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parasitegirlI can't even count the reasons to be reflecting on my life right now:
A major breakup, always a time for reflection. Knowing that my time in Japan went from being something I thought of finite/a matter of months to being something that stretches out before me without a known endpoint. New Year. I've recently been in my home town (In my family home surrounded by memories of my past) seeing people who've known me all my life/since elementary school/ since high school/ since college/ since I went to live in Japan.I'm bringing my time at one studio to a close and taking on more classes at the other. I've been on Lexpro with counciling every two weeks since early Septemer and it's helping me be able to think about my life without the fog of depression...
A whole lot of reasons...ne?
Lexapro Diaries:
In the first week of September, 2011, I had two appointments for mental health counseling with people who would be able to prescribe me anti-depressants. Prior to this I hadn’t been on an antidepressant for 13-14 years. In 1998, after my first in-depth discussion with one of my parent about the family predisposition for depression and anxiety, I got professional help. In retrospect, my college years were plagued with fluctuating levels of depression beyond what could be easily explained away..even when relationships were going well and sometimes when they were going bad, I was often struck by a sadness and pain that defied, or whet beyond, what I was experiencing.
With my first undeniable depression, I went on Zoloft for half a year. I experienced sexual side effects and (for a few weeks) amphetamine like energy spurts. Part of my depression manifested with lack of an interest in sex (which I think it started to happen last year but it's harder to know because I wasn't seeing anyone everyday) and the sexual side effect of the medication only compounded the impact my depression and treatment had on the relationship…a relationship that did not survive my depression but also was plagued by other issues that we might have been able to get through if we were older, more experienced, and had had the luxury of dealing with one issue at a time instead of an avalanche of everything pilled onto itself…and had we both gotten psychological help at the time. The latter isn’t a passive aggressive swipe, both of us have benefited from medical psychiatric help since then.
Since that time, however, my depression issues have manifested regularly as Seasonal Affective Disorder and I’ve felt them to be manageable without medications. It took very active work on my part to manage the depression. It wasn’t simply taking more vitamin D and being ok. I used a light box, watched my eating habits, upped certain vitamins, used exercise and regular physical activity to alleviate issues, journaled to keep a record of how I was doing, what might be situational and what be beyond, what was going on in my life…and more. I worked hard to cultivate a vocabulary to help myself identify what was happening with me and how to communicate that to others. I wanted to be able to explain my depression and present it as a real factor in my behavior, but not one that should excuse my actions. I wanted to give people I care about help with how to communicate with me about my problem and how it affects them…or to simply be able to ask me if I think I’m over reacting.
In the last few years I’ve noted a secondary depression wave that sometimes hits me in May and June. Four years ago it became so pronounced that I was bookmarking councilors and help-lines in Japan in case it got to that point. I’ve always known that there will be times in my life that my managing skills aren’t enough, that I will need professional help and medication.
So, in the last week of August, 2011, Damien visited Japan. In that time I was a twitchy mess. I flinched from human contact. I cried easily and sometimes needlessly. Eventually it culminated in a night where I was crying uncontrollably and screaming into a pillow.
I’d been in a state of depression since the earthquake. I thought I was actively managing. I was wrong. I wasn’t writing about anything but dance for 3-4 months and that was sporadic at best. I had to force myself to be social. I sometimes didn’t get out of bed. I started working out past the point of pain and dizziness.
It was hard for me to recognize that I was depressed because there had been an earthquake, a tsunami, nuclear accidents, and thousands dead. There were real things to be sad about. I had a day or two without knowing if friends who sometimes work up north were ok. I lived in an area where the water was, for a time, affected and in a region that some embassies had recommended evacuation...I missed teh rolling blackouts because I was hiding and breaking down in Taiwan.
There were, and are, real issues to be anxious and worried about. Outlets of relief that I’d had that shaped my sense of self, like performing weekly, were gone. There were reminders of the earthquake and the changes everywhere, in the dimmer lights, in the news, on the train. I was living in a place that reminded me.
