Kicking of 2012 with a major life update
Jan. 25th, 2012 12:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rallamajoopIn 2011 I was half of the winning team in the Australian Madman Cosplay Competition, had both my legs sliced by a surgeon and spent over a month recovering, twirled poi on stage in front of over a thousand people, did not get nearly so much fic written as I would have liked (as usual), spent far more time making costumes than I meant to (also as usual), was in a minor car accident, fell head over heels for a stupid webcomic called Homestuck, built a lightsabre, spent an ungodly amount of time installing and reinstalling various operating systems on various computers, and had a lovely Christmas with all my family (genetically related or otherwise).
But the single most important thing that happened in 2011 would have to be getting myself diagnosed with depression, after suffering from it – as the general agreement now seems to go – in one form or another for most of my life.
The short version of that story… well, I guess the really short version is that this is a good thing. I’ve got answers for things I’ve been avoiding talking about for a long time. I’m seeing a psychiatrist and I’m on anti-depressants, and while we’re still sorta feeling through what’s going to work best for me, it’s been helping a lot. I feel better. A number of little things in life are suddenly easier than they used to be. A couple of family friends who don’t see much of me at the best of times and have no idea anything is going on have volunteered the opinion I seem happier than they remember seeing me. It’s the usual story that it means a lot just to have a name and a formal diagnosis for That Thing That You Were Struggling With But Weren’t Ever Sure Was A Thing Until Now. Similar deal to what I went through with the anterior compartment syndrome that was giving me shin splints all those years in skating (see above note about surgery) – just having an explanation is a huge weight off your mind.
But it’s also a very different thing because these are the chemicals that are supposed to make my brain function in question here, and several months on I’m still mentally reeling from the experience of having a qualified psychiatrist tell me that a large number of things I’ve struggled with forever are a) real and very physical, b) not in any way my fault or an indication of personal failure to stop whining about dumb shit and pull myself out of the dumps like a goddamn adult already, and c) treatable using medication with minimal side effects. I don’t think I have any way to describe what a release all that is that doesn’t involve bursting into tears again.
It’s weird even typing this up to post - I’m really not in the habit of sharing personal stuff up here. Some of that would come down to the fact that committing something to writing is always going to be a different beast, but I’d say most of it comes from this deep-seated belief that anything I said in public about my own personal angst would only come across as pathetic melodrama over imaginary problems, besides which, asking people to care about that stuff was the sort of burden I had no right to place on them. Sure, other people had not trouble asking for support when they needed it, but I didn’t, because there’s always been this idea at the back of my mind that my personal value as a human being is intrinsically linked to me not inconveniencing other people with my inability to deal with stupid shit. Safe to say that kind of belief was, or is, part of the problem.
So, yeah. This is stuff I do need to get used to talking about, not least in the name of getting it all straight.
Now that I’ve got the permission to think about it in those terms, it’s a little breathtaking how long these kinds of things have been part of my life. I always was one of those stereotypical geek kids who are smart, quiet, shy, bad at school approved sports and more into reading about aliens and unicorns than talking about the footy or what happened on Home and Away – all the typical markers that keep you from fitting in. High school was better than primary, in that you stand out less in a class of three hundred than a class of thirty and most of the worst bullies seemed to have vanished by year ten or so, but worse in that by then I was into the years of puberty and wallowing in a regular cycle of being miserable for the first six months of each year, with things finally turning around in early spring and picking up again in the lead up to summer break before it all started over again. I had a handful close friends outside of school and I went through high school with a lot of people who seemed pretty cool (that I hardly got to know, for the most part), but there was still that inescapable sense that most everyone else around me was operating on a slightly different plane to wherever the hell I was. I was depressed because everyone knows teenagers spend a lot of time being depressed. I was miserable because everyone knows the rest of the school population will go out of their way to make nerds miserable. There were plenty of people out there with real depression, which I didn’t have because if I did then clearly someone who knew about that stuff would have noticed. I had anime and rollerskating and my ongoing efforts to write something that someone else would someday want to read someday to keep me going. I coped, for a given value of coping built around low expectations.
