tags: depression

On one of my therapeutic albeit expensive trips to the bookstore, I was arrested by a book entitled Undoing Depression. What I found unique (in comparison to the many books about depression that I have browsed through) is that the author writes as someone who simultaneously helps other people with their depression, being a psychologist. At the same time, he is dealing with his own problem. He is a fellow sufferer, and yet he does have some practical suggestions that might help. It’s a lot more cheering than various books that describe the author’s depression simply from the point-of-view of suffering (and on occasion, overcoming it.) Mainly, this is because the author has the other perspective of taking care of people who are depressed. And it works better than all those books written by people who may never have been depressed. While they say things that are really no different than what the author of this book says, the fact that they don’t identify as a sufferer of depression makes it, I think, harder to swallow. But maybe that’s just me.

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May

2006 May 12

diffusion

I’ve thought once or twice about how pretentious it is to quote yourself, but I like these paragraphs I wrote a few years back:

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August

2006 Aug 1

a meditation on why things fall apart

After work today, I went to the Coffee Bean to get some caffeine because of my impending caffeine-withdrawal headache. I basically spent the time sipping on my ice-blended caffeine drink and scrawling depressing passages into my notebook. Man, I’m on fire these days.

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October

2006 Oct 11

swirling

Oh, what was it I had meant to say? There are a million thoughts careening through my addled brain at this benighted hour, and I sit here tongue-tied like an idiot.

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2006 Oct 21

time marches on

So I give up. This is all there is, and there ain’t no mo’. God only knows what sort of fucked up crisis would actually get me to save myself, but I’m too fucking tired.

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2006 Oct 23

a hundred million bottles washed up on the shore

I just read this post about depression by alison on bluishorange, and I am so there.

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2006 Oct 29

feeling abandoned

I have spent the last 80 hours or so without speaking to another soul. (I am not counting buying stuff at the store, or communicating via computer.) I can’t help but wonder if anyone would miss me if I disappeared.

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December

2006 Dec 13

i should’ve known it right from the start

There is a good kind of tired, and a bad kind. The good kind lets you know that you had a good, full day, that you were productive, that you made fairly decent choices. The bad kind is like getting kicked in the face after you’ve already been shot a few hundred times. (I am thinking of the Jersey tollbooth scene in “The Godfather” with James Caan.)

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2007

June

2007 Jun 20

little thoughts

This week is starting to really get to me. I only have to work for two more nights before I get a weekend.

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August

2007 Aug 10

hmmm…

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2007 Aug 31

chief complaint: indecisiveness, avoidant behavior

Despite religiously taking my medications, I’m still not quite all that functional. I mean, I suppose the good things are that I’m not having any problems at work, and I’m not sleeping sixteen hours a day anymore.

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September

2007 Sep 24

hulogdahon (a brief and fitful storm)

I’ve never been sore from crying before. I mean, literally sore. My recti abdominalis hurt the next morning.

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2007 Sep 25

back to our regularly scheduled program

While I’m technically not on a ward month now, I’m spending about 11 hours a day in the hospital. Which is not as bad as it sounds, I guess. I dig working on the wards a lot better than working in the ED, frankly.

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December

2007 Dec 3

facing the unknown

will it be just like falling asleep
without waking
an eternal night
without sun’s dawning
no stars, no moon
just the silence
and the void?

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2008

April

2008 Apr 19

trying to characterize what makes me sick

The irony is, I'm terrible with details. I can't figure out the right threshold, the right setting. Either I actively ignore the minutiae and pretend they don't exist at all, or I end up mired in the trivial, and I end up taking hours when it should've taken minutes, and every task becomes a variation of Zeno's Paradox, getting halfway there, then halfway again, then halfway again of that, but still no closer to the finish line. This leaves me extraordinarily tired and frustrated, with a bunch of half-finished or maybe three-quarters finished projects lying around.

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May

2008 May 9

on the other side of the burn

I tend to pinpoint my inability to trust people on a single catastrophic event (the dissolution of a relationship), but now that I think hard about it, I wonder if I've always been distrusting. Some would say perhaps paranoid.

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June

2008 Jun 12

17 days

What does it really mean to be done? I've got 17 days of formal education left. I'm trying to be as optimistic as I've ever been about the future, but I'm just not an optimistic type of guy. I don't know. I'm more of a giddy cynic. A hopeful pessimist. The mantra of my profession seems to be "Hope for the best, but expect the worst."

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2008 Jun 21

effexor withdrawal

So I gave up on my psychiatrist because she's been pretty adamant about me making timely follow-up appointments. Unfortunately, part of my problem is that my executive function is seriously fucked. I'm just not very good at making plans. Seriously. It must be at least a minor miracle that I've made it this far without ending up dead.

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