The real update, I think

[mousme]

Not guaranteeing what's going to come from the tip of my fingers today. Nothing coherent, that's for sure, and very likely depressing.

I haven't really updated since Sunday, nor did I have the inclination to do so. My mind has shut down, which is a bad thing since I haven't finished my work. My brain no longer wants to have anything to do with me.

My nights are getting longer and my days are getting shorter. It's my fault, really: the thing about depression is that you don't want to go to sleep because that means tomorrow's going to get here faster. Somehow you convince yourself that by staying awake tomorrow won't get here.

So I don't sleep. I don't make an effort not to sleep, but something won't let me. My thoughts won't let me. I'm suffocated by anxiety, by the world I've created. Eventually exhaustion kicks in around 6am and then I sleep too late. Maybe until 10 or 10:30. If I don't wake up, I don't have to face the day. Only I have to get up because I'm parked on the wrong side of the street and I don't want a parking ticket. I'm not supposed to be parked there after 10am. 8am after November 1st. I have to get out of bed like a shot, run to move the car before the "green onions" come. The cars that the meter people come in are small and green, so we call them that. An apt analogy. People react to them the same way they'd react to an unpleasant smell. I don't think I'd like that job.

Get dressed, run out the door, move the car. Come back, feed the cats, who crowd around my feet and mew. They were worried I might leave for the day and not feed them. A squabble breaks out between them, and they hiss and spit and growl at each other. There are three double dishes for four cats. More than enough food for all of them, but it means two of them have to sit near each other to eat, and they think, maybe the other cats will take their food. They settle down, crouch by the green and red and burgundy plastic and crunch tentatively, ears flickering in case an enemy comes bearing down upon them without warning, tails twitching, brushing against the floor to demonstrate that they're not fools just because they're eating, daring someone, anyone, to try something.

I go to the living room. I should probably have some sort of breakfast, but I don't really care anymore. I can't be bothered to even pour myself a bowl of cereal. I have All Bran in the cupboard, and instant oatmeal, for which I could boil water. I don't care. I can't be bothered. Why feed the body I don't want to live in anymore? This is stupid reasoning, and I know it. I don't care, can't be bothered to try to rectify it. It just takes too much energy. Breathing seems to be a conscious, laborious choice. Every breath you take, every move you make/Every bond you break, every step you take/I'll be watching you... I feel like no one and everyone is watching me at the same time. I am alone, yet judged. I don't understand, logically, how it could be so, but it is.

I try to see people. I go out in the evenings as much as possible. Isolation isn't good for me. So I go out and see people and try to have a good time. Sometimes it works. Mondays I have Tai Chi classes, and I don't really have anything in common with the people in my class, but I like the Tai Chi itself. It's run by amateurs, and I remember enough from my last Tai Chi class to know that it isn't as good because I'm not really learning the right technique, but I'm learning the movements and it takes my mind off myself. I concentrate only on the movements. I try to work on my breathing too, but I can't do both. Try to follow the movements. I don't remember them all, but the rest of the class doesn't seem to remember them either. I think I'll take the beginners' class again next session. Work on the basics all over again until I get it right.

Tuesdays I have group therapy. This time around I see my psychiatrist too, the meds doc. I've been preparing myself for this for three weeks, and I still have difficulty telling him what's going on. I manage to tell him most of it. I can't tell him that I've been suicidal, but he seems to understand anyway. We talk for about forty-five minutes. More than twice the length of any of our other meetings. I think he understands that it's more serious than he thought at first. He wants me to try light therapy. The kind with a sun lamp or whatever. But not until my mood stabilisers are at the right dosage. He thinks, if the depression continues, we should try a light dose of an SSRI. I tell him I never want to go on Paxil again, especially not for a short period of time: I had nausea for three weeks when I started it, and then I went through two weeks of withdrawal symptoms. Nausea without being able to throw up is one of the worst feelings in the world. Short-term Paxil would mean nausea for three weeks, maybe a week without symptoms, and then probably two weeks of withdrawal symptoms. The meds doc agrees not to give me Paxil. We might try Effexor and see if that does anything. Again, not until the mood stabilisers are in place. Manic breaks are bad. He doesn't know what exactly causes the mood swings: it seems to be partly related to stress, partly seasonal, but there are tons of different factors that he can't quite seem to put together. He tells me I'm "complex" as a psychiatric case, rather in the same way that Sherlock Holmes would say "It's quite a pretty problem."

