Yup. After all that talking myself into it that I did in the previous blog entry, I ended up not going to the first ever shooting day for Secret Informant.

I just…. couldn’t. I spent yesterday morning and early afternoon in intense psychological conflict, the good and healthy part of me at war with the bad and sick part of me, and in the end, the bad side won.

And that puts me in a precarious position now because I have managed to hit pause on all the self-loathing that would normally accompany such a failure in my life, and now I feel like I have taken myself hostage and need to be talked down before I pull the trigger on all that self-hate and engage in a freestyle orgy of self-destruction.

The sad truth is, it feels good at the time. Partly. It’s the pleasure of a vented id, I suppose. And a kind of sick, sick vindication of a very dark self-image.

Anyhow, I figure this blog entry will make a good platform for talking myself down off the ledge, so that’s what today’s jumping-off point will be.

So to speak.

My first thought about how to tackle the situation was one of catharsis. Pour all that negative self-evaluation onto the page and then work on repairing the damage. It’s a method that has worked well before – getting it out of your system can be amazingly liberating and you find that once you have expressed it, you do not have to think it or feel it any more.

But as tempting as that sounds, and I mean that sincerely, for some reason that seems like the wrong approach today. Perhaps I am evolving emotionally and now find it mopre important to support my positive self-image than to vent my tired spleen.

On the other hand, maybe the truth is that I am enjoying the sense of detachment I am feeling right now far too much to get into the dirty business of throwing all my nasty thoughts out onto the page.

Either way, let’s move on.

One of the hardest things about recovery is failure. Depression makes a person prone to catastrophic all-or-nothing thinking that is highly maladaptive. Depression leaves us sufferers with so little faith in the world that we only truth experiences that continue to deliver a high level of reward, and then only sparingly.

It’s like eating a piece of cake and only having enough faith in life to believe that there will probably be another forkful after this one, if you’re lucky. To you, it seems extremely possible that something horrible will happen between bites. Something so bad, it will ruin the entire experience. And we can imagine lots of ways for things to go wrong.

So when we start believing in ourselves, it is very fragile and the slightest setback can bring the whole thing tumbling down like a house of cards.

Hmmm. Just got a nibble on a job writing gay supernatural romance novels. Cool.

Anyhoo, with time the edifice of our self-worth stabilizes, but without external support, it remains very fragile.

And all it takes is one “failure” to threaten it.

And I am not talking about failure in general. I am talking specifically about failing to overcome your depression when something important comes along.

Dammit. I’m speaking generally instead of personally again.

I can think of all the reasons I should have gone. But I already listed those in the previous blog entry. And I am sure there will be consequences. And of course, it’s easy to judge myself from my secure place in the future and say “You should have just sucked it up and gone, idiot!”.

But I was going through a lot of shit psychologically speaking. So I can’t even say that going was a possibility, let alone a reasonable option.

And I will learn from this, I think. Next time something like this is coming along, I will be ready to really dig deep and find the motivation to get my ass out the door.

Admittedly, since I graduated, I have not had to do that very much. School generates its own momentum for me. I have a much greater sense of commitment to the school I am attending and a much higher level of the fear of missing out and falling behind as well.

Now it’s just me, and my own issues, and in the case of the shoot, knowing I am not really needed. I still wish I had gone – for the group bonding if nothing else – but looking at the variables, it’s no surprise that I didn’t make it.

And there will be many shoots in the future. I will catch up.

The deal now, then, is self-forgiveness. So I didn’t make it. That’s bound to be the case some of the time. I am an unhealthy person, especially psychologically, and it’s to be expected that now and then, the disease is going to win a round or two.

The thing to do is to hit the reset button hard and fast. Get back up on that horse. Refuse to draw enormous conclusions based on one data point. It’s the exact same challenge and your score is reset to zero. Time for Round 2. FIGHT!

The thing to avoid is using this as an excuse to stop trying and give up on myself. That is loser thinking. And it’s completely illogical as well. Why does a long string of successes mean nothing but one loss means everything? Purely statistically, I am far more likely to succeed next time, based on previous results.

And talk about shortsighted. To give up at this point would be to sacrifice my entire future in order to get very temporary relief from an inner tension.

So no, I am not going to go there. I will forgive myself, take some time to lick my wounds, and be out there hitting it hard again in no time at all.

I can be my dreams. I just have to stay awake.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.