just a dull ache

Constant. Chronic. A dull, dull ache in my chest. In my heart. In my stomach.

So tired of crying over you.

So tired of loving you.

So tired of you loving me back but choosing a different life.

_____

There is not a soul in this world that would not be fine without me.

Tough pill to swallow.

I am no one’s person.

I would have thought I was, to several people, but everyone chooses a different life. One without me. Every single person.

_____

I’m honestly not sure how you can walk away and say you’d be upset if something happened to me. That doesn’t make sense. How would it actually affect you if you have chosen to walk away when I’m alive?

I don’t understand.

Every. Single. Person.

_____

A dull, dull ache that stabs sometimes. Constant. Chronic.

Overwhelming.

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When the music dies and other such signs of depression

Repost from Dr. Psych Mom.

Lesser Known Signs of Depression: Can You Feel The Music? 

by Samantha Rodman (4.7.2016)

Many times, I work with clients who tell me that they aren’t depressed, and therefore won’t try medication or in any other way augment our work together, or even come into my office often enough to give me a true shot to help.  There are so many reasons that it is helpful to know that you’re depressed, including:

• If you know you’re depressed, you realize you may be seeing things as more negative than they are
• If you know you’re depressed, you realize the “problem” may not be your job, husband, kids, friends, etc, but that you are depressed and see everything as a problem
• If you know you’re depressed, you may seriously reorganize your life, prioritize exercise, health, personal time, and so forth

But many people can look at the criteria for Major Depressive Disorder and not know if their symptoms exactly qualify.  So here is a list of some other “symptoms” of depression that you won’t see in a diagnostic manual, but that may resonate more with you.

1. Music affects you differently.  You can’t listen to sad songs anymore because they make you cry, or you can’t listen to upbeat music because you find it boring.  Or else you have no desire to listen to music at all, even though you used to love it.
2. You’re not as generous anymore.  You used to care about people’s troubles more, or you used to donate to charity.  Now you find yourself unmoved by the whole idea of charity or giving your precious spare time to listen to or to help your friends and family.  You’re looking out for number one.
3. You don’t feel refreshed after sleeping.  You can sleep 12 hours and you still don’t wake up with a bounce in your step.  Or you can have a luxurious afternoon nap, and instead of it feeling luxurious, you feel like you were hit by a truck when you wake up.
4. You don’t find things as funny.  You can’t remember the last time you laughed till tears came, or couldn’t restrain yourself from laughing.  If you watch a movie you used to find hilarious, you think it’s kind of stupid and you don’t remember why you even liked it so much.
5. You are irritable.  This, along with anger, is actually a diagnostic criterion for depression, but it’s usually not one most people are aware of.  If everything your spouse does annoys you, and work seems to be filled with idiots, and your kids seem spoiled and ungrateful much of the time, this may be a red flag.
6. Your relationship changes with food.  For many, food loses its appeal, and nothing tastes that awesome.  For others, food becomes the only bright spot in their day, and it is something to fantasize about.  Usually people with the latter extreme are suffering from atypical depression.
7. Your body hurts.  Your back, joints, neck, or head hurts all the time, or your stomach is always unsettled.  You constantly feel, or state aloud, that you don’t feel well.  You’re almost relieved when you actually have a cold or even the flu, because finally there seems to be an actual reason that you always feel kind of sick.
8. Your creativity tanks.  Some people are creative with crafts, others with cooking, others with cracking jokes, others with planning surprise day trips for their family.  Whatever your typical outlet is, it feels like your creative juices have dried up, and you can’t understand how you used to be filled with inspiration.
9. You don’t feel romantic.  Many people with lower sex drives, like women with small kids, are used to feeling less easily aroused than they used to be.  But this is different.  Now, you don’t understand the need or reason for romance either, when you used to love it. Your husband finally brings home flowers and you don’t care.  Or your wife looks objectively nice and you can’t bring yourself to care or comment.
10. Your kids aren’t cute anymore.  Well, they are objectively, you guess, but they don’t strike that same chord in your heart.  Or you may be a new mom and your baby strikes no chord in your heart, besides annoyance or anxiety.  If your kids don’t tug at your heartstrings, this is a sign something is wrong, and it’s usually not your deep fear that you’re actually just a cold person and parent.
11. You give up on aspects of your life and your identity that used to be important to you.  Maybe you were always into fitness, but now you think spending your limited time exercising is dumb.  Or you used to entertain, and now it seems like too much work to clean and shop to host people you wouldn’t even really want to talk to.

