Been feeling depressed lately. More so than usual.
Specifically, I have been getting these intense attacks of depression that make me feel like I am going crazy.
Suddenly, out of the blue, darkness overtakes me and makes me want to scream from the pain and despair of it. My whole body tenses and I can feel my bones grinding against one another. It’s like I got pounced by a blanket shaped creature who is trying to smother and consume and destroy me.
It only lasts a few seconds before my long practiced psychological defenses kick in and throw it off my, but those are some very bad seconds.
When I was sicker, these would have been the moments when I felt the most suicidal. When you feel that bad, you just want it to stop no matter what it takes.
But I am healthier than that now, psychologically anyway, and so I just defend myself against the pain for the few moments it takes to shut it down.
Still, these bad moments are not a good sign. They indicate that something is deeply wrong in the wasteland of my psyche right now, and I need to dig it out.
We’ll start at the top. I am, of course, depressed about the crazy era we are in. I am especially depressed about all the early openers in the States who are going to die because they could not wait for things to get back to normal and the Toddler in Chief is sending them mixed messages so they feel it is perfectly okay to protest for their right to kill themselves and/or others just so they can can get a haircut.
I have likened it to having a friend who is determined to drive drunk. That’s what it feels like to be a Canadian for me right now.
There’s not a damned thing we can do to stop them. They are going to die by the thousands. And all we can do is watch.
More personally, there’s my health issues. Now that I have finally managed to wake myself up to the danger I am in, I am very scared.
I don’t want to lose a leg or a foot. I don’t want to end up in the hospital full of tubes. I don’t want my life to get so much worse. I don’t want to end up in pain and fear as my body falls apart on me.
And yet, I am still having trouble getting my blood sugar to go down. Even with insulin. I haven’t given up yet, not by a long shot, but I can’t avoid the creeping feeling that maybe I have fucked up so bad that it can’t be fixed.
I’ve put a lot of insulin into me and it’s still sky high.
So I am going to radically reduce my carb intake and see if that helps. When I do my Sunday shopping tonight, I will eschew my usual carb laden junk food in lieu of almost, peanuts, and wasabi peas.
That’s helped me get healthy before, so I have high hopes of it working again.
I am also going to get serious about exercise. Vertical pushups (pushouts?) and pacing will figure heavily into that.
Has to be stuff I can do in my room, otherwise social anxiety will prevent.
And of course, I will keep taking readings to see how I am doing. It sucks to have to lance my poor fingertips over and over but I need data.
Hopefully I will be able to save my over-sweetened self from diabetic oblivion.
And if not, I will at least know I went down swinging.
And now, to plunge into reckless escapism via video games.
More after the break.
A need for clarification
I feel like I was not entirely honest earlier.
It is true that I – me – the full and rational entity named Michael John Bertrand – does not want to get way sicker and end up full of tubes in the hospital and all of that.
But there is part of me – the sickest, blackest, most self-destructive part of me – that wants that outcome very much.
Hell, it craves it.
Why? Because then all responsibility would be taken away from me. If I was terribly sick and barely holding on to life, nobody could possibly expect me to anything but do my best to get better, and thus I would be free.
That’s pretty goddamned crazy. But that’s how that part of me thinks. It wants nothing more than to have all my possibilities swept away so that I don’t have to face the infinite hallway of infinite doors any more and the cacophony of voices in my head all trying to get me to go their way would finally shut the fuck up.
And everyone would be super sympathetic to me and feel bad for me and be nice to me and all I would have to do was be my usual charming and sweet self and people would talk about how brave and strong I am to be so nice when I am so sick.
To this sick part of my mind, that would be heaven. It’s like an oral retentive fantasy of a life where you don’t ever have to do anything and everything you need just comes to you and everyone protects and nurtures you.
A return to infancy, essentially. Pathetic.
But ignoring that part of my mind does not make it go away. Giving it voice does, which is why I chose to write about it tonight.
It’s is a dark and desperate thing to admit about yourself. That part of you would trade even your very physical health in order to give up on having to be a grownup.
It is that part of my mind that made being suicidal so scary because that was the part of me that would have done anything to make the pain and fear stop, so that was the part of me that I had to be on guard against 24/7 in case it took over in a weak moment and made me walk into traffic or jump out a window or something.
Thank god I hardly ever have to think about that now. I still have my dark moments, but they pass, and I am my non-suicidal self once again.
Like all suicidal people, it wasn’t that I really wanted to die.
I just wanted the pain and fear to STOP.
Thank goodness I never went through with it.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.