This Is (Actually) Why I Can't Have Nice Things

Caveat: there is a 100% chance I am writing this from a place of depression.

I didn't go to practice again tonite. It's the off season, and I don't have to go, but I should. Healthy-me knows that I like roller derby, and that roller derby makes me feel good, even when it's hard, and so, I should go.

Healthy-me is not home right now.

Needs-otters-me is in that place where practice is far, so I should stay home. Practice is independent study, and I don't do well on my own, so I should stay home. It's mostly been A team skaters showing up, and I am not A team, so I should stay home. Roller derby is for people who are capable of doing good things, for people who want things more than I do, who are better than I am, and so, clearly, I should stay home, because trying is hard and failing is easy and why leave the house when I can be the architect of my own disappointment from right here in this spot?

Thank you to ThePhotoForum user Overread for taking a bunch of really incredible pictures of really sad looking otters.

And, hey, since I stayed home, thus satisfying my terrible proof of only good people go to practice, I did not go to practice, I am not a good person, how about I just spend the rest of the night self-flagellating? That seems like a good idea, right? Of course it does.

I have a tendency (it's not a tendency, tendency implies that it only happens sometimes, this is a course of thought that I have roughly 100% of always) to believe that I am not worthy of good things. "Good things" is a catch-all term, but it often includes things like a base level of happiness, proper nutrition, and access to healthcare/medication. Without even looking at what wider circles of that clearly flawed logic include, it causes me to exist in cycles where I deny myself access to things that I should not be denying myself - my anxiety meds, decent meals, anything one could deem a "luxury" - in an effort to satisfy the part of my lizard brain that is more concerned with being right than being healthy. (My lizard brain is a jackass.) (I almost said dick, but I am making a concerned effort to remove gendered insults from my lexicon. Note to self, keep working on that.)

Which brings me to the point of why I opened my computer - I don't want to keep satisfying my lizard brain. Because it is a jackass. I want to figure out how to keep myself in check, to hold myself outside of that base instinct that I do not deserve nice things (kind things, healthy things, things that make my life more tolerable), and to not fall in to its clutches. I want to take my anxiety meds, even if I don't feel like I need them, because they don't just stop my anxiety after it ramps up, they are useful in preventing those feels in the first place. I want to go to practice, even if it's hard and I suck and I'm still afraid that I won't make Brawlers again, because I like roller derby. And because two shitty hours on the track are still better than two shitty hours sitting at home feeling shitty about myself. Because I understand that while the act of denial is in itself a trigger for the pleasure center, it is a terrible one, and there have got to be better ways of indulging those synapses.

I made a Facebook post vaguely about this last week, in an effort to hold myself accountable and not do the thing I just did all over again (skip practice and feel shitty about it.) Will writing a blog post about it help? Probably not. But writing out why I do these things to myself at least sucks a little bit of how terrible I feel about myself out of my insides, and that's helpful. Sort of. Take your meds, Marissa.

Anxiety Nightmares #2

Item: My dad is my best friend.

Item: My dad's health is not, and has not been, for a very long time, the best.

Without getting in to the details of his maladies, suffice it to say, the idea of my dad getting even sicker, or worse, dying, has been an source of anxiety-to-the-point-of-trauma for me for a very, very long time.

It's bad enough that I can make myself physically ill with worry during the day, using nothing but controlled, conscious thought. What's worse is how much worse (better?) my subconscious is at drawing out fantastic, excruciating, unbelievable versions of these same anxiety-fantasies.

 I have had recurring dreams of my father's death/decline for as long as I can remember dreaming. Not the same dream, but the same storyline. (Do other people dream in movies, like I do?) What's truly impressive is the staggering number of storylines my subconscious has come up with to exploit this fear with me.

The one where I lose him in a crowd at a Flyers game at the Spectrum, and the next thing I know, I see his memorial obit picture on the jumbotron.

The one where, in a stunning recreation of an actual event from his childhood, he wanders down the beach and never comes back.

The one where I sit in the hospital with him for days and days and days and the doctors refuse to tell me why we're there.

It goes on. I've forgotten most of them, thank God. I mostly remember just waking up in cold sweats, consciously toeing that line between knowing it's a dream and just needing it all to STOP, and knowing it's a dream and being so horrified by the nightmare scenario playing out that I want to see it all the way through to the end.