I spent a lot of time being told that I worried too much, that I needed to smile more or that I was being rude or ungrateful, or getting teased for crying. On the rare occasions that someone did try to ask me what was wrong I generally had no idea how to put it into words. Being put on the spot like that, even by people with good intentions, generally didn’t work out well for me. I’m pretty sure I never liked being seen as a loner, but dealing with people outside of a very limited group of close friends wore me out a lot faster than it did most people. Learning the word ‘introvert’ helped, especially with the understanding it was a label that applied to a whole lot of people who felt similarly out of place in a world we were assured belonged to nature’s extroverts. I tended not to think about the future – university, jobs, all that sort of thing – any more than I absolutely had to. It would only worry me if I did more than sort of generally trust it would probably take care of itself when I got there.
Starting uni was my first turning point. The first six months followed that usual pattern, but after my marks came back for that first semester and I had my definitive proof that I was doing well, things started to turn around. (I’m not sure why my good grades surprised me so much. I’d always been on of those ridiculous academic overachievers in school, but I guess the idea that underneath all that I was a fuck up waiting to happen was always sitting at the back of my mind.) From then on, uni was great. I enjoyed the work, I liked the people I was working with, but I think most of all the irregularity of the schedule really worked for me. Most semesters I could count on having a day or two in my week where I’d only have a few classes before I could go home early. Stress came in neat little term-sized patterns followed by a nice long holiday at the end of the year. Time to decompress and get back on top of things. Life still had its ups and downs, but for those last four years of uni, the depression was gone. I rejoiced in knowing that life really did get better after high school and my gloomy teenaged years were over with.
The point to this backstory of teenage alienation is that I knew what it was like to be depressed. I knew it wasn’t something I had to spend my whole life being. What I didn’t have was any reason to believe that talking through this shit with other people ever made any positive difference. If it came to that, denial seemed like a pretty effective way of keeping things from getting on top of me.
I did know coming out of uni that the real world couldn’t be nearly as much fun and couldn’t possibly give me as many fantastic people to work with as there had been in my final year class (I really lucked out in that regard. The environmental engineering department was pretty small and full the kind of intelligent, dedicated people who were there because they emphatically did give a shit about the work we were doing. One of my better friends was a girl who managed to effortlessly juggle being president of the University Catholic Society with what seemed like similarly religious dedication to radical feminism and Harry Potter. Another invited us all to a birthday party in a park where it happened that a small percussion band was practicing that day. One thing lead to another and before long the band had moved over to join us and everyone was standing up and dancing on the lawn. It was wonderful.) I got my first job with a fair understanding that it wasn’t particularly what I wanted to be doing with my life, but it would be a decent first step. Good experience, good money, people who seemed pretty okay. That kind of stuff.
It’s fair to say that my workmates at my new job seemed – probably even were – very decent people on a lot of levels. They believed in giving lots of money and resources to charity, in fostering the kind of a friendly workplace environment you wouldn’t get at a bigger firm and that real engineers needed to focus on things beyond the bottom line. But the longer I worked there, the more it sank in that they also believed that jokes about how women should stay in the kitchen never got old, that Aborigines would live on hand-outs if we let them, that a lesbian couple would always be less qualified to raise a kid than a het couple or even a single mother and that evolution and global warming were ‘just theories’. They also believed that the fact the horrendously over-complicated spreadsheet model was spitting out numbers that looked roughly like the ones they expected was perfectly sufficient to prove it was working, and, occasionally, in some truly horrifying bastardisations of mathematics.
I don’t know that there was a definite turning point in my mood in this period so much as a gradual downward slide, but sometime around the second solid month of working on that godforsaken excuse for a spreadsheet model (by which stage it was also becoming apparent that it had only ever produced any kind of convincing results in the first place because someone had gotten the units wrong in a crucial piece of input data) simply concentrating on work for more than maybe a half an hour at a time was becoming a struggle. The limits I’d set myself on how much of the workday I was allowed to spending checking my email or getting distracted by this or that random webpage began to slide, then to accelerate. I hated that I was becoming such a compulsive slacker, but finding more energy to invest was becoming impossible. Whether because I really was beating myself up over nothing or whether as a simple result of standards and deadlines having always been sort of hazily defined, no-one seemed to notice, and lacking more than the vaguest external pressure to perform, things only got worse.
