Tag Archives: Life

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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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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Thought of the Week: Lithium, One Month In

About a month ago, I wrote about being diagnosed with Bipolar Type I and the treatments I’m undergoing. Specifically, I wrote about adding lithium to my daily pill diet, and being both concerned and excited about this new treatment. I was afraid of the results, afraid of the side-effects; in particular, I was afraid of what it was going to do to me mentally. I was looking forward to the possibility of a more steady life, and afraid that I would become a zombie.

So now it’s a month later, and I’ve been on lithium long enough for the effects to settle in. The overall result? It’s really, really weird.

I haven’t noticed a wide array of different crazy side-effects, but there are a couple of things that are different that I can really only attribute to the lithium itself. The first, most obvious and noticeable effect is a significant tremor in my hands particularly, and in my body in general. Sometimes the tremors become quite violent, although they are mostly more subdued. For example, I spilled tea on myself and my mouse while writing this post because of a sudden shake. It’s even a little more difficult to type on the keyboard (thank goodness for autocorrect). I’ve also noticed a strange phenomena when I’m sleeping. Mrs. Satis has for a long time said that I shake or move uncontrollably when I sleep, but recently when I’m coming awake (that state between sleeping and waking) I begin to shudder throughout my entire body. It’s not painful, but is the most peculiar sensation I can describe. Every muscle in my body, it feels like, starts quivering rapidly, and this continues for several seconds before eventually fading away, leaving me feeling normal. I’ve started to become used to this, and I had something similar (but much milder) before starting the lithium, but it’s a little unsettling.

The second most obvious change is mental. Here, I can almost feel the lithium interfering with the chemical signaling in my brain. I have a constant fuzzy, numb sensation near the back of my head – right about where the cerebellum would be, I’d say – and emotionally I’m simply gone. I can still laugh in the presence of colleagues but I don’t actually find the joke very funny; I can still frown when Mrs. Satis is angry at me for forgetting to do something for the millionth time, but I don’t actually feel upset. I feel steady, certainly; almost like a see-saw that’s frozen in place.

There’s a good side to this. I don’t get nearly so angry, and I especially don’t get so depressed. This is a hard one to explain, actually, because I still feel a great lethargy, which was always one of the key characteristics of my depression. I still want to spend all day lying in bed, sleeping. (I got ten hours of sleep last night, yet I still felt compelled to have a nap all morning.) I can’t bring myself to do anything, never mind the important things that need doing every single day (like cleaning).

And there’s a down side, which is that I can’t react appropriately to anything. If little Satis is happy, I feel a little “meh”. If Mrs. Satis is angry I feel a little “meh”. It’s okay at work – reactions are governed by pre-scripted rules for social interaction, so as long as I respond the way work wants me to respond, I’m good – but at home it’s causing all sorts of problems. Which is ironic, because the whole point of lithium was to improve my quality of life.

It leaves me wondering what the point of any of this medication is. All I’ve done is traded a violent, abusive, depressed and lazy monster for a quiet, monotone, unfeeling lazy monster. And I have no idea which is better.

Do I want to go off lithium? I’m not sure. There’s the part of me that’s enjoying a bit of stability for once. There’s a part of me that hates the relationships this “new” me is forming with his loved ones. And there’s now a big part of me that just doesn’t give a f***.

Sigh. What would you do?

Featured image from http://discoverccs.org/.

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