But, it was only when Damien visited that I fully understood how much of a depression I was in. I was with someone who used to bring me joy, hope, and physical excitement and I was sad, confused, and lost in my own skin. I tried to communicate what I was feeling, but I didn’t know, until later, that I was speaking from depression. I didn’t know to frame it through that filter…so all Damien must have got was a jumble of my despair and distance articulated but not explained or focused. I was pretty sure it wasn’t him…but…fuck.
Having a full breakdown wasn’t fun. The way I went through it was lonely. But, with it, I had a word for what was wrong. Depression. When Damien left I spent a lot of time figuring out my local options for help and announcing to people that I needed help and would start getting it.
I had to get help for myself. I also hoped that that was the fix. I would get on medication and I would be like I had been and that would solve our problems. I would be better. If I was mentally stable we would be fine. I assumed that everything was wrong with us was the fault of my mental health.
I went to two clinics for mental health evaluations. At one I had ended up arguing semantics with in regards to the language both of us used to describe depression and my depression (and we both ceded points) and the other I cried. Both thought I could benefit from Lexapro. I went with the clinic I cried at. My doctor isn’t perfect in her English skills, but that’s probably better for me. I can’t side-track on word use and small points. I need to find very clear ways of saying things and she, in turn, is probably allowed a bluntness I might quibble with in a native speaker of English.
As I’ve said, the first three or four weeks of being on Lexapro were rather hellish in regards to side effects: Nausea, dehydration, constipation, exhaustion, nasty gas…oh be yeah. I was a fun person to be in close proximity to. I spent much of those first few weeks in the extra room my supervisor puts aside for us…asleep on the floor.
Still, it worked quickly in regards to me not feeling like everything was impossible, not crying or feeling extreme anxiety at situations that didn’t warrant that level of response. Even though I was falling asleep in the conference room, I was getting out of bed.
A month in or so one the nagging anxiety that sometimes plagues anti-depressant users hit me: the worry that I was numb or not feeling enough. When you’ve just gone from the drama of crying jags on the train and severe anxiety as you think about lesson plans to being able to cope with having a legitimately complex life (that was when I was going into having my busiest dance month of the year, including my first workshops and, well, long distance stuff) it’s hard to be able to gauge if your emotional state is normal and functional, or if you are functioning because of lack of strong emotions.
Eventually those fears faded. I got through my busiest dance month and felt good about it and knew I had not been falsely confident and that I’d paced myself well. I still felt at a distance from some issue in my life but I didn’t feel numb.
And then I started feeling the nagging onset of my winter depression. Slowly I was crying on the trains again or getting choked up at minor things. I was avoiding communication (emails, online chat, and messages) and wasn’t writing again. I explained this to my doctor (she sees me every two weeks) and my dosage was increased… with fewer side effects this time.
I don’t feel numb anymore.
I’ve cried a few times this month. Once or twice it has felt like the surface irritation tears of depression, but aside from those few times my tears have felt like accurate responses to what is going on. And, unlike in times of severe depression, they have stopped after a certain point. I know I can read something that hurts, and process it, and cry…. and that it doesn’t mean that I will cry all day or be unable to work. I can now reach a point where the tears and hysterics subside and I can actually take things in and reflect.
The ability to reflect on my past and present actions…
(sigh)
Depression can derail your ability to function. It compromises your relationship to your world, your loved ones and yourself. When Damien went back America I hoped that the solution to all the strange moments and difficult times was that I would get mental health and that would solve everything! Yay! We would feel the same way! Chase that bliss! WOOOT!
Depression obscures. To see again without the fog of depression doesn’t mean that what I see will bring me happiness. The last few weeks have been a painful reminder that having mental stability doesn’t mean my problems are solved. Medicine and therapy provide me the calm and distance I need to look on my life and to sometimes sigh and say, well, shit.
Someday in the future I hope I’ll have the mental clarity and calm reflect where Damien is concerned. I know I’m going to have to think about my roll in all this, his roll in all of this, what we could have done better individually and collectively… but I’m raw. I am so afraid to privately tackle what I have written about him at the good times, to even look at it, or to mentally sort through more than a few moments of the last year at a time.
