Late October Monte Report

The most notable thing since my last post is that I ran out of my new medication. When I last saw my doctor I miscalculated how much I had left and so I ended up going about five days without it while I tried to arrange with my doctor to get a new prescription. Until that happened I wasn't too thrilled with the new medication. Things weren't going as perfectly as I would have liked, and so I was ready to conclude that it wasn't going to do the trick for me. But then I ran out, and things got SO much worse! Those five days without the new medication were quite miserable, despite the fact that I was keeping myself fairly busy with chores and errands and lunch dates etcetera. At certain points I just couldn't stop crying, and I ended up sleeping an inordinate amount, just to escape. Now that I'm back on the new medication, I can see that it DOES make a significant difference: my attitude, my self confidence and my outlook for the future are greatly improved. Things still aren't as perfect as I would like them to be, but they probably never will be. Right now it's a Friday night and I'm faced with the prospect of keeping myself occupied over an entire weekend with very little in the way of plans already made. Last weekend that would have been a devastating prospect. This weekend it's only mildly intimidating.

After I whined in my last blog entry about my difficulties in making plans with other people I ended up challenging myself to do just that -- and I was successful at making quite a few plans with various people. Besides being fun spending time with others, it felt good to be putting myself out there in terms of risking rejection, and I feel inspired to keep pushing at the borders of my comfort zone.

One challenge that I'm not facing up to very well is that of getting myself moved in. I have no desire to unpack anything, nor to begin the necessary work of purging my belongings. I simply have too much stuff, and though I want to live a more simple, uncluttered life, I am loathe to go through the motions of uncluttering my life. And so I'm living amongst stacks of boxes and empty bookcases. And I've got a storage locker filled to the ceiling with yet more boxes. Oy.

Anyway, things are generally looking brighter than they were ten days ago, and hopefully they'll keep looking that way.

Mid-October Monte Report

As you've probably heard, I didn't become homeless after all. I'm living in a small (475 sq ft) mobile home in a small park owned by my former landlord, just a hundred yards from where I was living before. And I'm now back at work, doing my same job as before. I'm REALLY excited about being back at work, and I received a very warm welcome back from everyone. I didn't realize how much I'd missed it, both the work and the people.

I've only worked two days so far, but both days I dreaded the end of the workday and the subsequent return to my life outside of work. Likewise I'm dreading the coming weekend. I seem to have completely lost the ability to entertain myself, and I also lack the motivation to deal with all the unpacking that there is still left to do. This doesn't bode well. I need to have a fulfilling life both at work and away from work. Unfortunately I've fallen into a familiar rut where it's hard for me to reach out to anyone to initiate outside-of-work socializing. Plus I'm reluctant to accept invitations from others, out of a fear of who-knows-what. So I'm feeling isolated and lonely outside of work. While at work, though, I've so far been able to "fake it" and keep a smile on my face. That's my goal at work, to "fake it so's I'll make it" -- to keep my depression from expressing itself at work. I used to do it all the time, so I've had plenty of practice. But then again, I hid it so well that it ultimately landed me in the hospital for two months back in '03. Hopefully I've learned a thing or two since then, and can keep this from evolving into a landslide back into the major gloom & doom.

As for the new medication that I'm on, I'm inclined to think it's not going to cut it after all. It's probably a bit too early to say for sure, but it's supposed to be a fast-acting drug. At first I thought it was helping, but I suppose that that might have simply been an adrenalin rush resulting from my return to California. In any case, I'm scheduled to see my doctor in a couple weeks, and we can assess it at that point.

Thanks to everyone for their warm wishes and encouragement regarding my decision to return to California. It's helped a lot . . .

Early October Monte Report

The whole purpose of the Monte Report is to keep people honestly informed on how I'm doing. And to be honest, I'm doing very poorly. Yesterday, strangely enough, I was fine. Today, though, I'm near rock bottom, and it's all I can do to keep from hurting myself. This is the worst I've felt since the day in May last year when I last cut myself. I'm worried about being able to afford the rent on my new apartment, and I'm worried about how I'll perform when I go back to work. The former depends upon my success at the latter, and the thought that keeps coursing through my mind is "I'll simply kill myself if it doesn't work out." And then I start wondering whether I should even bother trying. "Why put my family and friends through the trouble of witnessing me flail for another few months? Why not just kill myself today and get it over with?" And it's really difficult for me to counter that argument.

I don't know what else to say. I could list all the things that have gone wrong over the past couple days, just to help you feel sorry for me. Like the fact that I got squeezed into a too-expensive apartment at the last minute because some stranger changed their mind about moving out of the apartment that I was supposed to end up in. Or the fact that one of my crowns fell out on Sunday and it turns out my dentist is on vacation. Or the birds that I killed on the highway, including the sparrow that got so tangled in my windshield wipers that I had to forcibly wrench it to get it off. Or the fact that I'm leaving on my tenth round trip to Washington this year at four in the morning tomorrow, a fifteen hour non-stop trip. Or the fact that I'm faced with the overwhelming task of moving way too much crap into my new apartment. These are all things I should be able to cope with, but which accumulate in my brain to make me go haywire. And so I'm about to drug myself with sleeping pills so that I can at least be asleep and not be depressed for a few hours.