I’d tried applying for work elsewhere during this period, but at best I’d get as far as a very promising interview, then be strung along with ‘maybe’s for a month or two before being rejected. Half the problem may well have been that I wasn’t sending out enough applications, but thinking about finding a new job took more effort than I could bear most of the time. I knew I needed to find work I enjoyed enough to care about doing well, but it was getting to be impossible to picture myself caring about anything available in my field on a level that went beyond how much time off they’d give me. It was starting to become obvious to me that the real problem was me. I’d never been able to hack a regular work schedule. My parents had supported me through school and uni and I’d hardly ever done any more part time or vacation work than I’d absolutely had to. I was one of those spoilt, lazy gen-Y-ers the older generations were always being snide about, and I had no-one to blame but myself. Everyone had trouble finding the career they wanted at this stage of life, and it was my own weakness that I couldn’t deal with it.
Going back to university to do my PhD was something of a desperation move. My final year thesis supervisors had been keen on the idea back when I’d graduated, but after already having spent five years finishing my degree, committing to another three bogged down in a single project was more than I had the enthusiasm for. Now, with the world outside of uni proving so unappetising, things looked different. I’d enjoyed uni as an undergrad and a doctorate would open up a whole slew of new job opportunities. More importantly, it would be the change in routine that I so obviously needed, and maybe enough to pull me out of my unproductive funk.
It didn’t work. Maintaining concentration on my PhD was no easier than focusing on my job had been. There were plenty of things I liked about my topic, but on the day to day basis doing a PhD is a long, lonely job. My supervisor is a lovely guy who’s known me since my undergrad years and had every belief I could pull the work off, but he was incredibly hard to track down for regular meetings and more likely to tell me not to stress and get me an extension than apply pressure when I admitted I felt like I was falling behind. Money was no particular issue, I had both a decent scholarship and a good cache of savings from my last job. Once again I’d gotten myself into a position where I could slack off and no-one would notice.
Even when I was making the effort it didn’t necessarily seem to make a difference. My short term memory was a mess, and everything I’d learnt back at uni seemed to have fallen right out of my head. I spent a lot of time focusing on things like writing and cosplay largely because they were the only areas in my life that I was enjoying and where I felt like I was actually achieving something, but even there keeping my mind on one job for long wasn’t easy, and the guilt over all that real work I wasn’t doing was building up.
On top of all this I was suffering from insomnia, which worsened until it felt like a rare occurrence for me to get more than a few hours of sleep at a time. On the one hand, that at least gave me a convenient target to blame for my lack of energy and non-existent concentration span. On the other, it was only compounding the problem where I never had the energy to think seriously about what I was supposed to do about it. The first time I went to the doctor complaining about being unable to sleep I was given a short term prescription for muscle relaxants that didn’t do me much good, then a second prescription for anti-depressants that a friend talked me out of taking. The insomnia improved on its own for a little while after that and I gave up on getting useful medical assistance. It took ages for me to get around to trying again, this time making sure to insist on a referral to a sleep specialist who, after watching me break down in tears describing what it was like spending night after night in a horrible state of being half awake and half asleep, forwarded the opinion I was suffering from depression.
At the time, I thought he was nuts. Of course I was miserable, I’d hardly gotten a good night’s sleep in the last two years. I was much happier to take a prescription for an anti-depressant-type insomnia medicine this time though, and while it was no miracle cure, it helped enough that I had to rule out lack of sleep as the explanation for why I couldn’t make myself focus on work. Even when I finally got myself back to the doctor looking for a referral to a psychiatrist, I was still talking about my problems in terms of a concentration issue, like some kind of undiagnosed ADD. After spending so much time depressed back in high school I thought I knew what it felt like. Back then, I’d spent months at a time living under this vague aura of gloom, but my marks had never slipped – getting work done had never been a problem before. This was virtually the opposite – lingering conscience issues aside, most of the time I was basically okay, but I could hardly even bear to think about all the work I wasn’t doing. Mind you, I was also living with the strong suspicion that were anyone to put me under any real pressure to get more done I would have snapped in no time flat, but it never happened. The problem seemed to be far less about depression than about the extraordinarily bad habits I’d begun cultivating to keep myself moderately happy.
It took both the advice of a professional psychiatrist and a couple of weeks on a second anti-depressant to change my mind. It wasn’t pleasant owning up to a stranger about just how much of a screw-up I’d become – heck, by that stage I could hardly even think it without having to wipe my eyes – but I felt immensely better afterwards just for having been taken seriously and being able to tell myself I was finally working through my shit. In the first week on my new prescription I didn’t notice much change beyond that, but by the second things were genuinely picking up.
