The Bed Song

A favorite waltz of mine:



Although I think the song should be a duet.

My Father's Mother

On 12/25/14, my grandmother died. My mother got the call as we were pulling up to my uncle's house for Christmas dinner.

I've been thinking for a week about how to say something about her and her place in the world, like I did for my grandpa earlier this year, but it's much harder to do this for her. With my grandpa, I could, and can (and somtimes do) talk about his idosincratic behavior and his contracictory nature for ever. Everything with him was right on the surface and very little was held back.

She was different. She was kind and cared for everyone, maybe even everything. (Not snails, so much, because they ate her plants.) That kindness the simple way she showed it was who she was.

Which isn't to say she was a simple woman. How could she be simple? She was my grandma.

She was born in the USA, the daughter of immigrants.

She and her best friend couldn't eat lunch at Woolworths because the lunch counter there wouldn't serve colored people. They had to walk downtown to the Jewish deli and did that every day.

She never learned how to swim. She had a bathing suit and would come into the water with us, but she'd never go in past her hips. She enjoyed just wading, she said. As a kid it always concerned me that she never learned and, when I asked, she said she wasn't going to learn. Now that I'm older I wonder if she was scared.

She loved playing games. Cards and board, mostly. She introduced the family to Spite and Malice and when she got going she'd let out a wheeee and when things weren't going so well she'd put hexes on the other players and circle her chair for luck.

She'd take my brothers and me to the mall and we'd all just browse. There was nothing we needed, but it was always fun just looking.

Everyone she met she treated as an old friend. She called everyone darlin' and meant it.

My Brain

It's not at its best, my brain. It's been fuzzy. Tired.

The brain doctor didn't increase the dosage when I saw him a couple of weeks ago. He said what I'm at is the max. I decided, and he concurred, to continue on the way I am, for a while. The only other choice would have been a new drug and after six month (I think it was that long) of trying to find something that didn't hurt me while it helped me I need a break to just settle down.

Not to say that I'm doing well, though. I'm just existing. If I didn't have a job to go to five days a week, I wouldn't leave the house. At least I'd leave as rarely as possible.

At work, I've had a couple of major screw-ups that could lead to some future problems, although I doubt it. I've also made lots of minor ones. Most I've caught before the next step and no one knows about them. Some went on but came back to me to correct. Rarely have they gone past that state, but if they keep going, they're gone.

I'd like to quit my job. Not because I dislike it, but more because I'm "meh" about it. The great manager has moved on, for at least a year, but I expect she'll fit in the position permanently. The current acting manager is a good guy, but we only have him for a couple more months and then who knows. The biggest problem is I can't see this job leading anywhere that I'd like to end up. Even as I look out across the virtual 160,000 square miles of the state for a different job I see nothing that I want to do. I don't want to arrange contracts or spend my day in meetings or arranging travel plans or track expenditures or write reports or work with the public. That's all that I see available to me.

When I look out at other places, away from the public sector, I get lost in not knowing what I can do. There are a lot of things that I can't do or haven't learned to do and most of the time when I see a job that I might like I think I can't do it. When I see things that I can do and would like to do, I have no experience and would have to start at the bottom.

One of the best things about working for the state is knowing that every 12 months I'll get a step raise until I hit the top of the pay scale as long as I have performed my duties well. I don't beg to get that little bit more. I don't have to dance around convincing some asshole that what I do is valuable and that I do it well like people do in the private world. That kind of thing is especially hard because I don't believe it myself. Never have.

Sometimes I think I'd know what I'd like to do for a living. It would require a lot of work, though. A lot of time and learning to do things that I can actually do. Worst of all it doesn't really pay enough for a person to live. And then there's all the rest "social" "media" bullshit that you have to do just to stay "connected" with "people."

"Oh, he surely must be happy with everything he's got."

The meds that I've been on for about six weeks now have helped and don't seem to have hurt. (Except for maybe the break-outs on my forehead, but that could be something else.)

I feel nowhere near as well as I felt last year at this time, but I'm not scouring the internets looking for people thinking like I was thinking and reading what they've written. I'm not finding websites that give me information I would need to better make sure that I would end up dead. (Because, honestly, the scariest thing to think of when thinking the horrible thoughts is what if I fail and wake up tomorrow.)

