My first blog was called "psychic toilet" for no particular reason, but evolved to be the home of what I am calling "retro-blogs", postings of things I wrote before I had any kind of blog or other form of online publishing, or re-postings of my blog-like content from now inaccessible or unmaintained blog-like things such as "MySpace".
This one was created for the rare case where I feel some minor compulsion to document something in the present tense, yet is specifically intended to remain even more obscure and unread than my other online content. I'm not looking for responses.
In the present tense, my depression is about as bad as it has ever been. It lacks the edge of pain or grief or even sadness. It is difficult to describe. It is like someone turned up the gravity. It is hard to move or to want to try. It takes all the strength I have to push these words out.
Over the years, I have learned to avoid associating my depression with an external cause. It seems natural to try to assign a cause to something so debilitating, but doing so is almost always a terrible mistake. Depression is it's own cause. So, when some external stimuli really does unambiguously seem to make me feel worse, it is a surprise. In a way, it may be a good thing, to find that I feel any sort of connection to external circumstances to the point that it can affect me in a way that I notice. As such, this stimulus response may be something entirely apart from my actual depression.
The stimulus in this case was the simple act of resuming home testing of my blood sugar levels and finding them alarmingly high. I did this because my periodic lab tests have been trending in the wrong direction, and I have been feeling physically unwell in ways that I have learned to associate with elevated blood sugar. This physical unwell feeling is about as vague and difficult to describe as my depression, and is similar to the physical manifestations of my depression, so the whole picture is muddled and confusing.
I have type 2 diabetes, by the way, in case someone reads this who doesn't know me. I am also fat. For decades I have hovered just below the clinical definition of morbidly obese. To be exact: 289 pounds at 5 feet and 10 inches. I grew up a skinny kid, nearly starved to death when I was 19, and then gained weight through my 20s and early 30s until I hit this plateau where I have been stable for around 20 years.
My depression is pharmaceutically untreated due to very poor response to successive trials with everything that wasn't strongly contraindicated by some other condition I had or medication I was taking.
I also have general and social anxiety which have been treated with some success by high doses (4 1mg doses a day) of Clonazepam, also known as Zolpidem. This helps markedly with the general anxiety, but very little with the social anxiety, and I seem to be building a tolerance, as anxiety symptoms are recurring with increasing frequency and intensity. But there is no where to go from here. I am at the maximum safe dose, and have been for so long that it probably isn't really "safe", as it is orders of magnitude beyond the duration at this dosage of any clinical trials.
There was another external stimuli that brought my awareness of my own depression into focus. It was a news story about some kid who had made this giant public chalkboard with the heading "Before I die I want to", and then lines for people to chalk in their singular "bucket list" items. I realized I had nothing to write on such a board, or such a list. I could think of nothing I want to do badly enough to make sure I do it before I die. This is, to my thinking, equivalent to being functionally dead.
In the past there have been many things I have wanted to do. Most of them I either have not done, or have tried and failed. My experiences with doing things have taught me that I am not good at doing things or producing good results, so I no longer feel motivated to do things. Even when I have produced acceptable results from my efforts, it has always been an excessive struggle, with many false starts, wasted efforts and layer upon layer of error and repair.
The other stimuli which makes me more aware of my depression are the many stories of people and their heroic struggles against diseases and injuries and injustice. I am not that kind of person. I am weak. I am a quitter.
Where was I going with this? Nowhere as usual.