It’s a hard feeling to describe without resorting to clichés, but a lot of little experiences that I’d sort of taken for granted as being my base state were suddenly… not. Little jobs that I would have compulsively put off until even checking the due date was too stressful to deal with suddenly weren’t. Holding on to a thought long enough to do something useful with it was no longer a major effort. I was sleeping better than I’d slept since I couldn’t remember when. Even maths was easier. It turns out that pretty much everything I’d been struggling with from the concentration to the memory issues to the insomnia to the belief that every failure was proof I didn’t deserve help were bog standard symptoms of depression. I just hadn’t had the framework to interpret it for what it was. (My psychiatrist has some really interesting stories about work being done with MRI scans of activity in brains of people recovering from depression, though my memory’s not so much improved that I could count on getting much right if I tried to recount them here. Suffice to say it’s kind of staggering just how many ways depression can find to fuck over your neural processes once it’s dug its talons in.)
And that pretty much brings us to where I’m at now.
So the short version is: I’m doing a lot better. The slightly longer one would have to add that I’ve still got a long way to go. I had a few really good months leading on from my first psychiatrist appointment. Even with all the usual cosplay stress the Madman Finals were a great thing to work towards because they were a project I knew we could be awesome at, that gave us the excuse to pull out all the stops to make the best costumes we could, and it had a clear deadline just far enough away to give us time to get it all done (and then of course we went and won somehow or other, which is about as un-depressing as an experience can get). Having a shiny new fandom to squee over didn't hurt, plus an awesome Wai-con ball, and that lovely Christmas and New Years too.
Beyond those high points, though, there’ve been some ups and downs. I ran into this other post last month with weirdly appropriate timing, because it described what was virtually the exact same cycle of depression getting on top of you that I’d just been through at the time. (I’d recommend a read through it on general principles too, if you’re at all interested in the subject, because it does a very good job of putting into words what dealing with this stuff can be like.) When you’ve been living with a condition like this for as long as I have it’s probably safe to say that a few months down the track is still early days. I’m dealing with anxiety better than I was, but making myself deal with re-enrolment for next year was still severely unpleasant. Sitting down for a full productive workday is easier than it used to be, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy, or that I’m up to it nearly as often as I’d like. Still seeing the psychiatrist, still messing around with what dosage is going to do me the most good.
But it’s such an unspeakable relief just to finally have permission to look my problems in the eye and say, “It’s not me, it’s the depression.” And when things are getting bad, well, there’s this guy with a medical degree who makes a very solid hourly rate out of listening to people like me talk about their problems and handing out advice, so even I can’t beat myself up too much for bothering him with mine.
It’s a start.
Just to finish, well, obviously this is one of those ~deeply and meaningfully personal~ posts you see people put up on livejournal from time to time, and I’m not sure what I’m expecting by way of response, and lord knows I never know quite what to say when I see one myself. So I just wanted to say, basically, don’t sweat, it’s all welcome today. Ask me questions (relevant, deeply personal or otherwise), share your own story, leave me a comment consisting of nothing but an emoticon, wait until you next get the chance to bring it up with me in person or lurk on silently in the background. Whatever you feel (or don’t feel) inspired to share. :)
But the single most important thing that happened in 2011 would have to be getting myself diagnosed with depression, after suffering from it – as the general agreement now seems to go – in one form or another for most of my life.
The short version of that story… well, I guess the really short version is that this is a good thing. I’ve got answers for things I’ve been avoiding talking about for a long time. I’m seeing a psychiatrist and I’m on anti-depressants, and while we’re still sorta feeling through what’s going to work best for me, it’s been helping a lot. I feel better. A number of little things in life are suddenly easier than they used to be. A couple of family friends who don’t see much of me at the best of times and have no idea anything is going on have volunteered the opinion I seem happier than they remember seeing me. It’s the usual story that it means a lot just to have a name and a formal diagnosis for That Thing That You Were Struggling With But Weren’t Ever Sure Was A Thing Until Now. Similar deal to what I went through with the anterior compartment syndrome that was giving me shin splints all those years in skating (see above note about surgery) – just having an explanation is a huge weight off your mind.
But it’s also a very different thing because these are the chemicals that are supposed to make my brain function in question here, and several months on I’m still mentally reeling from the experience of having a qualified psychiatrist tell me that a large number of things I’ve struggled with forever are a) real and very physical, b) not in any way my fault or an indication of personal failure to stop whining about dumb shit and pull myself out of the dumps like a goddamn adult already, and c) treatable using medication with minimal side effects. I don’t think I have any way to describe what a release all that is that doesn’t involve bursting into tears again.
