safer in bed, but that’s not how life is lived. It’s not how to thrive.

The Consequence of Truth

So, I got new insurance after the old insurance took out a pound of flesh from my credit card (thank you congress for not supporting the ACA) and once I finally got things settled I found a doctor and made and appointment for the first available. They ask questions like: Do you have thoughts of harming yourself? Do you think of suicide? Do you feel hopeless? Now because of my honesty, I’ve had one social worker call me to make sure I have access to the suicide prevention line. I’m waiting for another one to call me about……I dunno. They did assign a psychiatrist but I won’t talk to him until June (My appointment was at the end of April). They need a box for yes, but I know better.

I told the truth, or my truth for that time. I was tired of fighting the good fight and being a burden to everyone in my family, and I want it to end. I won’t lie, there are some mornings when I wake up and realize I am failing at EVERYTHING and I don’t want to ever leave my bed again. The panic alone at the thought of starting another day is enough to hide under the covers for protection from the world.

But I don’t. I know it’s temporary and I know I just need to take my meds and wait the thirty minutes or so for the meds to calm my anxiety and brighten my mind. I know this. I know there is a way out of this darkness. Finding the energy to do something other than huddle in my room with Sammy and apply for jobs I won’t get and doom scrolling isn’t helping.

I’m not back in the void. I’m not, I’m not, I’m not!!!

Most days I’m in a mental state of ‘meh’. I go through the motions of what I need, ignoring what I want and trying to do something productive in my tiny world. I am reaching out socially. I started Stitch and Resist with another person in the TRAC Group (Tracy Resistance and Coalition) and I’m going to share it with SURJ. It is way to find people who are struggling with the anxiety inducing climate of the day and try to do something positive. I’m going to a movie on the 23rd with a bunch of rabid Star Wars fans. I’m having the second Stitch and Enrich at church on Saturday where I’m going to teach crochet to any of the women who want to learn. I want us to make blankets/hats/sweaters/whatever to give to either the homeless, the premature babies at the hospital or for the farmworkers who have to shelter in place because of ICE. I’m still doing all of this in the same state of ‘meh’. Is that normal? Is that fine? I dunno. Honestly, right now I’m alive, I’m trying and I’m working on it. And feeding an unhealthy addiction to cookie butter.

Exetential Angst…

…thy name is anxiety. 

I don’t know if I’m in a full-blown crisis yet, but naming your demons is the first step in taming them.

Doom Scrolling

We all do it. Someone sends you a cute video of (insert favorite subject here) and then you swipe up to see what’s next and then it’s three in the morning . By then you’re all tangled up in knots because the terrifying truths from your favorite influencers have enraged you and then your gears get stripped by a cockatoo tap dancing along with a Fred Astaire movie. (@jackson_huhniverses) And you keep going, hoping for another spoonful of sugar to make the horrors perpetrated in the world go down a little easier.

This solid waste of time is a symptom of the anxiety, and an excuse to submerge myself in the depression, I know this. Last week I spent 40 hours swiping instead of doing something productive, positive or useful for my mental and/or physical health. I wish they would put guardrails on these sites so you can’t go careening out of control. Can’t the algorithm that learns what you want and like learn to cut you off like a conscientious bartender? At least when I’m crocheting because I can’t deal with the sudden rush of anxiety over (insert crisis here) I’m making something…..doom scrolling doesn’t accomplish anything.

What I’m realizing is my depression, or the Void, is looming over my life again. I’m talking medication-upping, therapy-seeking depression. I’m hoping my desire to get out of bed before 7:00am, well, up and doing something like write or job search in bed, is a sign the light is coming back. I started walking with the ducks again and I’m putting forth a courageous effort to stop the scrolling before my alarm clock goes off. I’m ten toes down withstanding the void, but I am terrified. Rereading my post Distraction was a giant flashing red light and I blithely went about my life like “It is what it is,”

The answer is the beginning of my last paragraph: “…I’m realizing…” I can do something about it, and I’m trying. God help me, I am trying, Then I scroll up in my brain to make plans and a perfectly balanced cinematic short of the evil pixie pops into my mind to remind me this is my life. I will always be depressed, I will always be paralyzed by anxiety and I will die that way. (I won’t lie, death has been on my mind lately). I need to recapture the hope I had in Beyond Surviving, I’m not starting at zero, I still think I’m further along than when I started this blog what feels like a hundred years ago, I guess that’s something the evil pixie can’t take away. Celebrate the small wins, is what they say.

Distraction

I am struggling and instead of doing something to alleviate it, (writing in my journal, looking for work, exercising, praying) I’m reading excerpts from my writing and crawling into a word outside of what is going on in the world right now. I love fiction because it allows me to write the world the way I want it to be. A world where we protect our children from predators and themselves. For example, a parents who see a suicide note and yells at her daughter instead of getting her help. Yes, that happened. Though, at the time, I didn’t think of it as suicide. I wanted to just disappear. At 11, a very sheltered 11 to boot, I didn’t know really what suicide was. I didn’t know anything useful about protecting myself from myself any better than I knew how to take care of myself then or now. I typed on the typewriter I just wanted to leave, I didn’t want to be there any more. My plan, thin as it was, was to hike up into the foothills behind the stable where we boarded our horse. The one time I was allowed to take the beast into the foothills I found a decrepit shack, no bigger than a normal shed today and it represented a life completely cut off from people, from the confusion and ignorance I lived in. It also cut me off from water and food and any form of real protection from cold and rain. I recognize it now for what it is, a form of passive suicidality.

