Well yesterday largely sucked. I mean, I wasn’t contemplating self-harm or anything, but it was still pretty craptacular. So what can I do to keep that from happening again?

Well, clearly making ambitious plans that seem fun and rewarding doesn’t work. Not by itself, anyhow. I had such big plans on Friday, but by the time I was awake enough to try them, I was too depressed. The very idea of throwing myself into an ambitious new project just for the heck of it seemed repulsive and insane, like going for a jog on two broken legs.

So clearly, I have top intervene a lot sooner. Starting with making sure I have clean clothes to wear. A very big part of learning to deal with your depression is learning to proactively nullify your usual excuses. Excuses are the base currency of depression. Depression itself is one giant excuse not to deal with the real world and whatever it is that you imagine is in it that is so bad that you would rather retreat into depression that face it.

Usually, this is unresolved trauma. To go forward is to face the things you stomped on the breaks to avoid. Since then, you have only trusted the slowest of motion. Anything else makes you feel like you are going out of control, and you are… out of the control of your depression and its determination to do whatever it takes in order to avoid dealing with stuff.

Is that leaves you feeble and miserable, that’s just fine. Makes you easier to manage.

So yeah, step one, make sure I have clean clothes to put on. Then put them on. I realized while I was in the shower that I have been clinging to an old outdated belief that hanging around nekkid on Saturday “saved” me a day of laundry. And that made sense in the old place, where I couldn’t do my own laundry and when Julian did it for me, it cost me money.

But it’s a year and two months since we moved, and we have our own washer-drier right here in the apartment, and so I can do laundry whenever the hell I want.

Which is great, because now that I am going to school, I do two loads a week! That would have been very trying on both Julian and my wallet, no to mention all that extra bus time.

Looking back, if we hadn’t moved, I probably wouldn’t be going to school now. So, lame gym or not, I am glad we moved here. It is so easy to get places!

Anyhow, back to laundry. (FINALLY, you all say. ) So yeah, put on the clothes and wear them all day, whether I am up or down, even if I decide to take a nap. I have been trying to train myself that naked + bed = going to sleep for the night, and having a day where I don’t follow that rule is quite injurious to that process.

The key to training is always consistency. Especially when you are training yourself.

Opening a few windows probably couldn’t hurt either. Part of what kept putting me to sleep yesterday was that, sitting here at the computer, I am close to the baseboard heater in this room and that makes things all toasty warm here, and we all know by now that toasty warmness makes me really sleepy.

Then again, in the summer, it was the fact that being close to a window when I am at this desk that was making me sleepy because it was cooler than the rest of the room.

I guess the unifying principle is relief. Whether it’s relief from cold or heat, relief makes me melt into a puddle. And with toasty warmness, there is the added bonus that getting in bed and burrowing under the covers continues the toasty warmness, and hence, being toasty warm at the computer reminds me of how nice it is to be feeling the same, but lying down.

And so I ended up spending half the day in bed yesterday. This would not be a big deal if it made me happy. It would be totally fine if I took Saturdays to be my “lie in bed and catch up on sleep” day every week. That way I would look forward to it as opposed to viewing it with a thick cold glutinous dread.

But I am not there yet. Being sleepy all day still makes me feel depressed and helpless and lost. It makes me feel like I can’t stop myself from slipping into depression on my own, I need something like getting to school and back to keep me functional. Without it, I am the same sad person I was before I went back to school.

Only way more aware of the sadness than before. Yay.

But I know that’s the wrong way to be looking at things. I know that’s a negativist way of looking at it. It’s like there’s this grim satisfaction in seeing the world and your situation in the worst possible way. Like that’s how you get your kicks, with self-sadism. Or that’s how to express emotions without involving even the possibility of other people.

Because that’s where the real hope lies : connecting with your fellow human beings. Science says it, religion says it, the deep empathy lurking in the human heart says it. It’s something I can scarcely even imagine without a host of panic alarms going off in my head. Can I even stand connecting with someone and seeing myself in their eyes? Or would the identity feedback be too much, and I would have to flee to someplace where nobody understands me?

Perhaps in time, as I heal, that sort of thing won’t panic me any more. Maybe a stronger and healthier me will be able to let down his guard and let people in and finally end that isolation that I have locked myself into for all these years.

And then, finally, Spring will come.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.