Fat and happy, my ass

Me in 2007, four months before Dad died.

When I saw him recently, my doctor asked how I was doing with the off-meds business (as is his wont, since that’s the only reason I see him). I gave him the 40/60% standard answer I’ve got going, and explained that I had no physical symptoms beyond the VERY occasional re-occurrence of The Spins. (Which is fun, I’ve decided, and allows me to pretend that I’m two-glasses-of-wine drunk while at work.) We got to chatting about how I am, ahem-hem, a truly model Cipralex patient (you know, because my BRAIN doesn’t ZAP ME) -

- Damn it all, the parentheses are back, hang on while I wrestle them down -

- and how I didn’t have any significant weight gain while I was on them. This is not a thing I talk about often, but I have actually had a significant weight gain over the past five and a half years. About 40lbs, which on a 5’3″ human, is a lot. Wait a minute – I’m imagining a grocery store cart full of 40lbs of butter – that’s a lot no matter how tall you are. Anyhow, it was something that Therapist warned me about before I started the Cipralex, in her very kind way, saying that she hoped I wouldn’t concern myself with it too much as it was one of the milder potential side effects.

I won’t lie. For a few minutes I was very concerned. I feel like I’ve struggled with my weight my whole life – though in reality up till ’07/’08 I was a healthy weight – and I didn’t want to add ‘Increased Arse’ to my list of reasons to loathe my entire self-hood at two am. What I realized over the three weeks between my appointment with Therapist and my ability to find a GP was this: in the pits of depression, spending time on the couch, never doing any of the active things I loved – Weight gain was in my future no matter what.

I’ve actually lost a bit of weight since going on the drugs and then coming off of them, mostly due to two things. The obvious one is that I am more inclined to be outside, active, and generally in motion; the slightly more complicated reason is that the foods I crave when I’m sad – because for a few moments, they generate something in my brain that simulates ‘happy’ – are not good for me. I believe in being healthy, and my body is remembering that along with my brain, and I’ll land on whatever-the-hell weight I’m supposed to be when I’m once again able to do every activity that pops into my head.

Regarding weight and depression, these are my new truths:

1. Some antidepressants will make some people gain weight, but so will depression. (Or not, if you go the other way and stop eating. I hear that’s a thing. It sounds awful.)
2. Food and exercise are the ways in which we tell ourselves that we matter.
3. Health is not contained in a number, but in a capability to do all of the things that are important to you.

 

Guest Post Redux

Since it’s mental illness awareness month, and I have all these great guest posts about said illnesses scattered about the place, I thought I’d put up links to all the guest posts in one place. La voilà:

Fear and Writing - Ann Becker

Learning to Deal - Seamus Bayne

My Pet Depression - Spencer Ellesworth

Serenity through Iron-Fisted Control - Anon.

Shooting the Wild Duck - Bill Blais

Taming the Wild Voices - Chang

The Rules - Anon.

The Wee Hours - Anon.

What it looks like

May is mental illness awareness month. My own personal pet depression being somewhat under control (Fight. Fight. Fight.) I have been pretty quiet of late. Sometimes it’ll rear up and I’ll spend a day on the verge of tears, or having to journal the actual behaviour of people versus my perceptions of it lest I become convinced that the world hates my useless ass, and sometimes I have to go to bed at five. Sometimes I can only manage my job, and I suspect I’m not the friendliest gal in the office on those days. But I’d say those days are down to 40%, and my own awareness is what makes that 40% bearable. I know what I’m dealing with. Once I recognize, this isn’t me, this is pet depression, and also fuck you pet depression I can generally hold my own against it.

That’s five years of therapy, nearly two years of medication, countless hours of struggle and pain and just-managing. That’s what depression costs. I don’t think I would have responded oh-so-terribly-well if anyone had told me, back in the days of couches and missed showers, that I was depressed … but I wish I had known more about what it looks like.

So here’s what it looks like:

Depression is an angry, frightened, and above all else confused beast. It is never the same two days in a row.

I lived on the couch, and slept in for far too long. I gained weight and lost weight randomly and through no healthy initiatives in either direction. Some days I could go to the gym, or walk the dog, but mostly I didn’t.

