brain

So, my way to deal with anxiety, deep dark feelings, sadness, depression and almost anything that could be distressing is to gather information, and oh, ain't the interweb a boon in this regard. Any unexplained crying jag can be successfully interrupted by searching for depression websites, unrelenting blues can be nipped by a youtube video of a visualized meditation, and getting help when I've exhausted my intellectualism is just a depression group listing away. So I went to my psycopharmacologist today with a list of depression groups and day programs and anti-depressants that I haven't tried yet and website printouts and a stubborn idea of how I came to be in this hole again and how to fix it. Like a tire. Or a cavity.

And she made me cry.

Well not really. She just suggested that maybe all that research and technology and intellectualization might be getting in the way of handling overwhelming feelings. Of acknowledging the pain. Well, fuck, no d'uh but I think what really gets me is the sameness of it all. I want a new spark, a new discovery...why it's the hypothalmus! or an excess of progesterone, or that sweet roll you ate last week! Or that giant hump on your back secreting seretonin inhibiting goop--your dowager hump is causing your depression! Huzzah! Let's remove it, get me some spanx, and I'll be all set.

Oy. the gospel of depression. "You have no reason to be depressed." "Depression is just an indication that something is wrong." "Depression is selfish." "Just pull yourself up by your own bootstraps." "I'd never take medication." "I don't want to be involved with someone who has to take pills to feel good." "You're just lazy." "You wouldn't be depressed if you'd just lose weight--got married--had a baby--got your toes done once a week." "You just can't handle life." Darn tootin'. I can't handle it when my emotional barriers fall and the angst comes pouring in sticking to everything and ruining the carpet. I can't handle it when my prism of perception is so off-kilter that I think my cat hates me. I have trouble when my self-conciousness is so profound that I feel invisible, not important enough to take up space. Waste of flesh.

And it's very, very, very tiring. All those commercials about how depression takes a physical toll are true at least in that regard. Don't you love those ads where a person in sweat clothes with limp hair lies on a couch--all this filmed through a grey filter--while their significant other, or child, or dog, sits nearby looking quizzical and lost--in one the husband is sitting at the kitchen table and you can see the lady on the couch in the foreground. (Hey hubby, get up and fix this woman a chocolate cake). And then, in one fell swoop, the filter lifts, the depressive swallows a pill (must be the size of a horse) and eureka! They are out in the technicolor world playing with their ecstatic child (on ritilan) and their dog (on canine prozac) or reaching across the table to hold thier husband's hand (because he's baked a chocolate cake!) And it's just that instant unless you have the eyes of a leopard and can read the tiny print that runs in the last nanosecond the commercial that says, "this shit may kill you or cause the contents of your ass to fall out and it'll definitely be a few more pain filled weeks on the couch until it works but we can't tell you that until you take it for a while, you human guinea pig."

I now have this cocoon of a cubical at work (temporarily while the annual cube shuffle takes place) and I had the lighting crew take out the flourescent, so it's now a dimly lit den, the computer screen casting blue shadows on my face, and sometimes around 2p in the afternoon, digesting an inadequate and acid inducing lunch, working on a spreadsheet for the nth time, fielding calls that should go to subscriptions, I could swear that I actually disappear. Poof. All that's left is are my glasses and a little pile of dust. Gassy dust.