How It Makes Me Feel

I read a status post from someone that said something about not wanting to be around a particular someone because they are always bitter and negative. I feel that way a lot, not the part about not wanting to be around someone, but the part about being the person who is not a positive person…but more on the sad and mopey side of it. I try to squash it down around other people (although I am obviously not doing that here) because I don’t want them to stop talking to me or hanging out with me because I am that SAD person, but I don’t really know how to make that stop. Sometimes I realize my anxieties are taking over and people are reacting to them, and so then I don’t talk about them for a while. It doesn’t make them go away, but…it keeps people from going away. I’ve had too much of that. I can’t magically be a happy perky person at the moment, or even the sarcastic funny person I used to be, because I don’t have it in me most of the time. In fact, if you see a remnant of the old Kathy in a conversation, it’s probably me faking it because I don’t feel it, I don’t feel like I’m that person. It feels fake to talk like her. Then again, you don’t want to hear me talking like the new Kathy, because she mostly sucks and she cries and is depressed and has very little hope and doesn’t think she will ever get out of this hole.

It’s amazing how deep I am in the hole some mornings…probably I had some dream where the same old shit happens over and over again and I have no power to control any of it and just going with the flow gets me back in the hole and I have to climb out over and over again, and sometimes I’m just too damn tired or sad to do even that.

So you get to this point where you can’t really act like yourself (whatever that is, honestly, because I don’t know who or what I am any more…I keep looking around for someone who sounds or feels familiar or safe and it just doesn’t happen), because you’re afraid someone is posting about you on Facebook, about how they can’t be around you any more because of the disease you’re fighting. Because that’s really what it’s about…that’s the super-sucky part of depression is that people who have never experienced it think that you can just snap out of it and it’s a choice to stay like this, even when they can see that the person is doing everything they can (although someone said something about taking meds, and let me tell you, you don’t get to tell someone that meds are the fix-all because they are different for everyone and being on them can be even worse than not being on them). So they say stupid-ass shit like “I can’t be friends with that person because they are a total downer,” and yes, that person probably feels the same way about herself at the moment. I know I do. I know I don’t want to be with myself a whole lot because my self isn’t fun to be with. She’s a pain in the ass and sad and I keep telling her all she has to do is just fucking snap out of it.

Yeah. See. It doesn’t work that way.

And she doesn’t really want you to have to deal with her when she’s like that either. She really wishes you didn’t ever have to see her or experience her like that. But that means never leaving the house. Never going to a social event. Never hanging out at all. And that does often seem like a viable option. Except that continues the depression and the sad, and is NOT listed on the Long List of Things That You Should Be Doing if You Are Depressed So That You Don’t Have to Be Depressed Any More. Because it’s like magic, you know. If you do the things on the list, that’s the magic. It just happens. You GET to be happy. Otherwise? You didn’t expend the effort, you suck, stay in the fucking hole bitch.

And when you post something like that about not wanting to hang with that person any more (I actually remember my mom talking about a friend of hers in a similar way, and I’m not saying she’s wrong…because they always tell you to surround yourself with BETTER people than that, right?), then every sad and depressed and down friend or acquaintance that you have thinks you are now talking about them. Because there are a lot of us. Which makes me wonder what kind of world we are living in where babies starve to death and parents beat their children and sad people are made more sad by the people who should have some level of understanding, not a level that stops after X number of days, but just plain old understanding.

I am depressing to be around. I depress myself. When I fake it and hang out with other people, I am temporarily less depressing. I have to admit, though, that the low I hit AFTER faking it? It’s way fucking lower than I was when I started. It’s Sobbing Low. It’s Holey Crap I Don’t Want to Live Like This Low. It’s not a good place to be. It’s some sort of force reaction…more force here brings the wave UP, but the resulting LOW is LOWER due to expenditure of energy HERE.

All in all, this is a seriously vicious cycle. I don’t know how to break out of it. I’m doing everything I’m supposed to do.

I went back and read my blog posts from last March, and wow. Who the fuck is that person? She sounds so upbeat and perky (which is ironic, because I don’t think I was ever either of those things, but compared to how I am now? Holy shit.). I don’t know who she is. It’s sad when you don’t recognize yourself.

It was the soccer banquet tonight…I had some wine and read my book through most of it. Then came home and communed with the girlchild, because she needed to vent. Exercised. Talked to the SIL, who worries when I don’t answer my phone. Interesting. Then did some work for school (ugh). Meditated, mostly unsuccessfully. Then ironed some more…it’s taking a really long time because I don’t even start until 11.

Ah yes…hair. Trees on the fabric? Makes good hair. Normally I cut pieces out in order, but I just can’t get my head around that right now with this quilt. I’m all over the map. What that means is that I have no idea how much ironing is left…usually I can guesstimate based on how many pieces are left, but I’ve ironed a bunch in the 300s, plus most of the 100s and earlier. I don’t think I’ve done any of the 200s. Or maybe I have. I just don’t remember. I have lungs and heart and all the bits and pieces that go with them, along with the bird. Oh, and the eye and non-flesh surroundings of the eye (mostly eyelashes). It should go quickly. Says she who is taking fucking DAYS to get this done. Tomorrow night won’t be any better. I’m 3 1/2 hours in…

Oh well…the box is mostly full of parts for cutting…

I make. I create. I keep going. This is not the time to stop the artmaking. Is this me? Is this who I am? The chick who is making the art at 1 in the morning and not getting enough sleep and whose eyelid constantly twitches from not enough sleep and too much stress? Is this all I have to look forward to? The girlchild had an existential (weepy) moment in the car today on the way to the soccer banquet (which she did not want to go to…hell, neither did I)…about NOT wanting to be like her parents (what kid does?), but in terms of being happy vs unhappy. Plus a discussion of everyone being in couples but her. Yeah. I get all that. I don’t have a solution. Acceptance? It’s not really a healthy state to accept that which makes you unhappy. I don’t have any answers.

I just have a lot of fabric. And I haven’t read all the books in the world yet. And I pointed out the landscape as we drove from El Cajon down into the valley where the Sycuan Casino is located (home of said soccer banquet)…which is a beautiful valley. Gorgeous. Drop-dead. It seems strange that the mountains and rocks and native plants can give me a sense of peace where nothing people say to me can, where nothing I say to myself does. The land, sitting there, majestic, dry, half-dead with the drought. It speaks to me. I can’t explain how it makes me feel. I just know it does.