#depressionsession

[nightingalechild-blog]

sadness has become one of my primary character traits

[greatest-queen]

It’s time for my daily depression session, alexa play despacito

[hzltryingtowrite]

I’m on holidays again and I feel crazy

I realised today that the reason I prefer to travel alone is because i worry that when I inevitably sink into the mires of the afternoon or whatever time of the day that I’m being a drag. Obviously I’ve internalised all of what i was told by my parents on our fraught holidays when i was a teenager- things in the general vein of being ungrateful and ruining the fun for everyone else. I can hold onto this like a dog with a bone and feel like my inner child was hard done by or i can just acknowledge the fact that at times I probably am a pain in the arse to holiday with. At least when I’m alone i can wallow and languish on schedule without feeling like I’m inconveniencing someone else and their enjoyment. Is it somehow more endearing when it comes from a place of concern for others rather than purely indulgent melancholia? I think ‘holidays’ in general just don’t really suit me- i am unable to be at leisure (except for when it comes to languishing) nor enjoy sightseeing and activities without it eventually catching up with me via some crushing sense of tragedy and impending doom, whether it’s at the fate of the planet at the hands of mankind or a more ancient and deep-seated dread at the Transience of Things. An idyllic vista can feel oppressive if I’m caught in statis- right now the call of the cuckoo is mocking rather than cute and i feel like an incongruous townie in my black culottes and shades. Ive tried to sleep by babbling brooks before only for their incessant gurgle to sound like a muffled television and the sounds and words eventually become indistinguishable from my own thoughts and i feel demented and insomnolent. Sometimes on holiday with Karl I feel like a high-class Victorian invalid, being ferried around in the car to various scenic spots in attempts to soothe my nerves and lift my spirits. Maybe I should just embrace that fact and start wearing straw boaters and carrying a gold-topped cane. I have often thought that becoming a full blown eccentric would maybe ease the antagonism i feel between indulging my whims and trying to appear normal. And I suppose that people are more likely to leave you alone anyway when you are visibly Mad. 

I don’t know if my discomfort with holidays is some extension of the fact that my physical being generally feels at odds with my surroundings. Dysphoria plays a role for sure but its also aesthetic- any time I feel I’ve tried to emulate the hippy types I see on the west coast or at festivals, I’m let down by my hair. My straight, dark helmet-like hair doesn’t match their tousled and sun-bleached heads, even if I have a tan and dangly earrings and earth-toned clothing in natural fibres my hair is still lacking this sense of whimsy and artfulness that someone in the Irish countryside should have. I think it’s a question of the landscape. Maybe that’s why I felt more at home in a place of nature that is more manicured and organised, like in Japan. I remember feeling that way too about the Alps which were so pretty and vast  and perfect (not that my hair felt any more at home there, it’s not blonde and ethereal enough), but after some time there I began to miss Ireland’s tangled landscapes of thorn and briar and nettle and its wind-bent and twisted trees, along with its invasive but colourful incursions of rhododendron and crocosmia. That’s not to say Japan isn’t liable to adverse weather but its typhoons and earthquakes have a more purgative effect- all is obliterated-their wooden structures are swept up and scattered into the wind and then rebuilt, as opposed to the slow and dogged attrition we face here, the creeping dampness into brick and mortar and lingering black mold which  drives us to some form of choleric madness.

That being said, the place is being well and truly aired out today by the sun, I’ve just noticed I missed a patch of hair while shaving the back of my leg and even this quip makes me feel deeply dysphoric and women writers who write frankly about the trials and tribulations of owning and maintaining a female body are overdone and that general feeling makes me want to float up, up, up out of my body and away over the hawthorn and the gorse and the brambles. 

[hzltryingtowrite]

Cycling and being a cog

I was cycling to work last Tuesday morning, it was raining heavily. Everything was pretty quiet and I thought a little bit about how it felt like some kind of ritual self-punishment to be resolutely spinning forward, to work, of all places, while getting absolutely sopping wet. 

