God, I hate the summer.
While also loving it.
It’s a complicated affair.
Been through a lot of bad sleep in the last 10 hours or so. The usual kind, all sweaty and draining, leaving me disoriented and dissipated and disassociative.
Right now, I feel like I am not quite in my body. Like I am a few inches out of sync with it. An aura photograph of me would look like a double exposure.
And I have that maddening floaty feeling. Like I am a soggy balloon full of water and helium and every time I move, the water sloshes around vertiginously.
Goddamn sinus fluid in the inner ear.
And everything seems sort of hollow, Especially sounds. There is a distinct (albeit suble) flattening effect on everything I hear. Really adds to the surreal factor.
And of course, underneath it all is the heavy, sodden feeling that comes from having been pulled through the eye of the needle by my sleep apnea over and over again.
It’s rough being me.
But there is light at the end of the tunnel. I think I am actually catching up on sleep now. Despite all the symptoms detailed above, I actually feel better than I did the last time I woke up. I figure one more nap might actually get me to something approaching an actual alert waking state.
What a concept.
I really should go back to taking my sleeping pills. I haven’t taken one in weeks, maybe a month. I have been sleeping in naps instead, which appears to be my default state.
And I know that’s not good for me. It means I am not getting nearly enough of that deep cycle sleep where the brain does its deepest and most profound integration of short and medium term memories into the overall long term memory structures.
What that means is that, without that good deep sleep, I end up with my mind slowly filling with unprocessed memories. These haunt the background of my mind, unconsciously, so they do not have a conscious effect and it’s all too easy for me to pretend like it’s no big deal.
But all those memory fragments displace normal cognitive functions and drag down my mental CPU performance, and that menifests as low mood and a general feeling of weakness and confusion.
And that’s depressing AF.
So as usual, I am the author of my own depression because I don’t do the things I know damned well I should do in order to stay healthy.
Because I am too depressed to do them.
It’s not quite the Catch-22 that it sounds like because it is possible for me to pick my moments to resist and push against the depression and get some of the good healthy things done, and thus get ahead for a while..
I think that;s the key, though : waiting for the right moment. My mood goes in cycles and if I try to push in the middle of a cycle, then it goes nowhere.
But if I wait for the nadir or apogee of a cycle, I can get shit done.
Speaking of which, time to call my shrink (finally), take that last nap, and then go finally get my psych meds.
The darkness never lasts forever.
And the sun feels just as good on my skin no matter how long it’s been.
I will be back later.
I feel a lot better now.
Did the whole phone call, nap, meds thing.
Turns out, my shrink doesn’t schedule appointments past 3 pm any more. Bummer. I am guessing that this was a compromise with his wife, who wants him to retire.
See, she has retired, and wants to do all kinds of stuff with him, but he is a workaholic and doesn’t want to commit to retirement.
And he has a very good excuse for not retiring : he has a bunch of us mentally damaged types who are highly dependent on him to think about.
I know damned well that if he retired, there would be no other therapist for me here in Richmond. I would either have to do without (unthinkable) or have some kind of long commute to wherever in the GVRD will have me, I suppose.
And speaking of long commutes : because he doesn’t do appointments past 3 pm any more, that pretty much kills any chance I have of continuing to get a ride home from Joe this summer. Bummer. And that means I will be getting there and back all by my little old lonesome for like, eight weeks.
And that’s doable. I have a bus pass. The bus gets me within five or six blocks of my therapist’s office, and it’s summer, so it’s likely to be a pleasant walk.
And it (almost) goes without saying that I need the fresh air and exercise.
So that’s not so big a deal.
And if I really, really, really don’t feel like walking to and from the bus stop, I can always take a cab. Costs about $15 each way, so not exactly a cheap option, and not something I could do each way every week.
I do not have a spare $30/week in my budget.
But it’s good to have the option in reserve, just in case. Like, what if it’s a crappy rainy day? Or I am sick or something?
And there are always those days when the depression wins. Those are the days when I am forced to admit to myself that I am truly sick, and that my depression is not necessarily something I could just shake off “if I really wanted to”.
And nobody ever told me that my depression wasn’t real or anything like that. I just developed that delusion in order to cope with the reality of being ill.
I would probably be better off in the long run without it. It keeps me from truly facing and dealing with the realities of my mental illness because it keeps me from taking my depression as seriously as I should.
But I am not sure I could cope with the true reality of it. And that’s not an easy thing for a rugged intellectual type like me to admit.
There are truths I fear and realities which could kill me.
And that fills me with existential shame.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.