And so, today's. I took a nap after I came home from Kentucky, and got served what may have been my most vivid version of this shitshow to date, and a uniquely nauseating one, to boot.

This wasn't a dream about my dad's death, for a change. The thought and fear of that was a bright and pulsing undercurrent for the dream, to be sure, but not the literal content.

We're driving home in a car that is mine, but is not my Element, though it is suggestive of it. We are driving from a vague but familiar point west - Genaurdi's, perhaps. The doctor's office. We are initially driving past Not-Radnor-High (you know how dreamscape geography is), under the 476 underpass at Lancaster & KoP, when the underpass area becomes more urban (a larger underpass area, more lanes, more concrete, more confusion) and more forest (more leaves on the ground, low-forest shrubs in the same concrete-y area) than before. The area merges to a combination of the underpass intersection of Sproul and Conestoga, but with the trailheads of Enke Park/Radnor Chester Road transposed on the SW side of Sproul.

This locations are important, because they're such a familiar, background part of my daily drives back home. That section of Sproul, particularly, is one of my favourite bits of road to drive on. The scenery and landscape are familiar, homey. So it makes what happens next all the more distressing.

The roads become this morph of roads, and they become difficult to navigate. The car is physically having a difficult time travelling over them. The traffic is getting more condensed - not heavier, just as if the roads are merging - and though I don't see it, it feels as if we're fording a river. I'm becoming claustrophic.

I feel the car pass over what might be a speed bump, as we're passed on the left by a large, white, fast moving vehicle. This is insufficient. It's a vehicle that seems to be part DeathRace 2000 racecar, part boat. The part that is exposed to me, on the driver's side left, is the right side of the vehicle, which is essential the white, oversized ridged bilge of a crappy speedboat, if that speedboat bilge had been stretched with the bow and stern on the horizontal, and the bilge pulled vertically along the gunwales, almost to form a sail (maybe a shield) that obscures the rest of the craft from me as it passes by, though I see enough of it to know that it is attached by a simple joint, like an umbrella, or what is used to hold up deck awnings.

It passes us, and between the reflections (or what, I'm not sure, just that they're glaringly bright) and the water it splashes, I am blinded and run off road.

We are in a patch of the underpass underbelly, stuck in some sort of mud-quicksand-grass-island-median. Dreamscape, all things at once. We're being passed by men and women on foot, in costume. Dad gets out of the car, and wanders in to a storefront, one of many that has appeared, and look like they have come out of a set, or Main Street Disneyland. They look faux, false.

I realize that the men and women in costume are part of one of those doofy themed 5ks, and the Disney set we appear to be on is, in fact, a set that has been built on top of these familiar roads. The bilge vehicle DID offroad us over breakers, and we ARE in the middle of the course. And this course IS partially submerged in water, the racers DO have to ford it (there are large black whitewater rafts, though it is unclear how racers are chosen for them. Teams? Fighting?), and run it, and obstacle course it.

The car is stuck, and there is no way back to where we started. The terrain is unpassable in that direction, and we are beginning to be overcome with course runners. I manage to find a race official to explain the situation, but Dad has wandered in to a storefront, something that appears to be a cross between a tailor's shop and a western saloon. He stands on a slightly elevated square of a pedestal, as you do in a dressing room, while women both measure and coo over him. This added measure of sexuality makes me intensely uncomfortable as a watch them drape themselves over him.

The staffer I talk to is at first perplexed - she doesn't understand that we're not part of the race, that we don't want to be a part of the race, that I just need to get my car off of the "lot" and go home. Eventually, she leads me behind the "scenes" - it is exactly like a false front on a set, or a prop front on a stage, and, from the back of a "barn" front, she throws open the double doors and says that I can drive out that way. Even with my narrow Element, the frame is not quite wide enough for me to fit my car through, I tell her. She gets upset, and re-explains that this is how I should leave. We go through this for a while, til she eventually sighs, exasperated, and pushes a wall to the side, like a pocket door.