My dad learned that his reading slows dramatically when he starts to get depressed – when the number of books that he flies through suddenly decreases in a week, he makes an appointment to see his therapist.

For me, it’s my friends that first point out that I’m “up” – the “when was the last time you ate?” question never stops, but it turns to “so for the past three days you’ve said you hadn’t slept last night…” or “wow you’re speaking quickly this morning!” or “so….when was the last time you took your meds?”

What are your personal signs that you may be sliding into a depression (or into mania)?

no more memories.

Forgot my real journal.

Going up on the lamotrigine. Really pumped about it, only not that pumped b/c I’m super down.

Super.

I hate this time of year. Obviously I think we’ve caught on to that. Waiting on the upswing.

All of my best memories are with you.

^^^^Statements that are false. But you know when you’re sad and lonely how you can only think of one thing? That’s where I am.

“I want you to see it before anyone else.”

Why? Because you love me? Because you know I’ll be upset otherwise? Because old time’s sake?

I want to see it before anyone else. But I want it to be for me.

It’s not for me, is it?

I always hear the lyrics first. You? What do you hear?

I haven’t been hungry or full in a month or more. I eat when I shake, or when I realize I took meds without food and feel nauseated. It’s like my stomach went numb.

I talk about money too much. Fixated.

Selfish.

Things are terrible in the world and I am selfish.

All of my best memories are done. I feel like I haven’t made a memory in a year. Isn’t that weird? All of the memorable things I’ve done this year and I feel like I can’t remember them.

I barely remember anything. Cannot get up for work. Cannot work. But I love my work. But I’m not doing any work.

I need new music. The world needs new music. I cannot write music.

Cannot cannot cannot.

I think of things that I cannot do all day every day. Because I could have done them, if I’d learned or worked hard.

Even the things I could do, I can’t do anymore.

Who am I, if not a runner, or a dancer, or an actor, or a dog trainer, or the one who dresses nice and always look good for work?

Who even am I.

Sorry for this irrelevant stream of consciousness.

Someone write it in a song, because I cannot.

I hate November.

[for the ones we’ve loved too much + lost too soon, all because of a past love that’s clouding their mind. oh, november and your way of breaking all our hearts]

how can i find my home
in the darkness of your mind
you talk of her too much to let it go easy
Will you Ever let go long enough to wAnt me?

oh, because i saw, bLack as a night, ocean’s abyss of her in your eyes
i saW it when you looked through me that night
i heArd it in the whispers between Your teeth,
heard it in the way you tried to Say that you loved me
heard it in your leaving, you were packing up your things
i should have known you didn’t want me
you never had room to want me

a FlickEring of innocEnt Light,
but a fire never burns all the way through a windy night
i can’t help but notice that you LOok so NicE
oh, and november’s chiLling my spine with his call

oh, because i saw, black as a night, ocean’s abYss of her In your eyes
i saw it wheN you looked Through me tHat night
i hEard it in the whispers between your teeth,
heArd it in the way yoU Tried to say that yoU loved me
heard it in your leaving, you were packing up your things
i should have known you didn’t want Me
you never had room to waNt me

(all of the lyrics, including capitalization choices, taken directly from Liza Anne’s website).

Doing it Wrong

Last night I had a total breakdown. It was a long time coming, but I’ve been super up and down the past couple of weeks (as if you couldn’t tell) and last night I just lost it.

I realized that for the past 6-8 months, possibly more, possibly the past 5 years…oh geez, possibly the past TEN years, I have been investing in the wrong things. Okay let’s stop with the global look at disappointing things in my life and just talk about the past few months.

My friend who called off her wedding and had an eating disorder return. I invested so many tears, so many hours of counseling, only for her to suddenly decide everything is fine and now the wedding is back on. I can’t even talk to her right now because I have so little respect for what she is doing to her fiance. I haven’t heard from her since the text that said “thanks for being my friend, the wedding is back on.”

My friend who sat on my couch suicidal for a week, for whom I missed days of work and arranged inpatient care and spoke with her family and cried with for days…months. She told me to go fuck myself once she started feeling better. I mean, borderlines will be borderline, but still.

