AUBREEVISION - Observations from the far side of the dial

I have a history of depression, and every so often have a day or a couple of days in which I'm completely non-functional. I had a couple of those recently.

I love the Cymbalta "depression hurts" commercial, as much as you can love a pharmaceutical ad, anyway, because it so perfectly captures the experience of depression -- living your life from a dark place, in a dark room, oblivious to those around you while everyone else lives their lives. It perfectly illustrates the sense of being completely hopeless and unable to engage, wandering aimlessly through the frozen foods section, completely overwhelmed by the effort of choosing between two types of Swanson dinners and not caring if you ever eat again. The commercial hits so close to home, in fact, that I find it hard not to cry every time it comes on.

Eventually the darkness lifts and I return to my own special version of normal, forgetting for a time what it was like to spiral down until the Black Dog, as someone famous (Winston Churchill?) once called it, comes around again. Just when I feel that I'm making real progress in my life it happens again, and I can't remember or imagine ever feeling well. Apparently I talk a great game, because I'm constantly told how incredibly "perky" and "happy" I am, a great source of confusion when you feel awful but question your judgement because everyone assures you you're a bleeding beacon of sunshine. I decided that it might help to keep a written record of my "episodes," both to validate my experience in my own mind and perhaps offer patterns and clues that might help the next time around. I thought that I would post one of these accounts, my own little Cymbalta commercial, to try to capture the nature of depression. I have also realized how much I have kept this part of myself to myself, lived alone with it, and thought that releasing it into the blog-world might help dilute its power.

I tried Cymbalta, incidentally, until my samples ran out and it wasn't among the antidepressants my insurance would approve; since moving to the US a year ago, I've switched medications four times trying to find one that is covered by insurance and lifts my mood without destroying my guts, libido and figure.

Sept 5^th

 

Even when I am depressed, or maybe especially when I am depressed, I can eat my weight in breakfast. I had the Spacetown Breakfast at the Derry Diner, and the waitress applauded me for finishing everything, right down to the enormous waffle that she said is most people’s undoing. I grinned shyly, acknowledging her praise, and felt actual pride. I am 30 going on 6.

 

Between being unable to find any decent clothes due to the move and the apathy with which I awoke, I am dressed like a tragic soccer mom. My hair is scraggled back in an elastic. These are the most attractive years of my life, and this is all I have to offer.

 

This morning I woke up afraid. My dehydration headache was a reminder of last night’s cryfest. I told Eric that he shouldn’t have to babysit me, but he worked from home to keep me company because I was afraid to be alone and sad. Usually, I am just afraid to be alone in a house with crappy locks. Today, I didn’t really care if anyone broke in.

 

I don’t think Eric got much work done. We went to Home Depot for screws, and I picked out some tulip bulbs that caught my eye, while simultaneously telling myself that I would never be organized enough to get them planted.

 

At suppertime I almost cried when I couldn’t find cayenne pepper and a baking pan for hot wings. I ended up using a turkey roaster placed in an oven full of ashes I didn’t have the strength of body or mind to remove following the self-cleaning we had done earlier in the day. The oven wouldn’t work. We had takeout. I ordered some cabinet knobs online that made me happy until the happiness was drowned by the knowledge that I’d never get the house together and didn’t deserve nice things anyway.

 

Today I took my first walk around the neighborhood (it started as a run, but quickly degraded). I tried to focus on foliage and houses but mostly thought about all the things in life I can’t keep up with. I showered and shaved my legs and armpits with a razor too dull to cut butter.

 

I am sad because I am invisible.

I am convinced that life is a constant series of disappointments.

I am sad because I feel like the friends I had have forgotten me.

I am sad because I am scared of everything.

I am sad because the entryway smells like pee.

I am sad because I cannot seem to get past sad.

I am sad because everything is an obstacle, and I cannot see it any other way.

I am sad because I once thought I would run with the poets. Now, I run with the bottle of all-purpose cleaner and still manage to live in a dump of my own creation.

I cannot call myself a writer, because writers write, and I do not. I clean and stew.

I am bitter because people with full-time jobs manage to keep shiny, clean-scrubbed houses, and I clean obsessively with nothing to show for it.

I feel guilty because I have no 9-5 job to go to, yet still can’t find time to do anything and completely throw away the opportunity I’m given.

I am angry that there is not enough time for anything, let alone slowing down and enjoying it.

I am convinced that others see me as nothing more than a housewife sponging off of Eric, and fear that this is true.

I walk with the constant pain of so much wasted potential, and the conviction that life and time have passed me by.

I am crushed by the knowledge that nothing ever changes.

I am drowning in the past, and see nothing of pleasure or success in the future.

I am isolated, with no one reaching in and no me reaching out, falling in on myself. I know that I need to spend more time out in the world, but every fiber fears and resists.

I am angry that I try so hard and have been doing it all wrong, all along. I have learned nothing.

I want but fear children, both for the demands they will impose on my already beyond-control life and the things I will impose on them.

I am sad that I cannot get in a car and drive without being paralyzed by the conviction of an intrinsic lack of skill and fear of hurting someone else or myself.

I am sad because my way always seems to be the wrong way.

I am angry for staying quiet while others put me down, then turning around and giving myself the same treatment.

I did not like Sylvia Plath's journals, particularly her description of the pleasures of picking her nose, but one thing stayed with me -- her description of how she couldn't find the strength or motivation to wash her hair, paralyzed by the prospect of having to do it again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, wondering what's the point of ever doing it at all.