Depression wasn’t the only my problem with Damien’s visit. Depression did obscure increasingly unproductive and even destructive ways in which I can be passive. I look now and see patterns of how I actively avoided certain painful discussions, and not just with Damien, but with friends and loved ones before him...to the detriment of the relationship
When I am aware of my own depression it can be hard not to use it improperly as a scapegoat. I don’t mean that I give myself a free pass for bad behavior; I use it to ignore the behavior of others and avoid conflict. I tell myself that what he or she said or did was/is not that bad, I just I over reacted due to depression. I don’t tackle complicated interpersonal problems when I feel that way; I just blame myself for not being able to communicate better or not having caught my depression earlier. At the worst of depression passivity I will feel like the person is better off without my insanity and that to work through it will only prolong their contact with me, because it’s my fault, and I’ll fuck it up later so why bother.
Depression ramps up my passivity and avoidance of painful conversations…and now I’m facing down the fact that even when I am in a state of relative stability I have an unhealthy passivity in relationships and difficulty directly communicating in certain situations.
I’ve started trying to make amends to a few people, male and female. I don’t expect that my awareness, owning up to, and apologizing for my past behavior is going to erase pain I have caused. I’m trying to say “if you thought you deserved X or blamed yourself for Y and Z when looking over past relationships...please don’t. Please don’t. That was my fault and I am sorry.”…but bringing up the past, even to acknowledge my own role, may re-opening wounds. I’m trying to offer my regrets and apologies where they might do some good beyond me feeling good about trying to be good…and that I might be fucking that up. I’m trying not to go on some crazed sobriety spree where I apologize recklessly to everyone. I know I’ve got that in me and am primed for it: I’m just out of a relationship/on medication and in therapy/ back in Japan facing a full new year.
I also know that the urge to make up for past mistakes can become another avoidance technique if taken too far. Examining the past can help you identify patterns to avoid in the future, it can make you better…but spending too much time in the past can also be a way of avoiding in the time you are in. Trying to make peace with people in your past you have wronged can feel like you’re actively trying to work on things…but it is easier (and may have more present-time rewards) than the amorphous goal of trying to be better in the future.
I’m in a strange place where the uncontrollable non-situational depression is at enough of a distance that I can start trying to do the hard work of trying to figure out how I can live a life with more joy: more personal joy., more situational joy and more shared joy.
A major breakup, always a time for reflection. Knowing that my time in Japan went from being something I thought of finite/a matter of months to being something that stretches out before me without a known endpoint. New Year. I've recently been in my home town (In my family home surrounded by memories of my past) seeing people who've known me all my life/since elementary school/ since high school/ since college/ since I went to live in Japan.I'm bringing my time at one studio to a close and taking on more classes at the other. I've been on Lexpro with counciling every two weeks since early Septemer and it's helping me be able to think about my life without the fog of depression...
A whole lot of reasons...ne?
Lexapro Diaries:
In the first week of September, 2011, I had two appointments for mental health counseling with people who would be able to prescribe me anti-depressants. Prior to this I hadn’t been on an antidepressant for 13-14 years. In 1998, after my first in-depth discussion with one of my parent about the family predisposition for depression and anxiety, I got professional help. In retrospect, my college years were plagued with fluctuating levels of depression beyond what could be easily explained away..even when relationships were going well and sometimes when they were going bad, I was often struck by a sadness and pain that defied, or whet beyond, what I was experiencing.
With my first undeniable depression, I went on Zoloft for half a year. I experienced sexual side effects and (for a few weeks) amphetamine like energy spurts. Part of my depression manifested with lack of an interest in sex (which I think it started to happen last year but it's harder to know because I wasn't seeing anyone everyday) and the sexual side effect of the medication only compounded the impact my depression and treatment had on the relationship…a relationship that did not survive my depression but also was plagued by other issues that we might have been able to get through if we were older, more experienced, and had had the luxury of dealing with one issue at a time instead of an avalanche of everything pilled onto itself…and had we both gotten psychological help at the time. The latter isn’t a passive aggressive swipe, both of us have benefited from medical psychiatric help since then.