I cried all the time. Anytime I was alone, I was crying. I can’t even imagine how I thought that was normal.

I couldn’t concentrate on anything. The books I read, the television shows I liked, all became short and nonsensical. I couldn’t read the books I love because they were so involved, so dense. I was tired from looking at them, and I felt stupid and slow and like I wouldn’t be able to understand them even if I tried to read them.

I wasn’t interested in anything new. I didn’t want to learn. I was overcome by fear at the thought, and trying to make sure no one knew it. And everything was so blurry all the time. My head was stuffed with cotton.

Social occasions were a chore for which I needed at least a week to prepare. When plans inevitably descended, I hoped for some kind of random event to swoop down and save me from it. A massive thunderstorm that would knock a tree through the house. A car crash – nothing fatal, just enough to slow down the evening, and only if I was alone in the car. (These are the rules.)

Once, when making samosas in preparation for a potluck dinner with friends, I accidentally burnt my hands so badly I had to spend the night with them both wrapped in ice, and I was so grateful.

Anxiety was crippling me. 90% of my daily thoughts were directed to how I had failed, who thought what of me, and how I could fix it. I would come up with grand ideas, and fail at them, and start the process all over again. At night my heart would pound uncontrollably and, if I slept, I woke up with crescent-moons in my palms from clenching my fists.

Every word I said for four years about my hopes for the future was a lie. I had no hope. I laid awake at night and thought about each little lie, and how disappointing I was turning out to be.

Depression steals your self-worth and your hope, and it hasn’t got the right.

If I had been able to see all of that from the outside – if I had looked in on myself and seen this scared, tearful, isolated person with no future and no dreams – I would have known something was VERY wrong. Now I write it all down, so that I can be the objective observer to my own life; so that I can’t be dragged under when I’m not paying attention.

There is so much help available, and no one ever has to fight alone. It’s easy enough for me to say all of this right now, because of everything else I’ve done, but let me just say that without those little white pills I would still be crying on that couch thisminuterightnow. So whatever that little white pill is for anyone out there – medication, therapy, yoga or Friday night fight club – everyone deserves the chance to find it, and start working with it, and remember that their lives are worth fighting for.

“We are our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.”

-Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

I hate self-help books

It’s the language that they all seem to have adopted; it’s weird and preachy and reminds me vaguely of Sunday School.* “Here! Play with this string and these two pieces of wood! It’s fun for kids! NOW EXAMINE YOUR FAILURES AS A PART OF THE HUMAN RACE.” Everything’s a damned metaphor. Preachy metaphors, even, which are worse.

But I’m going to try this ‘Feeling Good’ book, partly because it was assigned to me by Therapist and she is a level-headed, clever lady; partly so that I can report back; but mostly because it’s a workbook and, oh, man, do I ever love doing little exercises in books.

Plus, look at this dude. Look into his eyes. Doesn’t he just make you want to get better? And then maybe join a bunch of people? Out in the woods? Who wear robes a lot? And drink special cactus tea?

*Actually, I really loved Sunday school until I turned about ten and started getting creeped out by all the crosses. It coincided with when I started sneaking my dad’s Dean Koontz books out of his briefcase and reading them at night, by flashlight, under my covers. I’m not entirely clear on how those two things are connected, but I’m sure they are.

My Hill To Die On

So last night, I saw my therapist. I talked for a while, rambling on about trying to do things and managing a couple and then generally feeling lousy and going to bed; waking up exhausted, doing it over again. I told her I had felt really well, for a week or two, and now seemed to be backsliding. It felt like one of our old sessions, with me fighting back tears and trying to talk through the lump in my throat – and feeling incredibly frustrated with the familiarity. And, okay, horrified at the thought of going back on the meds. No matter what I know, it would feel like a failure to me.

She said, “I think you’re tired. I think everything that you have done in terms of coping with your depression – living with it, starting to see me, the medication, the last few months – has led you to this point. This is the part where you have to fight. This is your hill to die on.”

Holy fuck, I forgot to fight.

I’ve been learning all this gentle self-talk and care and healing and I forgot to fight.

