kitty!

first off, it seems that maybe the dreaming thing is settling down a little. i had a particularly poignant one the other night, no interpretation of symbolism necessary, and i wonder if maybe it was little more than that working its way to the surface. the problem is that my energy level isn't much better, so i don't know what that says. and then, of course, in a final installment of wishy-washiness for the day, my energy level may simply suck due to the fact that we have had three sick kids around here since that dream happened and my system's been fighting off kid germs in the meantime. kid germs are very strong. they're like the hulk of germs: indiscriminate and powerful, and they have a nasty habit of harming those they love.

so, the kitty thing. in a lot of conversations lately it seems that people don't quite understand how one can become depressed and not know it, and there's a lot of validity in not getting it. sometimes, i look back over the last year and wonder how i missed the signs. but the fact of the matter is that depression hides and protects itself, and it makes you feel good about it in ways a healthy mind wouldn't really consider.

and so, cat. it's like a cat. a beautiful, smooth, warm and fuzzy kitty. certainly it has claws, but you don't see them; they're hidden away safely inside the paws, allowing it to pad safely and softly into your lap, such that in spite of the fact that you know those pointy razors are sheathed in there, waiting to knife into your thighs, you don't really consider them a threat, and certainly not relative to the comfort of having this delightful little beastie cuddling against you. it comes to you, all body rubs and begging for your attention, turning itself over to expose its belly to you in the hopes that you'll become absorbed in how cute it is and pay attention to nothing else.

because, like a cat, depression is jealous. jealousy is how it works. it gains your trust to the exclusion of everything else. like a cat that crawls into your lap while you read, only to insert itself between you and your book, and then, not content merely to have your lap now, but requiring to be the sole focus in your existence for that time, the cat will place its paws against the book and push it down against your knees so that reading it becomes impossible and you must pay attention to it. if you continue to try to read, the cat will find its way around to stand on your legs, stretch itself up and stare into your face so that its own eyes fill your vision and you have no choice in the matter. jealous beastie has won again.

there are times when it is less obvious, too. like a cat who wakes in the night to find itself lonely, it will sneak into bed and lie next to you and you'll never even notice it has come until morning when it's too late. perhaps it has inserted itself between your knees as you lie on your back, keeping you from turning yourself over as needed. perhaps it has wrapped itself around your head, purring and creating enough heat and noise to keep your sleep from being peaceful. but you don't really realize it's there until you're fully awake and the night's sleep has already been compromised. and even if you did, it's so soft and warm, and makes you feel so loved, that you'd let it stay anyway.

and therein lies the final piece. the ugly piece. like a cat, who's affections are entirely on the its own terms, depression loves you. you are its host, the thing that feeds it, the thing that protects it. you are its reason to exist, and so it makes you feel loved, too. it can fill your world, staring into your eyes to the exclusion of all else, telling you it loves you and begging you please to rub its back. and, despite the fact that you know this, in spite of the fact that you understand it's a cat and that the love is never truly unconditional with it, you still feel privileged and special. this is your cat (HA!), and it loves you. it wants you, and only you. and so you love it back. you pet it, you nuzzle it, you stroke it and feed it and give it what it wants, because it has made you feel special.

then it tires of the love and swipes you with those fucking claws. again.

ouroboros

i had a very cool experience on friday night. a pair of our friends came over and spent the evening with us, we ate indian food cooked right here in our very own kitchen (except for the naan - that's done out back on the grill, friend), and sat at the table for the next 5-6 hours and drank wine and talked. and talked. and talked more. and across the course of the night one of them opened up just a hair.

this person is reserved and wears as much emotion as possible on the inside. i get the impression that to have such a conversation for this person is rare, and to be let in on it either implies a special level of either trust or drunkenness or both. in any case, there is some measure of darkness that marches in lockstep with my own, but it was the admission that struck me. when talking about it all, and the ability to recognize it and snap oneself out of it with relative ease, there came this: 'sometime i like it'.

and that's just the thing. sometimes we all like it. B has always made fun of me for wanting to be a 'tortured artist'. she's always contended that i am, in reality, far to happy-go-lucky to be such a thing, and my life hasn't really ever been terrible enough to qualify as tortured. point taken. agreed, my life has been relatively kind to me, and i try my damnedest to be happy-go-lucky. but i do love to be tortured. many of us do, and some of us more than others.

what our friend said struck me for the truthfulness of it, and it was a strange repeat of a conversation i had had earlier in the week with someone else. to hear other people admit that they like to be in that place sometimes was oddly freeing. i don't know that i had ever really admitted to myself before that i like to be there to some degree. B and i talked about it a little, and she nailed it right on the head: for me, it's because it feels natural. it is, at my base, who i have been for a long, long time, and it's easy and comfortable for me to be miserable. it takes work to be happy, it takes little effort to swim around in one's own head.

and this seems to be where the problem lies. like the mythical ouroboros, i eat my own tail because i like the taste of it, never realizing that all along i am consuming myself. i refer to my depressive cycle as a downward spiral, but that is only half right - it is truly an inward spiral, one that turns in on itself more and more and more until the outside world ceases to feel familiar and my own tail is the only flavor that becomes acceptable. social anxiety makes it that much easier for me. if one fears others, there is a convenient excuse not to eat with them, and simply to withdraw into my own dinner party with and of myself.