Obviously, I'm still thinking things, though. However, it's much easier to turn on a smile and laugh at the appropriate and expected moments and make sure that people at work and people in my family don't even suspect what's in my mind.

So, I am feeling better.

I don't know what the maximum dose of the medication is, but I bet that if I can take one step more the brain doctor will put me at that level when I see him on Tuesday.

Children Without a Parent

About three weeks ago my brother caught up with this here blog. He worried and fretted and then showed what I had written to his wife. His wife, the kind and sweet woman she is, told him to drive down and see me. Which he did.

However, he didn't tell me. I just got cryptic messages about breakfast and seeing him and I don't really know what. Of course I had a feeling that he was driving down from Oregon, but I hoped, so hoped, that he wasn't on his way. My brother, being my brother, didn't respond to me about, well, anything. His wife, unlike how she usually is, kept cryptic on me and experienced a partial me not being so nice. (This is where I try to tactfully tell the person who they are or what they're doing in child friendly language, but all the subtext comes out as me yelling at them to stop being a fucking asshole and tell me what I want to know, in a very passive-aggressive way. I did, sort of, apologize for acting this way.)

Eventually, I got confirmation from my brother that he was in California and he wanted to take me out to dinner. Nothing about why he had driven nearly 700 miles, but I could guess. I knew what I had been writing and how it would look to someone who hadn't been following daily, but rather read everything in one chunk. Of course, I spent the whole day feeling sick to my stomach because I had made my brother leave his family out of concern for me, which is something I never wanted to happen.

It also made me rethink this whole blogging thing. In part, especially over the last year, this has been a record of just how sick my brain has been. Reading it, you can see the few highs and horrible lows. And I think that's a good thing. Maybe not for me or my family, but there's this sickening cycle of thought on the web that may help other to understand what it's like to be a severely depressed person. A person on meds that worked and then stopped working and the mental and physical pain that's one can go through trying to get back to okay.

That evening we met and we talked. I felt like I was driving the conversation more than him. There are two reasons for this: 1. I'm very good and sneaking conversations onto other topics that are comfortable for everyone. 2. I kept pushing back toward the blog and depression because I wanted to reassure my brother that nothing was going to happen, for the foreseeable future.

It was a weird dinner and a weird after dinner, too.

He left for Oregon so his wife could get back to work. I went back to the house and thought about deleting everything I'd written on the internets, or at least this blog.

Also, while he was in California, he stopped and talked with each of our parents. Our dad, for the first time ever, had a flash of understanding about the sheer insanity this depression thing is made of. I'm not sure what he and our mom spoke about, but she reminded me that I can talk to her and my dad about anything. ("Hi. What'd you do today?" "I stared at the brick corner of the building for a few minutes trying to figure out how fast I'd need to swing my head so I can smash the bricks through my skull and deep into my brain while picturing that exact scenario in my head." "Uhhh...")

A couple of nights later, my dad wrote me a pretty long e-mail, at like two in the morning, which I feel guilty about. In it was all sorts of advice on how to counteract bad things with good. (He's a fixer.) He reminded me that he has felt depressed in his life so he does know what it's like and not to dismiss his advice. I wrote him an equally long e-mail and very carefully laid out what my depression is like; what depression is like when you can find no person, no action, no thing, no emotion to blame it on; how this depression is just being mentally exhausted all the time and knowing, simply knowing, that there is only one way to stop being exhausted and that one way is socially unforgivable. I think he understands what I've been going through better. The other night he was willing to engage me with questions about depression and that's a big step for us.

As for the blog, I don't know. I didn't like the idea of deleting it. It charts the course of my life very well, especially the last year when I decided no one was reading so what the hell. I'm surprised I'm writing this. I still feel very uncomfortable and I'm censoring myself more than I was because it was my fault my nieces didn't have their dad for three days. And that's just one problem that I know I caused.

Schrecklichen Schönheit

On TV, death can be funny and it can beautiful even when it's horrific, but it's rarely sad.

In life, death is never beautiful. It is always sad and often horrific, but it is never beautiful and only "funny" in the Darwin Awards.

Yet in my head I see stark, contrasting colors and unique environments.

