Another update

Sometimes it is ok but just looking at my actions lately, it doesn’t look so ok. So this is another post just logging it. I can’t ask for help because I have no idea what type of help would even be useful.

I had a pre-surgery appt Friday morning. dkferret showed up late Thursday night to stay the night and babysit me during the appt. It was greatly appreciated. It meant something to me to have someone waiting and there for me as I went to talk to one person or another (there were a total of five I saw over 3 hours). It really made me realize that I am going to need someone to babysit me the day of my surgery and not just for the week of recovery afterwards.

I had been working all the week prior, Thursday to Thursday. Even a job I felt go going into as well as one I didn’t feel good about but did very well at. Friday, we did well at the hospital and I got to reconnect with dkferret. We had been out of touch for over a year and that was very good too. In theory, I should have been on an upswing and been doing fine.

I was tired after the visit. dkferret and I are not calm people when we are together especially when there is stuff to catch up on. I zoned out in front of the TV some and napped some. I went to bed for real between 1am and 2am. I love sleeping but I hate going to sleep. I woke up on Sat from some really great dreams about a Moon Station, moving around in Zero-G, swimming in a perfect ocean, using my ability to float above the ground which is like walking on the crust of snow. I had so much strength and endurance and it was all so effortless and rewarding. Then I have to get up and everything just takes so much. I get up and get myself fed around 2pm. I watch a movie on TV and I am so out it that I pause it right in the middle of the big climax/scary chase scene and take a nap until about 8:30pm. So again I have slept the day away. And this means I am awake all night. I go to bed again around 3 or 4 am and read. I end up finishing by book at 7am after the next door neighbor’s alarm goes off and she isn’t home to turn it off. There is a brief book break to put on some clothes and flip her circuit breaker.

I have my alarm set for 10am because I have an Easter gathering to go to. I am looking forward to it and to talking with some of the people there. It is a chance to be social some more. I am sure this introverted side to me is not doing me much good. I am having trouble even returning emails. Of course I can’t go to sleep but I can get some rest in. This has happened in the recent past. 10 am comes around and I have drifted in and out of sleep and don’t get up. 11 comes around and I know I have to get up to be at the event at Noon. And I can’t seem to make me do anything about it. Everything requires too much effort. Everything about getting ready is broken into all these little steps. To go to the event, I need to call and confirm its location because I am not sure of my memory, which means I have to get up at 10 in hopes of catching my friends (I did do this and I missed them but I think I know where I am going so that isn’t so bad). But I have to get ready which includes eating breakfast, showering, putting on clothes and getting out of the house. Breakfast includes getting out of bed, opening the refrigerator and getting out two eggs, getting out a paper bowl, finding a fork and the spices, scrabbling them, putting them in the microwave, doing my little exercises while they cook (the exercises actually help get me going but no until after I do them, until then they are part of the just one more thing to do list.) Then I have to put my evil cheese on the eggs and nuke them again. Find juice. Sit down and distract myself while eating the eggs and juice, usually with a book or TV. That is just feeding myself. The shower includes shaving the legs, I have been wanting to color my hair so that gets thrown in there to be efficient, taking my meds, brushing my teeth. I have to figure out something to wear.

This doesn’t seem like much and in the past, most of this is stuff that runs on the back burner. But lately I see and sweat each and every action. If it can’t be done in three steps, I usually can’t start it. I keep wearing the same clothes days in a row because I don’t want to figure out something else to wear. They are piled next to my bed. I eat things that have minimal prep, like straight out of a box or can. Even boiling pasta takes too many steps. I spend most of my time reading or watching tv or sleeping.

I really wanted to go to renwench’s Easter event but time kept trickling away and then it just didn’t happen. I kept trying and not moving. I started and finished a book today. This is not how I want to spend my day. I haven’t been able to call anyone to wish them a happy easter. It feels somewhat obligatory to do so for my parents and I don’t want to deal with that. I don’t want to deal with anything.

I haven’t left my place since Friday evening except for turning off the power to my neighbor’s apt. I don’t have work lined up for tomorrow so I see it being the same.

I don’t have anything major going on that I need sympathy or help with like Miss_Mimsy. I feel like I should be just getting up and doing things that need to be done or that I would like to have done. But I am watching myself not do it over and over and over. I don’t feel like I am in a deep depression but I seem to be acting like it. I want to be taken care of because I don’t seem to be doing much to take care of myself but I feel I should be able to take care of myself. I want things focused on me and I don’t have room for anyone else’s problems but I would like to help someone else to distract myself from my crap and become functional again. I am lonely and feel like everyone is missing but I don’t want to actually deal with anyone. I think I probably need some sort of help but can’t imagine what that would be nor can I even conceive of asking for it.

In the past, when I have been depressed, I felt like it would go on forever. The work on myself has finally had the effect that I realize in time it will pass. But it feels like it isn’t passing, that it is just getting worse and worse. That I am undermining any ability I have to claw my way out. That is the negative side to knowing what you are doing. You have the ability to screw it up even better than before because you know the weak points.

