Tag Archives: Depression

The Constant Toil of Inner Turmoil

At the start of the year, as I do every year, I made a commitment to write more frequently, regularly, and consistently.

As I do every year, I failed.

I mean, I did try. I wrote seven posts here in January … then two in February … then one in March …

I really meant to try and recover the lightning-in-a-bottle success I had on here in 2012, but I was writing three to four posts a week at that point. I had themes – Thought of the Week, Tales of Despair, Movie Night – and I stuck to it. I would write late into the night, getting little to no sleep, but it was worth it for the engagement and interaction with people in the WordPress community.

Now, I barely make it to 9:00 PM most nights. I go to bed early, and fall asleep in front of reruns of Family Guy and Futurama. I don’t write. I don’t do much of anything.

In 2012, I was unmedicated, and starting to really see the effects of my burgeoning bipolar disorder. When I was depressed I would go through phases of drab nothingness, of course, but it was alternated with periods of virulent productivity. I wrote, and I wrote, and I wrote.

I don’t know if I can go back to that, of course; the medications take edges off in many ways. The catatonic depression is largely gone, but so is the mania that led to so much work. Instead, I go through life in a kind of gray fog, not quite sure of what to do with myself.

I do have plans; I do want to finish the Redemption of Erâth series. I want to write more young adult novels. I want to blog, and interact.

It’s just so frigging hard.

It’s my son’s spring break this week, and I took the week off many moons ago in the assumption we’d be going somewhere or doing something. We’re not, so I really now have a week at home to lounge around and do nothing.

Or maybe …

Let’s see what I can accomplish with a week of little-to-no responsibility. A week with nothing to stop me writing my heart out. A week of productivity.

I may get no further than this.

Fifteen Years Young

My son turned fifteen this weekend. Fifteen. That’s five-and-half thousand days he’s walked this earth (well, walked and crawled), and with a few small exceptions I’ve been there with him for every single one of them. This doesn’t by necessity make us close, but it makes us … well, something.

There’s no connection in my mind between the helpless, crying, infantile baby that came into the world fifteen years ago and the moody, sarcastic, increasingly self-aware teenager that thinks swearing is cool but doesn’t quite know when it’s appropriate. These are two different entities, and frankly I’m not sure I really know either.

My memory of his life is sporadic – fleeting moments in time, stuck in my mind like a photograph without context. I know he was once six – and twelve, and many other ages – but I don’t seem to be able to draw a line connecting these moments to each other. Like each memory is of a different person, one who no longer quite exists.

At the risk of being a cliché, it makes me wonder what I was like when I was fifteen. Where was I? What was I doing? What did I think? Fifteen was my sophomore year of high school; it was a summer of forgetful abandon. It was a year of adventure, of climbing and mountaineering, of school and exams and friends and excitement.

It was also my last year of happiness.

The following year, my junior year of high school, was the first year I learned depression, and I’ve never forgotten it since. By the summer of sixteen, I was catatonic in my room, drinking with my goth friends, staying up all night with candles, and cutting my arms. And it only got worse from there.

To some extent, I wonder what fate awaits my son. Will this be his last year of happiness? Will he succumb to the deep, numb despair of depression? I really can’t say, of course – the future is the future, and I’ve never really been good at predicting it. But I can see that he is, in many ways, a stronger person than I was at his age. He cooks, he cleans, he reminds me to take my meds, and he can’t stand how dirty I let my car get. He’s responsible, has a girlfriend, and frankly doesn’t get into much trouble at all. These are all things that were not true of me.

In fact, reflecting on that past fifteen years of my own life, he’s more of an adult now than I ever was – and more so than I am today. While I mope in bed and struggle to get through each and every day, leaving dishes and laundry to pile up, he actually takes care of things around the house. He doesn’t enjoy it, but it does it nonetheless.

Fifteen years ago, I was a scared, naive, miserably depressed kid who didn’t see a path forward in the world. Not that many young adults do, but for me, the end was visibly near. I was on a speeding train of mental turmoil, rushing headlong toward the abyss with no bridge and no brakes. What I’m trying to say is that without my son, I may well have tried to kill myself.

But I didn’t. And whilst I’m certainly not ‘better’, I survived. I mean, that’s probably as much as I can say for myself, really – I survived. It’s up for debate if that was worth it or not, but the point is, I’m likely alive because of my son. So there’s something.

We share interests – a love of movies, Lord of the Rings and heavy metal music, for starters – and we talk. I’ve never been secretive about my mental health with him, and I hope he doesn’t resent me for it; he talks to me (on occasion) about the things that trouble him, and I hope he continues to.

What I see when I look at him is no longer my child. He is no longer helpless. I mean, I may never have really come to terms with a person in the world being my descendant, but the point is that he is a young man, whole and independent, with thoughts and opinions that are not mine. He is a good person, and whether through my actions – or lack thereof – or not, I believe he will become a good adult. I have faith he will become a hard-working, functional member of society. And I guess I really couldn’t ask for more.

What I see is simple: my son is a better person than I am.

I couldn’t be more proud.

The Vividness of Mid-Afternoon Dreams

Perhaps because of my bipolar disorder, or perhaps because of the medications I take to quell its symptoms, I like to sleep. Like, a lot. When I’m not working, I find it very difficult to make it through a day without having at least one (if not two or three) naps. (To be honest, even when I am working I get so tired after lunch that it’s hard to be productive anyway.)

Also perhaps because of my disorder, or the meds, I dream when I sleep. What’s particularly funny about these dreams, though, is that they are (mostly) benign, never frightening, and vivid as hell. Like, Wizard of Oz Technicolor vivid.

For example, just yesterday I dreamed that I was in the loft in my house, but for some reason my house was on the edge of a cliff bordering the sea. While I was sleeping (because in my dream, I was taking a nap), the cliff started to crumble, and the house started to slide into the ocean. It really wasn’t a big deal, but kind of threw me for a loop.

The best part was that when I woke up (in the dream) and looked out of the window to see my house sliding down a cliff, I thought to myself, this isn’t very realistic – I bet I’m dreaming. But then I went downstairs, and when I passed the bathroom I saw the toilet gurgling and flooding as the water from the ocean started flooding the house. And that’s when I started to worry, because it seemed like a detail too intricate to be dreamt. Maybe my house really was drowning.

This is an example of a particularly fantastic dream, but more frequently my dreams are much more bland; sometimes I’ll simply dream of a day a work where nothing of much interest at all happens, or I might dream of eating a meal that wasn’t bad, but just not really good, either.

I suppose I should consider myself lucky that I don’t have nightmares – the vividness of my dreams would not translate well. And the most vivid of my dreams are usually from those mid-afternoon naps, snuggled deep in the blankets (or on the couch with my cat) where the world outside is cold but in my head everything is toasty warm.

When I’m feeling particularly depressed, I actually look forward to these hallucinatory dreams – it’s like a fugue state, where everything and nothing is real, all at the same time. During these times, I slip into sleep like a warm comforter, just waiting for the dreams to come. When I’m not depressed I don’t necessarily deliberately look for the escape, but I certainly don’t avoid it, either.

Sleeping – and dreaming – is an integral part of my life, and something I couldn’t imagine being without. It’s an odd thought, really, because I think most people don’t really remember their dreams – or care to have them. I find them a necessity, though, in some ways to maintain my sanity; without dreams, I’d probably wonder if the real world was even real at all.

What are your most vivid dreams, and do you remember them well?