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So, I'm behind on reading again because... it's been a week, and also reading has been difficult due to issues with my glasses. BUT THIS IS HUGE
This thread on Twitter.
Her therapist told her to be nice to the negative voice in her head. Read the whole thing, but the conclusion is: that voice is trying to protect her. It's not helpful, it's not actually protecting her, but it's not malicious. She likens it to a child making a mess because it's trying to be helpful. You have to clean up the mess, but you also tell the child that hey, you appreciate they wanted to help, but they don't have to do all the things. It's okay.
That's... a thing. A thing that is huge.
The voice in my head that tells me that if I'm too confident, if I'm too sure, if I actually believe that people love me and I'm worth it, everyone will hate me and leave me and I'll be abandoned and alone...
It's trying to protect me. Because that always happened before. It's a voice of fear that's trying to keep me safe.
I don't need to deny it. I need to soothe it. I need to tell it that it's okay. Thanks for the warning. Good looking out, voice. But it's different now, and I've got it from here. We'll be okay, voice, I promise.
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So it's a known thing that depression is isolating.
Here's an under-observed (in my experience) part of why:
Many of the systems that, at present, exist for people to connect are, for the depressed, actively damaging and alienating.
Much of how people connect now is social media. Even a housebound shut-in can access that.
But social media is acutely toxic poison if you're coming at it from a certain place.
Which is to say:
Imagine (and I do hope this is something you have to imagine) that you have been depressed, and ill and/or injured. For a while. All you've done for quite some time is survive, and that's not nothing, but if you go to social media, you come across the following:
Everyone's life is better than yours.
Facebook is the worst for this, because everyone seems to post the best possible version of themselves on Facebook, and if the best possible version of you is still kind of a mess... what do you do? Facebook is a parade of people showing off how great they are and how great their lives are. You can't compare. You're pathetic. You have nothing to tell people that you're proud of.
You have nothing to say.
Everything you could say seems like you might come across as whining, or attention-seeking, and you have nothing interesting and novel to say about anything. You haven't done anything. You have no experiences to relate in any way.
Everyone is like a stranger now.
While you were sick, you didn't keep up. Even if you read what people were posting it, you don't remember it, because you were feverish or drugged and it's a blur at best. You've fallen behind. You don't know who the people they're casually mentioning are, you don't know what's going on, and you don't want to ask people, "Hey, catch me up on the last two years of your life?"
But the problem keeps getting worse because you can't make yourself keep reading, keep up, because it hurts even to try.
Everything about how people try to connect is alienating.
Friending memes feature people listing the things they're interested in and the things they do and the things they want to talk about, and you look at it and back away, wondering if you should just give up on everything, because you don't remember what you're interested in, all you do is try to make it through the week, or the day, or the hour, and you don't know what you want to talk about, you just want to talk to someone at all.
Popular culture is alienating too.
Everything is grimdark, everything you think you'll love goes full tilt to clear the nearest shark with room to spare, and you can't take it any more. You can't get emotionally invested in yet another TV series or book series that's all going to go to shit, so you take to avoiding them all until they're finished, until you can know whether it's worth it or whether it's going to betray you, and by then... no-one cares any more.
Crawl back into your box. This isn't for you any more.
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So, I'm currently in the process of washing out (most of) my current antidepressants, in order to switch to a different one - under the instructions and guidance of my psychiatrist, mind you. This is, of course, the express ticket to Fucked In The Head you might imagine, and the sad thing is I didn't realise that was what was screwing with my brain yesterday until Dean was like, "Dude, I totally saw this coming, relax."
The next week or two should be Interesting Times.
... huh. Dreamwidth just gave me a "Restored Draft" of the post I was working on about twelve hours ago on a different computer and never finished.
Anyway, it's now 5am, and despite only getting about three hours' sleep last night, I can't sleep, at all. Hooray, fucked-up brain chemistry!
The best part is my supposedly-joyful trip out earlier this evening to go see Up! with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) elaran earlier this evening.
Without wanting to give spoilers, a few minutes into the movie I started crying uncontrollably, and thereafter everything that happened just seemed drenched in pathos and woe. It got so I couldn't stand it, and - for the first time in my life - I left the film early. (Early enough, mind you, to get a ticket refund, which was nice.)
Someone laughed at me, and I was deeply hurt by that - but at the same time, hey, I'm sitting there sobbing real tears at a Pixar movie.
On the bright side: planning for my trip to Britain continues apace. Travel arrangements are getting booked by travel agent. To my astonishment, I shall apparently be driving a Mercedes B 180 SE (something like that) or similar, for 78 days, for AU$1200.
My mind, it is somewhat boggled.
Some exploration of accommodation options in various areas suggests that B&Bs are really not that expensive, which is good.
