Thanks...

...Eatmisery, for your concern.

I'm fine, mostly. I would say the depression is...maybe not abating, but settling down somewhat. Last week was the worst it's been in a while, but since about Friday afternoon I've noticed an uptick in my basic functionality. Which is good, because I wasn't getting a damn thing done; I took two sick days and just laid around in front of the TV in my pajamas, trying to rationalize my total inertia. At first I wondered if this isn't the fallout from the change in medicine/dosage; then I came up with a more-logical explanation. But whatever it is, I did not enjoy it. At all.

Friday night I sorta got a "second wind", and chugged off to work on Saturday morning; from the time I got home after work, I've been scurrying around nearly nonstop, working on projects for Mom both at her house (digging up the extremely-dead front lawn, putting down poison against the grubs that killed it, and then re-seeding) and here at home (scanning and transcribing some old family letters from the 1920's). The nice thing about THAT project is that it got me a brand-new all-in-one printer-scanner-copier, because mine gave up the ghost midway through the project and Mom is really, REALLY anxious for me to finish with the letters, and so she agreed to go halfsies with me on a new one. I appreciated the hell out of that; more so because...

Well, this is why I think I'm depressed.

My finances have improved GREATLY in the past few months. I still have a crapload of old bills to pay, but I can pay all the current ones and then some. And when my tax check came, I thought "Yay!" and started thinking of all the things I could buy...

...except for a promise I made about 18 months ago.

See, Tim has an old friend, Brandon. They've been friends since grade school, and they're pretty close. Brandon's getting married next month. Well, back in the fall of 2006, when Tim moved in with me after I got fired, he told me about Brandon's wedding and how honored he was that Brandon had asked him to be best man...but that he was really nervous, because the wedding was in Las Vegas and Tim wasn't sure if he was going to be able to afford to go, and he didn't want to accept and tell Brandon he could be in the wedding if he wasn't one hundred percent sure he could make it. "I don't want to let him down," Tim said. So, being me, I said, "Don't worry about it, Tim--if you need some help getting to the wedding when the time comes, I'll help you out." When I said it, I figured Well, he knows a year and a half in advance that this is an expense that's coming up; he'll make SOME kind of provisions for it. He has time to get a job and save up at least MOST of what it will cost, and if he needs me to throw in a couple hundred at the end, well, I can do that for him--after all, he's my friend.

And he is. But he is also, and I didn't know this when I made the promise, a different Tim than the one I knew when we first lived together. Being homeless did something to him, I swear, and the former sense of thrift and responsibility and planning ahead has been replaced by this day-to-day survival instinct which sees no time but right this minute. So eighteen months after making this promise, last Monday I found myself typing my payment info into the checkout screen on Orbitz--for just over $800.

This didn't eat up all my money. But it ate up every bit of my emotional reserves.

He wants me to go to Vegas with him. He claims it's because he feels bad about the fact that I'm spending my money to send HIM, but I'M not going myself. (If I was picking places to go, Vegas wouldn't be on the list, I don't think.) He also says he wants someone to "keep an eye" on him; this is so he can give a clean report to Squeaky, methinks.

I -could- afford it--just barely, but I could. But if I DID go, I would be going out of guilt.

Now I ask you: What kind of damn person feels GUILTY because she can't do something she doesn't want to do, for someone on whom she's already just spent more money than she's nearly-EVER spent on herSELF--and she's not even romantically involved with him, or even INTERESTED like that??? (Wait--I think I can answer this one: a DOORMAT. THAT's what kind of person.)

Well, all that crap rattling around the brainpan, coupled with the tweak in the meds, plus finding out that Debbi (my oldest friend) is apparently going to marry this guy who everyone in her life seems to think is beneath her--I can't say, since I've only met him once and other than being one of those disgustingly clingy, slobbery kind of couples I'm always secretly jealous of, I can't say anything bad about him, but he's definitely NOT the dream guy she's described in the past--anyway, she's supposedly marrying him next spring, and between hoping SHE'S going to be all right, and worrying about how I'm going to tell Tim I'm not going to Vegas with him, and wondering if that's the right thing to do, and dealing with Mom which has been a WHOOOOOLE nother story....

I've been a little overwhelmed, is what I'm saying, I guess. I'm certainly trying. Trying to do the right thing, trying to make everyone happy, trying to keep it together, trying to be a good person...trying to cover it all up and make everything seem normal when it isn't.

Also, I've been drawing. Before I bought Tim the Vegas trip, I took the proceeds of my tax check to the art-supply store, and I gave myself a merry little Christmas. I bought acrylics, watercolors, pastels, paper, pencils, brushes, ink pens...oh, I had a grand old time. There is nothing in this world that's cooler than having a brand-new box of paints and a brand-new set of brushes...

...Now, though, I have to set up a cat-free workspace. And that's not as easy as you'd think.

"Cat-free" pretty much means "in my bedroom", and it's pretty cramped in there to begin with. Full-size bed, two dressers, cedar chest, two bedside tables, a couple of small bookcases, an armchair--plus laundry hampers, boxes, assorted accoutrements of daily living...Maybe if I moved the bed out into the living room? I mean, it IS my apartment...there's no law that says the bed needs to be in the bedroom... :::laughing::: (See, THESE are the kind of problems I like. THIS is the kind of dilemma I'm equipped to deal with. "Where can I paint?" is so much softer and easier of a question than "What's my purpose in life?" If one question is like drinking cool water through a straw, the other is like trying to inhale a Buick through your nose.)

Anyway. All this is to say, there's no need to worry. I'm doing my damnedest to keep my pieces together, and though I'm not entirely successful at it just yet...well, we may be making progress. (And it's SPRING!!!! Spring helps my mood, quite a lot. It's more difficult to be depressed when every time you look around, you're confronted with fuzzy baby green grass blades, tiny little purple and yellow wildflowers, and noisy bright-red cardinals singing from the utility pole outside your window.)