that cycle is a tough one to break. i taste good to me. my own sadness and anger are the meat and potatoes on which i have raised myself, and that i consume myself in feasting on them is immaterial, or just goes unnoticed. this is how i got to where i got to. i enjoyed it. i loved it. i ate myself, gorged on my own darkness until i nearly ate myself whole, and if i consider myself as that mythical lizard i ate my own tail and had to get a look at the back of my own head entering my jaw before i could stop.

that is how close it was. writing that made me see it for real, and i can admit it to myself. i was likely within weeks, if not days, of finishing the meal. thank god for that fight, thank god for that one single clear moment, and thank god for that god-forsaken place i went that made me stop eating.

alright!

i'm sorry! i have been well and roundly castigated for being delinquent on an update. well, if i'm not writing, i haven't anything to say, so deal with it. truth be told, it really has been a head-down, nose-to-the-grindstone sort of week. after my vanishing act last week, there was an understandably large pile of work out from under which i had to dig, and that has taken much of my focus and energy. mercifully, all this happened right before a major holiday for which the nation slows to a crawl, and seemingly my business is as affected as most others which has allowed me to catch up. on the truly weird side of things, i actually produced a quote yesterday that totaled out at more than $109 million. does this sound like a sum for which i should be responsible to anyone?

which brings me to a bit of a revelation i had yesterday. i was talking to one of my great friends, and she and i were musing on our respective astounding abilities to hold onto a low self-opinion even in the face of mountains of reinforcement. she had her thing that she had just plain rocked and for which she had been rightly praised, and i was struck be the similarity of her reaction to my own. in the last couple of months i have gotten a new job and then been trusted with major, global level accounts due to some of my skills and tendencies that line up well with that, and yet i still feel like i'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, looking around at everyone around me and feeling that i really have the wool pulled over their eyes. and in the middle of expressing this thought i occurred to me - this is a rather sizable indictment of everyone around me, is it not? if i'm as simple and as incompetent as i think i am, what does that opinion say about the people who have evaluated my performance and ability and judged me to be not only worth of employment but of trust with our largest and most complex accounts? and this is to say nothing of the people who truly support me every day and feel i'm worthy of their love and compassion and friendship. so either i am surrounded by morons (a possibility one should never discount, mind you), or i am way better at what i do and at being who i am than i believe myself to be, which all sounds very self-help but i even have trouble escaping the logic in it.

but don't you worry, faithful reader - even should i manage to climb via this logical fire escape to the solid ground in the alley of reasonable self-opinion, the fires of other emotional issues will still burn brightly within my walls, waiting only to take down a handful of bricks to expose themselves to the oxygen-rich atmosphere that is this blog. i am a veritable burgeoning towering inferno of self-loathing and emotional turmoil, and i simply need time and a little more digging before another sore festers to the point where you can read about it.

and now we have come to the less-entertaining portion of today's post. i had massive reservations about posting all of this so publicly, and there were others who bore equal and even stronger concerns than my own, but i have never been so happy to have done something for myself. this blog has been a boon to my own creative impulse, as i find that truly enjoy writing it. but more importantly, the others in my life who have either themselves fought these same demons or have watched loved ones fight them are coming out of the woodwork, and the love and support and pats on the back and hugs (where i've been comfortable with them, and thank you to everyone who asks first!) have been flowing in a river the depth and breadth of which i would never have guessed. i have obviously touched more lives than i'd have thought, and that is a good thing to know and to feel. and it is both comforting and alarming to know that not only am i not alone in this struggle, not only am i not a rarity, but this is dangerously close to being a common ailment (though admittedly, most manage not to end up incarcerated!), which is a pretty harsh indictment of our modern world and the society we have built for ourselves, in my opinion. but that is a rant that will have to wait for another day.

wake-up call

so, i came to a conclusion this morning after my world got a little ugly and i realized that i was the reason for the ugliness. or, i suppose it wasn't so much a conclusion as it was a moment of clarity that i managed to distill into a nice, neat trio of sentences.

when you're unhappy with yourself, it's pretty easy to be unhappy with your life. when you're unhappy with your life, it's pretty easy to convince yourself you don't want your life. when you don't want your life, it's pretty easy to convince yourself it didn't want you first. that makes you unhappier, and the cycle continues. this is what we call depression.

now, there are usually a lot of variables in play, too. i'm not discounting that fact. lord knows that i, in my own life and fight with depression, have more than my share of variables, many of which i have - knowingly or unwittingly - created of my own idiot accord. anything that has kicked off this latest round has unquestionably been my own doing. i can see some of them, and i know they are mine. but that fact doesn't actually matter.

the time has come once again to see someone. i have held my own psyche together for my entire adult life with nothing more than the psychological equivalents of duct tape and bailing wire. i have a southern-engineered mental state. and i have finally come up against the big bump in the road that knocks the coat hanger off the muffler. i wasn't ready for it, i didn't see it coming, and in fact i never thought it would. but it did, and now, this morning, i know it's time to take this thing into the shop. i can't fix it anymore.