I go to retrieve my father, and he doesn't want to go. He doesn't protest, doesn't say he isn't ready - and that's the most frightening part. He is acting like someone wholly unlike the person I know. This is the part I find hardest to describe, because none of the actions he is taking or words he is saying are inappropriate or lewd or unbecoming. There is simply this aura of his behavior, his body language, his words and tone, that is distinctly off and frighteningly wrong. His physical form has shifted. He is not the man who is currently my father, but somehow a dream-ish version of him when I was younger, one that I have cobbled together from pictures, but not actually rooted in memory. Not problem-free, but healthier than he has been in a long time. Brunette, not grey. And I am surrounded by people who cannot see this, who do not understand why these behavior changes, along with the physical retrogression, distress me so much.

I become increasingly desperate to collect my father, to leave this situation, but in between spurts of me not being able to find him, being overcome by runners in (superhero) costumes, by the spray from the obstacles, I can't. And no one will help me.

"You're being a stick in the mud," they tell me. "He's just discovering himself. Maybe this is his true self. Maybe this is how it's meant to be."

But that is not my perception. The actions and interactions I see my father performing are so wrong (on him) that they are shaking me to my core. I am on the edge of hysteria, as the people around me ignore the years of relationship that my father and I have built, telling me that his current actions are the way he really is, should be, wants to be. And that way is rude, childish, fedorable. He stands in front of a fountain like the one in Triangle Park, Lexington (onyx stairs), with his brown hair and enormous tortoiseshell glasses, and looks at me. Looks past me. Like he's not interested, or like I'm only something he imagined, once.

I can only try to explain my terror, in that moment, of someone who is being told that their loved one's cancer, or mental health, or broken limbs, are "natural," and the treatment options that are usual for them are hurting them, that they should be free to be their "true" self. That their suffering/pain/distress is actually pleasant, a release. Or like when a child goes missing, and someone suggests to her friends and family that the reason they ran was a reason so far from the realm of known possibilities that it is actually offensive. (This did, in fact, happen to me several weeks ago. Maybe some of that is bleeding through, here.)

Maybe I'm seeing a version of my father that never was - of a person he wasn't able to be, because of his illnesses holding him back. But in the moment, all I can see is my dad, my best friend, who is acting like he hardly knows me, like he doesn't care, and like he has no responsibility to get back in the car, and back towards the time-sensitive treatments that allow him to continue being my best friend.

I go from person to person, trying to get them to help me bring my dad back to me. Every one of them chides me, asking how dare I pretend to know what is best for him, how I can deny him his true self. "Look how happy he is," they say!

All I can see (feel) is how close we are to that timeclock running out on when he last took his insulin, what he looks like when he goes in to shock, what will happen when medicine can't keep him patched up and running. hHow powerless I feel when bad things happen to him and I can't help him. I can't do anything. Nothing I do or want or say can save him. He stands by that fountain and grins.

I wake up, per usual, drenched in cold sweat and tears.

Betsy's a Liar Liarpants.

Sometimes I wonder if I should give my anxiety a really stupid, cutesy, humanizing nickname, like "Betsy," or something. Just so you can see how easy it really is for it to show up in my daily interactions.

Like, why I'm home with Fringe on a Friday night, instead of a) at services, b) at my friend's aerial dance performance, c) at a laser show, or d) roller skating.

Last week, I went to a haunt with a friend. We grabbed burgers afterwards, and had a very normal friend-talk about his living situation, which was stressing him out.

Fast forward to, y'know, now:

Friend: Hey, I just wanted to thank you for last week. It was really helpful, and you're the best.
Me: You're welcome. I'm glad it helped. {I feel ok about myself for half a second and then}
Betsy: He's LYING. LIAR LIAR LYING. You shouldn't talk to him again. You don't have any business helping him, what the fuck do you know? You don't have roommates. All your roommates were drug addicts, and now you live by yourself. Just stay home and shut up. You're useless.
Me: ...Bwuh?

And then, y'know, you can't have a fight with Betsy, because then you really start to feel like you're crazy.

No silver lining to this one, folks. Sometimes, you just stay home with Betsy and Joshua Jackson, because you're afraid that if Betsy got out into the real world, things would be even worse.