Well fuuuuuck you, depression, I am a good fighter. This is my body and my mind and I have worked goddamn hard for them and you can’t have them.  I am not going through the last five fucking years all over again because you’re a bully and you don’t know when to piss off. I’ll tell you who’s hill this is to die on: Yours.

Last night I realized that I almost lost, because I neglected some fundamental parts of to who I am: The tenacious, the aggressive and the determined. Suddenly, I’m feeling better. Fucking depression. Horseshit. Other swear words. I’m mad now.

p.s. First person to make a pun about my last name…will actually be the second person. Muahaha.

I Miss My Drugs

- so why don’t I go back on them?

I’ve been thinking about this lately. Especially today, because someone asked me that very question.

When I was <insert random age that I don’t remember; late teens>, I dated this guy. Who was wonderful. He was really nice, and funny, and open hearted. We had a great time together. He was good in bed. There was literally nothing wrong with him, and nothing wrong with me, but we were going nowhere – and he wanted to be, and I ended up breaking it off because I couldn’t stop thinking about how much of a giant waste of his time the relationship was. He wasn’t a bad guy. In fact, he was really awesome. He  just wasn’t the right guy, and I knew he was never going to be. And I missed him, because (understandably) he didn’t want to be friends with me after I couldn’t give him a reason for the breakup beyond ‘It’s just – there’s no – I’m not.” (Teenagers are articulate.)

It would have been really easy to stay with him. I didn’t, because it wasn’t right for me (or, I think, him). The years between that relationship and the one I’m in now were full of relationship-shit, which means I earned the one I have now, dammit. And it’s worth not having taken the easy route, a hundred times over.

In case that metaphor isn’t painfully obvious, that’s how I feel about cipralex. I miss it. It was wonderful and easy and uncomplicated. It would have been easier to stay on for the rest of my life, but it wouldn’t have been right. Now I’m going through those ‘shit years’ (except they will not last YEARS, dammit) and at the end, I get the ‘great relationship’ – the goal for that one being a healthy whole human who’s not having to remember to take the (lovely wonderful) little white pill every day.

Anyway.

I miss my pills.

Shit years are shitty.

Therapy tonight. Also, I’m going to go and see a nutritionist about eating-for-brain. (Please note distinction: not eating brains. I hope.) Onward, forward.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
-Robert Frost

I need a hobby

The benefits of hobbies:

1. You do them just for fun. (Usually) there is no financial profit, thus alleviating any obligations
2. They are relaxing. If not, you may be doing it wrong.
3. They generally force you to remove yourself from a prone position.

My hobbies as they currently stand, according to those three points, are: Driving to work, which is debatable under point #1; reading, debatable under point #3; soapmaking, which I don’t really feel like doing as I end up with rubbermaid bins full of lovely bars of soap and no idea what to do with them all, and finally, crocheting. Which I don’t really do because it’s boring and aggravates my wrists and I only know how to make ever-enlarging squares. Writing…writing is a little bit like a job, in that I commit to it, and in that I do hope to sell the product of it some day.

I need a (new) hobby.

I have so far come up with woodworking and/or refinishing things that already exist. The latter is more appealing because I wouldn’t have to drive to my friend’s house all the time, and I think that would be a barrier to me actually doing anything. I like working on things, making them new. I used to like working on my car, but now I have a newish truck and a)it rarely breaks, b) I don’t want to fix it myself, when it does.

What I want to do, really, is buy a bunch of oil paints and sit in front of an easel and paint with Bob Ross, because his voice is so soothing and I’m quite sure that under his tutelage I could learn to paint happy little trees everywhere. It’s just that I can’t fully commit to the concept of a hobby that doesn’t produce anything useful.

I’m going to try refinishing my kitchen table and see how I like that. I’m spending a lot of time watching TV lately, and while it’s lovely to know ALL OF THE FRINGE ALL OF THE TIME, it’s not making me feel happy. It’s making me feel like someone who goes to work, comes home, watches TV, goes to bed stupid-early, has a shitty sleep, and wakes up feeling rather maudlin about doing the whole dog-and-pony show all over again. All of those things are red flags for me.

It’s been two months today since I went off the meds. I feel like I’m settling in to a dysthemic pattern, and I am hoping to settle at a slightly higher level. I realize that to achieve that, I have to do certain things – eat well, be social, exercise, have hobbies. But I have trouble, in the midst of feeling like there are clouds in my brain, actually doing any of these things.