It’s weird even typing this up to post - I’m really not in the habit of sharing personal stuff up here. Some of that would come down to the fact that committing something to writing is always going to be a different beast, but I’d say most of it comes from this deep-seated belief that anything I said in public about my own personal angst would only come across as pathetic melodrama over imaginary problems, besides which, asking people to care about that stuff was the sort of burden I had no right to place on them. Sure, other people had not trouble asking for support when they needed it, but I didn’t, because there’s always been this idea at the back of my mind that my personal value as a human being is intrinsically linked to me not inconveniencing other people with my inability to deal with stupid shit. Safe to say that kind of belief was, or is, part of the problem.
So, yeah. This is stuff I do need to get used to talking about, not least in the name of getting it all straight.
Now that I’ve got the permission to think about it in those terms, it’s a little breathtaking how long these kinds of things have been part of my life. I always was one of those stereotypical geek kids who are smart, quiet, shy, bad at school approved sports and more into reading about aliens and unicorns than talking about the footy or what happened on Home and Away – all the typical markers that keep you from fitting in. High school was better than primary, in that you stand out less in a class of three hundred than a class of thirty and most of the worst bullies seemed to have vanished by year ten or so, but worse in that by then I was into the years of puberty and wallowing in a regular cycle of being miserable for the first six months of each year, with things finally turning around in early spring and picking up again in the lead up to summer break before it all started over again. I had a handful close friends outside of school and I went through high school with a lot of people who seemed pretty cool (that I hardly got to know, for the most part), but there was still that inescapable sense that most everyone else around me was operating on a slightly different plane to wherever the hell I was. I was depressed because everyone knows teenagers spend a lot of time being depressed. I was miserable because everyone knows the rest of the school population will go out of their way to make nerds miserable. There were plenty of people out there with real depression, which I didn’t have because if I did then clearly someone who knew about that stuff would have noticed. I had anime and rollerskating and my ongoing efforts to write something that someone else would someday want to read someday to keep me going. I coped, for a given value of coping built around low expectations.
I spent a lot of time being told that I worried too much, that I needed to smile more or that I was being rude or ungrateful, or getting teased for crying. On the rare occasions that someone did try to ask me what was wrong I generally had no idea how to put it into words. Being put on the spot like that, even by people with good intentions, generally didn’t work out well for me. I’m pretty sure I never liked being seen as a loner, but dealing with people outside of a very limited group of close friends wore me out a lot faster than it did most people. Learning the word ‘introvert’ helped, especially with the understanding it was a label that applied to a whole lot of people who felt similarly out of place in a world we were assured belonged to nature’s extroverts. I tended not to think about the future – university, jobs, all that sort of thing – any more than I absolutely had to. It would only worry me if I did more than sort of generally trust it would probably take care of itself when I got there.
Starting uni was my first turning point. The first six months followed that usual pattern, but after my marks came back for that first semester and I had my definitive proof that I was doing well, things started to turn around. (I’m not sure why my good grades surprised me so much. I’d always been on of those ridiculous academic overachievers in school, but I guess the idea that underneath all that I was a fuck up waiting to happen was always sitting at the back of my mind.) From then on, uni was great. I enjoyed the work, I liked the people I was working with, but I think most of all the irregularity of the schedule really worked for me. Most semesters I could count on having a day or two in my week where I’d only have a few classes before I could go home early. Stress came in neat little term-sized patterns followed by a nice long holiday at the end of the year. Time to decompress and get back on top of things. Life still had its ups and downs, but for those last four years of uni, the depression was gone. I rejoiced in knowing that life really did get better after high school and my gloomy teenaged years were over with.
The point to this backstory of teenage alienation is that I knew what it was like to be depressed. I knew it wasn’t something I had to spend my whole life being. What I didn’t have was any reason to believe that talking through this shit with other people ever made any positive difference. If it came to that, denial seemed like a pretty effective way of keeping things from getting on top of me.
I did know coming out of uni that the real world couldn’t be nearly as much fun and couldn’t possibly give me as many fantastic people to work with as there had been in my final year class (I really lucked out in that regard. The environmental engineering department was pretty small and full the kind of intelligent, dedicated people who were there because they emphatically did give a shit about the work we were doing. One of my better friends was a girl who managed to effortlessly juggle being president of the University Catholic Society with what seemed like similarly religious dedication to radical feminism and Harry Potter. Another invited us all to a birthday party in a park where it happened that a small percussion band was practicing that day. One thing lead to another and before long the band had moved over to join us and everyone was standing up and dancing on the lawn. It was wonderful.) I got my first job with a fair understanding that it wasn’t particularly what I wanted to be doing with my life, but it would be a decent first step. Good experience, good money, people who seemed pretty okay. That kind of stuff.