World Suicide Prevention Day: How To Care for Your Stiricide

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day (Suicide Awareness Day, if you're the internet), and as all my social media feeds flood with helpful-but-frustratingly-generic tips for how you can help someone who is depressed, I can't help but think: who is this actually helping? And how is this helping them?

Because the thing is, unless you're up close and personal with someone, it can be pretty hard to tell the difference between "kinda sad" and "sitting in a bathtub wondering what else you can use that razor blade for." It can be hard to know when you need to reach out - and even harder to know what form that reaching should take.

For me, if I'm functioning through my depression, no one else will notice it. Because for as much as I hurt, I don't want to be a burden on anyone else in my life.

The LAST thing I ever want when I'm at the bottom of my own personal pit, is for anyone to tell me "It'll be ok." "You're strong, you'll get through this." Or my favourite, eternally, from my mother, "Did you take your meds today?" I have been through this before. I don't need you to offer me platitudes or patronize me. I don't need suggestions based in cool rationality, or reassurances that are foreign to the point of impossible. (I live with depression. It will never be "ok." It will, sometimes, be somewhere between slightly and significantly less shitty. But it will never be "ok.")

When I'm sinking to the bottom, the last thing I want is platitudes, or unattainable hope, or obvious yet impossible advice. All I want is a single thing to momentarily distract me from the bottomless abyss that I'm still trying to find the end of. Not a life changing epiphany or a new raison d'être. Not a phone number to call that will require an enormous amount of emotional energy that I do not currently possess. All I want is a fucking lifeline*. A tiny thing that I can momentarily glom on to - that will, with any luck, lead to another tiny thing, and then another tiny thing. (Eventually, all these very tiny things will gradually lead me out of the waters.) 

Do you want to actually help your maybe possibly too depressed to function friend? Take a deep, scary look at who your friend is and how they function on the regular. Prepare yourself for possible and likely inevitable rejection. Don't get offended when that happens. Try not to offer them help in a form that they wouldn't appreciate when they're at "normal" - they'll appreciate it even less when they're in the hole.

But if you want specifics, I'm not sure if I can give them to you. Every person is different, and everyone has their own lifelines. If that friend is me, though, here's a short list of what you can do:

- Send me pictures of otters.

Ohhai there.

In fact, you should do this whether or not you think I'm in the hole. Spontaneous otters are code for "I'm thinking about you. I like you. I hope you're well."

But seriously, "Otter Day" is my public access code for "things are no good, ship has been abandoned." It is both a cue to send me a lifeline (pictures of otters are just one), as well as a heads up that things are, well, not ok. Saying "I am not ok, I need help" - literally, in those words (which seem to be the only words that people think have any validity when talking about these things) - never stops being terrifying and next to impossible. So I have code words.

Otter Day.

That's what that means.

- Invite me out to take a walk.

Somewhere safe, nearby, and normal. Somewhere inside my comfort zone.

Not a hike, not to go dancing, not to have coffee. I can't handle extended human interaction, I'm ashamed to show my face in public. I can't handle a challenge. But I can put on some pants and walk around the block with someone I trust. Though the pants part may take some cajoling.

- Show up, uninvited, bearing food that I will eat.

I may be able to shove a Wheat Thin in my mouth,
but I will not be able to make myself an actual meal.

When I'm in my hole, I lose my appetite. I'm too tired too cook, then I'm too sad to cook, then I'm too disappointed in myself to even try. If you haven't seen me in a few days and suspect that I may be sinking, feed me. Probably protein.

But what if you have a friend that isn't me? The only thing I can tell you is, be their friend. Don't assume that the things that work for you to get out a minor funk (or for me to get out of a major one) will necessarily work for them.

Don't treat them like they're an idiot, or like you know how to fix this better than they do. (I can't tell you how many times I've had people suggest that I exercise/take a bath/watch a fun movie/get laid. Just because something is the right answer for you doesn't make it a universal truth. Also, if it's that obvious, your depressed friend has probably already thought of it. 'Cause they're smart, right? Isn't that why you're friends?) Think about who they are, and how they are, and do what you can do to be good to them, in a way that they would appreciate.

Keep trying. Be the best lifeline you can be.

