Tag Archives: Depression

Thought of the Week: Little Guilt and Regret

Feelings are becoming alien to me, dear readers.

I feel (pardon the irony) like I have been without emotion for many, many months now. This isn’t to say I’m flat or numb, because I’m not. But can you imagine laughing and not feeling happy? Crying, and not feeling sad? Shouting, and not feeling angry?

I’ve been suffering through an extended depression since November last year, when my motivation and reason for living vanished without a trace. All progress on The Redemption of Erâth ceased; I stopped doing the dishes, I stopped washing clothes, or even myself…every day became a struggle to find a reason to get out of bed, and if I did I would spend the remainder of the day finding ways to get back into it.

 

…there are no connections, nothing to root me and say, “This has meaning.”

 

I’m not out of this depression yet – the bed still calls beckoningly – but my motivation is back (somewhat). I rose from the depths of nothing to a point where I could at least force myself to take the next step and tell my publisher to look into re-editing the manuscript for Consolation; this led to further work on Exile, on which I managed to progress five chapters in the past week and half – an unprecedented level of productivity for me. That’s 30,000 words in 10 days.

With Little Satis’ broken leg, I’ve also been forced back into household chores that I had all but abandoned, and I’m finding it…if not enjoyable, then at least tolerable. I have to do the dishes in spurts to get them done, and I still fail to do the laundry on a regular basis; my office is a disaster of strewn clothes (clean and dirty), tea mugs and coffee cups, dust, crumbs and a suitcase, half unpacked from six months ago. The chore of cleaning is beyond me.

The pile grows ever taller…

The pile grows ever taller…

But there is one thing that remains constant throughout all of this, whether its when loading the dishwasher, lying in bed thinking about not cleaning or writing emotional scenes in The Redemption of Erâth: I feel nothing. It’s as though I’m simply moving through existence, seeing and observing (or sometimes failing to observe) the things around me, but there are no connections, nothing to root me and say, “This has meaning.”

The funny thing is, it isn’t an entirely unpleasant way to live. When you can’t feel, there’s virtually no stress, no worry; none of the bad things in life have any real meaning. They just are. If that comes at the price of the good things in life, then…so be it.

Of course, occasionally the odd sensation will flare up momentarily. For example, the guilt that stopped me from choosing a loaf of bread when I knew Mrs. Satis was paying for the shopping (she can’t eat wheat). This little, odd fleeting feeling that buying that bread would be a ‘bad’ thing to do.

For the most part, though, there is precious little guilt and regret. Little stress, little worry, little sadness.

And little happiness, too.

What would you trade?

 

Featured image adapted from http://www.drdavewhite.com/2013/10/30/godly-sorrow-vs-worldly-guilt/.

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Personal Update

This post is something of a personal update, borne out of the need to say something to you all, even if I can’t think of what to write. It’s been about a month since we last talked, and I feel bad about that.

Lots of things have happened in that meantime, which is a good thing in a way, I suppose – it’s better than nothing! First and foremost, the biggest impact on my life has been Little Satis’ injury:

Do you see the problem?

Do you see the problem?

This happened shortly after his birthday, poor thing, when his grandfather and I took him skiing. It was only his second day on skis, and at the moment he claims it will be his last. It was a gentle slope with a curve, and he picked up a little too much speed (not a lot, honestly) and forgot to stop. The edge of the curve was bounded with a net, and when he hit it his ski twisted one way while the rest of him twisted the other. As you can probably see it’s a bad fracture, and he’s now in a full-leg cast for the next three months. Apart from the guilt and remorse, there’s a whole lot of inconvenience involved, especially since he can’t really get up the steep stairs to his bedroom. He’s been sleeping on the pull-out couch so far, which is getting in the way of just about everything. On the plus side, the pain seems to have more or less subsided for him, and he’s gotten pretty good on crutches.

 

I started The Redemption of Erâth in November of 2011, so it’s been quite some time, and I’m really looking forward to it finally being done.

 

On a very positive note, I’ve started writing The Redemption of Erâth: Exile again, and have managed to complete an entire chapter. That’s right – 6,436 words now exist in a row that did not exist before, and while it’s definitely not my best writing, it’s a chapter I don’t have to write anymore, and I’m that much closer to the end of the book (book 2, that is – there are still 5 more to go). I may even set out to write the following chapter when I’m done writing this post. I have the week off to look after Little Satis during his spring break, and there’s not much to do with him having a broken leg except read, watch movies and write.

How dare she?

How dare she?

Speaking of reading, Little Satis and I are diving back into Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for the first time in four months – another loss to be attributed to the rather devastating depression I’ve been struggling through. No spoilers, please, but we were both outraged that J. K. Rowling had the audacity to kill off his owl, Hedwig. Wasn’t it bad enough to do what she did to Dumbledore? And although I know somewhere along the line Snape manages to redeem himself, I can’t for the life of me see how. Good writing, Joanne; good writing. I can only hope to have such mystery and suspense in my own story.