Since that time, however, my depression issues have manifested regularly as Seasonal Affective Disorder and I’ve felt them to be manageable without medications. It took very active work on my part to manage the depression. It wasn’t simply taking more vitamin D and being ok. I used a light box, watched my eating habits, upped certain vitamins, used exercise and regular physical activity to alleviate issues, journaled to keep a record of how I was doing, what might be situational and what be beyond, what was going on in my life…and more. I worked hard to cultivate a vocabulary to help myself identify what was happening with me and how to communicate that to others. I wanted to be able to explain my depression and present it as a real factor in my behavior, but not one that should excuse my actions. I wanted to give people I care about help with how to communicate with me about my problem and how it affects them…or to simply be able to ask me if I think I’m over reacting.
In the last few years I’ve noted a secondary depression wave that sometimes hits me in May and June. Four years ago it became so pronounced that I was bookmarking councilors and help-lines in Japan in case it got to that point. I’ve always known that there will be times in my life that my managing skills aren’t enough, that I will need professional help and medication.
So, in the last week of August, 2011, Damien visited Japan. In that time I was a twitchy mess. I flinched from human contact. I cried easily and sometimes needlessly. Eventually it culminated in a night where I was crying uncontrollably and screaming into a pillow.
I’d been in a state of depression since the earthquake. I thought I was actively managing. I was wrong. I wasn’t writing about anything but dance for 3-4 months and that was sporadic at best. I had to force myself to be social. I sometimes didn’t get out of bed. I started working out past the point of pain and dizziness.
It was hard for me to recognize that I was depressed because there had been an earthquake, a tsunami, nuclear accidents, and thousands dead. There were real things to be sad about. I had a day or two without knowing if friends who sometimes work up north were ok. I lived in an area where the water was, for a time, affected and in a region that some embassies had recommended evacuation...I missed teh rolling blackouts because I was hiding and breaking down in Taiwan.
There were, and are, real issues to be anxious and worried about. Outlets of relief that I’d had that shaped my sense of self, like performing weekly, were gone. There were reminders of the earthquake and the changes everywhere, in the dimmer lights, in the news, on the train. I was living in a place that reminded me.
But, it was only when Damien visited that I fully understood how much of a depression I was in. I was with someone who used to bring me joy, hope, and physical excitement and I was sad, confused, and lost in my own skin. I tried to communicate what I was feeling, but I didn’t know, until later, that I was speaking from depression. I didn’t know to frame it through that filter…so all Damien must have got was a jumble of my despair and distance articulated but not explained or focused. I was pretty sure it wasn’t him…but…fuck.
Having a full breakdown wasn’t fun. The way I went through it was lonely. But, with it, I had a word for what was wrong. Depression. When Damien left I spent a lot of time figuring out my local options for help and announcing to people that I needed help and would start getting it.
I had to get help for myself. I also hoped that that was the fix. I would get on medication and I would be like I had been and that would solve our problems. I would be better. If I was mentally stable we would be fine. I assumed that everything was wrong with us was the fault of my mental health.
I went to two clinics for mental health evaluations. At one I had ended up arguing semantics with in regards to the language both of us used to describe depression and my depression (and we both ceded points) and the other I cried. Both thought I could benefit from Lexapro. I went with the clinic I cried at. My doctor isn’t perfect in her English skills, but that’s probably better for me. I can’t side-track on word use and small points. I need to find very clear ways of saying things and she, in turn, is probably allowed a bluntness I might quibble with in a native speaker of English.
As I’ve said, the first three or four weeks of being on Lexapro were rather hellish in regards to side effects: Nausea, dehydration, constipation, exhaustion, nasty gas…oh be yeah. I was a fun person to be in close proximity to. I spent much of those first few weeks in the extra room my supervisor puts aside for us…asleep on the floor.
Still, it worked quickly in regards to me not feeling like everything was impossible, not crying or feeling extreme anxiety at situations that didn’t warrant that level of response. Even though I was falling asleep in the conference room, I was getting out of bed.
A month in or so one the nagging anxiety that sometimes plagues anti-depressant users hit me: the worry that I was numb or not feeling enough. When you’ve just gone from the drama of crying jags on the train and severe anxiety as you think about lesson plans to being able to cope with having a legitimately complex life (that was when I was going into having my busiest dance month of the year, including my first workshops and, well, long distance stuff) it’s hard to be able to gauge if your emotional state is normal and functional, or if you are functioning because of lack of strong emotions.
