Strawberry Jam

Made strawberry jam this afternoon. One just popped. Hurray!

I don't see any stars.

The brain doctor keeps saying that my life seems depressing. Every time he says it I wonder what's the point.

He wants me to go out and do thing with people around. A class, maybe. Something where my mind is occupied on thoughts and things outside of myself and, he believes, eventually I will come to strike up conversations with the people around me and make friends and then start going out and doing things with people and eventually I'll be happy and I won't think how I currently think. He also says that this will take time and will be hard for me; he has no idea how hard.

The thought doctor jacked up my medication to the highest approved dose a few weeks ago. I didn't notice any positive difference. He doesn't want to put me on another drug because he's afraid of generics and what may be in the pill. (Generic drugs have to be + or - 20% the brand name levels of the active chemical and the FDA doesn't monitor what else goes into them.I looked it up.) I'd like something else, though, I've been on this drug for three months and while it has helped a little, it doesn't feel like much change.

A friend who is on a different medication said that she thinks more clearly and more purely herself. I envy her both. Over the last couple of days my brain has felt muddied and slow and sometimes I feel like I have to pull really hard to get thoughts out and then have concentrate even harder to make sure that I'm understood by others. As for feeling more like myself, I've been down so long that the only self I know is the one in a dark pit, so deep I can't even see the stars at night. I don't know if the medication she's on would do the same for me, but I'd like to spend a day feeling like she feels.

The doctor also said that if I am as depressed as I say I am he finds it to be incredible that I can function as well as I do at work. I tried to explain to him that if I couldn't get out of bed and make an effort to get to work and do my job that I may as well end it all and I can't do that because I made a promise about 25 years ago that I wouldn't. So I haven't. So I don't plan to. So I won't.

It's strange to be talking with someone about these things and being very specific, not vague like here. What's stranger is knowing that he's been doing this job for longer than I've been alive and he can still be surprised and shocked by some of the things I say. I assumed that someone who's been in the brain doctor business for this long has pretty much heard it all. He did tell me that he hasn't hospitalized one of his patients in 20 years, which, of course, sent my brain into overreact mode and I wonder if he's considering hospitalizing me. If he does I may just let that be the end; stop there.

I feel like I should apologize for putting this out there. I know that very few people read this and I've heard that getting your thoughts and feelings out is a good idea, but I don't want the few that read my thoughts to worry or think that there's something that they should do or something that they can do.

In time I'm supposed to enjoy the things that "normal" people enjoy. In time I'm supposed to be able to find a reason or reasons like "normal" people do. In time certain thoughts are supposed to fade away and I'm supposed to start thinking more closely to how "normal" people think. In time.

Finished Yogurt

With peach jam.

Yogurt: Successful!

Currently, three of the quarts are draining for the Greek style.

Today I Make Yogurt

I hope it turns out.

Increase Without Increase

Last week, with great hope, the brain doctor upped my dosage. The idea is that since there have been some positive effects with the lower dose the higher dose would, hopefully, give my brain a push to the next step and I could really start getting better.

Tomorrow I get to tell the brain doctor that it's not working. I don't feel any different this week than I did last week or the two weeks before that. Which isn't so bad because my insurance won't cover this drug.

Besides what I wrote on Tuesday about how those okay moments make me hate my job they also make me really want to get better. Having those moments of okay make some of the horrible times hurt, really hurt. I don't remember a time when I really wanted to be better. It's kind of scary.

Work Misery

The bad thing is that the more often I feel okay to good the more I realize just how miserable my job makes me.