My situation re : diabetes just struck me as ironic in a way I will now explain.

Basically, I have type II diabetes because of my obesity. The usual cure for obesity is to eat less. But I can’t do that.

If I eat less than usual, I run a strong risk of ending up with low blood sugar, a situation that is both incredibly unpleasant (I feel like I am dying) and potentially fatal (because I am, sorta kinda).

That means that I, fat as a house, can’t just go on a diet. I would have to consult with my GP and possibly a specialist as well (like a dietician or a nephrologist) before making any large change to my diet, plus or minus.

And that’s mentally weird for a fat dude like me. Society screams at us to lose weight by eating less and for me, it’s just not an option.

Or rather, it IS an option, but a complicated one with too many steps for my depression to handle most of the time.

There’s that ol’ executive dysfunction again. Stringing together a series of actions to achieve a result is basically what your executive function is for, and when that gets overloaded and bogged down by depression, that series of steps had better be short and easy or we just can’t.

No reason why. We just…. can’t. Okay?

I have written in this space (a long time ago) before about how depression screws with how we perceive tasks, making them seem impossibly difficult and intimidating in order to serve depression’s agenda of dissuading you from ever doing anything that might free you from its grip.

And that’s most things.

Well I think I get now that the way it does this is that it hacks your executive function to make all tasks feel like you have to take them on all at once.

Every task is therefore as “heavy” as all of its steps taken on in one go.

One might visualize this as trying to carry a heavy load up a flight of stairs all at once.

Depression pulls this con so well that it never occurs to the depressive that they could simply divide the load into managable bits and shift the load that way.

And that;s part of depression’s evil spell as well. Keeping you from thinking certain thoughts that might threaten it. Then some outside person comes along and points out the option that is super obvious to mentally healthy people, and the depression has to move fast to keep you from doing said option.

Unfortunately, depression has a big deep bag of tricks to achieve that goal. It can distract you into objecting to the tone in which the suggestion was made and forgetting all about the actual substance of it.

Similarly, it can make you mad about how humiliating it can be to have a super obvious thing you missed pointed our, and distract you that way.

Or it might say to you, “what a great idea! We’ll get right on it! Right after we… ” and then suggesting something that will be mentally engrossing enough to give you plausible deniability when you “forget” the suggestion later.

Or it might dispense with the formalities and just flood your mind with fear and uncertainty that you can only escape by blanking the new, threatening idea out of your mind completely, and ASAP.

Thus, depression makes us work very hard to stay sick.

Obviously, I am one of these people who misses things like only having to do one small part of a large task at a time. My mind strongly resists ever looking at things that way. I can see how illogical and self-defeating such all-or-nothjing thinking can be, but that does not automatically let me escape it.

Sometimes, bad tools are the only tools you have.

I mean, I went through the core program at Richmond Hospital Psychiatric Outpatients and had the whole “make a realistic plan of action then execute it” drilled into me over and over five mornings a month for like a year, and it didn’t make a bit of difference.

And it’s not like I disagreed. That certainly sounded like the sort of thing I should be doing. I admired how it specifically targeted executive function in a way that sounded like it would work to circumvent one’s doubts about one’s own effectiveness.

But I never really applied it to myself. Instead, when asked about it in group therapy, I just lied about it.

Lying was easier. So I lied. And eventually, they stopped asking.

People always give up on me eventually, and are almost never willing to ask me the tough questions that would actually help me.

But I don’t blame them. I have an effect on people that disarms and distracts them and makes them not want to upset me because I broadcast my emotions so well.

My mother is the same. It made all us kids eager to do whatever it takes to avoid upsetting her. We are all her guardians and have been for as long as I can remember.

I think people might feel the same way about me. I don’t like to imagine putting my loved ones through all of that, but I don’t think I really have a choice.

None of us can change who we really are.

I think this projecting empathy is also the major factor in why I can be somewhat tiring to be around. Being my audience can wear people out, even if they are loving it.

And so, some people start avoiding me. They don’t want to be emotionally evoked by me any more.

I both give and take a lot from people. Especially when I am “on”.

At least I am fully aware of this truth about me now. I can start to look for signs that I am being “much too much” for people and ease off a bit.

I wonder if Robin Williams had to go through the same thing?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.