The meds doc thinks I should come out to my parents sooner rather than later. He thinks I need to do it before the 7th of November, which is when I see my therapist for the last time. The therapist I call in my head "the little boy" because he seems to be all of twelve. He's leaving in mid-November. I don't know why, but he told me this during our second session. The meds doc thinks I should come out before our last meeting, so I'll have "support" during that time. I'm not convinced, but he really wants me to do it. What he says makes sense, except when the little boy leaves after that I'm not going to *have* support. The group therapy isn't about coming out issues. My brain doesn't even want to keep that issue around. It keeps dismissing it out of hand, preventing me from making sense of it. It comes and goes in waves, an ebb and flow of confusion that never stays long enough for me to pin it down. It's like trying to thwart the ocean tides with your fingers.

Group isn't bad. I make an effort to talk, I even take the meds doc's advice and voice my frustration with the therapists in the group. I'm frightened and stressed out, and I wonder what will happen when I do it. It's not my place to question authority, especially not when they're the doctors and I'm the patient. I do it anyway, and nothing terrible seems to happen, except I know that the therapists have put it down, kept a mental note of my rebellion and any day now I might get a phone call telling me not to come back, ever, because I'm preventing the group from going forward. My lack of respect for authority is undermining the group's progress. I'm a hindrance, an obstacle, I'm making things worse rather than better. Better I shouldn't go back, then. Hard to justify, rationally, but it's there, and it won't go away. Even if they don't send me away, every time they see me they'll think "That's the girl who doesn't respect our authority. She's the one who doesn't like us. Have to watch her, she might keep rocking the boat."

The group discussed bullying at school, and all I can do is flash back to gym class, to people tripping me, hitting me "accidentally" with their hockey sticks. The mocking, derisive laughter in class. Legs being stuck out to trip me, to kick me as I walked down the aisle. Hard soccer balls whipped at my head. Being shoved hard against wooden lockers. My hair pulled out in handfuls. Punched in the back of the head so I see stars, kicked in the back of the knees so I fall over.

My stomach lurches in sympathy as the man before me talks about how people at school teased him and called him "queer" and "loser" and "fairy." I was never called those things. It's not a big enough insult for a girl to be called gay. There are other insults for girls. But I understand. I can feel my ears and face burning with shame as he talks. They ask me about my experiences, and I try to tell them, I open my mouth and a sentence or two dribbles out, but they don't really want to hear. They move on to another topic. I close my mouth again. It's too much to inflict on them anyway. I've been told I'm not supposed to "protect" or coddle the group, but no one said anything about having to tell them something they don't want to hear. Someone briefly asks me why I was beaten up at school, but they don't give me the chance to answer. My first answer is "I don't know," but I do know. It's because I was different. But they don't want to hear that anyway.

They move on and discuss being marginal. One woman holds up her marginality like a badge. She's proud of being marginal, wants to be marginal in our group too. Keeps insisting on the fact that she's not like "us." That's fine, but I keep thinking that we're all marginal in this group. That's why we're here. Raise your hand if you've never felt like you're an outsider. *No one moves* I thought so... She's smug about it, and I can't help but burst her bubble later by pointing out that we're all outsiders, and that she's not all that unique. I'm unique, just like everyone else.

I leave, plagued by doubt and fear. I make small talk with the group as we leave. Nothing dire happens, which is a good thing, all things considered.

I go to my parents' home for dinner with my godparents. My parents are celebrating their 32nd wedding anniversary. My godparents mercifully arrive about five or ten minutes after I do. I show my godmother my knitting, and we agree that we ought to meet sooner rather than later so I can work more on my mother's sweater. I had given up on it after losing my pattern, but fearsclave found it for me, so I'm going to make it for her as a Christmas present. My father and my godmother both get heavily into their cups. I try to leave quickly, but I don't make it out in time, and my father gives me a twenty-minute lecture about my work. It's midnight and he's quite drunk, and I'm tired and although I drank earlier in the evening I watched myself because the Neurontin makes me sensitive to alcohol, and I had a coffee not too long ago. I'm tired and want to go home, and every word he says makes me hate myself more. My mother tries to help me but it only makes my father more irritated and he pokes and prods and harangues me about my work and my finances and my life and everything he can think of that I might be doing wrong. His speech is rife with "I told you so"s.

I leave, exhausted. I get home at about 1am, and I can't do anything except turn on the computer and scan my friends page. I don't have the energy to read most of them in depth. If the entry seems serious or in need of attention, I force myself to read more attentively. I don't comment. I have nothing to say. Anything I could say would sound trite and forced. I commiserate silently, and I know they think I don't care. I do care, but I don't have the energy, the willpower, whatever you want to call it. I just can't.