Since I'm going to be over there longer than I was originally vaguely theorising - shall, by current travel arrangements, be arriving at Heathrow on the 6th of October and departing on the 22nd of December - I'm looking at going into Western Europe, too. Check out some major historical sites, maybe go to Legoland in Denmark... then, maybe, catch the Oslo ferry, and scoot up a ways through Scandinavia and, as well as taking some potentially gorgeous photographs, see if I can catch the Northern Lights.
I would love to see the Northern Lights, and in October, it's nominally pretty feasible.
Still working on a rough itinerary plan. Currently, my rough idea is: from London, go to Uncle Ian's to recover from the flight, depending on whether that's going to be feasible for him and his family, then head north. Edinburgh and Mary, then Aberdeenshire and Great-Uncle Ian and his family, ferry from Aberdeen to Orkney, ferry from Orkney to Caithness, south again, stop at Worcester and Great-Aunt Eleanor, onward to... Dover? to get the ferry across the Channel to France, then head north towards Scandinavia.
It might marginally increase my chances of seeing the Northern Lights if I aim for Norway first, but I'd rather go see my kin first. I could also skip Orkney entirely.
I did buy a GPS device, which came with maps for Australia, and I bought maps for the United Kingdom, Western and Central Europe.
The problem is, as it turns out, the otherwise-totally-pleasing GPS device doesn't quite have data storage space available for Australia *and* the UK/Western/Central Europe. (The problem here is largely Europe, which is almost 2GB of maps, where Australia is 100MB. There's less to map.)
However, it's not like I'm going to want both at the same time, and swapping them by connecting to my computer is trivial. (Somehow, I find it hard to envisage circumstances in which I would urgently need GPS driving navigation assistance for Europe and Australia in quick succession.)
I'm glad GPSes exist, because driving around foreign countries should be a lot less stressful when I have a little device to feed me directions, rather than having to mess around trying to work with maps. I'm used to using Perth street directories, but even that can be stressful finding thoroughly unfamiliar places, and this is my home town, and Australia is very, very different, in terms of geographical layout kind of stuff, from Britain and Europe.
Britain, at least, is so very densely occupied. I'm from Perth. The nearest major city to mine is halfway across the continent. Far further than, say, London to Edinburgh.
But my GPS includes things like petrol stations and Points Of Interest, which I think is pretty awesome, and, you know. Directions. "Where the hell am I going? Oh, right, thattaway."
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Tonight I baked chicken drumsticks, for foods purposes, in two attempts because the first time I took them out they came out underdone.
In other news, I talked to both Chas and Dean today. It turns out they'd read all the comments on a recent post, which I hadn't expected (to the extent that I thought about it, since I was answering comments while quite upset), and had gathered alarming hints about how I've been doing. Soooo, all my dedicated efforts to keep them from knowing anything about how I've been managing in the last week have come to naught, but on the bright side, we're all fine.
And since this means I am no longer carefully dodging the possibility of them finding out what's been happening, I can talk about it here.
My reasons for doing so are mixed - partly for my own benefit, since this is my own damn journal, partly for the informational benefit of people who care about me, partly because I know sometimes it will be surprisingly helpful to a stranger to know that other people deal with this kind of thing too.
I've been struggling to hold things together in the last week. All the strains that were there before the wedding are still around, only now my brother and my best friend are far away and out of reach. My dear friend Oliver has been helping, trying to take care of me, and housemate.Dave cares, but it's not the same, and I've been having trouble.
My psychologist has been taking the angle of reminding me that this is my great chance to work on being able to deal with things independently, without help, but it turns out I'm not entirely ready for that yet.
Oh, I'm better enough not to be totally dependent any more, but... Ideally, I think, even if I moved out and was living alone, say, I would still be in frequent contact, by e-mail/IM/phone/etc, with my family. (By which I mean my brother-out-law Chas and my sister-out-in-law/BFF Dean.) Feeling cut off and isolated is bad for me - my actual, real breakdowns while they've been gone have both taken place when (first time) everyone I tried to call wasn't answering, or (second time) I was feeling like I couldn't call on anyone at all.
First time I mostly held it together until Dave came home.
Second time ( is cut for the squeamish. )
Linkin Park. I bleed it out digging deeper just to throw it away, just to throw it away, I bleed it out...
I've always had this feeling like everything would be okay if I could just get the blood to run.
The only thing that seems to have bled out with it is that. Blood won't help. The cut will hurt and the blood will be in sight, and I'll be distracted from my pain by hating myself for the weakness that cutting represents, but it won't make it all better.
I know I've been told this, many times, but I could never feel it.
But I have enough self-inflicted scars, and I've seen my life pooling on the floor, and I want to believe I can let this all go now. If two sutures is what I needed to be able to put this behind me, I'll take it. I want to be past this. I want to feel like I don't have to be afraid I'll lose myself, like I don't have to be terrified that depression is an illness that will kill me.Current Mood:  tired Current Music: Cobra Starship - Guilty Pleasure
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