Wave

Between Now and “Normal”

Chris Leave a comment

Sometimes, the day after a tidal wave is horrible. My depression is still worse than normal, but all of the turmoil and the fight against nothingness has ended, leaving me empty and without something I can push back against. In a classic case of “the grass is always greener,” today I feel like I’d rather have the giant wave of exhaustion and apathy that was yesterday than the emptiness and casual disinclination toward everything that is today. I’m pretty sure that’s wrong. At least today, I don’t worry about getting crushed by the wave as it passes or ripped away from my anchor. Today, I don’t even worry.

Today, I don’t anything. I have a hard time telling if I’m hungry or tired, if I care about anything going on at any point, if I want to reach out to my support network, and so on. I don’t really care about anything but the things I know I’m supposed and even then, I only care because the reasoning part of my mind says I should. Nothing seems interesting and, while I know I’m capable of getting things done, I feel like there’s little reason to try to do so.

While that might sound a lot like apathy, I feel like the distinction is important. Apathy, to me, implies a certain amount of lethargy. It requires me to know I don’t want to do anything and to not care that I don’t want to do anything. It also almost always includes not feeling the need to be doing something. Today’s “casual disinclination” includes the lack of a desire to do anything, but mostly because nothing sounds interesting. I still feel the need to be doing something and that doing something would be beneficial to my well-being.

The best counters I’ve found to this include having routine tasks to do that easily flow into other things. Laundry is a good one, while making dinner or cleaning the kitchen also works very well. Turning on a favorite movie or TV show helps, as does reading in general. Video games don’t usually work because they often include performing a series of tasks or completing various objectives. Reading is the most solid of them, so long as I’ve actually got a book I’m currently reading and enjoying. If I’m not in the middle of anything, starting a new book is hard and old favorites all feel boring. The only way through this, so far as I’ve found, is to go out and buy a bunch of books because I’ll definitely start reading at least one of them.

Cleaning works the most frequently because it feels useful and doesn’t take any emotional or mental investment on my part, so I can get physically active while letting my mind drift. Then I can switch to something that requires mental effort as well, gradually moving myself up from being entirely disengaged to being completely engaged. Eventually, I’ll be doing things and it’ll be easy to continue doing things.

Ultimately, when I’m in a mood like this, that’s the goal. Once I get moving on something, if I can get myself one hundred percent involved with it, I’ll break through the casual disinclination and be able to move past the lingering feelings of depression from the recent wave. Waiting always works, but it can take a lot of time and leaves me a little more prone to rough seas until I’ve finally gotten free.

One method I don’t use much is getting other people to help me through it. If they’re the right kind of person, know what they’re doing, and are willing to help pull me out of the lingering traces of my latest episode of heavy depression, I’ll be fine. If they’re not all three of those things, chances are very good that I’ll just sink into a foul mood or another big wave still appear on the horizon.

A lot of the time, whatever I try to do winds up just being a way to help me get through the time between when the crest of the wave passes and when I start to feel like I’m back to my “normal.” Which is also fine. That’s all I really need: a way to get through the hours between now and “normal” without wallowing in negative emotions or feeling helpless. Either one of those things will turn right into an internal storm and those ones are always horrible.

Right now, that means updating my blog with what turns out to be literally the only thing I can think about, focusing on what I’m going to make for dinner, and trying to make some kind of plans for the weekend so I’ve got something to look forward to. Something to put up on the horizon to encourage me to want to work through this current phase of disinclination and emptiness. Maybe I’ll even write more tonight, since I’ve already done the work of getting myself to a place where I can write at all.

Whatever I do, I’m pretty sure I should feel mostly back to normal by tomorrow or Friday. That’ll be nice.

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Just Another Wave in the Ocean

Chris 1 Comment

Some days, as I wake, I do not turn off my alarm. The alarm on my phone marks the passing minutes by softly playing the song a once-friend recorded for me when I needed it more than I had words to say. It is a soft song, something that speaks to me of the process of healing, of starting anew, and of learning to forgive yourself for what you perceive to be your greatest failure. Unlike many songs about healing, or even most of the way we talk about healing, this song does not pretend that things will be like they were before. This song promises healing, but it also promises change. It promises that things will be different than they were and that whatever that difference is will be better than what you feel right now.