Day Off

I took a mental health day today. Well, mental and physical health. The new pills are still doing a number on my stomach, so much so that I hurled this morning.

On the brain side, well, I'm ready to take a trip to Utah.

I see the brain doctor tomorrow afternoon. We're going to have to try something new. I don't want the sweating and the headaches and nausea anymore. How can someone feel mentally good if they feel physically disgusting all the time. It's hard enough being morbidly obese and trying to be accepting of oneself.

Anyway, the time away from work didn't really help me, but I made sure that it didn't hurt other people, either. Tomorrow my concentration will be just as poor as it is today and my stomach will be just as achy, but I'll go to work and then, eventually, drive an hour to see the brain doctor. And I'll hear him tell me, again, to just hold on. Of course I'll hold on. There's a lot of stuff to do before I'll be ready to go to Utah.

*blink*

Away It Goes

I haven't read a book in over three weeks.

I haven't finished reading in book in four or five months.

Reading was one of my favorite things to do. I used to be able to spend all day reading and now I can't muster enough concentration to read for more than ten or so minutes.

This makes me angry and sad and that doesn't help me with anything.

*blink*

Fancy Pants

I think if I were thin, or normal, I'd be a clothes whore.

Jacketed Hollow

Earlier this week, Tuesday I think, I found myself reading about bullet caliber.

I honestly don't remember how I got there, but there I was. Not only was I reading about the size of bullets, but I had tabs open relating to the fillings, or lack thereof, of bullets, reading about the different kinds of shapes and coatings. I read as much as I could learn about bullets in a short amount of time.

This probably isn't a good thing because the most recent fantasy (both an accurate and horrifying word) floating around in my head involves a handgun of some sort. The kind changes, but it's never a rifle.

Fortunately, I don't own any kind of gun, so there's all that time, right. But since I've done nothing for years, what are a few weeks for paperwork and background checks. And I can wait. I can wait as long as I need to.

Patience may be a virtue, but it's also a delaying tactic.

Just the Fingertips Touch

Yesterday I spent time looking up books to buy my neice for her birtday. When I look stuff up for her, I tend to look for two things: pictures and writing that's above her age group. She's only turning four, so she's not a great reader anyway, but I like to get her books above what's recommended for her age group because it helps push her a little and I expect that her parents will read with her at this age. I know that they do read with her because I've seen both of them read with her. Hell, she and her younger sister like to hand me things to read to them when I visit and the one turning four will correct me when I screw up. Reading at that age is a shared experience for their family as it was for my family while I was growing up.

I found things to get her, but I also make the mistake of reading the comments. Most of the comments were positive, four or five stars, but there were a few in the one or two star range, which I had to read. The common complaint was that these books were not really for "all ages readers." They complain that there's a lot of words and some are difficult, but maybe they could give it to a second grader rather than the kindergartener.

To me, this means they expect a child who is only five to read by his or herself. If something is out of the child's current range, shouldn't they be reading along with the kid? Shouldn't they use it to sneakily teach the kid? To push the child's abilities?

Apologies

I feel bad about what this blog has become. Especially after last night's post.

The blog used to be more fun. More funny. Maybe more thoughtful.

Yes, I spent thousands of words bitching about work and bosses, but interspersed were reviews of movies and comics or goofy things I found on the inturdmets. Plenty that was fun. And even when I was deep in my bitching, even when I felt as dark as I feel now, everything had a lighter tone than my posts do.

In part, it's because the vast majority of people migrated away from blogs. Myspace started the destruction or personal blogs, but Twitter and Facebook squashed it completely. People who used to blog several times a week quit blogging. For a time, they still read personal blogs, but eventually they drifted away from even that because it's so much easier to read 140 characters from a bunch of people or it's easier just to look at news-feed -- because it shows everything everyone wrote -- rather than use a feed reader which might force you to click to read a whole post. Away went the 1000 word essay about burning last night's dinner and in came the three word "I burnt dinner" post or worse just a picture of the burnt dinner. At least you get 150 "likes" on the short post/picture rather than the two to five comments your essay got, right?

I'm guilty of slowing down on the blogging, but I never stopped. I think that every month since October 2013 has at least one post. The average monthly posting is about 13 per month. Not perfect, but I'm still around. Mostly because I have to get some things out of me and the only people who come to this blog choose to come to this blog and can choose not to come, too. Sometimes I wish there were more readers so there could be conversations in the comments sections, but I can live without that interaction on my blog.

