Now that I finally have been to the doctor, I am cleared to hang out at Felicity’s parents’ place with her and Joe later tonight.

It’s literally been months since we’ve done it. I got sick, which meant I couldn’t hang at Casa Del Felicity because her parents are old and somewhat frail, and if they get sick with whatever I had, it could really do a lot of damage.

Fair enough. Sound reasoning. I would be able to go back once I had been to the doctor and gotten a clean bill of health.

What I didn’t anticipate was having all that trouble actually getting my doctor’s office on the phone. That problem was enough to rob me of my motivation.

Depression makes motivation very, very fragile. And in my case in particular, the biggest robber by far is the unexpected.

I tried to hang on to it by looking for a new doctor on the website for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia.

Wow, that was a lot to type. At least they finally dropped the “Royal” at the beginning.

Anyhow, that was a process doomed to fail because what I basicallty got was a long list of doctors with names that made me (unfairly) wonder how good their English was and no way of determining which one would be the right fit for me and that killed the remainder of my motivation by strangling it with a rope made of option paralysis.

And thus it languished for months. :Literal months. The whole thing disappeared into the mists of my befogged brain and most of the time, I just plain did not think about it.

That’s how it goes with depression. It creates a mental environment toxic to motivation, desire, happiness, and joy.

And to me, the worst part of that is that it makes me do things of which I am deeply ashamed. Like completely fail to get a new doctor and thus restore my privs regarding Felicity’s parents’ place.

And this has had real world consequence for everybody in my little circle. It meant that at all the times we would normally hang out in private. I was dropped off at the apartment instead and Felicity and Joe went on to hang out together.

This meant a serious drop in my social time, and I didn’t have much to start with.

And God forgive me, but I loved it.

Or at least, the bad part of me. The sick part. Suddenly the amount of social pressure in my life was cut in half and my illness thought that was marvelous. It was quite happy to crawl back into my cave and be twice as socially isolated as before.

Why, that meant way less time when I would have to pull myself together and be socially present and aware. I could remain in my safe little womb way longer, where I could be free of the demons of my social anxiety because I was all alone.

That is literally the only way for me to be free of them. And even then, they are never truly gone. They are still lurking around the periphery of my consciousness like starving wolves who hate me.

There’s an image for ya.

And now, a message for my most important and valued reader :

Felicity, this was never anything to do with you. Not even slightly. At the same time I was further isolating myself, I was missing the heck out of you.

But part of mental illness is not being entirely in control of yourself.

I hate that part.

It did have something to do with your parents’ place though. Still mostly my own insanity at work but it played a part.

Because the truth is, that place makes me anxious. I feel like I don’t belong there. Like I am some kibnd of filthy, disgusting mongrel that has been allowed, just this once, to sit on the couch and is terrified that he is going to screw that up.

And part of him just wants to be back in his doghouse.

And like I said, I know this is 90 percent Crazytown. But that does not make it any less real for me. That place makes me anxious. I don’t fit in. I don’t belong.

And for the ill part of me, not having to go there for months has been delightful. I can be much more calm and relaxed without it in my life.

All of that was to explain this : This is my first chance to hang out with Joe and Felicity in months, and I don’t want to go.

RIght now, my anxiety level is at red alert levels and I am not even there yet.

I am going to have to do that thing us depressives tend to do and cancel at the last minute. I have always taken solace in the fact that at least I didn’t do THAT.

Strike that one off the list, I guess.

This is one of those moments I have quite frequently whether I can’t tell whether what I am doing is good because it means I am taking care of myself by setting boundaries and giving myself permission to not be “okay”, or whether I am letting the mental illness “win” and thus doing great harm to myself.

Well I can only do what I can and make the decision that seems best at the time, and right now that feels like not going.

I will bank mental resources for trying again Friday night. Generally, we hang out Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday nights.

Tuesday and Friday, we’d go to Felicity’s parents’ place, and Sunday we would come back here to the apartment.

And I know I should miss all that. And part of me does, but it’s not the part of me that is in charge right now.

Right now, it’s the sick part of me in charge, and it says don’t go.

So I will not go.

But the fight against my insanity is not over.

Sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards.

Sometimes you have to give up what you have to get what you want.

Sometimes you just have to put everything in reverse so you can back out of a dead end street and find a better path.

Some fights you just can’t win.

I will talk to youi nice people again tomorrow. ‘