It pisses me off all over again that my mother who knew, who read the note for what it really was, never did anything. Who I felt I had to hide my first go-round when I attempted suicide and subsequent antidepressants because I couldn’t let her know or talk about it because she wasn’t safe. A doctor put her on Decadron for a pseudo brain tumor to reduce the swelling in her brain and that somehow sparked some sort of mental break which required anti-depressants and after she became RFK level anti-anti-depressant spokesperson. (She revealed in ‘couples therapy’ with my sister she was faking it so we wouldn’t move to the Virgin Islands for a job opportunity for my father…..Yes, that happened.)

The most useless distraction is wondering how my life would be different if she had done something other than yell at me for scaring her. If she had gotten me therapy or took me to the bishop, or just ANYTHING. Would I be constantly second-guessing myself now? Would I be struggling with depression and anxiety? Would I be able to take care of myself like a valued human being instead of just doing the needful? Would I still be in pain every morning wondering if I should just stay in bed and forget the fight, surrender and die? I have really, really been hating her all over again. This is something that has recently bubbled up from the emotional archives and has rekindled the hate and anger and self-recrimination for not protecting myself better. (way to really add to the emotional maelstrom.)

Let me be clear, I am not suicidal. Disturbing Thoughts is the closest I’ve come since I’ve started this journey to be that close to causing myself harm. When the disturbing thoughts disturb me I correct them and remind myself I have faith (not always hope), and that everything will be okay. I know it will because I’ve seen it happen. I have a very loving family, I have friends around the US, and I have a bird no one wants so I can’t go anywhere. Some days I just need to allow myself distractions to get me through. I need ignore the feeling of being at the bottom of a hill and having to push my whole life up it again to see the future.

If the abuse/neglect I received in childhood did this to me, my heart aches for the survivors who suffered at the hands of the pedophiles and rapists on and off that Island. Every man who takes privilege and forces it on children should be publicly humiliated, excoriated with acid and castrated. NO ONE has the right to do that to a child. Period. Not a parent. Not a politician. Not a billionaire. Anyone who protects, supports or defends these men are JUST AS GUILTY. Period. PROTECT THE CHILDREN not privilege,

Coping Strategy For The Nonce

The world, not just our nation, is in chaos. Wars, incursions, kidnapping, school shootings and women and mothers are being destroyed by the dozens. Some in places where their safety has been guaranteed by a democratic constitution. As a woman who is known to be mouthy, that kind of frightens me…..A LOT! I try not to think beyond prayers to the families because that path leads to panic and sleepless nights.

Unemployment gives me time to think. Its helpful to untangle the plot knots I often find myself ensnarled in, but not so good for the anxiety which makes it impossible to concentrate. Writing gives me escape from my stress and anxiety, crocheting provides an outlet and a filler for times when I’m trying to ruminate on my problems. It also fills a need for me to help out in the world without totally getting involved….by that I mean leaving my bedroom and bird and actually putting actions to my beliefs. Crochet isn’t going to be enough while this country spirals through the machinations of a greedy and slowly dissolving mind.

So, what to do….

A friend at church has started TRAC Indivisible which sent me to a site http://www.mobilize.us. It’s a platform dedicated to help us to, well, mobilize and realize we aren’t alone in this struggle to restore the America like-minded patriots believe in. After signing up for TRAC Indivisible mobilize.us directed me to SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice) group. I’ve attended one Zoom meeting which covered the wins and goals for the nationwide group. The first meeting for TRAC Indivisible is IRL this Saturday and I can see what I can physically do. Talking about it isn’t enough any more, it only adds to the angry and terrifying spinning in my head. I’m hoping by doing something tangible, like the crochet does for the anxiety in my immediate sphere of influence, I will surmount my fear and anxiety over the local, national and global terror playing out on all news outlets every freaking day.

If the current state of the union is tweaking your anxiety and you think doing something will help, please check out SURJ at http:mobilize.us. You will need to certify yourself, that you’re not a bot or whatever. If you are in my area, Tracy and San Juaquin County, you can sign up for TRAC Indivisible.

I’m afraid I will fail. My CBT rebuttal to that unkind thought is: Failing means I tried. Failing means I was moving forward. Not all paths are marked, not all roads are paved and sometimes you have to stick your toe in hot water before you realize it’s perfect for a long soak.

Crossing Signal

Twelve days ago I upped my Welbutrin by 50%.  I explained to the teledoc I wanted her to increase it by 100% but to do it with 50mg tablets.  Aparently, that’s illegal.  Learned something new. 

I started the 150mg and waited for my brain to accept and become comfortable with the saratonin level rising.  In twelve days I’ve taken my meds maybe eight times and it’s not sending a consistent signal. 

There was the initial placebo-effect knowing help was coming and the constant hoovering-up of the happy chemical would be able to play longer on the gray matter would become reality…..then hope faded and the darkness reasserted itself and I’m compounding the signal by skipping a dose every few days. 

To avoid fault at all costs, I’m thinking my emotional brain is sending the signal it wants relief where my pragmatic brain is countering the signal with….now you have to take responsibility and do something about all the things the depression has kept you from doing.  That thought exhausts me when I see everything I’ve been avoiding.

I think the signals need to be flooded with saratonin so switching to my old dose and taking two might keep the signals from crossing and confusing me….What do you think?

Make a Wish

With e erything going on in the world, what would you wish for?  It’s a fun thought experiment.

Snow of Blossoms

I love how, when the blossoms fall it looks like snow but smells like a bubble bath.