Interaction was never the reason I liked blogs. I'm not good at doing it and since, on bigger blogs or in message boards, my comments get ignored or trolled down I'm afraid that my comments come off as condescending or rude. What I liked about the personal blogs was seeing people's thinking and reasoning. I liked watching them drift around topics like a feather on the breeze or narrow down like an electron microscope as they wrote. I liked reading the slices of people's lives; it was never just a moment, though, but things leading to the moment and the fallout of that moment, too, because rarely did people blog just one sentence. Even though I wasn't a part of the story, I got to experience it in the unique way that each and every blogger wrote.

Now most blogs tend to be about hyperspecific topics that only interest small groups or regurgitate the new and all for money. Not that any of those things are bad, they just aren't people and the lives they lead.

See, the interesting thing about the personal blog boom, for me, was the drama in daily life. Life isn't a TV show or movie. The story of our day doesn't build to a climax which gets resolved before a denouement and then bedtime. Victory in life is getting through the day. It's the lonely person having a good conversation with a stranger at the coffee shop or the hardworking parent making it home in time to tuck the kids into bed. It's the daily survival of high school by anyone in high school. It's the heavy petting that leaves both parties with blue balls because they're just not ready for the next step. Each day is frustrating and painful and hopeful and sad and angry and happy and everything all lumped into a mess. And that's what all of those personal blogs shared, the mess that we each live and those little moments that add up to life.

I guess that all this is to say that I'm doing my best to stick with the little things in life. Unfortunately, my life is not interesting right now and my only victory is not hurting myself each day. All those little goofy things I used to post now end up of Facebook because that's safe to post there. That's all I can post there.

Unintended Consequences

About two weeks ago, when I stopped for some sleep while driving up to my brother's house, I ran up one flight of stairs and walked to the door of my hotel room. As I slid the card into the lock my breathing got heavy, my heart began to race, and my stomach churned. I opened the door and I started to heave, but I kept my mouth shut. My backpack was hurled to the floor and I headed into the bathroom and hovered over the toilet bowl. If I was going to lose my dinner, so be it. I didn't, though. My breathing and heart-rate evened out and my stomach settled. I wondered if I was getting sick. Wouldn't that be fun -- getting sick just as I show up at my brother's house where he lives with a teacher and two children under five?

The next morning, after a longer than expected sleep, I hurried down the stairs and through the hall for the free breakfast. About halfway down the hall I had to slow down because my breathing got heavy, my heart began to race, and my stomach churned. I hadn't eaten anything for at least 12 hours and hadn't felt sick all night long. I continued on more slowly and by the time I found a table I could claim with my book, I felt okay again.

When I finished eating I hurried up the stairs again and guess what happened? If you thought I thought I was about to color the world with hardly digested food, your right!

Could this be a coincidence?

I figured not. It had been just over a week since I had been on the 80mg dose of the new drug the brain doctor had prescribed. Just long enough for everything to kick in.

I had already been getting the sweats. That was a side effect of the old pills, but these sweats were stronger, sweatier. Pretty sure that's the new stuff forcing it's way in. This has continued. At night, especially since this week has been so cool here, I go from extremely hot, sweat pouring from my pores to freezing because my body's covered in a layer of moisture and my body's not hot anymore. This happens if I'm under covers, or not, in sleepy pants, or not, in a shirt, or not. With the old med my sleep didn't get interrupted and it wasn't fun, but it didn't feel disgusting like this new sweating thing does.

I'd been having these muscle shock sort of things. They lasted as long as it usually takes to pop your ears, but they raced through all my body, head to toe, and made me dizzy. This happened several times a day and I was glad they were short because it's scary to have it happen while driving. There's no way for me to know if this was because of the new drug or a withdrawal thing. I still get them, but not nearly as often. At this point I'm saying withdrawal.

There was also this low- to mid-grade headache. It's just kind of there. Usually it's not anything to worry about because it doesn't HURT-hurt; it's just annoying. But it is always there. The rare times it has HURT-hurt the asprinolfrin has helped tamp it down to a mild enough level that I notice the headache, but it doesn't disturb my concentration or keep me from sleeping. Didn't have this problem before the new med.