*Of course, if this is the first time, or if it just feels like the first time, they've been down this road, be supportive. Let them know that there are options for them. And help them find out what those options are. Odds are, they don't know what their health plan will cover, or who to call to find out, or even how to set up an appointment with a therapist. If depression comes with a side of anxiety and phone-phobia the way it does for me, they may not even be able to make those calls. If you want to come to the table with advice or options, makes sure you know as much as possible, and have taken as much of the legwork out of things as you can. YMMV, of course, but information and preparedness is always my favourite.

Anxiety Nightmares (& Dreamscapes)

Anxiety isn't something that you can turn on or off. If you're like me, it persists well past the awake part of your day, and shows up, frustratingly, in your subconscious. Nothing says "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed" like a night full of anxiety fueled nightmare, right? Right.


Snippets from my anxiety dreams this past weekend:


- I pull into the Einstein Bros parking lot. Some dude in a Nissan Cube is blaring Beastie Boys. Everyone in the shop is singing along. Dude looks at me, glares, and swings his car in front of mine (both of us still legally in the space) and glares at me some more, then pulls out. The rest of the shop glares at me, keep singing; I have no idea what I did wrong.

- I walk into the (same but different) shop, catching a climpse of someone who may be my bff of the last 27 years through the window. I walk in and, yep, it's her. Only she's doing (statistics?) homework with a pretty blonde girl, and won't tell me why she's in Colorado. She barely speaks to me, and seems put out that I'm speaking to her. She promises to call me later, but I don't believe her. The bagel counter has closed while I'm talking to her, so I walk out, hungry and unsettled.

- My apartment, but not my apartment. Bigger, prettier. As I settle in, I realize that small things are oddly out of place. My computer is at a strange angle, and has a bunch of those wrist/mouseguard pads strewn around it. My dresser is askew. There's an overhanging lamp where there wasn't before. I walk into my living room, and my coffee table is gone. I walk outside, and everything seems normal (except for there being 8 units in my building instead of 6), my coffeetable is out on the walk way. No one has seen anything, no one knows what's going on. Eventually, a van pulls up around the corner (a corner that doesn't exist in real life) and a tall, thin, scary looking contractor-dude comes out. He tells me that he's replacing all my furniture. I question him intensely, he is hesitant to tell me that my landlord sent him. Eventually my landlord shows up, in a truck, with his mom and sisters making christmas decorations in the back of it. They angrily insist that I help them while the men empty my stuff out of the apartment. The sister is angrier and angrier that they're not repossessing my car as well, even though my landlord has no claim to it. They try to take my computer as well. I tell my landlord I'm going to need a formal notice of eviction, and he laughs at me. Inside, 3 people my age (2 girls, I think I know, 1 I don't know, 1 friend of a friend who is in an improv troupe back home) are planning what they'll do with the property when they move in. They discuss calling my friend B to live with them as well. I'm appalled that they'd even consider him, let alone laugh about me being homeless, while I'm right there. They continue laughing at me.

- A different my apartment/not my apartment. A friend that looks like S (in bad overdramatic gothish makeup), too tall for the boyish, 1800s-esque clothes he's wearing, is yelled at by his mother. We go outside where a woman who looks like the evil fairy from Sleeping Beauty is standing regal and tall. She informs him that he is her real son, and will be coming with her. I am left alone, and informed by the groundskeeper that her other son, the human son she stole (not S, the changeling/real son) from the 14th century, is buried under the house. I will be joining him/taking his place. As I walk down the stairs to the sub-level apartment, I see credits rolling for a movie that is a collection of adaptations of short stories by DH Lawrence. I am, apparently, actually in this movie.

Is there a common theme running through any of those? Besides not understand what's going on as a participant in each dream, I'm not sure. Stress about fitting in? Maybe. (Are you a dream interpreter? Let's chat.)

The good news is that with time and distance, I can shake the cobwebs of residual reality that these dreams leave me with. My best friend doesn't hate me. I'm the maid of honor at her wedding, for chrissake. I'm not getting evicted. I've been living in the same place for the last 4 years, and my landlord thinks I'm a super easy tenant. And I'm definitely not a bit player in a crummy adaptation of a D.H. Lawrence story (though S definitely might be.)

I just need to remember that as real as they can feel, anxiety dreams do not, cannot, manifest in reality. 