It’s fair to say that my workmates at my new job seemed – probably even were – very decent people on a lot of levels. They believed in giving lots of money and resources to charity, in fostering the kind of a friendly workplace environment you wouldn’t get at a bigger firm and that real engineers needed to focus on things beyond the bottom line. But the longer I worked there, the more it sank in that they also believed that jokes about how women should stay in the kitchen never got old, that Aborigines would live on hand-outs if we let them, that a lesbian couple would always be less qualified to raise a kid than a het couple or even a single mother and that evolution and global warming were ‘just theories’. They also believed that the fact the horrendously over-complicated spreadsheet model was spitting out numbers that looked roughly like the ones they expected was perfectly sufficient to prove it was working, and, occasionally, in some truly horrifying bastardisations of mathematics.
I don’t know that there was a definite turning point in my mood in this period so much as a gradual downward slide, but sometime around the second solid month of working on that godforsaken excuse for a spreadsheet model (by which stage it was also becoming apparent that it had only ever produced any kind of convincing results in the first place because someone had gotten the units wrong in a crucial piece of input data) simply concentrating on work for more than maybe a half an hour at a time was becoming a struggle. The limits I’d set myself on how much of the workday I was allowed to spending checking my email or getting distracted by this or that random webpage began to slide, then to accelerate. I hated that I was becoming such a compulsive slacker, but finding more energy to invest was becoming impossible. Whether because I really was beating myself up over nothing or whether as a simple result of standards and deadlines having always been sort of hazily defined, no-one seemed to notice, and lacking more than the vaguest external pressure to perform, things only got worse.
I’d tried applying for work elsewhere during this period, but at best I’d get as far as a very promising interview, then be strung along with ‘maybe’s for a month or two before being rejected. Half the problem may well have been that I wasn’t sending out enough applications, but thinking about finding a new job took more effort than I could bear most of the time. I knew I needed to find work I enjoyed enough to care about doing well, but it was getting to be impossible to picture myself caring about anything available in my field on a level that went beyond how much time off they’d give me. It was starting to become obvious to me that the real problem was me. I’d never been able to hack a regular work schedule. My parents had supported me through school and uni and I’d hardly ever done any more part time or vacation work than I’d absolutely had to. I was one of those spoilt, lazy gen-Y-ers the older generations were always being snide about, and I had no-one to blame but myself. Everyone had trouble finding the career they wanted at this stage of life, and it was my own weakness that I couldn’t deal with it.
Going back to university to do my PhD was something of a desperation move. My final year thesis supervisors had been keen on the idea back when I’d graduated, but after already having spent five years finishing my degree, committing to another three bogged down in a single project was more than I had the enthusiasm for. Now, with the world outside of uni proving so unappetising, things looked different. I’d enjoyed uni as an undergrad and a doctorate would open up a whole slew of new job opportunities. More importantly, it would be the change in routine that I so obviously needed, and maybe enough to pull me out of my unproductive funk.
It didn’t work. Maintaining concentration on my PhD was no easier than focusing on my job had been. There were plenty of things I liked about my topic, but on the day to day basis doing a PhD is a long, lonely job. My supervisor is a lovely guy who’s known me since my undergrad years and had every belief I could pull the work off, but he was incredibly hard to track down for regular meetings and more likely to tell me not to stress and get me an extension than apply pressure when I admitted I felt like I was falling behind. Money was no particular issue, I had both a decent scholarship and a good cache of savings from my last job. Once again I’d gotten myself into a position where I could slack off and no-one would notice.
Even when I was making the effort it didn’t necessarily seem to make a difference. My short term memory was a mess, and everything I’d learnt back at uni seemed to have fallen right out of my head. I spent a lot of time focusing on things like writing and cosplay largely because they were the only areas in my life that I was enjoying and where I felt like I was actually achieving something, but even there keeping my mind on one job for long wasn’t easy, and the guilt over all that real work I wasn’t doing was building up.