I go to bed. I read Hilary Mantel. My father gave it to me. It's called Giving Up The Ghost, and the writing is interesting. Very involved writing. An author who labours over her craft. Every word weighed, considered, placed carefully next to other words. The writing is contrived, but not in a bad way. It doesn't flow so much as sit there like a lake. Calm on the surface and turbulent beneath. The book is a memoir, and I'm halfway throug hit, although so far it's mostly about her childhood. It seems rather self-indulgent to me: the author keeps assuring us that she is very different from the rest of humanity, and has been ever since she was a child. She sees things other people don't. So many people in my life lately seem to want to prove that they're not like the rest of us. I am still reading her book. She suffers from migraines. Different than mine, as she gets aphasia with her auras. I've never had speech trouble. I see spots and lines and squiggles and get blurred vision and my hands and feet go cold or numb, but I can always talk properly.

Perhaps right now my desire to belong has overridden my desire to be different. It used to be the other way around. Now all I want is for people to want me, to accept me, and I've worked very very hard for it. All my psychiatrists tell me that I was wrong, because now nobody knows me for who I really am. I've created a persona people will like. This is what they tell me. I don't know how to prove them right or wrong. I don't know if the person I've presented to all my friends is the real me or not. Even now when I write this I still want to make people happy. They say that making people happy to my own detriment is not who I really am. So am I lying to myself? I don't know anymore.

Wednesday passes in a blur. I spend most of it with my mother. I watch an episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation, which I've never seen before (a rarity, now). One in which Wesley Crusher goes on a vision quest. Lots of stereotypical Native American shit, although it's theoretically a different planet and they are theoretically Pueblo Indians. They look nothing like them, but then maybe there aren't many Pueblo Indian actors. They use a famours Indian actor whose name I forget. He was in North of 60. That show was good. At least, it was pretty realistic at the beginning. I never watched the whole thing. I am strangely reminded of Perseity. There are Native Americans in Perseity that have emigrated to another planet in order to protect their beliefs. I wonder if they're anything like what the people in this Star Trek episode were like.

I have to borrow money from my mother to buy my new meds. The new dosage, that is. My credit card is maxed out. My cheque still hasn't arrived. My account is still overdrawn. The first of November is in two days, and if my Idiot!Landlord decides to cash his cheque on time, it'll bounce. Three rent cheques in two weeks. The anxiety wakes me up in the morning, pounding in my head, my heart hammering painfully against my ribcage, my stomach knotted with pain. Breathing hurts when I first wake up. I have to stretch my lungs against my fluttering heart, against my stomach which has risen up and refuses to move back to its proper place. Each breath is a struggle against the vise constricting my chest.

It's been a bit better since I started the new dosage of meds two days ago. It doesn't hurt quite as much.

Game Night is fun, as usual. I see faces which are beginning to be quite familiar. I realise how oversensitive I am while I'm there. A slightly negative remark from Prospero's Daughter feels like she's sliced through me with a switchblade. She didn't mean anything bad, and she probably forgot it seconds later. She doesn't mince her words. She's not a writer, either, so she doesn't realise the weight of her words. Perhaps I don't either. I don't remember what she said, but I think that's due to the meds. I take words too seriously. I shouldn't. I treat them in a cavalier manner when they're my own: I bandy them about, throw them around, bounce them off the walls to see what they'll do. I take the words of other people very seriously. It makes no sense: if my words ought not to be taken seriously, why should those of others?

I come home, tired, drained. My cats are waiting, mewing. They haven't seen me all day, and they want attention. I stroke them and pet them and cuddle them and generally make a fuss over them, and then they are content. Would that my wants could be so simple. In some ways, they are. My wants are simple, but I have developed complex systems whereby they will never be truly fulfilled. I skim my friends list again. People are lonely, people are frustrated, some are joyful, many are sad, and I have nothing to give them. I have nothing left inside me to give. I want to reassure them, to tell them that everything will be all right. I haven't got the words. I had no words all week. They are tumbling out now, having hidden in the recesses of my mind all week, refusing me their eloquence until just one hour ago.

I'm tired, all I want to do is sleep. Or read. Something that doesn't involve effort on my part. I only want peace, but I have none. My peace is shattered by the voices of all the things I should have done, all the things I should be doing. My failures, my failings. Myself.

This is where my week has gone.