Tag: #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.

I Protest Two

Today was No Kings III. For a small town (like under 100,000…I think) we had a mighty force of courageous and outraged citizens demonstrating. I worked mostly at the membership table. I know I can talk to people if there is something between me and them….a table, a bar on the chair, even glasses. That’s not saying I like doing it, but I know I can do it if it’s needed. I held a sign for about 30 minutes towards the end. I made it myself…”Stop Deranged Trump Syndrome”. I think there is a better word for syndrome for the message I was trying to get across, but it’ll do. I was forthright in getting people to sign in, get them to take a “Fabulously Fighting Fascism” sticker until we were out. I told them about drop cards and why, even if they’re old and white, they needed one.

This picture sums up my whole day. I don’t know her name, she sat in her chair, in the sun waving her flag at passing cars and refused to give up, or give in. My hero! I couldn’t hold a sign unless I was in the shade of a tree. I’ll get stronger, but she showed us all how it’s done.

Part of why I am doing this is to fight back the anxiety of unemployment, looming recession and because it is horrible out there, and if we don’t stop it, it’ll only get worse. This week I’ve been to a TRACC Indivisible membership meeting and a SURJ.org local circle meeting. The circle meeting asked questions of what we would be comfortable in doing, gaging where we need to focus on to be a better team and support system for those in the community. One was to be a decoy car with a Mexican flag when ICE is in the area to give people time to go home where the government can’t get to them. My first thought was NO! That’ll get me shot. Which is a valid concern with the untrained stormtroopers making life miserable in the towns they infest. But then the evil pixie pops up her spiky little head to ask, “Would that be a bad thing?”

Yes, you evil sprite, it would be a bad thing to be shot and killed before I am ready to leave the earth. Again, it’s the passive suicidality trying to reassert itself into a more prominent role in my life. And the depression, anxiety, passive suicidality and the pixie can rearrange the deck chairs all the want, but I still own the boat! I still decide when the ship sinks or float. And damnit, it is going to sail until it reaches the Elysian shores we’ve all been promised in our individual spiritual studies. It just bothers me that I’m not cured. I still have to tackle the darker elements to the mat every day. I know, I’ve had this for decades, probably my whole freaking life if you look back at Distraction I wrote my first suicide-esque note when I was barely double-digits. I’m hoping it’s not too late to make a life of what life I have left, but every time I try to get out, they pull me back in.

I’m constantly trying not to let the thoughts of failure, giving up, of wasting my life and all that entails bog me down. I’m trying to write, but the ever present need for an income keeps me distracted from the comforting pools of creation. I set the goal at the end of last week to go back to the basics….take meds, exercise, eat 3 meals a day, pray and read the scriptures. Anything else is gravy, as they say. And then I caught myself piling on more and more things every day and I shut down. After going to the SURJ and TRACC meetings on Thursday made me withdraw from the world on Friday. It was hard to engage with people today, but I had the safe space of a barrier (even if it is imagined) me and them.

I know this is sounds like a doggy-downer post, it’s not. I got up, even when I didn’t want to, and went to the protest. I accomplished that. I shared my opinion, my jokes and my stake story with strangers. I am moving forward, but just like the dragonfly in the chrysalis, it is a struggle to emerge a new and stronger creature. And I just want to be the promised dragonfly instead of in a constant lava state.

–

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,

SURJ’ing Forward & on TRAC

These postcards represent my very first action in resisting. All four were sent to my senator, basically asking him if he would like his due process, freedom of speech and so on denied him. My point here is that I did it. It’s not holing a sign singing, chanting and marching, but I did it.

I’m a good talker about what’s wrong with the government (no matter who is in the oval office) but I’ve always believed when you deny any right to any person you are opening the door for those rights to be denied you. Benjamin Franklin, I believe, said:

Any man who gives up his freedom for security deserves neither freedom no security.

I love my freedoms, and I’m not going to let them go easily, I am going slow because I don’t want to terrify myself under the bed. So, I’ve been to two national call to action meetings (another one tonight) to unite against the tyranny and brutality in Minnesota. There is a national call to action to stand up against the companies in our neighborhood which are supporting ICE while they occupy any area….Target, Home Depot, and Hilton. Tomorrow, if you can, please don’t shop at them or if you’re traveling try not to stay in a Hilton property.

My new years resolutions requires me to see how far I can take each aspect of the two organizations I’ve adopted. TRAC Indivisible (Tracy Residents Action Coalition) which is within the Indivisible grass-roots organization. SURJ is Standing Up for Racial Justice, specifically White People Standing Up for Racial Justice. Theirs is the call to action for tomorrow. Within these two groups I need to do certain things like doing the postcards (done), going to a protest, doing call-banking, and actually going door to door to get my neighbors involved. I’ve done all of those things for jobs or charity work but I had something to hide behind. This is standing up for what I know is right and asking people to join me.

The goal for getting involved? Mostly to re-enter the world. It’s so easy to stay in my room, crocheting obsessively and repeating the mantra ‘everything will be okay in the end’. The end being when I’m dead and the worries of the world won’t trouble me any longer. I’ve also tasked myself to join a writing group and to join the church choir and see if loud makes up for talent.

In all honesty, I’m scared. I don’t want to be shot, I don’t want to be hurt and I don’t want to bring down any of that hell on my family. But, for me, it’s gotten to the point where doing nothing is no longer an option. So, here I am on the bleeding edge of action and I’m trying really, really hard to leave my room and jump.

Reflecting on Life: A Robin’s Journey to Freedom

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This isn’t my photo. I found it on BlueSky. It just spoke to me. The single branch swamped in dark water with a single red breasted robin on it’s arthritic finger. It is a story of rebirth, renewal and recovery from a dark and solitary life to the freedom of a bird to soar on the winds of time. Too dramatic? Possibly. I just really like this picture, it gives me hope.

The Cutest Ducklings Welcome Spring

A group of five ducklings swimming in a pond with rippling water reflections.

Spring has officially sprung when you see more ducklings in the pond than ducks. Happy Spring!

Eviction Day

Well, I did it. I finally finished the third book in my trilogy. I can now evict the people who have been squatting in my head for the last, what feels like, 100 years. The time differential between the time I wrote it (March 1 until April 8) feels like the whole eighteen months which elapsed on paper. I realize a lot of my anxiety from the pressure of time was from the fictional days flying off the imaginary calendar, not the real one. I wrote close to 500 pages in about 40 days. It’s both amazing and dumbfounding and makes me wish I could just sit and write for a living. Adventures in publishing awaits; Any advice?