When I got home i went on the turbo-trainer for an hour and a half- it’s kind of like my hamster wheel. On this i continue to pedal and afterwards I get off and I’m reeling from all of the endorphins. I don’t know, I could make some kind of Sisyphean allegory here but I don’t want to be thought of as having notions. I have no such notions about myself. A few weeks ago, i flew too close to the sun (oops, notions) and my wheels fell off- i had been getting so good at doing the thing- getting up, cycling to work, working, cycling home, cycling continuously in one spot for an hour or more, listening to a medieval history podcast, making/eating dinner and then picking from one or more of my interests to cultivate for the rest of the evening. I had a little daily checklist of things I was supposed to do, i read the foreword of Atomic Habits, i found myself on r/productivity and I thought i could feel new synapses forming.

I don’t know what prompted it exactly but i veered off course at some stage and found myself spending my weekends and evenings wandering absently from room to room in the house- I find i spend a lot of time staring out the kitchen window- sometimes i can see a little boy in one of the apartments across the way doing the same thing, I’m pretty sure he’s autistic from the way he rocks back and forth and flaps his fingers. I think I’m probably rocking a bit too, but mostly I’m just trying to take in heat from the radiator, it feels like a bath. I usually have BBC Radio 6 on but then i might switch it to something else. Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of シテイポップ which makes me feel nostalgic for memories I don’t have and a bit deranged. I know its bad when nothing is making the lights in my brain blink on and my media consumption mirrors the way in which my thoughts are occurring, hopping haphazardly from one subject to another- I actually don’t know if one begets the other- in general it is a bit of a chicken and the egg situation and I wonder whether my falling off my routine and hobbies is what leads to my being melancholic or if the lack of motivation and greyness is intrinsic. I know that most likely it is a bit of both and I visualise it as some kind of paradoxical perpetual motion machine which gains momentum from my own inertia. 

I don’t need to be more explicit here with the whole cycling and working cog analogy. I suppose that’s why it feels so freeing to me to cycle with no particular direction- I’m still pedalling and sweating but the heat and effort has more of a cathartic effect- while i write this I’m reminded of when i went to Japan last summer after a few of what had been some of the most difficult months in my life. That was really strange- i went from what felt like i was being metaphysically beaten up in a playground week after week to suddenly being completely alone in Tokyo where i wandered aimlessly around the labyrinth in 40+ degrees heat- i was too overstimulated and jet-lagged to eat or sleep, i just sweated continuously and drank litres of ポカリand カルピス. I wondered how much energy it took to keep all of the vending machines powered and how many plastic bottles i had discarded and i also wondered when I’d stopped caring so much about that stuff. At times i felt like a ghost or a floating head on a pilgrimage, undergoing a ritual cleansing, the inverse from the ritual cycle in the rain. 

Anyway, maybe I’m just bored and i want to go back to Tokyo.

[defenstratedantagonist]

DEPRESSION SESSION TIMEEEE

yoyoyo this feb 9th it is time to be sad. it is almost valentine’s day and i’m gonna be single again, so on tuesday the 14th we are going to the gym in the evening––everyone there is single!!

anyways i’m watching criminal minds and i wish i had my spencer. a man who makes me laugh, buy me flowers, cuddle and watch movies etc. instead i text college friends and whenever i try to express emotion they leave me on read. the accuracy in the fact that there is an exponential decrease in the amount of people in your life from the age of 7 to 19 is hitting hard.

also i’m sick and have no energy to move or focus so that’s a blast.

[imscareddonthelp]

So depression’s back on the menu.

According to the psychologist im seeing, im definitely back in depression. I came in because of panic attacks and today i was told that he believed we should focus on your depression before we could deal with the panic attacks. 

Everything just seems to overwhelming. Im not thriving in my current job, but its probably the best job ill be able to get. Not just pay-wise, but in terms of them accommodating the things i struggle with.  I cant go get a different education, because its just unrealistic for me to try and finish one, in any field.  Im draining away and burning out and i cant find a way to refuel. 

The current situation isnt helping either, other than the pandemic, it feels as if the entire world is on fire, even more-so than usual. Im scared for the safety of everyone i know around the world.  My chest feels empty and drained, and suffocating. Im not gonna hurt myself, and this isnt a cry for help. This is an attempt to vent out the fears and frustrations that are bouncing around inside my skull.

I just dont enjoy anything right now I’ve lost the feeling of passion and drive ive ever had for anything. And that is what terrifies me the most. 

[brittenyismyname]

It’s hard to keep my head above the water.