Unless I let them.


Which I have no intention of doing.


Because D.H. Lawrence is awful.

And I Would've Gotten Away With It, If It Weren't For Those Meddling Kids.

I took a rain check on yesterday. Part of being an HSP is knowing my body, and my limits. I took a bunch of Sudafed on Tuesday, forgetting that Sudafed is pseudophedrine, is a basically an amphetamine, and tends to react like speed would in many people. Especially me. (I've tried Adderall, which is similar, and it was one of the scariest afternoons of my life. I ended up in the nurses office, unable to stop vibrating. Literally.) So I woke up on Wednesday in the throes of some sort of manic episode/anxiety attack type thing, with my thoughts racing and my body feeling like there was a high-speed rail line racing alone under my skin. Nothing was possible, and every sensation, every thought, every stimulus, was too much. I probably should have realized something was awry when I woke up in the middle of the night, because the hidden snaps on my duvet cover were registering as "too pointy" on my skin.

I hate being in that situation, knowing that something is wrong, actually wrong, but unable to figure out what it is, or how to circumvent it. Then feeling powerless. Like I'm not in control, like my body is winning, like I'm just a passenger along for the ride in my life.

Luckily, somewhere in between the "I hate myself"s and the "Everything is terrifying"s, I remembered the Sudafed thing, and was apply to delay sensation overload long enough to ask my phone what side effects of the drug were. Oh, look. All the things I was experiencing. It was such a relief to know that this wasn't just my body chemistry having it out for me, but something outside, something that could be dealt with. Granted, I still couldn't actually get out of bed. But I was able to recognize that if I just waited long enough, the drugs would pass out of my system, and I'd be ok. So I slept. All day. I've never really forced myself to sleep before, but I didn't really know what other choice I had. At least in sleep, my conscious mind can't hurt me. (And my subconscious has been behaving itself rather well these days.)

Around 10.30pm, I woke up, and felt ok. Thank god. And then I vowed to not let today end up like yesterday. I ended up emailing my mom, telling her everything that had happened that day, and promising her the things I was going to do today. Because I need to hold myself accountable to other people. It's too easy to let myself down. I do it all the time. My brain is programmed for self-sabotage and disappointment. Letting other people down, though? It's much harder. More to the point, lying to other people is much harder. And I know that if I tell mom a thing, she will later ask me about a thing. And then I either have to tell her all about it, or I have to lie. And I hate lying. (I'm also terrible at it.)

So today, I pulled on my big-girl pants, changed the wheels on my skates (oh my god, my bearings are filthy), and went to the park. To skate. Alone. By myself. For the very first time.

And it was scary. What if there were other people there? What if all the hockey rinks were occupied? What if people stared? What if people laughed? What if I got there and didn't know what to do? What if I fell down a lot?

I've never actually exercised by myself before. I can count on one hand the number of times I've gone running, or popped in a workout video, or anything. Usually getting me to work out is an exhausting exercise in coercion and bribery and teamwork. By which I mean, exhausting for the other person.

So this? Kinda huge.

I got to the park, and both rinks were empty. So I walked up, picked one, strapped my skates on, set my clock timer, and just... did things. Regular laps. Sprinting. 8 on the floor, both ways. Shuffling reps. Grapevines. Jumping. Heel-toe runs. 10 laps/10 reps each, making myself to pushups/crunches/leg lifts/planks when I stopped for water. Was it effective? I have no idea. I was sort've winging it. And about halfway through, there were all these small children on skateboards weaving around me. And their moms, watching me. And yeah, that part was kind've embarrassing, because I kept getting winded, and they kept being wired.

But hey, I did things. And it wasn't so scary. Though next time (whoa. There's gonna be a next time? I guess so.), I'd like to bring a friend. Because one of the things I did learn today is that derby is way more fun with my teammates than it is by myself. Though, on the other hand, an hour on skates without getting hit was kind've nice, too.

Coming Clean or, We Call This Burying the Lede.

I've been rolling this around in my mouth for days, now, and I still don't know how to say it.

I've typed more than a handful of versions out, and none of them seem right. The thing is, I'm leaping in to NaBloWriMo, and I honestly don't know how I'm going to manage a month's worth of entries without coming clean about this to the blog.