On top of all this I was suffering from insomnia, which worsened until it felt like a rare occurrence for me to get more than a few hours of sleep at a time. On the one hand, that at least gave me a convenient target to blame for my lack of energy and non-existent concentration span. On the other, it was only compounding the problem where I never had the energy to think seriously about what I was supposed to do about it. The first time I went to the doctor complaining about being unable to sleep I was given a short term prescription for muscle relaxants that didn’t do me much good, then a second prescription for anti-depressants that a friend talked me out of taking. The insomnia improved on its own for a little while after that and I gave up on getting useful medical assistance. It took ages for me to get around to trying again, this time making sure to insist on a referral to a sleep specialist who, after watching me break down in tears describing what it was like spending night after night in a horrible state of being half awake and half asleep, forwarded the opinion I was suffering from depression.
At the time, I thought he was nuts. Of course I was miserable, I’d hardly gotten a good night’s sleep in the last two years. I was much happier to take a prescription for an anti-depressant-type insomnia medicine this time though, and while it was no miracle cure, it helped enough that I had to rule out lack of sleep as the explanation for why I couldn’t make myself focus on work. Even when I finally got myself back to the doctor looking for a referral to a psychiatrist, I was still talking about my problems in terms of a concentration issue, like some kind of undiagnosed ADD. After spending so much time depressed back in high school I thought I knew what it felt like. Back then, I’d spent months at a time living under this vague aura of gloom, but my marks had never slipped – getting work done had never been a problem before. This was virtually the opposite – lingering conscience issues aside, most of the time I was basically okay, but I could hardly even bear to think about all the work I wasn’t doing. Mind you, I was also living with the strong suspicion that were anyone to put me under any real pressure to get more done I would have snapped in no time flat, but it never happened. The problem seemed to be far less about depression than about the extraordinarily bad habits I’d begun cultivating to keep myself moderately happy.
It took both the advice of a professional psychiatrist and a couple of weeks on a second anti-depressant to change my mind. It wasn’t pleasant owning up to a stranger about just how much of a screw-up I’d become – heck, by that stage I could hardly even think it without having to wipe my eyes – but I felt immensely better afterwards just for having been taken seriously and being able to tell myself I was finally working through my shit. In the first week on my new prescription I didn’t notice much change beyond that, but by the second things were genuinely picking up.
It’s a hard feeling to describe without resorting to clichés, but a lot of little experiences that I’d sort of taken for granted as being my base state were suddenly… not. Little jobs that I would have compulsively put off until even checking the due date was too stressful to deal with suddenly weren’t. Holding on to a thought long enough to do something useful with it was no longer a major effort. I was sleeping better than I’d slept since I couldn’t remember when. Even maths was easier. It turns out that pretty much everything I’d been struggling with from the concentration to the memory issues to the insomnia to the belief that every failure was proof I didn’t deserve help were bog standard symptoms of depression. I just hadn’t had the framework to interpret it for what it was. (My psychiatrist has some really interesting stories about work being done with MRI scans of activity in brains of people recovering from depression, though my memory’s not so much improved that I could count on getting much right if I tried to recount them here. Suffice to say it’s kind of staggering just how many ways depression can find to fuck over your neural processes once it’s dug its talons in.)
And that pretty much brings us to where I’m at now.
So the short version is: I’m doing a lot better. The slightly longer one would have to add that I’ve still got a long way to go. I had a few really good months leading on from my first psychiatrist appointment. Even with all the usual cosplay stress the Madman Finals were a great thing to work towards because they were a project I knew we could be awesome at, that gave us the excuse to pull out all the stops to make the best costumes we could, and it had a clear deadline just far enough away to give us time to get it all done (and then of course we went and won somehow or other, which is about as un-depressing as an experience can get). Having a shiny new fandom to squee over didn't hurt, plus an awesome Wai-con ball, and that lovely Christmas and New Years too.
Beyond those high points, though, there’ve been some ups and downs. I ran into this other post last month with weirdly appropriate timing, because it described what was virtually the exact same cycle of depression getting on top of you that I’d just been through at the time. (I’d recommend a read through it on general principles too, if you’re at all interested in the subject, because it does a very good job of putting into words what dealing with this stuff can be like.) When you’ve been living with a condition like this for as long as I have it’s probably safe to say that a few months down the track is still early days. I’m dealing with anxiety better than I was, but making myself deal with re-enrolment for next year was still severely unpleasant. Sitting down for a full productive workday is easier than it used to be, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy, or that I’m up to it nearly as often as I’d like. Still seeing the psychiatrist, still messing around with what dosage is going to do me the most good.