Eventually those fears faded. I got through my busiest dance month and felt good about it and knew I had not been falsely confident and that I’d paced myself well. I still felt at a distance from some issue in my life but I didn’t feel numb.
And then I started feeling the nagging onset of my winter depression. Slowly I was crying on the trains again or getting choked up at minor things. I was avoiding communication (emails, online chat, and messages) and wasn’t writing again. I explained this to my doctor (she sees me every two weeks) and my dosage was increased… with fewer side effects this time.
I don’t feel numb anymore.
I’ve cried a few times this month. Once or twice it has felt like the surface irritation tears of depression, but aside from those few times my tears have felt like accurate responses to what is going on. And, unlike in times of severe depression, they have stopped after a certain point. I know I can read something that hurts, and process it, and cry…. and that it doesn’t mean that I will cry all day or be unable to work. I can now reach a point where the tears and hysterics subside and I can actually take things in and reflect.
The ability to reflect on my past and present actions…
(sigh)
Depression can derail your ability to function. It compromises your relationship to your world, your loved ones and yourself. When Damien went back America I hoped that the solution to all the strange moments and difficult times was that I would get mental health and that would solve everything! Yay! We would feel the same way! Chase that bliss! WOOOT!
Depression obscures. To see again without the fog of depression doesn’t mean that what I see will bring me happiness. The last few weeks have been a painful reminder that having mental stability doesn’t mean my problems are solved. Medicine and therapy provide me the calm and distance I need to look on my life and to sometimes sigh and say, well, shit.
Someday in the future I hope I’ll have the mental clarity and calm reflect where Damien is concerned. I know I’m going to have to think about my roll in all this, his roll in all of this, what we could have done better individually and collectively… but I’m raw. I am so afraid to privately tackle what I have written about him at the good times, to even look at it, or to mentally sort through more than a few moments of the last year at a time.
Depression wasn’t the only my problem with Damien’s visit. Depression did obscure increasingly unproductive and even destructive ways in which I can be passive. I look now and see patterns of how I actively avoided certain painful discussions, and not just with Damien, but with friends and loved ones before him...to the detriment of the relationship
When I am aware of my own depression it can be hard not to use it improperly as a scapegoat. I don’t mean that I give myself a free pass for bad behavior; I use it to ignore the behavior of others and avoid conflict. I tell myself that what he or she said or did was/is not that bad, I just I over reacted due to depression. I don’t tackle complicated interpersonal problems when I feel that way; I just blame myself for not being able to communicate better or not having caught my depression earlier. At the worst of depression passivity I will feel like the person is better off without my insanity and that to work through it will only prolong their contact with me, because it’s my fault, and I’ll fuck it up later so why bother.
Depression ramps up my passivity and avoidance of painful conversations…and now I’m facing down the fact that even when I am in a state of relative stability I have an unhealthy passivity in relationships and difficulty directly communicating in certain situations.
I’ve started trying to make amends to a few people, male and female. I don’t expect that my awareness, owning up to, and apologizing for my past behavior is going to erase pain I have caused. I’m trying to say “if you thought you deserved X or blamed yourself for Y and Z when looking over past relationships...please don’t. Please don’t. That was my fault and I am sorry.”…but bringing up the past, even to acknowledge my own role, may re-opening wounds. I’m trying to offer my regrets and apologies where they might do some good beyond me feeling good about trying to be good…and that I might be fucking that up. I’m trying not to go on some crazed sobriety spree where I apologize recklessly to everyone. I know I’ve got that in me and am primed for it: I’m just out of a relationship/on medication and in therapy/ back in Japan facing a full new year.
I also know that the urge to make up for past mistakes can become another avoidance technique if taken too far. Examining the past can help you identify patterns to avoid in the future, it can make you better…but spending too much time in the past can also be a way of avoiding in the time you are in. Trying to make peace with people in your past you have wronged can feel like you’re actively trying to work on things…but it is easier (and may have more present-time rewards) than the amorphous goal of trying to be better in the future.
I’m in a strange place where the uncontrollable non-situational depression is at enough of a distance that I can start trying to do the hard work of trying to figure out how I can live a life with more joy: more personal joy., more situational joy and more shared joy.