So I’m going to pick a hobby and start small. It doesn’t feel like a big committment; if I refinish the table and I hate it, I just won’t do things like that anymore. It’s not like having to actually talk to my friends, which is clearly a mountain I don’t wanna climb.

Yet.

Anyway. In conclusion: Ladies and Gentlemen, Bob Ross!

Hallo.

Dear Everyone in the Pacific NorthWest:

Do not go off of your antidepressants in the middle of winter. It can be done, but it is unnecessarily hard.

That is all.

Regression

I guess this is stage two, if you consider the week of cold turkey fun to be stage zero.

This week brings with it some fun new things. Stage one was all about the sad. Weird random sad. Genuine-reason-sad (‘My dog is getting older and will one day die’) with far-reaching overreactions (‘and thus I will drink a bottle of wine and lie on the floor crying for an hour or two’).

This week is anger. I’m just kind of low-level pissed off all the time. It’s entertaining! Because there are things that might actually, genuinely piss me off going on in my life right now – or would they? How much? This much?

The Is-This-Normal game is my constant companion. I feel like a teenager again, and not in a sexy fun way; more in the way of ‘Duude, nobody understands me and everything is soooooharddddd and I just wanna smoke gross cigarettes and listen to rage against the machine.’

So….er. My brain is full of angry self-pity. Keeping a grip on it is a constant job, one that I’d say that I’m doing with about 80% success.

To those with whom I have failed: My apologies. Really.

To the headhunter from my previous job who asked if they could have me back: THANK YOU for giving me an outlet for all this pissy anger! Super appreciated.

To those with whom I have succeeded: Look, don’t be scared of me just because I’ve got this cloud of pissed off living in my head. I’ve got this. Mostly. And IF I drop it, it will not be your fault, and I will later apologize profusely and take any abuse you care to hurl in response.

But mostly, I feel fairly capable of being objective and keeping everything under wraps. It’s actually pretty cool. If it’s legitimate-angry, I can just talk to people using my grown-up voice. (Again. Mostly.)

Bye kidlets. Maybe next week’s stage will be all about flowers and sparkly dragons.

What is Submitomancy?

Note from Gwen:

Firstly, all things said about me in this post are very, very true. Secondly: This is a post from Sylvia. Sylvia is a brilliant woman, to a degree which I suspect would make her head explode if she knew it. Thirdly: I will do a lot of work for internet/video game badges. It makes no sense, but that’s humans for you.

And now . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sylvia Spruck Wrigley

I’ve designed Submitomancy to help writers submit short stories and poems to publishers. It’s sort of like speed dating, but for imaginary people.

I aim for maximum efficiency: I have this story, there are all these markets, one of them is going to fall in love with my story, it’s just a matter of persistence.

But not everyone works that way. If I want my submission tracker to be useful across the board, I have to consider writers who work differently.

Like Gwen.

Gwen doesn’t like submitting. Gwen writes excellent fiction, fascinating, fast-moving stories of space fun. And then (correct me if I’m wrong, Gwen), she’ll put off sending it out for as long as she possibly can. Like, forever.

So the perfect submissions system shouldn’t just be super-efficient for me, it should also support Gwen and encourage her to submit her stories more often. The question is: What can a piece of software offer to make this happen?

Badges. Shiny badges. Possibly with sparkles.

Submitted something? Have a badge. Submitted your first poem? Have a badge. Submitted a story a week for 52 weeks? Have a HUGE badge and a kitten.

Submitomancy has to be efficient and easy to use, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun too. I know that a lot of writers dread putting their work out there and if I can create a system that encourages them, then everyone wins.

Because the system needs a funds and a critical mass of users, I’m asking writers to show their support now. If you think Submitomancy is a website you would use, or even if you just want to see Gwen submit more stories, then please support the Indiegogo campaign and tell your friends.

http://www.indiegogo.com/submitomancy/

If Submitomancy gets off the ground, I’m going to ask Gwen to come and use it and submit her stories like crazy. And I’m going to tell her to do it for the kittens.

She doesn’t stand a chance.