I hadn't been in my doc's office five minutes today when she suggested that I go back onto anti-depressants immediately. "I haven't seen you like this in a long time," she said. "And since nothing happened to precipitate it, it sounds like this is just the depression talking--something biochemical, which can be fixed."
I'm not thrilled about it, of course--the side-effects are Not My Favorite Things--but I'd take the weird dreams and the muscle twitches any day, over feeling like this. I was in the grocery store today, and the background music started playing a Gin Blossoms song with significance to me from long ago--normally I could have handled it, but I pretty much had to stand there for three-and-a-half minutes staring as hard as I could at the orange juice, just to keep it together. I'm usually waaay more resilient than that.
It was a beautiful day today--sunny and "warm" ("warm" by Chicago standards--a whole balmy 40 degrees!) so after I dropped off the I-Go car, I went for a walk around the neighborhood and stopped to get myself a sandwich. I'm trying to like this neighborhood--there's certainly nothing to object to about it, other than the appalling lack of grocery stores--but I don't feel the level of attachment to it that I felt about West Garfield Park, or even Rogers Park, for that matter. I actually feel less-safe here than I felt in the 'hood; I was safe there because I was different, because any attempt to mess with me would have brought the wrong kind of attention, but here...here, I'm just another probable University student, or wealthy Hyde Park homeowner. Just another white person, not to put too fine a point on things, and it's been my experience that where people of widely-disparate socioeconomic status live in close proximity, it's much more likely for the tensions to erupt. In the 'hood I was "the white lady", true enough, but it was obvious from the way I was living that I wasn't wealthy by any means...although "poor" for me was "well above average" for most of the neighborhood. I always felt bad about that, especially since it wasn't because of anything I'd DONE differently--it was because of how I was born, who I was born to, and what my parents were able to do for me. If I'd had anything to do with it, maybe I would have felt better about it.
But back to the neighborhood...It's a beautiful place. Come spring, when I can explore more, I'll probably learn to love it. But right now, with ice and slush and doggie-poopsicles everywhere, gray old snow and construction and bare trees...I think you have to love a place already, to find beauty in it during the last few weeks of winter.
I had a bit of an epiphany last night. (I realize that any epiphany experienced in the midst of an episode of depression is....suspect, to say the least, but this one makes sense anyway.) Part of my unhappiness, even when I was much younger, has been the constant awareness that in the end, there's not going to be much left from my life when I die. The things that mean everything to me will not mean much to anyone else; even my closest friends will only understand bits and pieces of it. Somehow I've insulated my life so completely that there is literally no one who knows everything about me; I get the sense that that isn't the case for most people. I feel like most people have one or two friends who could, in case of emergency, know who to call and what all the names in their little phone-book meant--or even just basic stuff like how they spend their time, what an average day is like, what shows they'll stay home to watch. I don't have people like that in my life. A lot of it is because of distance; Firefly, who knew me the best when we were younger (and probably still does) lives far away, and I realized the other day it's now been five years since I've seen her last! And Debbi, who lives close by and who I've known longer than anyone, has a lot of friends; besides that, there was a gap of about five years where we didn't talk at all, from the end of college til I was about 25, thanks to some misunderstandings and miscommunications.
Most of all, though, I think it comes from the way I've lived my life. The last new friend I've made is Tim; he and LJ are the only people I've kept in contact with of all the people I've met since college. That's not entirely been my fault; there have been some people I've tried to keep up with, like the Brit, or Stella; they just haven't wanted to keep in touch with me, for whatever reason. But mostly, it's just been a case of not making any new friends, and I think I understand why, a little better.
I have been living my life not with the intent of enjoying myself, or accomplishing something great, or creating something--I have been living my life with the intent of staying out of trouble. I'm sure the roots of this are back in my childhood, but I can pin down the adult manifestation of this to the point at which I moved back home, after JP died and my addiction was first exposed. From that point on, my relationship with my mom has been a subtle but constant rebuke--I don't know how much of it is her doing and how much of it is mine--to everything I believed while I was with JP. (I realize also that the things I believed with him were obviously there inside me to begin with, or else he wouldn't have recognized them--they wouldn't have been there to BE recognized. But since our relationship was the thing that enabled me to really express them for the first time, that's the point of reference I use.) Since I moved home, since she took me back after all my opposition and rejection of her values, somehow the message has been sent and received: See? This is what happens when you try to stand out. This is what happens when you try to be "different". (Ignored: the fact that I wasn't "trying to be different"; I was being me, and making some poor decisions at the same time.) Ever since then I've been trying to keep out of "trouble"--"trouble" in this context meaning "any situation that results in drama, conflict, opposition, tumult, or anything other than perfect calm". Well, last night I realized: the more "trouble" I stay out of, the less I actually DO. In trying to avoid getting hurt, in trying to avoid drawing any attention to myself, in trying to avoid conflict and drama and inconvenience, the way I'm "supposed" to...in trying to do all those things, I'm basically doing exactly NOTHING. I have no conflict or emotional upheaval, true--I also have no happiness, no activity, no accomplishment-- no point to living, basically.
I don't know how I'm going to handle that knowledge, what I'm going to do about it. Right at the moment, I think I'm going to wait and see what the meds do, and try to force myself to do the things I "want" to do, but have no motivation toward (the main manifestation of this depression right now--I have a million things that I want to do, and no impetus to move in that direction). And I'm going to try to keep this new understanding in the front of my mind--that I have to stop trying to make up for being myself--something that wasn't wrong for me to do in the first place. I've largely been able to accept my own mistakes--I'd say "forgive" but I'm not sure I've done that, entirely--but I have this pervasive sense that my mom, at least, has forgiven them, maybe, but still hasn't accepted them. I have to stop living as though that's MY problem.
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