A Whiney Year End Monte Report

Well, I must say that 2006 was a pretty sucky year for me, and I'm not at all disappointed that it's ending. My issues with depression and suicidal rumination have persisted relentlessly over the past few months, trending towards "worse" rather than "better." Changes in my medication regimen seem not to be helping at all. To be blunt, my "problem" is that I'm having trouble coming up with a fool-proof suicide plan. I learned in May that although I'm capable of cutting myself enough to get handcuffed and taken away in a police car, I also learned that I don't have what it takes to really cut myself enough to bleed to death. So, what's a suicidal perfectionist to do when they can't conjure up a suicide plan that is guaranteed to work? Well, what I do is lay in bed for hours and hours and hours; neglect my laundry and dirty dishes; and try my best to show up for work as scheduled and work hard while I'm there. It's certainly plausible that I would spend all of my time in bed if I wasn't working, but I wonder if maybe my job is causing more hurt than help. I am certainly surrounded by extraordinarily caring people at work - a circumstance that is not likely to be easily found at another job. But the sad fact is that the organization I work for (like all organizations, I suppose) also suffers its own version of dysfunctionality, and it just so happens that the sort of dysfunction I encounter at work is of a sort that easily triggers my depression. And worst of all is the fact that for several years now my greatest strengths at work have been put on the back burner because of that dysfunctionality: the organization is terrified of spending money in order to make money, and as a result the strengths I bring to my job no longer boost my self-esteem like they once did. Back when the organization understood that it's worth it to have me pursue more complicated projects rather than just working on the front line all the time, we had a win-win situation going. Now, the opposite is the case: because my strengths are disregarded, I am left to wonder if I bring anything special to my job anymore. And if not, I'm left with the conclusion that this is "just a job" and I'm "just another employee." I long ago got used to being an outstanding employee. Now that I'm not, I'm wondering if I'd be better off moving away. That decision, though, may ultimately get made for me: at some point in 2007, my disability benefits will run out, and if I am unable to resume full-time work, then I'll have no choice but to move away, tagging along with my parents as they head north into retirement.

In the meantime, I expect I'll continue to slog through life, enjoying very little of it. Though I do try and engage myself in fun activities, it's extraordinarily difficult to do so, whether it involves time with friends/family or time spent solo on my hobbies.
I'm suffering from that "bug in a cup" syndrome: I can't see anything around me except the walls of the cup, and though I know intuitively that there are great things outside of my cup, I can't see them because I keep sliding back to the bottom every time I try and climb out. And I'm tired of trying to climb out. So, instead, I sit at the bottom of my cup, feeling sorry for myself, hoping someone will just do me a favor by filling the cup full of scalding hot coffee.

Mid-December Monte Report

I suppose that my meds are having some positive impact. The Abilify is meant to help squeeze the lows of depression and the highs of mania back towards a more normal state of mind. Though I don't really experience clinical mania, it does seem as though the lows aren't as low as they have tended to be. I still spend an inordinate amount of time each day feeling like crap, curled up in a ball on my bed, binging on ice cream or popcorn, and failing to accomplish anything productive. And my anxiety level at work has reached a point where we have officially reduced my hours, per a note from my doctor, to a typical schedule of about 25 hours/week -- most likely in the form of two full days and two half days, but with lots of wiggle room for those weeks when I feel up to a longer schedule. It's WAY too early to tell if it is helping, but some signs point towards "yes" -- the fact that my house is the tidiest it's been in a year for one, though that is perhaps more related to the fact that a friend came over last weekend to help me decorate my Christmas Tree (a live Coast Redwood tree!) before we headed off together to the holiday party at work. (There's not much to say about the party, other than that I was very anxious at it -- even with a double dose of Xanax -- and that there seemed to be too many people there that I didn't know, and the karaoke selection sucked so bad that I ended up leaving long before the party ended. But, as I've mentioned to several people, at least now I don't have to wonder if I would have had fun had I gone -- I know for sure the answer to that question.) To some extent, however, I'm keeping myself busy with some fun hobbies -- stamp collecting for one, and also studying about the wildlife of central Washington where my parents will be moving in a few months. (Speaking of which, Mom is still doing pretty good last I spoke with her, tolerating the chemo better than most people, or so it seems to me. Her hair is gone, of course, but the nausea and queasiness is under control.)

That's all for now . . .

Early December Monte Report

I'm going through a pretty bumpy time this past week or so. The desire to cease to exist plagues my thoughts much of the time. I don't think I'm in danger of actually (or, at least, intentionally) injuring myself, but when I get this way I tend to start popping pills until I knock myself out. One day this week I hit the extreme end of that sort of thing when I left work after just two hours and then ended up sleeping for 15 straight hours -- and probably would have slept more had my alarm not gone off. The vague silver lining is that it doesn't feel like I'm being just randomly hit with depressive symptoms, since that tends to reinforce the feelings of hopelessness in a big way. Instead, I've got a pretty good sense of what's triggering me. At the bookstore yesterday, for example, I was repeatedly set off merely by seeing individual books that dealt with certain topics, leading to a practically instantaneous cascade of associations in my head, and ending in a spot where I was left feeling inadequate, inferior and worthless. I wish I could recall a specific example, because the next step in the process of course is to challenge these negative and irrational "cognitions" in some way.

This coming week I expect that my boss and I will work together on making a significant reduction in the hours that I'm working, and hopefully that will provide me with the downtime necessary to rebuild my energy for fighting these irrational thoughts.

In the meantime, however, I feel stuck in a depressed and suicidal space that I can't escape from.

Today's bird of the day is the Labrador Duck, former denizen of the North Atlantic coast. Extinct as of 1871. (Painting by Louis Agassiz Fuertes.)