All of that is to say that if this new drug made me feel better, which it doesn't, I probably would have stuck with it until this nausea thing started. I can live with the sweat and the mild, but permanent, headache. I can't deal with this nausea, though.

While visiting my brother I had to stop us going on a walk because I thought I was going to blow chunks and we were maybe 100 feet from his house. It kinda put a damper on the visit, for me, at least. My brother and his kids like going on walks, lots of walks, and I couldn't do it.

My brother and I went to a comic convention that weekend. I kept pausing and asking him to stop because I felt sick. I know he understood, but I didn't. I don't understand.

Thursday I see the brain doctor again and I have to convince him that we need to go with something that's generic. I can't be sick and sweaty and headachey anymore.

I'd rather be dead.

Just Go To BED!

Going to bed can, sometimes, be the hardest thing.

I don't want to wake up tomorrow morning. Wouldn't my problems be so much easier if I just didn't wake up? Wouldn't your life be full of less misery because this depressing blog wouldn't change? Wouldn't I make my family's life easier by removing my problems from there lives?

The thing is, I expect to wake up. And waking up will only be a disappointment to me. So, here I sit, in the dark, with the TV tuned to background noise.

If I wake up with my alarm, I won't get eight hours and that's not good. Saturday I slept for more than 16 hours and still woke up exhausted Sunday.

I can feel the ramble coming on and that's not good either.

I want to sleep because I'm tired, but the sooner I sleep the sooner I'll wake and have to get up and move. I try really hard to pretend to be okay at work, but I know I'm not achieving it. I see the looks. I've explained my problem to my supervisor. Is it abuse to call in because I'm afraid I may just crumble to pieces? Christ, even I can't get over the whole depression isn't really real and it's just in your head and all you have to do is stop being sad and start being happy.

Fuck.

Just Wondering

Do people with normal brain chemistry sit and think about reasons to continue on tomorrow?

Reasons

1. Finding out how The Song of Ice and Fire ends.

I've been sitting here for ten minutes with just the title and first sentence. Seriously, I thought I'd be able to make it to at least ten.

Shit.

The Finger Guns Are Not Loaded

Ever since I saw the brain doctor last week I have felt like there is a hole in me.

The hole sits beneath my heart and above my stomach and is still partially behind my ribcage.

I can feel the pull of the hole; how it's trying to curl me up and suck me in.

Into what, I'm not sure, but I know what I hope it is.

My feet are dragging and I'm afraid of how horrible a guest I'll be when I get to Oregon later this month.

More About That

It terrifies m'better half that I'd ever felt or that I understood something akin to this; I've tried to explain it, but, whoops, it just terrifies her deeper. It's good to know I'm not the only 'someone' trying to explain, not explain away, and understand their own tendencies.

I think, through that, I pretty much get why most people don't understand, don't want to understand, and don't want to learn about the topic.

What I've told you in the past is me-talking-about-me, which is the best I can do to relate suicide to friends and family. It's never easy for them to take. Thank you for posting about you. It's meaningful to me. It might terrify mine, but it's a nice deep meaning to me, and I'm CERTAIN it would be to others, unless I'm unequally, unequivocally unique. You're touching a subject that's very private (extremely personal) for a lot, and I mean 'a LOT' of very silent people.

------Comment from AE

I've been thinking about this comment a lot since I first read it because it's happened to me, will continue to happen to me, and is me all at the same time. What I mean is that I don't like talking about this stuff either. I don't know if it terrifies me anymore, but it did.

Talking about it terrified me because of the dismissal so many people have for this topic. Hearing them dismiss a serious and sincere matter by ignoring it or, even worse, saying you’re just looking for attention hurts, and that hurt is deep. Deeper than any hurt that I've ever known because it's a rejection of the only non-physical feeling that I'm feeling. When I say I want to return this "gift" that no one is supposed to want to return it should be taken seriously, shouldn't it? Then comes the doubt, maybe I am just looking for attention or maybe I will just get over it even though the only attention I want are for the things I do that I think are good and what if something is extra wrong with me because I have had very few moments of gotten over it?

