In the last post, I was talking about some of the difficulties in my life creeping back in like depression and anxiety. I am fully aware that much of my negative feelings aren’t real, but that doesn’t make them any less painful. This was something I talked about with my last therapist. Some people think that if you know you have issues, that’s half the battle. I get it. You can’t do anything about your probelms if you don’t know/don’t think you have them. However.
On the other hand, it’s furstrating as fuck to know whtat my issues are, but not be able to do enough about them. I’m well aware that my brain is broken, for example. That doesn’t mean I know how to fix it.
I know I’m depressed. I know that my brain is fucking with me. I know that it’s lying to me. It matters not a whit. I still feel like shit and that nobody cares about me. Even though I know objectively it’s not true.
My brother was here today for a chat and dinner. It was nice to see him, and it reminded me that it’s not good to be completely isolated. I mentioned in the last post that I wanted to find a group of queer/genderqueer Asian people to chill with. It’ll probably have to be online, but it would be cool to find an in-world group. Except I can’t drive any longer–at least not to any great distance. I can drive to the grocery store, but that’s about. I have no peripheral vision any longer, which makes driving on the freeway fraught.
I also need to get my shit together in general. As I say that, though, I shake my head because what does that really mean, and is it even feasible? I have a general idea about the former, but not about the latter. I get overwhelmed when I think of everything I’d like to do to make my life better. And is it even worth it?
That’s how I know that I’m depressed. I no longer think being alive is a gift. I am back to thinking it’s a burden and that I’d rather just not be. It’s hard to explain that I do’nt want to die, exactly. I’m not suicidal, and I have no intention of taking my life.
I just…don’t have ambition to improve myself or my life. I feel a numbness in my soul that I recognize as deepening depression. I cringe at everything I saye or write because it all sounds/looks inane, boring, or bland to me. And that’s at its best.
I’m also not being able to sleep well at all. I haven’t been getting enough sleep, but admittedly, that’s partly because I’ve actually had to get up at certain times the last few days, but did not manage to go to bed any earlier. In other words, my sleep is fucked.
This was how my selep used to be before my medical crisis. I barely got 6 1/2 hours of sleep. Then, high on drugs in the hospital, I slept a solid eight hours or more a day/night. That continued after I went home for the following year.
In addition, I was a night owl. I used to go to bed around four or five, sometimes pushing it to six or seven. After I got out of the hospital, I went to bed at ten at night and got up at six in the morning. This was unheard of for me. Even when I was a child, I did not go to bed before midnight, and the last time I saw eight in the morning was when I stayed up that late.
In the second year after my rebirth, however, my sleep started to slide–in terms of time and in terms of quality. I still slept roughly eight hours a night, but my bedtime was starting to creep later and later.
Now, it’s all over the damn map. Ever since Daylight Savings (which fucks with me every time, but not usually this bad), it’s just been atrocious. It’s now four-thirty in the morning (almost). If I make it to bed by five, I’ll consider it a win.
I also need to get back to writing. I have not been able to write anything other than posts, work stuff, and mesasges (like texts, but I don’t text). I have tried so hard to write fiction, and it’s just not there. I’m frustrated with it, but I can’t say I haven’t tried. I have tried so hard, but everything is flat. I have the idea. It’s a great idea, if I do say so myself. Maybe one of the best ideas I’ve had (for a story) in the post-medical crisis era. But I just cannot get it to gel in my brain.
I keep writing and writing and writing, but I’m not getting anywhere. Or rather, I get about twenty solid pages, and then it all falls apart. I’m not exactly sure why. By that I mean, I don’t know if it’s that my idea isn’t as good as I think it is (nope) or that I just can’t write any longer (very possible) or that I just need to persevere (probably).
I know you have to write shit in order to get to the gold, but I’m not even writing shit in this case. It’s worse than that in that it can’t be spun into gold. Yes, I know I’m mixing my metaphors, but I don’t care.
I haven’t been at it in the last few weeks. I keep trying for weeks and even months, and then I fall off it for weeks. Before my medical crisis, I could write for hours a day without even thinking about it. I had ideas up the wazoo, and more to the point, they flowed easily from my fingertips. I have dozens of novels sitting in various folders across my computers. I have read some of them, and tehy are pretty dang good. Not all of them. The first novel I wrote is embarrassingly bad. But that’s only to be expected.
More later.