None of my usual highfalutin' ideals today, I'm afraid. If you have an aversion to emo whining I'd suggest you skip this entry, because I'm in a dour mood indeed and I feel compelled to vent.
For years I've struggled knowingly with manic depression, after having not known that was what it was before. I've gotten past the point where it could control me as completely as it used to, but I still have entire weeks when nothing seems to go right and I'm just useless for accomplishing anything and can barely stand the thought of living to see another day. I know these moods pass and have banished the thought of doing anything irreversably drastic as a result of them, being sensible enough to realize that I have no right to deny my future self opporunities on the basis of my current moods. So I've taken refuge in a number of coping strategies, of which one of the most successful has been self-aggrandizement. I would imagine that what few virtues I do possess (writing talent, for example) might eventually earn the approval of some agency that was in the position to grant me ultimate power to make the world right according to my preferences, or at least to escape the world into a neverending fantasy that would fulfill my wildest dreams.
Today I confronted yet another of these bleak moods, promoted by a series of petty annoyances (and one not so petty one which puts my future, as in my having one at all, in serious question). And when I reached for my usual power trip, I found that the idea didn't satisfy me this time, because I realized that ultimately, my problem is an inability to stand the possibility of things going wrong in the future. Any current happiness is fleeting to me; no matter how much it satisfies me, the best it can hope to accomplish is to temporarily distract me from the knowledge that things could go horribly wrong tomorrow, condemning me in an instant to unbearable agony, degradation, terror, or any number of other fates I would give anything to avoid. But I saw today that there was nothing I could give, even if an entity of ultimate power were to offer me some bargain...for what that being could grant, it could also take away, for any reason or no reason, and I would have nothing but its word to suggest otherwise. Not being a person given to trust or faith, I couldn't believe that word, and so I would never feel secure, not even after being blessed by a benevolent deity with the fulfillment of my every whim. (That's not to say it might not be fun, but it would have to continue being fun forever or it would still fall under "temporary diversion"; I'd still never be content.)
So I see now that the adaptive nature which I've always believed was humanity's greatest strength, and also suspected was its greatest impulse, indeed has me by the balls even more thoroughly than I had suspected. There is no gift I can be given which would entirely and eternally free me from the fear of pain, disgust, and fear itself. Today I am legitimately a being without hope, and I recognize that I will be overcome with fear for the rest of my days, that short of the complete obliteration of my personality (which I would not submit to even if I trusted that the method employed was capable of doing the job right, and I certainly have no such faith in modern medical methods), nothing can ever set me fully at ease. Right now, the only thing I have to live for is a vague sense of gratitude toward my parents for having put up with me when I was terminally unemployed and seemed incapable of ever amounting to anything. I've made something of myself, but it's a something I don't much like, and I legitimately wish I would simply cease to exist forever (not simply dying, mind, for that makes no guarantees regarding any afterlife), because I see no other way I can be guaranteed never to suffer the worst fates I can imagine, and those fates are so frightening to me that no reward would be great enough for me to be able to accept the risk.
That's where I am today - nowhere, and going nowhere. To be very explicit, this isn't a "cry for help" and suicide is not on the table as an option; I simply have the bleak realization that life brings me no satisfaction, and probably never will again. I will eventually escape this mood, and you'll hear me ranting about how perfect the world could be if we all did X, Y and Z, and I'll believe it wholeheartedly and disavow this dour mood as just a depressive episode, over quickly and better forgotten. I'm not going to try and say otherwise; I just know as of now that this darkness will always return to snuff out all my joys, and that I can think of no way to guarantee it won't.
EDIT - Just to put things in perspective here, it's an hour later and I feel somewhat better. This in no way means I don't still believe as I did above, only that I've been distracted from that belief and am no longer fixated upon it. Like I said, I've learned that these moods come and go, so I need to take them with a grain of salt.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Thursday, January 12, 2012
A Brief Note on The Emotional Rollercoaster
"If you can't handle me at my worst, you sure as Hell don't deserve me at my best."
--Marilyn Monroe
I've been knowingly rocking the bipolar lifestyle for at least a good half-decade now; back when I was a teenager I didn't know what was happening, but I eventually accepted that mood swings and bouts of either hyperactivity or severe lassitude were just a part of who I was. There's no denying that the short end of the stick doth mightily suck - "depression" is a misleading word, because it's really not sadness, it's glumness, a sense of utter despair and frustration where everything seems pointless, where you feel that the very things you most want to do are a waste of time and not worth the effort of bothering to do them. But I've learned to pay a lot of attention to myself, and I've found that those feelings always pass in time; it's just a question of finding a way to get through it. And in learning how to make that happen, how to accept a certain proportion of uselessness in myself, I've become stronger and more balanced than I think I ever could be if I simply took a pill to make my brain 'normal'.
I've lost a lot of friends because of this attitude, and that's one of the things that bums me out when I'm on the downslope. I wish they'd stick with me through thick and thin, but I don't blame them much for not granting that wish, as it's a massively selfish and unreasonable one, one I would never grant to someone else who claimed to deserve such loyalty while virtually guaranteeing they would never return it to any real extent. But while I have regrets, I don't consider them a reason to change. The highs are still worth the lows, and one of the things that gets me through in the dark times is the knowledge that, at the end of the day, I have been myself, and there can be no more pure purposes to my existence than that.
(Disclaimer: I have no medical or psychological proof of any of this. Perhaps a "professional" would decide manic-depression isn't the technically precise name for my condition; I really don't especially care, it's how I view the condition and I think being the one who has to live with it gives me the necessary diagnostic credentials. Still, don't skip out on taking your butt to a doctor just because I told you so; make the decision on the strength of your own ability to determine right from wrong, and give it a good lot of thought from every angle you can come up with.)
--Marilyn Monroe
I've been knowingly rocking the bipolar lifestyle for at least a good half-decade now; back when I was a teenager I didn't know what was happening, but I eventually accepted that mood swings and bouts of either hyperactivity or severe lassitude were just a part of who I was. There's no denying that the short end of the stick doth mightily suck - "depression" is a misleading word, because it's really not sadness, it's glumness, a sense of utter despair and frustration where everything seems pointless, where you feel that the very things you most want to do are a waste of time and not worth the effort of bothering to do them. But I've learned to pay a lot of attention to myself, and I've found that those feelings always pass in time; it's just a question of finding a way to get through it. And in learning how to make that happen, how to accept a certain proportion of uselessness in myself, I've become stronger and more balanced than I think I ever could be if I simply took a pill to make my brain 'normal'.
I've lost a lot of friends because of this attitude, and that's one of the things that bums me out when I'm on the downslope. I wish they'd stick with me through thick and thin, but I don't blame them much for not granting that wish, as it's a massively selfish and unreasonable one, one I would never grant to someone else who claimed to deserve such loyalty while virtually guaranteeing they would never return it to any real extent. But while I have regrets, I don't consider them a reason to change. The highs are still worth the lows, and one of the things that gets me through in the dark times is the knowledge that, at the end of the day, I have been myself, and there can be no more pure purposes to my existence than that.
(Disclaimer: I have no medical or psychological proof of any of this. Perhaps a "professional" would decide manic-depression isn't the technically precise name for my condition; I really don't especially care, it's how I view the condition and I think being the one who has to live with it gives me the necessary diagnostic credentials. Still, don't skip out on taking your butt to a doctor just because I told you so; make the decision on the strength of your own ability to determine right from wrong, and give it a good lot of thought from every angle you can come up with.)
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