And then what if they do listen to me? How often do severely depressed people hear that this will just pass? Or they're told it must be their situation and they just need to get out of it and find something better? They are hearing what's said, but their experiences are based on the typical human melancholy that does pass in time or disappears when they change jobs or leave an abusive relationship or whatever it is that was bringing them down. This is why when someone like Mr. Williams takes his life the most often thing said is that he had so much to live for because they assume that his feelings would have passed and his stuff, his career, his family would have help the feelings to move on more quickly. Except this kind of depression doesn't work like that.

Also there's the fear of being taken seriously, so seriously that I end up being taken to a facility of some kind. The cost of that, even just for the three days many people stay to get over the hump and onto medication, is astronomical. And I promise that if I end up at a place like that I'm going to give up for a while. Not like kill myself give up, but just not caring anymore give up. I will not participate in group bullshit unless forced and even then I won't speak except, maybe, to outline the logical reasons my brain keeps giving me to make it okay to kill myself. Not really to cause problems, but to just let it all out.

Even writing what I'm writing now, and have been writing recently, is terrifying for me. I have an ache in my stomach that wasn't there before because I'm writing about something that I'm not comfortable with and have trouble understanding completely about myself and I work hard to understand why I do the things I do.

I also get why a spouse would be terrified at the idea of suicide. The knowledge that your best friend, the person you've chosen to stay with for the rest of your life has, in the post, though about ending his or her life, what would that mean for your life? Places never visited, people never met, children never birthed. It's a large quantum change on one life without the spouse they choose. And what if the spouse considers, or worse attempts, while married? What then? And are these things passed on to the children? What if the children feel this way at some point? How do you cope? How do you help? How do you stop it? How do you keep it from happening? Or happening again?

I don't know.

One thing that made me feel some relief was finding out, recently, that my mother, throughout my lifetime at least, had many nights where she'd lie awake in bed and think it would be okay for her to not wake up. Her children would be fine because their father is a good man. I also learned that one of my great-grandmothers once just went to bed and didn't get out again. The kids had to do everything around the house; lucky there were seven of them.

I can't say that I felt better learning this, but I felt relieved. I felt relieved because this isn't something that spontaneously generated during this generation of my family. It's been around and member have been fighting it or giving into it for at least three generations. I just get to experience it differently because I live now, because I don't have children, because it started a long time ago and hasn't ever really backed off. I don't like the idea that these women had similar thoughts to mine, but I like knowing that I'm not just some extra-freaky freak.

One of the hardest parts about trying to talk about/explain this is how intensely personal it is. What I mean is that everyone reacts to this level of depression, this amount of suicidal thought, in different ways.

I force myself to roll out of bed each morning after the alarm goes off and take a shower. I force myself to get dressed and make a lunch and then get on to work. I force myself to stay at work all day long. I force myself to pretend to actually be okay. (That one's become a lot harder since my meds were changed, though. I know I'm not hiding it like I used to because I can't.) Yes some days it is easier than others, but it's still a lot of work and mental pressure I put on myself. I don't want to get out of bed or shower or go to work, but I do. I do because if I don't I'd be better off in some facility somewhere where I don't have to try. Where it just doesn't matter.

I know that other people get up each morning for other reasons. Some have children. Others have a significant other. Some just have a hobby or a project that they want to see through to the end. I'm sure there are even more reasons. There's probably at least one different reason for every thousand people whose brain tells them that they'd rather not be around. Some of those reasons are going to be more common than others.

Writing about all this doesn't make me feel better. It also doesn't make me feel worse. However, I do feel a little guilty because I don't care if any of this helps someone else. I want it to help me and it hasn't, yet.

On the Twelth Day Since Posting

It's been -- What? -- 12 days since my last post. Since the day I was pretty damned crippled by the problems in my head chemistry.

I have been to see the brain doctor in that time. I saw him on the Monday following. I like the brain doctor I see, but he's semi-retired so he's on vacation for about a week each month and sometimes that makes it really hard to contact him. He started me on a new medication. That means I get to feel awful while taking small doses of a new drug to work it into my system while lowering the old drug and experiencing the withdrawal symptoms that come along while also keeping all the side effect I had before. Joy.

