More Meanderings

[dreamcatchings]

I hate commercials for anti-depressants because they typically read like a snapshot of my life.

Lack of energy? Check
Loss of interest in activities you used to enjoy? Check
Feelings of apathy and disinterest? Check
Having to "wind yourself up" throughout the day to perform simple tasks? Check
Not wanting to go anywhere or see anyone? Check
Feelings of sadness? Check

I'm trying to be more proactive, but I don't want to talk about them because that almost always seems to make things backfire on me. I have not yet called any doctors or made any appointments, which is likely due not only to the depression and my total avoidance of doctors but also because of the weather. I hate winter weather. I do not want to drive in ice or snow or any sort of "wintry mix." It's really hard to make myself do anything when it's cold. It's hard to care that I'm not doing anything.

Sometimes I wonder if I feel like other people feel. Most of the time, I don't actually seem to feel anything. I'm not happy or sad or excited or anxious. I'm just there. It doesn't seem like contentment or apathy. It feels like empty, hollow, autopilot. I don't know if that's normal. I don't even know how to broach that sort of topic to ask someone. I could. I have friends I could ask. I have multiple friends I could ask, and I can already gauge in my head how they would react. Not what they would say but what their faces would look like.

One of the things that kills me, one of the things that can make the carefully held together broken pieces fall all over the place is compassion. I don't understand it. It makes no sense. Show me an inch of kindness, give me the sort of hurt and astonished look that tells me how deeply you care, ask me what's wrong, give me the time of day and I fall apart. I can't help it. It's a trigger. I have stopped communicating by and large. I talk, I sass, I quip and jest. I make astute comments. I come up with intellectual ideas. I offer up very little of myself.

Until someone who knows me stops me and looks at me just so. And then my world is open.

It's scary and disarming.

I don't understand. I don't know if it's me that doesn't work right or if everyone feels this way and they're all just better at hiding it than I am.

Comments

[believeitup.livejournal.com]

Apart from the wintry mix, I'm there. I spent so much of the time leading up to Christmas, six weeks or so, crying in the offices of various bosses because they would do just what you described. They'd ask and I'd know they meant it and I'd fall apart.

So, I do feel the same. Some days I hide it well, I think, and some days I don't. I don't know what's better, though.

[magikfanfic.livejournal.com]

It's actually reassuring to have someone say that the same thing happens to them. I spend a lot of time wondering whether my brain is completely wired wrong. I worry that I don't process things the way I'm supposed to.

There have been some days at work when someone will give me that look and start to ask and I'll have to ask them to stop because I can't. I do my level best not to cry at work.

[believeitup.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of people have it happen and they just don't know how to articulate it. For me, it was shocking to read your post because you nailed how I feel so exactly.

That's why it was mostly in offices. That was a pretty humiliating span of time, though, not gonna lie.

[magikfanfic.livejournal.com]

I hate that you feel the same because I don't want other people to feel like this, but I'm glad that I was able to put it into discernible words that make sense. I fear so often that I'm not saying what I'm trying to say.

[believeitup.livejournal.com]

Well, it's all right lately. It comes and goes. Around/leading up to Christmas was a bad time. Since the middle of January or so, I've been getting better. I find myself laughing and smiling for no reason, the way I used to when my antidepressants worked their best. So that's something.

I think you put it very, very clearly :)