I know it’s supposed to be “black dogs”, for depression, but grey dogs match all my clothes.
I’ve had the uncooperative brain chemicals going on for more than a decade now. These days, they mostly show up in the form of general anxiety. It’s often manageable. It occasionally spikes, and freezes me in place for a while, but I’ve grown used to shifting my life around it, and avoiding its more prominent jutting edges. Those of you who have that perfectionism thing, will understand me when I say that the worst of it is feeling like you are always waiting for conditions to improve, just a little, before you can finally start anything. It’s so easy to develop a false nostalgia for some vague period of time when life seemed relieved of its weight, and everything just came easily. And It’s hard to shut that down – the tendency to create a misery of the present by an endless series of fictional comparisons. It’s one of those human things.
And for the most part, this is actually OK. I mean, I’m terrified of my email inbox, and I have to approach people gathered in groups like I’m being forced to run some do-or-die flesh gauntlet. But this is my normal. It’s well enough, and there is always pie.
Just lately, though, I’ve been in a rougher patch. And things like ever doing laundry, or changing my clothes, or walking to the grocery store (fuck a grocery store!) feel too challenging to contemplate. I know it passes – I do, at least, have some perspective on this. But frankly, it is balls.
I’ve been avoiding Hchom posts because, yes, what I said about putting things offs, and what I said about wearing the same clothes every day (they are quickly becoming a different kind of impossible). And even more, because I fear drawing attention to myself in this state. But it’s important to speak about depression openly, and I have that unfortunate artist’s tendency to feel stifled and miserable unless I can bare-all (which is frustrating, when combined with my reserved introvert desire to bare-nothing, ever).
I don’t want to make any false forecasts of immediate improvement – that comes as it comes. I also don’t want to give an exaggerated impression. I’ve been in that place, where I can’t be bothered to get out of bed, much less leave my dwelling, and I am definitely not there. Rather, it really is like my opening image: I have to go about my normal life, hefting this wilting lump of grey dogs. I get used to them, but they are a heavy, drooling deadweight.
So for now, I’ll hoist those dogs around with me, and maybe in a slightly wider circle (but still not to the grocery store – hissss [luckily, Brandon appears to be ok with fetching things for me, so it all works out]).
In this spirit, I have done as I once threatened, and started a tumblr. And I’ll leave you, now, with the first post. (It hasn’t rained in an entire month, and I am starting to have Vampiric sun-destruction fantasies.)
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