Still, I am here, despite the imaginations in my head. That counts for something, right? It's been tough, though and that one, stupid, unanswerable question (Why?) just keeps flowing through my head. Like a little kid who doesn't really care about the answer, but just wants to push you to your breaking point where you turn away and the little kid "wins."

I've been reading one website a lot recently. It's basically people writing about their experiences or desires or thoughts with the end. Many people express their appreciation for group of people who "understand." I'm just humbled with the realization of how not special I am. I am neither the oldest nor the youngest visiting the site, either. That surprised me. I expected to be the oldest. I do not post but the vast majority of the people who post are younger.

For the most part, the posters are all of that age when everything is so serious. Where nothing can be taken at face value, but is scrutinized so much that even a physical object sitting on the palm of a hand becomes nothingness. So scared. So ugly. So fat. So lonely. No understanding. No one. No love. No reciprocity. These are brought up over and over again. Things that are so subjective that even the person who writes them can't properly explain them. (Even the fat one because she posted that she's a disgusting size 12. What does that even mean to me without height and weight and a million other little details?) I read the post and wonder if there is a change that could be made that would make them better?

In some ways, the comments are even worse. Too many of the comments starts with the commenter saying that he or she has no right saying this but... How seriously can one be taken if a few days ago he or she was eagerly waiting to swallow a bottle of pills with a vodka chaser and then tells someone else to wait one more day or focus on the good? I don't know. Those aren't the only comments. Sometimes people say they understand. Sometimes the commenter had a friend or family member end it all. Sometimes it's about missing the poster. Sometimes there's nothing at all.

The weirdest (worst?) part is that I'm jealous of a lot of the kids that are posting. I know that being in the moment is hard and crushing, but most of them will grow out of the darkness as hormones settle and growth stops and they become more comfortable and happy with the person they are rather than believing that there's something that they should be. And then they'll move on. I'm not saying all of them will change and grow out of the depression, but most will. I'm pretty sure about that because everyone I knew growing up had dark times between the ages of 10 and 21. Most of them grew out of the extended periods of horribleness and settled into mostly fine with periods of dank and periods of great.

I didn't grow out of it.

I don't know if I'm mentioned this anywhere except to my brain doctor, but I was 11 when I first seriously considered... First came up with a plan. I was involved with a whole never ending/no escape thing that I had no control over and I just kept burying myself deeper within myself. I can't say if I really might have tried anything, but I kept thinking about my best friend when I was little and how the first time my parents met his mother she told them about how his sister had cut herself; not in that I-want-to-feel-physical-pain-I-controll-rather-than-mental-pain-I-can't-across-the-street sort of cutting, but the seriously-I-don't-want-to-be-around-anymore-down-the-block sort of cutting. Afterward, my parents' took me aside and talked to me about it. I'm sure I didn't understand everything, but I knew that it scared my parents and that it wasn't something that I should ever do.

For a long time, especially in the really deep dark times, that was the thought I hung on to, how much it would upset my parents. It was the reason I would occasionally lose my belt and sit in the closet rather than, say, go to the kitchen which is where my brain wanted me to go. A long time. Really up until about 14 months ago. Losing that barrier was one of the reasons I went to see this current brain doctor because without that barrier I don't know. I don't know.

I should know, shouldn't I?

Shit or get off the pot, right? But what if you didn't want to be on or near the pot in the first place? What if you had no choice in the matter?

***********************

I've been staring at that last question mark for a couple of minutes. It isn't the last thing I wanted to write, but it's the logical place to end.

If I weren't so tired I would have tried to wrap around to something more positive. Something that wouldn't leave a family member with an ache in his or her stomach and a lump in his or her throat.

This is the best that I can do and hopefully it's a much less heart exploding finish because this post wasn't meant to horrify, but to explain and to get a thought or two out of my head so I can obsess over other thoughts.

This Day

Got to the house yesterday a little before 4:30PM. Sat on the bed while I was changing clothes. Next thing I know it's after nine. I opened up the house, turned on the fan, took my meds, and then went back to bed. Other than a brief trip to the bathroom sometime after midnight I didn't wake up until my alarm went off at 6:30. Since I've spent the whole week at work forcing myself to not hide under my desk all day I've decided to not go to work today and fall asleep in front of the TV.

I did call the brain doctor yesterday. Unfortunately I think he's on vacation this week. Maybe next week.