I don’t know what this song would say to you. I have a long history with this song and I’m willing to admit that at least some amount of its speech is projection. I need this song to say these things to me and, since it has said so many other, similar things to me before, I hear it say them now. So I let it play and I listen as it cycles through itself, restarting automatically because my phone is committed to ensuring I’m awake. It has no way of knowing that I was already awake before it began. It has no way of knowing that I’ve been awake for half an hour already, but have not been able to make myself get out of bed or even move until the song begins to play.

After a while, I roll over in my bed. My eyes, adjusted to the shy light of my phone as the alarm sounds, are stabbed by the bright white screen that flashes when I tell my phone to wait a bit before reminding me to wake up again. Five minutes later, it does so. I have not moved.

This time, before I temporarily silence it, I sit up in bed. The next time, I pull back the sheets. First one foot, then the other. I shuffle to the edge of the bed. Finally, after my phone starts singing for the seventh time, I stand. I tell my phone I no longer need the reminders and make my way through my morning routine as quickly as possible. I feel like someone running downhill. If I stop, if I stumble or trip, I will fall and roll to the bottom. If I can keep my feet moving, if I run quickly enough, I can stay upright.

Even when I sit to put on my socks, I still feel like I’m running. The edge of my bed folds underneath me as I lift up one of my feet for easy access, and I feel like all it would take to pitch me forward is a little shift in my balance. The first time I have to stop, when the feeling of running down hill ends, is when I put on my shoes. I have to sit in a chair or on the edge of the couch, and all of those seats are secure. As long as I keep moving, though, I’m fine. But if I stop, if I even pause for longer than a heartbeat, I might not make it back to my feet again.

This moment is dangerous. There is nothing to do in the seat. I should leave it fairly quickly, to get into my car and go to work, but sometimes I can’t. Sometimes, I stay there until something happens to remind me that there is more to do. A nudge from the cat, one of my roommates coming down the stairs, a notification on my phone, anything. I will sit there until one of those happens and not realize how much time is passing until afterwards. An impossible moment where I am nothing until I am reminded, somehow, that I am something. It is like falling asleep, but without losing all awareness. Any outside stimulation brings me back, full awareness and consciousness crashing back into me. Painful, but welcome.

The day continues the same way. So long as I am moving, so long as something is happening near me, I am here. If I fall silent, if I grow still, it creeps up, washes over me, and I am gone.

These days are not storms, nor are they whirlpools. There is no OCD involved and very little anxiety, only enough to worry about how far down I’m going to go this time. Days like these are wavy days. Sometimes they’re choppy water, with small episodes spread throughout the day, and sometimes they’re a single tidal wave that threatens to crush me beneath its weight. The tidal waves are horrible. I know they’re coming before they appear on the horizon and all I can do once they’re there is to wait until they hit. Do my best to make it back to the surface after I’ve been pushed down and spun around until I almost don’t know which way is up. Wouldn’t know which way is up without all the practice I’ve had making it back to the surface.

So far, I haven’t found anything I can do with these feelings other than wait for them to pass. If I get too focused on them, my anxiety builds and my OCD starts acting up, threatening to turn the tidal wave into a full hurricane. I try to treat them like just another day while continuously denying the urge to let myself sink. To let myself stay in my bed or on my chair or to sleep at my desk. I do not give in to the desire to stay still because I am afraid that saying yes now will make it easier in the future. Losing entire days to tidal waves and choppy seas is not something I want. There’s always the risk that I’d wind up getting caught up and carried along by the waves, stuck until I finally manage to break free of the lethargy and exhaustion that tempts me to stay still.

It is sorely tempting to give in. One of the features of my depression is a desire to rest, an unending exhaustion that is beyond mental or emotional or physical exhaustion. Existential exhaustion that makes me wish I could just cease to be for a few days, until the waves have passed. It makes a convincing argument that I could use a day off of work or a quiet day to myself, but I know the day would be gone before I knew it, vanished in the haze of unawareness. I do not want that.

So I deny myself. I keep moving. I do one thing after another until I am out of things to do and then I invent more. I keep pushing until the exhaustion fades, the waves recede, and I can get back to just floating again. After all that, floating feels wonderful and I find myself almost grateful for the normal, every-day version of my depression that makes me less sociable and disinclined to take risks. Anything is better than the constant invitation to feel nothing.

This is my depression at its worst. I don’t have many days like this, thankfully, but today it is taking everything I’ve got to deal with the tidal wave headed my way. Tomorrow will be better, thankfully. They’re awful, but they never last long.