![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Now is not then.
May. 9th, 2014 08:24 pmWays in which May 2014 is similar to January 2008
- I have just moved house to be nearer my partner
- I have just been socked in the gut by a new bout of depression
Ways in which May 2014 is different from January 2008
- I am actually living with my partner
- I am not living in a crumbling, leaky bedsit with mice behind the sink
- I have a job
- I have a sense of direction, career-wise
- I have friends who live close by, and plans to meet up with them
- I recognise it as depression, as a thing that is in me but not of me
- I have hope that it will go away again
2008 was an awful year. About the only two good things that happened were getting engaged and joining the choir at Holy Trinity.
2014 is pretty good. See above.
And I have far better tools to deal with it this time. Actually knowing that it’s there, and what it is, is a huge advantage. Work is useful, and always has been; having people around who trust in my competence makes a good prop when I don’t. Indeed, a lot of it is about competence, and the reason it has hit me now is probably because I have gone from coping magnificently on my own to now there are two of us I can relax. My brain is trying to fall back into the pattern where I wibbled and Tony cleared up after me.
Identifying the pattern is in itself a step forward. I have the courage to look at the thing now, and to prod at it to see what it’s doing and why. Admitting its existence to other people, though it’s screaming at me not to (because everybody will think I’m pathetic and useless) is one of the best things I can do. Asking for help is easier now. So is working out what help it is that I need. I can do this, but I need you to do that. And, conversely, the gumption to stop well-meaning people trying to do everything for me, pushing my self-esteem still further down.
It is still horrible. It feels like a swirling black hole somewhere behind my sternum that sucks all the joy and beauty out of my experience, a nothingness so intense that it warps everything that comes near it. (And of course, like a black hole, it isn't nothingness really; there is stuff there that I know about but can't look at.) My concentration is shot to pieces. Depression affects my short-term memory and turns off all my autopilots – there have been moments over the last few days where it has required serious thought simply to put one foot in front of another. I’m used to seeing everything all at once, for solutions to make themselves obvious to me in a flash. At the moment I’m having to disentangle laborious toils, to plot out every tiny task step by step, and am getting very frustrated with myself.
If I am unsociable, if I am silent, if I am slow or useless, or think myself so, if I am overly apologetic, if I fail to find anything interesting, or worth looking at, or worth doing anything about, over the next few weeks, this is why. I am working on it, but it is difficult; admitting how difficult is part of working on it.
- I have just moved house to be nearer my partner
- I have just been socked in the gut by a new bout of depression
Ways in which May 2014 is different from January 2008
- I am actually living with my partner
- I am not living in a crumbling, leaky bedsit with mice behind the sink
- I have a job
- I have a sense of direction, career-wise
- I have friends who live close by, and plans to meet up with them
- I recognise it as depression, as a thing that is in me but not of me
- I have hope that it will go away again
2008 was an awful year. About the only two good things that happened were getting engaged and joining the choir at Holy Trinity.
2014 is pretty good. See above.
And I have far better tools to deal with it this time. Actually knowing that it’s there, and what it is, is a huge advantage. Work is useful, and always has been; having people around who trust in my competence makes a good prop when I don’t. Indeed, a lot of it is about competence, and the reason it has hit me now is probably because I have gone from coping magnificently on my own to now there are two of us I can relax. My brain is trying to fall back into the pattern where I wibbled and Tony cleared up after me.
Identifying the pattern is in itself a step forward. I have the courage to look at the thing now, and to prod at it to see what it’s doing and why. Admitting its existence to other people, though it’s screaming at me not to (because everybody will think I’m pathetic and useless) is one of the best things I can do. Asking for help is easier now. So is working out what help it is that I need. I can do this, but I need you to do that. And, conversely, the gumption to stop well-meaning people trying to do everything for me, pushing my self-esteem still further down.
It is still horrible. It feels like a swirling black hole somewhere behind my sternum that sucks all the joy and beauty out of my experience, a nothingness so intense that it warps everything that comes near it. (And of course, like a black hole, it isn't nothingness really; there is stuff there that I know about but can't look at.) My concentration is shot to pieces. Depression affects my short-term memory and turns off all my autopilots – there have been moments over the last few days where it has required serious thought simply to put one foot in front of another. I’m used to seeing everything all at once, for solutions to make themselves obvious to me in a flash. At the moment I’m having to disentangle laborious toils, to plot out every tiny task step by step, and am getting very frustrated with myself.
If I am unsociable, if I am silent, if I am slow or useless, or think myself so, if I am overly apologetic, if I fail to find anything interesting, or worth looking at, or worth doing anything about, over the next few weeks, this is why. I am working on it, but it is difficult; admitting how difficult is part of working on it.
