Depression, Despair

This about describes it.

I got back home from Flashback Weekend in Chicago, a happy time where I got to meet Katharine Isabelle and the Soska Twins, Jen and Sylvia.

Jen, Katie and Sylvia. Not one of my pictures from Flashback, but you get the idea.

 
Then, the death of Robin Williams and events in Ferguson (a suburb of my hometown of St. Louis) lowered my mood this week. I haven't been able to get back into the routine that I depend on to get work done. Disposition has sunk even lower. (Yes, unfortunately this blog entry is not going to be about my kickass time at Flashback weekend.)

I don't generally talk to anyone when I'm depressed, so this blog is a bit different. The things that are in my mind seem too difficult to describe. Not wanting to bring anyone else down, is some of the reason, but I don't want to exaggerate my altruism. There's also the fear that I'd be judged as bitter due to things in the past that still lower my mood. However, mostly I go quiet because things that depress me also tie my tongue. I talk around it all, and people can misunderstand and jump to the wrong conclusions about what I'm saying. So this blog is something different.

My struggle with depression has been life long. Its flip side, mania, isn't common, but the manias I have had changed the course of my life a few times. I remember being depressed when I was 7; when I was 11-15, where I missed some important years of socialization; when I was 18-19; again at 22; 24-25; 28-30 . . . I had no real medical help for those. Nor for the ADHD. I wouldn't be writing this blog if I weren't medicated for that. And then there's apparently, trauma . . . 

How long did I see therapists? I sought out and saw my first one at 17-19, without my parents' help, knowing at the time that I had a lot of problems. Therapists weren't required to be certified then. He did far more harm than good, and broke my faith in them. I began seeing them again when I was 30, even though I could have used good ones for the entire intervening time. I stopped therapy this year. So, that's about 26 years. Finally, a combination of therapy, medication and training were having an effect. I could at least plan a day and get things done.  

That tells you how long it could take to recover from a bad childhood with a few neuro-psychiatric problems. I've been able to plan a day and get things done regularly. However, there are a few major things that normal people take for granted, which  I can't do, and apparently, therapy can't help. I'm more than self-conscious. Those "phobias" or complexes have kept me solitary.

And I'm a coward because I can't bring myself to confess what they are. I'll show the tip of the iceberg to tell you few pictures of me exist. I get through the day by pretending on some level other people don't see me. 

Then there are the major world-shaking things. The fact that the people we've made leaders, corporate and government, are wrecking the environment and in my non-scientific trained "Oh, shit!" opinion, are sending us and many other species into extinction. I believe, if anything, scientists have actually been understating what they've been finding. It seems to me that psychological denial would be a huge motivator for denying publication to an article. Scientists would know this even if they won't admit it.

That's not all. Every unjustified killing by police, suppression of reproductive rights, and just plain meanness and ignorance in our government at every level is dispiriting. Just incorrigibly cruel and stupid people make me feel bleak. Republicans taking the Senate after what they've done would be a hard one to survive (please vote!).

I don't write because it's a career, though I'm trying to make it one. I write fiction out of self-preservation. After I had Electroconvulsive treatment in 2009, writing fiction kept me from flailing back into depression. And it's kept me stable ever since. 

It was the career path I should have taken when I was seventeen, but I was discouraged by my own lack of education (don't let anybody tell you Catholic Schools are better) and the fact that the circle of friends I had then hated horror, and didn't like the same stories I did. But also from the fact that no teacher or professor would say anything good about my work or encourage any of it. For the latter, I had serious attention problems, and couldn't seem to get anything done on time. That goes back to a decision by my Mom to see my ADHD (then called Hyperactivity Disorder) as a medical myth and just a stage in childhood. She was deathly afraid of the amphetamines they treated it with. 

However, still the biggest error of my life was ever listening to them. If things had gone right, I feel that I wouldn't be pursuing in middle-age on disability what I should have been doing when I was eighteen. 

I am better now than I was then, in skills and mentally. Though depression does come and visit now and then, such as this week, it hasn't been able to move in and stay. I'll write more on my novel, and I know by tomorrow I'll be more less sad and more in control of myself.