With regard to my story, I finally made the move to get my publishing company to start final edits on The Redemption of Erâth: Consolation. It should be a few weeks now, and I’ll have a finished – actual, honest, finished – manuscript in my hands, and I’ll be ready to move that little bit closer to publication. It’s terrifying, nerve-wracking, and not a little exciting to think that in a few months I might have an actual, purchasable book.

You’ll all buy a copy, right?

I started The Redemption of Erâth in November of 2011, so it’s been quite some time, and I’m really looking forward to it finally being done. Five sections, 25 chapters, 103,000 words (it was 111,000 to begin with)…it’s a hell of a novel. (For what it’s worth, the second book is at 93,000 words already and I still have 9 chapters to write! That’ll end up being about 150,000 words – eek!) I have to say that, looking back on it, there are definitely improvements that could have been made, but also parts that could have been a lot worse, and on the whole…I think I’m pretty proud of it. I just hope you all like it as much as I do.

So what’s the upshot of all of this? I guess it might be that things are starting to look up for me a little bit. I even had a breakthrough regarding the origin of my depression in therapy…not that it’s helping me get through it today, of course, but every piece of information is useful. I still can’t promise that I’ll be returning to my blog on a weekly basis, though I honestly would love to – the issue is motivation and energy, which I sadly am still lacking severely. If I can, though…if I can…

For now, take care, and enjoy the new chapter of The Redemption of Erâth: Exile!

 

Satis 2014

Featured image from http://miriadna.com/preview/the-clock.

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Long, Cold Winter

Hello, my dear friends and readers. It’s been a very long time, and I’m sorry for that. I miss you all. I haven’t reached out to you since the beginning of December, and that was to say that my world was growing darker, and that I’d be taking a break.

Well, that break turned out to last three months, and I need to make it clear: I’m not back. Not yet.

It’s been three months since I last wrote here on WordPress, but more to the point it’s been three months since I was last capable of writing at all. Throughout December and into January, my mind collapsed. That’s the best word I can think of to describe it; it feels like nearly all of my mental faculty is crushed and flattened, obliterated and destroyed beyond recognition. Since my depression began in my late teens, I have never experienced anything quite like this.

It began slowly, but daily the task of getting up and going about my day became increasingly overwhelming until I found myself spending every available moment in bed. I still do. I became unable to clean, unable to eat, unable to take care of myself on the most basic of levels. I stopped showering. I stopped brushing my teeth. I wore the same clothes for a week at a time.

Now I’ve become incapacitated before when faced with something that felt unsurmountable, but in the past it always turned into an internal battle – the overwhelming desire to cower in a corner and block out everything around me, pitted against the guilt of my incapacity and the desire to please the people around me. But this time, the battle never happened. I had simply given up. My brain decided it couldn’t cope with the struggle any longer, and began to accept the world around me as unchangeable fact, rather than a catalyst for action. Dirty dishes? Yep, I agree, they’re there. It won’t be me cleaning them, though. Floor needs sweeping? Sure does; I’ll see you in bed.

If this sounds selfish, it’s because it is. However, it’s been the only way for me to survive the last three months. I spoke with my therapist, quite seriously, about hospitalization. I didn’t see how I could continue to survive. Somehow, against all odds, I’ve managed to drag myself to work every day, and the Lovely J was blown away. Most people, she said, would have called in sick. Who knows what perverted dedication I have to my job; I certainly felt like calling in sick, but for some reason never did. For that reason alone, she said, most hospitals would refuse to take me.

So instead I’ve tried to build a new life at home, based around this newfound incapacity. Little Satis does the dishes now. He and Mrs. Satis do their laundry separately, and I’m left to do my own. Every two weeks it goes in the washer, then in the dryer. I only take it out of the dryer when I need it. I eat separately; usually a bowl of cereal or a loaf of bread – whatever makes the least mess. I sleep in the guest bed, so that I can lie in bed out of sight and so have less of an effect on the family.

Mrs. Satis has been incredibly accommodating, and I want to thank her with all my love. I know this can’t be easy for her. She tells me she loves me a dozen times a day, and every word makes a difference to my world. I’m not back yet, but with my family’s support I’ve managed to sit down and write this post. It’s been three months in coming.

I’m not back. I’m not resuming Thought of the Week. Not yet. But if I can write this, then maybe there is still hope.

Lastly, thank you to every one of my readers – knowing that so many people have read my words is uplifting, and goes a long way toward getting me back on track.

We’ll see where things go from here.

Featured image taken from http://barbarashdwallpapers.com/dark-blue-winter-landscape-with-forest/.

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