This post is mostly an acknowledgment of my current headspace and dilemma. I don’t expect any response to this so it is ok not to put comments. The typical LJ <> comment would be more annoying than anything else. But ember_leo took me to task about disabling comments on my last post so I will leave them operational on this one.

(FYI I know about doing things one step at a time and eliminating unnecessary steps from the middle. That concept is not working at this time. Please do not bother suggesting it or anything like it. The issue is something logic will not fix. I have plenty of that and it is a lever that just isn’t working this time around.)

13 thoughts on “Another update

  1. Missed you at the potluck. I kept meaning to call you, but there was a ton of stuff to be done and I kept thinking “I’ll call Gina as soon as I finish this.” and before I got finished with task 1, something else needed to be done. “I’m not done excavating the available horizontal surface space, what do you mean we have to hide 21 dozen eggs!? Augh! We don’t have maps this year!” and so forth and so on.

    Can I try to make it up to you and take you out to dinner one night this week?

    *hugs*

    1. There is nothing you need to make up. It wasn’t your fault. And dinner would have been a good idea if I didn’t zone the week away. Ha on you for putting the ball in my court. I just sort of stare at it awhile and wonder if I will ever pick it up. Took me a couple of days but I finally did. Just in time to run away for a week because of surgury.

  2. Oh I know this feeling. I sit and tell myself the next thing that needs doing and then I just… don’t. I sit and zone out on nothing, or play the same game of Honeycomb Hotel over and over, or switch to spider solitaire, and tell my self over and over, I will get up in just a moment. But I haven’t and I don’t.

    I’ve given myself a task now, to force me to get up and move. I’ve made public promises that I must keep, because they are public and because I care about the good opinion of the people who I made them to. I’m hoping it will be enough to get me moving.

    Sparrow

    1. Yup, that’s it.

      You even got me to check out Honeycomb Hotel. I had never heard of it and now I have lost hours to it. :)

      I have gotten very good at avoiding making public promises. I wiggle well. I used to worry about not having anything to do because I know I would slide into this time wasting null space. Now I just don’t worry about it and days go by. I am waiting to see what happens next.

      1. well, you can blame Ember for the HH addiction. She introduced me to it.
        *laughs* But then, it’s not her fault I fell down the well, so I guess you’d better not.

        I’ve been in null space. The promises that I made at the beginning this week, that are panning out so richly, are the beginning of my struggle out of that space. I suspect you will struggle out when you are ready. I hope you will ask for help if you need it.

        *hugs*
        Sparrow

  3. I’m playing a lot of Kingdom of Loathing. And doing a lot of reading.

    It’s amazing how easily you can delude yourself into thinking that that’s “doing something”.

    1. Nod. I’ve had this happened when depressed; a game would suck me in and I’d feel like I was accomplishing something because I was making progress in the game, even while real life languished.

      At the same time, it was a tiny bit better than doing nothing and brooding.

  4. , it does sound like you’re depressed; you have anhedonia, a feeling of hopelessness (though a less directed one than you might be used to… a “there’s no point, I can’t get it done” rather than “all is doom, and I wish the world would hurry up and end”), and sleep changes. If it’s not depression, well, it’s *something*… and if you can do it (money, time, effort all aligned) it’s worth seeing a doctor about.

    I won’t give you any advice, except, maybe, “do something”. Do something about your depression, maybe, but do *something*… anything.

    That’s not an order, though I guess it sounded like one. I just mean, if you get yourself moving over something small, it can help you figure out what’s really going on. Is it depression? Or is it a lack of (physical) energy? Or is it something else?

    1. Oh I have no doubt that it is depression. I have a shrink and two therapists and I am on meds. This is my standard before I went into the depression. In fact some of the work I am doing with my therapists is probably why I am depressed. It is part of the growth process. It is just different than the depressions I am used to and I don’t know how to deal with it. All the logical steps have been taken. What I really want is for someone to take care of me and that isn’t an option because there isn’t anyone to fill that role right now.

      But thanks for the suggestion.

  5. A completely unhelpful comment

    Been there, done that, couldn’t scrape up the effort to buy the t-shirt.

    All I can offer is sympathy and an ear/shoulder. And I know that sometimes even calling is too much effort.

    1. Re: A completely unhelpful comment

      Woa, even trying to reread my post is hard. Not far enough away from it yet.

      I have to admit you are currently having the affect of lifting some of this and inspiring more energy into the system. Sometime later, I would be interested in hearing about your experiences and what color t-shirt was available. We can compare designs.

      You seem online right now, got an IM? Mine is on Yahoo and as easy as my LJ name.

      1. Re: A completely unhelpful comment

        Since LJ finally saw fit to send me this comment notification sometime around 0300, I’m guessing that you’re not online anymore.

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