I’ve been dealing with the worst depression spike I’d had in years these last few days. I don’t think I’ve felt this bad since I was twenty-four and I was bad enough at that point in my life that maybe two people in all of existence know how poorly I was doing back then. Because that’s what always happened when I get this bad. I got quiet. I stopped talking to people. I stopped writing about it in any quantitative manner and just wrote in generalities, if I wrote about it all (back in those days, I mostly just stopped writing entirely). I would never bring up how badly I was doing out of a desire to avoid worrying people, to avoid taking up their mental space, and because I’m aware that these kinds of waves, the ones that show up and worsen without any kind of trigger, will last until they’ve over and nothing I can do but pass the time will bring them to an end. Which isn’t to say that I had no ability to influence my well-being or the frequency of those kinds of events. Over the years of my adult life, I’ve identified a few factors that contribute to these ways and worked to prevent those factors from coming into play. That’s why I almost never drink and avoid drinking to excess if I ever do. I go on regular walks for a mixture of fresh air, exercise, and sunlight, all of which contribute to a base level of well-being. I regularly exercise in order to create a firm basis for my daily routines, hone my discipline, and get myself feeling physically embodied. I also try to sleep at least six hours a night. If that last one didn’t illustrate the problem I’m having right now, don’t worry since I’m about to explain it in detail.

Over the past year and a half, almost all of my routines have fallen apart. The only habit I’ve maintained over these years of stress, exhaustion, burnout, and pain has been the lack of drinking and that was largely enforced by the fact that the medication that caused me so much pain forbade drinking and I’ve been too miserable since getting off that medication to risk drinking. I stopped walking at noon every day because I’d get a sunburn at UV rating 2. I stopped walking as frequently because I was in too much pain to handle a thirty-minute, mile-and-a-half walk every day. I stopped getting enough sleep every night because I was in too much pain from laying in bed to stay there for more then three or four hours at a time. I stopped working out for the same reason. I stopped stretching every morning because I was exhausted from not sleeping enough. I ever stopped keeping up my routines every day because I was too tired to focus and now I can barely even keep this blog updated for the same reason. Every single thing I’ve built over the last five years to help manage my mental health and physical well-being has been picked apart by a mixture of exhaustion and pain over the last year and a half and all I can really say in positive terms about my life is at least I’ve managed to avoid picking up any particular vices.

All of this contributes to my worsening well-being these days. I’m changing the dose of the antidepressant I’m on in hopes of finding something that works, but it means accepting potentially long periods of feeling miserable while I wait for my brain chemistry to balance out again, all while battling feeling tired constantly no matter how much I sleep and feeling absolutely miserably exhausted on the nights that I just can’t sleep enough. I have traded the misery of constant pain and a poorly functioning body for the misery of constant exhaustion and sleepiness, which means all of my attempts to fix my habits have failed. I was already struggling to get out of bed because of my depression (which is part of the reason I decided to try the medication route this year), but now that I’m always tired no matter how much I sleep, it takes a long time no matter what. Which means I’m starting work late and that’s even with skipping most of my morning routine, which means staying up late so I can get some relaxation in, which means I’m getting less sleep, which leaves me more tired than ever… A vicious cycle even a week of really good sleep couldn’t fix because I was still exhausted, no matter what. Even when I do get into the office, I still have so little energy and focus that I can barely do the parts of my job that I NEED to do, let along make the time in my day for a little extra writing or a nice long walk. I’m trapped in this cycle and all I can do is wait until I’ve finished trying out this medication and don’t feel so perpetually tired.

Which means that, this week, as I’m struggling to actually do anything at all and taking a mental health day to help recover from the horrible start to this week that I’ve had (with unfortunately mixed results, given that this post is going up in the evening), it is all I can do to keep up a conversation with my closest friends and loved ones. Which sucks, because a significant part of me wants nothing more than to hear their voices and talk with them, while another significant part of me wants nothing more than to sit in inactive silence until this has passed. I mean, it’s not a problem of whether or not I feel like I could reach out or take up people’s emotional space, but a problem of whether or not that would actually accomplish anything. After all, if the positive and negative impacts of reaching out will cancel out, why not just save the energy I’d have spent on trying to make a conversation happen and just be quiet by myself instead? Well, the easy answer to that question is that at least spending the energy means I’ll get out of my own head a little bit, and that’s always useful. I mean, I might not feel better, but at least all the noise in my head won’t be me endlessly looping the debate of whether or not I should speak up at all. That gets real old after the first twenty-four hours. So I spoke to my friends about it as much as I could (which is not much) and now I’ve written about it today, so hopefully that’ll get it out of my head for at least a little bit. Hopefully. We’ll see. You’ll know it worked if I don’t write about being depressed again this week.