My friend who called me hyperventilating five weeks before her wedding. My best friend, with whom I’d spoken nearly every day for the past eight months, who visits regularly and who is, did I mention, my best friend. The one for whom I worried so much that I didn’t sleep for days and had heart palpitations over and over. I haven’t heard from her since her wedding day, the one where I stood by her knowing that she meant none of the promises she made. I can’t decide if I did something wrong or if she’s ashamed. I’m obsessing nearly every minute over the week that I was with her and what I could have done so wrong for her to go a month without reaching out to me, or answering my texts and calls.

My doctor.

My friend that can’t be my friend.

My ex that I love who loves me.

I tended a lot of concrete that I thought was soil. And I’m getting the blooms one would expect from such pointless toil. I realize that this is a common problem when you’re everyone’s social worker…but man. It sucks.

Glad to finally realize why I’ve been so upset recently. I’ve known that I felt abandoned. I hadn’t realized how used I feel.

Grateful for some patients who are doing much better today. I may owe my alma mater a million dollars, but for now it seems like the only worthy investment I’ve made.

Yesterday was weird.

An ex texted me out of nowhere to let me know his wife cheated on him.

A friend made a move he never should have tried.

Another ex got jealous.

And a friend broke up with me. Via email. And it hurts.

 

Grateful he didn’t “ghost” like I have so many times to so many others. But man. My heart hurts.

 

Friendship. It’s weird.

I’m sure days have gone by when I didn’t think of you.

I just don’t remember any of them.

because of you.

I never cared about the Wendy’s lady.

I mean,

she doesn’t look like Wendy.

But you.

You hate her. She drives you crazy.

And now,

I can’t.

I can’t with the Wendy’s lady.

And it’s all

because of you.

I’m sad today.

I know that it’s okay to be sad, to have times where you just don’t feel good.  As I’ve mentioned before, though, I don’t trust happiness in the slightest, and I’m much more prone to believing the personalized critic that follows me around during times of discontent.  What I’m saying is that when I get sad…I’m afraid I’m going to stay sad.  And that I’m a sad person. And what is wrong with me.

Everyone has bad days.  And all of us, not just the ones with an Axis I diagnosis, experience emotional dysregulation in our daily lives.  When we’re a little too angry at the person that cut us off, a little too teary eyed at an adorable dog food commercial, or a little too excited about the many uses of WD-40.  (Look it up.  It’s exciting, okay?)

So what I’m learning as I study CBT and DBT is that I have choices and agency over my thoughts/feelings/behaviors.  And the three of those things, while interconnected, are not the same thing.  If I can distinguish between them and name my feelings and change my thoughts — well then, I can start reacting in different ways and avoid [some of] this unexplained sadness!

:/

Much harder than it sounds, I guess.  But it’s totally working.  Already I’ve started a tape in my head about “goal-directed behavior” versus “mood-directed behavior.”  Essentially, many times we make our next moves in a day, in life, based on how we feel.  I want to exercise, but I don’t feel like it so I don’t.  I want to be more spiritual, but I don’t feel like going to church today so I don’t.  Sometimes it’s okay to “not feel like it,” but if you’re like me it’s easy for every behavior to become mood-directed.  With bipolar I have to learn to define my goals and perform tasks because they are in the best interest of my goals, dreams, life-vision, even if I don’t feel like it.  It’s a basic concept some people inherently understand: I want to be thinner so I exercise, I want to rest this weekend so I write my papers today.  For me it seems so much more difficult than that! My moods change so drastically, even while I am medicated, that I can get exhausted from an emotional standpoint before I’ve even done anything.

But this “goal-directed” thing has stuck with me.  I wanted to nap so badly yesterday and today, but I realize that, even though it’s the only thing I felt like doing, that I really wanted to end my day at an earlier time, get a full night’s rest, and feel productive.  I wanted to complete my to-do list for the day.  I want to stop needing a nap in the afternoons every day so that I will feel more social and creative in the evenings.

So I didn’t.  Nap, that is.  I walked around, I didn’t sit down when I got home, and I headed out to run errands rather than sleep.  I made something. I started a project.  And now I’m blogging.  All because I’m telling myself to not let my [stupid] moods dictate my behavior.  Because I’m constantly saying it to myself, catching myself, reminding myself.

It’s CBT and DBT in action: mindfulness, identifying automatic thoughts, using behavior to change your feelings, feelings to change your thoughts, etc.  It’s difficult, and it’s a tiny step.  But that’s the only way we change – in the small steps.

And look.  I’m already feeling better.  Now that I think about it…I’m not even sad anymore.