But it’s such an unspeakable relief just to finally have permission to look my problems in the eye and say, “It’s not me, it’s the depression.” And when things are getting bad, well, there’s this guy with a medical degree who makes a very solid hourly rate out of listening to people like me talk about their problems and handing out advice, so even I can’t beat myself up too much for bothering him with mine.
It’s a start.
Just to finish, well, obviously this is one of those ~deeply and meaningfully personal~ posts you see people put up on livejournal from time to time, and I’m not sure what I’m expecting by way of response, and lord knows I never know quite what to say when I see one myself. So I just wanted to say, basically, don’t sweat, it’s all welcome today. Ask me questions (relevant, deeply personal or otherwise), share your own story, leave me a comment consisting of nothing but an emoticon, wait until you next get the chance to bring it up with me in person or lurk on silently in the background. Whatever you feel (or don’t feel) inspired to share. :)
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no subject
Date: 2012-01-25 03:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-25 08:50 am (UTC)I haven't been in a long-term depression but the closest but I have them in intervals, usually lasting a year then the next it'll be all flowers and sunshine then the next would be depression again. It's like the season. Like you said, a cycle, although mine would occur every two years.
I'm glad that you managed to find help, and that it's somehow working for you. :) I'll be sending you positive energies so that you would consistently feel better!
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 04:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 07:50 am (UTC)Heh, I am more inclined to pin my faith on prescription drugs than positive energies these days, but I appreciate it all the same. <3
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 07:56 am (UTC)I must confess, I never would have guessed that you had problems sitting down and working for solid periods.
Can't blame you, I was having more than my share of trouble getting my head around the idea myself. Suffice to say that didn't exactly help with the getting to a place where I felt like I had any right to ask for outside help.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-28 07:51 am (UTC)This is remarkably similar to what has happened to me, except replace the bit about uni with Uni being... rather unpleasant. Life is pretty good now, but Uni - I don't think I could ever go back to Murdoch with the bad memories I made there. I'd quite like to do a second degree or post-grad somewhere else one day though, so I could appreciate the university life with none of the rubbishy things that were in it before.
But yes, I've had insomnia most of my life and I'd experienced a lot of the other symptoms you mention. I saw a doctor about it about two months ago and I've ended up going on anti-depressants myself, too. (This was the last time I described how it felt until I caved in and saw a doctor)
I do seem to have been sleeping a little better although the doctor thinks we may need a stronger dose, will see.
I completely share your relief about the fact that you can finally identify a root cause of the other problems. It's a relief being able to finally do something about it.
*sending you good vibes and my favourite emoticons*
キタ━━━(゜∀゜)━━━!!!!!
ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)
（╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
(ΘεΘ;)
(ﾟ⊿ﾟ)
no subject
Date: 2012-04-29 11:33 am (UTC)So, obviously IANAD and I can only guess how similar your insomnia may be to mine, but for me, taking the sleeping pill anti-depressant helped, but what made the real difference was getting put on the second anti-depressant (taken in the morning rather than at night, doesn't make you sleepy). I still do need my sleepy-pills, but I'm taking barely a quarter of the original prescribed dose - any more and I end up sleepy during the day. It seems like getting my head sorted out for daytime purposes was what really mattered. For the last couple of weeks I've been using a high-magnesium multivitamin I picked up in Japan as well (long story), and I've hardly had a bad night since. The ability to, like, go to bed and fall asleep in minutes and not wake up until after 9AM is a novelty I am still adjusting to. If any of that sounds at all useful I am only too happy to trade further notes. <3
It is so true that just having a name for what's wrong with me has been half the victory, but in my own case, I'd have to say it goes even further. It's like, for the first time in my life I've got permission not to blame myself for not always having as much energy, or ability to be grateful for things that other people do, you know? I can actually explain to people what's wrong with me. I can ask for help without feeling like it's more than I deserve. Maybe it was a big sister thing on my part, but I never even felt I had the right to make posts like that one you linked to before. So it's not just the relief of being able to do something about it. It's the relief of being able to say it's not my fault.
Anyway, I am wishing you all the best of luck in being able to improve things well beyond "a little better". I'm still not quite where I want to be, mood and energy-wise, but on insomnia at least I offer proof it can be done.
（╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ God I love this emoticon. It's just... everything centuries of art and science have ever been building towards.