Been pretty damned depressed lately, as alert readers have probably already guessed.

But I know why, or at least, part of why, and that means I am at least on the way out of the long dark tunnel. I feel better today than I have in a while.

And I figure it is mostly because I am finally caught up on sleep.

You see, I fell back into a bad habit without realizing it : being depressed by how much I was sleeping.

I had a few days where I slept around sixteen or so hours out of twenty four, and that can be pretty damned depressing if you let it be.

And for a while I knew this. I have written in this space before how proud I was of my ability to remember not to be depressed about how much I was sleeping.

But I guess I forgot all about that, as seems inevitable with me, and what is worse, I let the idea that I was choosing to sleep so much creep in, and that would make it all my fault and another sign that I am just pathetic and can’t handle anything, and yadda yadda yadda, shame spiral, depression, self-loathing, and hating my stupid fucking life.

I was even talking to my therapist today about all the usual depressive things, like lack of motivation, and feeling like I had no zest for living, no reason to be awake. If your life is incredibly unrewarding, why not sleep all the time? What is worth staying awake for, anyhow?

And there is definitely some truth to that. I do not enjoy my life all that much. I enjoy bits and pieces of it, which is good. I love hanging out with my friends at a restaurant or back home in front of a video. I like hanging out with my online friends, although that seems weirdly unrewarding lately for a reason I can’t quite fathom.

I guess I enjoy playing games on Facebook. Or at least, I enjoy it enough to keep doing it, which is not exactly the strongest of endorsements, but it is all I got.

I am seriously considering getting myself a new Wii game as an Xmas gift to myself specifically because it will give me something to look forward to during the day, and something to do besides sleeping.

Is that sad, or what? But whatever helps, I guess.

But lack of zeal for living aside, I do not only sleep for escape.

Sometimes I sleep because I am goddamned tired and the low quality of my sleep makes me run up a huge sleep debt that has to be paid off in very big installments.

So I end up being super sleepy for two or three days. I know all these things, and yet, somehow, I forgot. I started thinking the old bad way, looking for an excuse to hate myself and my life.

I am not surprised that all that negativity was looking for a way to go back along the same old pathways. I have not made much progress in finding new, less destructive, more acceptable ways for the same emotions to express themselves.

And well, if you block the old pipes without opening enough new pipes, things are bound to back up and cause a huge mess for you to deal with.

I guess I sort of thought that if I blocked off the self-loathing, the anger and frustration it expressed (and caused) would just naturally find another outlet.

I mean, it would have to, wouldn’t it?

But um, not necessarily, as it turns out. I figure the problem must be that I have not yet truly faced the issues that cause all that anger and resentment and frustration and rage in the first place.

Issues with my past, issues stemming from all the time I have spent sick, issues, issues, issues.

And the thing is, dealing with all that anger I have stored up over the years is a damned tricky proposition. I fear my own rage and so I have, historically, walled it up like in “The Cask of Amontillado” and ignored it while trying to live my life.

The sort of dark, violent, angry thoughts I end up thinking when I try to deal with it do not exactly encourage self-exploration along those lines. I really worry about what I would be capable of if I decided I just did not give a shit any more, and that scares me.

I just feel so close to madness sometimes. Like I could just snap.

But maybe that is all just a barking dog with no teeth. Maybe that is how my depression protects itself, by putting horrible thoughts into my head whenever I get close to the source of the problem.

If that was true, it would be safe for me to just dive into those emotions and see where they take me, see if I can vent them for good and reduce the pressure inside me. Certainly, I could see myself deriving great benefit from releasing all that nasty dark anger lying like a lump inside me.

Or at least some of it, for crying out loud.

But how? I grasp the theory of dealing with your emotions by going someplace quiet and safe and just giving yourself permission to feel everything while at the same time firmly establishing that you are not going to act on any of the emotions.

The metaphor is that you watch your emotions pass through you like clouds through the sky, not trying to control them but not letting them control you, either.

But that is a lot easier to do with things like grief or sadness or regret. Those are naturally fairly passive emotions that do not demand action.

Anger, on the other hand, inherently demands action as its form of expression. Just sitting there letting the rage wash over me without doing anything with it sounds really, really hard.

And if that dam should happen to break…..

Well, I would end up some sort of headline.