Eric and I just bought our first home, which is super exciting. I've been offline for a week or two with the insanity of last-minute packing and the move. For reasons that don't merit description, I did a Mapquest search on a nearby road and was delighted to discover that our new town contains the following thoroughfares and districts:

- Peppermint Corner
- Featherbed Lane
- Muzzy Lane
- Blackberry AND Blueberry Rds
- Tiger Tail Circle

I am convinced that we live in the land of elves, or at the very least, dedicated users of psychedelic drugs.

I have an unfortunate tendency for misreading perfectly legitimate words and names as less-appropriate alternatives. In this case, my brain transformed "Bedard Avenue" into "Bastard Avenue" as my eyes roamed over the map.

The oven has finished self-cleaning, so I can safely enter the kitchen without threat of having my eyebrows singed off from the heat. Back to unpacking!

In the foolhardiest of endeavors, a Chicago blogger is living her life in accordance with the gospel of Oprah for an entire year. In essence, she watches every episode of Oprah and reads every issue of O Magazine, then carries out anything that Oprah mandates (reading a certain book, wearing a certain outfit to flatter her body type, creating something called a "vision chart," etc.) She devotes about 40 hours a week to carrying out Oprah's "assignments," and hopes to write a book about the experience.

The best/most terrifying quote: "It takes a huge amount of pressure off to be handed a spiritual path."

After hearing about John Edwards becoming the latest in a string of politicians to admit to having an affair (while his wife was undergoing cancer treatment, no less), I have to wonder: is fidelity too much to ask?

While some men (and women) can be idiots, it seems that politicians are a very special kind of idiot. In saying that, I'm assuming that politicians more frequently engage in affairs than non-politicians; on the other hand, there's the scary possibility that their behavior actually reflects that of the general population, who may cheat just as often but are less likely to get caught. I've heard the "monogamy isn't natural"/men-are-biologically -wired-to-spread-their-seed justification, but I don't buy it. We are also equipped with brains and the ability to choose. Women are biologically equipped to reproduce at age 11 or 12, but does that mean that they should?

I have always thought that infidelity is one of the most despicable acts a person can commit, and something that I could never forgive. That said, I think that people, including myself, are capable of just about anything under the right (or more accurately, wrong) circumstances, so maybe I shouldn't be so quick to judge. Who knows? The whole thing makes my brain hurt.

While tidying up around the apartment I turned on the TV and came across Oprah doing a show on past-life regression. Eric makes fun of me whenever I confess to watching Oprah because I'm always complaining about how she drives me crazy; my defense is that if the current show's topic is interesting enough, I can put aside my dislike for the host and watch it anyway (the same applies to Dr. Phil).

Anyway, the topic of today's show, as I mentioned, was past-life regression. A therapist was leading patients with unusual phobias into what he claimed were past lives to help uncover the supposed source of said phobias. For instance, a woman with a lifelong fear of sharp corners and having her neck touched discovered that in a former life she had been slain by an Indian warrior with a spear to the throat.

The skeptic in me finds it very interesting that what seems to be 98% of patients who undergo past-life regression therapy report having been something akin to a member of royalty or a Babylonian high priest in a previous life. Remarkable, given the percentage that people of such status would have occupied in the general population. Why is it that no one seems to regress themselves into unglamorous identities, like chief stall-mucker or lonely Victorian widow? One of the patients did suggest that the therapy has a "fantasy" element, which lends even less credibility to the whole past-lives thing. I also found that the questions the therapist was asking had a definite "leading" quality.

Maybe it doesn't matter if the therapy is reality-based or total hocus-pocus -- if it helps the patient, maybe that's all that really matters. No doubt past-life regression therapists will have to break out the waiting lists now that they've received Oprah's coveted stamp of approval.

Happy Solstice! There is always something very exciting about the longest day of the year, tinged as it is with the knowledge that it's all downhill from here.

I just channel-surfed my way onto the opening credits for "Whose Wedding Is it Anyway?" and was confronted with the following voice-overed declaration:

"This is your one day to express yourself."

What a horrible sentiment! As if brides aren't already under enough self- and socially-imposed pressure, now they're being told that they'll never have any opportunity for self-expression outside of their wedding day. What if you never get married? No self-expression for you. The wedding industry lines its pockets by planting these suggestions in the minds of vulnerable brides-to-be, who are presumably new to the wedding-planning game and willing to spend huge amounts of cash to meet real or perceived expectations. Who needs the pressure of being informed that you have an eight-hour window in which to show the world exactly who you are?

I'll be honest -- I began the wedding-planning process with loads of excitement, but before long got overwhelmed and came to hate it. I'm a perfectionist and a little (ok, highly) obsessive, and the stress of planning a wedding and a cross-border move brought out the worst of my neuroses. It's kind of funny in hindsight, but at one point I was so overwhelmed I actually crawled under my bedsheets in a panic mid-day, trying in vain to shut it all out. I've always been a champion sleeper, but would wake in a cold sweat from nightmares of a half-done wedding. Looking back, I wish I had enjoyed the process more, but by some miracle, despite the officiant showing up half an hour late and the guitarist arriving without the extension cords he needed to perform at our outdoor ceremony, the wedding came together last-minute and was the antithesis of the horrible planning process. Focussing on that allows me to block out all the blood, sweat and tears that went into it (I honestly don't know how I would have recovered if I had put all of that energy into it and had an equally traumatic wedding day to match).

Wow, I'm feeling dangerously expressive for someone who's already had her one kick at the can.