And I tried do a "short" version of it, but it just turned into a long version anyway, so if you're interested, read on. And if you're not... I dunno. Skim. Maybe there'll be important bullet points along the way.

When I started this blog, I had every intention of chronicling my story of quitting grad school and moving on with my universe, through the lens of depression (which every therapist I've ever been to has agreed has some sort of hold on me), general anxiety (only the more recent therapists have agreed that this might be a thing), and social anxiety (subset of general, painfully obvious to everyone around me.)

It has been, and is, harder than I thought it would be, mostly because it's difficult for me to write about how hard things are, or to wrap things up in a tidy bow at the end of posts. The thing is, depression sucks. Anxiety sucks. They're not "oh I had a bad day so I took a bubble bath and now I'm better" posts, they're "I'm too incapacitated by sadness to take the 10 steps from my bed to my bathroom to fill up the bathtub" posts. They don't end on high notes, or with solutions. And I've been scared to post, publicly, about how I'm "really" doing.

The other part was that aside from a few moments of abject depressive hysteria, very few of the things I was writing felt true. And since I couldn't figure out why, I just... didn't write.

Switching gears: A few years ago, a friend of mind who did happen to see those depressed-hysterical thought-spews recommended a book to me. I glanced at the author's website, but never really followed up on it. It had a hokey title, and sounded like a self-help book. Neither of these things have any sort of appeal to me.

But funny enough, something about it must have grabbed me, because every few months, I'd go back to the website, and wonder if there might be something to all of it.

Last month, I was low. Lower than I've been in a really long time. Hysterical, phone-a-friend, serious thoughts of self-harm low. (It's hard to say any of this out loud, in public. My gut instinct is to cover it all up with platitudes and denial - "I'm ok now." "I'm fine." "Don't worry about me"'s. I don't want anyone to swoop in and try to save me, but at the same time, I desperately want to stop hiding the sheer fact that yes, sometimes there are these things, and they're bad things, and they're terrible, and they're hard, but they're TRUE. I'm not comfortable hiding my depression anymore.) After a late night at a friend's place, freaking out her boyfriend with my crying, I did one of the hardest things I've ever done as an adult: I walked into a bookstore, and headed for the self-help section.

The best part of this was discovering that the book I was looking for was not, in fact, shelved in the self-help section. It was in Psychology, which, ironically enough, made/makes me feel less crazy about the whole thing.

I picked up a copy of the book that my friend had recommended to me years ago, and started reading the introduction. And there, at 7pm, in this independent bookstore in the heart of downtown, I started crying. It would've been sobbing, probably, if I hadn't learned how to cry silently years and years ago.

3 pages in, and already the author had identified behaviors and patterns that I could barely explain to myself, let alone verbalize to other people. Things that I had been thinking about and living with and knowing for as long as I can remember being able to, y'know, think.

These things in my head, about my head... they weren't just symptoms of the depression, of the anxiety. They're a whole separate thing. And it's not bad, it's not scary, it's not yet another disorder to lump on top of the others, it is, at its heart, just a different way of interpreting sensory data, and a difference in how data is processed and acted upon. Not bad. Not scary. Just different.

I identify as what Elaine Aron calls a Highly Sensitive Person. If you're interested, you can poke around on her website. The link she includes to the basic assessment test is super telling, and likely does a better job of explaining what being an HSP is and feels like than what I could do in my own words. (For the record: Aron suggests that if you score a 14 or higher on the self test, you are probably Highly Sensitive. I scored 23.)

Reading her books have been a strange journey of self discovery for me. I'm not learning anything new, per se, but it's wonderful and scary and freeing to not only have a name for what goes on in my head, but to know that there are other people out there. And to know that I'm not broken.

So there. That's that. I'm an HSP. I'm not sure how that information is going to manifest itself in this blog, but I felt that it was important information to share. Maybe it'll give you a better perspective on how I live my life, make the decisions I make, think the things I think. Maybe saying it out loud, in the blog, will let me be more open and honest with my process - both how I'm progressing, and how I'm getting there. Right now, I'm really not sure.

But being open about feels real, feels true. Feels like a Thing I Need To Do in order to keep moving forward with things.

So.

Now you know.