Houseguest

I am fighting.  I am fighting so, so hard.  I can NOT let this depression take me under, get the best of me.  I still have free will.  I still get to decide.  I'm still in control.  This is not the time.

The more I think about how this isn't the time, and the reasons why, my anxiety grows and swells like a menacing wave in this sea of emotional toxicity, threatening to take me under.  School starts in, like, 3 weeks.  I have to pack.  I have to do school shopping.  I haven't heard back from Darren yet so I'm not sure what's going on with the employment thing, and until I know that, I can't possibly figure out what's going on with the living situation thing.  I feel like I just don't have enough time.  What's going to happen to me?

This low isn't like the last one.  The last one, after Hoodilidoo, was just nothing.  I was just gone, empty, detached.  I was afraid that I would never feel again, but in contrast, THIS low is too MUCH feeling.  An overwhelming abundance of thick, dark, suffocating sorrow.  The intensity dial of feeling is dialed up to maximum input, but it's set on misery.  Maybe it would be better to be numbed.  Maybe it would be a relief to detach.  How can I escape?  Here's a poem I wrote like 5 or 6 years ago about depression.

Never mind, I'm going to have to paste it at the bottom.  If I center it, then I can't set the text afterward to align at the right again for some reason.  I woke up this morning and, for the second morning in a row, experienced that horrible discomfort when consciousness returns...bringing with it all of your worries, concerns, and sadness.  Oh yeah, that's right.  That happened.  It makes me just want to crawl back under the covers and retreat to the sweet oblivion of sleep, forever.  As soon as I remember, I immediately wish I could just forget.  But, I couldn't sleep anymore.  This depression has a twinge of mania in it, just enough to make me feel truly mad.  So I have to stay AWAKE and deal with EVERY miserable feeling.  There is no escape, no solace in sleep.

I have read that mixed episodes are the most suicidal times.  During depression, you feel the lowest, but you also have the lowest energy.  You can't even muster up the energy to formulate a coherent plan to kill yourself, much less get off the couch or the bed and actually put this plan into action.  When you're manic, well, why would you kill yourself then?  You're too busy, too happy -- even if you're angry, you still have WAYYYYYYYY too much going on.  But if you add the sorrow of depression to the energy of mania, you have a perfect recipe for disaster.

I'm not going to do it.  I decided to get out of bed, put on some music, drink some coffee, and talk about my feelings until maybe they feel seen and go away.  I'm not saying that no one sees my feelings.  The thing is, who can I talk to about them now?  

Joth's focus right now is on how I hurt him because I accused him of something he didn't do.  So I can't talk about how I feel, because he thinks I'm denying his hurt, minimizing, or blaming him.  I know this isn't his fault.  But what happened with him is a symptom of the very thing I am trying to describe here.  This tornado of destruction didn't just annihilate him, it is actively destroying me as well.  He was a casualty, yes, and I am sorry for that.  I didn't summon it.  It doesn't do my bidding.  It has engulfed me, and under its influence, I behaved in a way that hurt him.

Now, that makes it sound like I'm not responsible for what I said, and I'm a big proponent of taking responsibility for our actions.  Just like today, although I am overcome by depression, I still CHOOSE every single action and am still ultimately responsible for every choice I make...I am also responsible for what I did to him.  I don't like it when abusive drunks blame their actions on the alcohol and I won't do that here.  Something I'm learning is that everyone has a reason for the pain that they cause, and as legitimate as that reason may seem, it does not absolve them of guilt.  

Hurt people hurt people.  Just because I live inside my body and can see the connection from my experiences to the way I interact with the outside world doesn't mean that I am any more justified in dealing the same pain I have been dealt.  It doesn't even anything up.  It doesn't ease my own suffering to inflict it on anyone else.  But seeing how my own inner pain provokes me to make choices that are painful to others has been an a-ha moment for me.  

For example, I have been cheated on a lot.  The first time was the most excruciating pain I have ever felt in my life, because I was still a teenager, it was new, I had no experience in dealing with this, and had not prepared myself for the possibility that it could happen.  It was my first love and I was infatuated.  I adored him, I believed everything he said, in my eyes he was perfect.  I thought that he meant everything he said.  I assumed that he felt the same.  I lost my virginity to him and found out later that the same weekend he had been cheating on me.  For YEARS after that, I couldn't cope.  I couldn't let him go until I was 26.  TWENTY SIX.  I met him when I was 14.  

I'm not going to blame him, because he was a teenage boy and people cheat all the time.  But that destroyed me and created this fear that had not existed before.  From then on, feelings of love were laced with panic and terror of what I came to believe love naturally leads to -- betrayal and heartache.  I don't know how I survived it.  In every relationship after that until I was 19, I cheated on everyone.  I felt a little bit better if I did it first.  If it was going to happen, I wanted to make sure I beat them to the punch.  I wasn't going to suffer like that again.  No way.  No one else would ever rip my heart out like that.  

I never considered that I was doing to THEM what Jay had done to me.  I never thought that his motivation for doing it to me may have been the same motivation I had for doing it to everyone who followed.  It wasn't okay for him, and it wasn't okay for me.

But every time I trust, every time I start to feel that blissful unfettered admiration swelling in my chest, it feels like my first love.  It feels like before I was changed by heartache, still innocent in my view of romance, experiencing it untainted and unfiltered.  You would think this would be a lovely thing to feel.  It isn't.  Because now I know how that story ends.  

Any time I feel like I did when I was 14, I assume that it will lead to the same destructive soul-shredding misery.  Now, I know it isn't okay to do the thing that I am afraid of having done to me -- in fact, that destroys any chance at having a healthy relationship.  I can't run away from the feelings of intense discomfort, although they make me squirm and sweat.  So what else can I do?  I have to sit with this anxiety.  I have to keep climbing the staircase, even though I am sure that a monster lurks at the top.  I want to be in love, but it scares me to death.  And sometimes, when hormones get added to the mix, the storm churning inside of me gets to be even more than I can handle, too big to suppress, and it lays waste to everything in its proximity.

I had been dealing with my bipolar successfully before I got into a relationship.  The two major lows that I have had this year were not related to weather but triggered by arguments with Joth.  Arguments which were bad enough that they reached the point where I thought he would stop loving me and that I would lose him.  I chide myself for allowing myself to love so deeply.  What was I getting myself into?  Didn't I realize how dangerous this was for me?  In the interest of self-preservation, I should never never NEVER have fallen in love like that.  Now, I have loved people since Jay.  But no one -- NO ONE -- has permeated every barrier that I have erected.  I let people get close, but I always keep in mind that there has to be enough distance so that it won't destroy me if they leave.  I always maintain a protective bubble.  I have no bubble now.  If this ship capsizes, I'm going down with it.  I am not comfortable with this much trust because I know from this level how devastating it would be to be wrong.

Minding my business, then there was you
Invading my life just out of the blue
I know your type, I’ve been through the drill
You stay for a night and you’re hanging ‘round still/

Needless to mention, you’re cramping my style
I find you repulsive, repugnant, and vile
I want you to leave, do you hear what I said?
I wish I could kill you! I wish you were DEAD!/

Why won’t you listen? Why won’t you GO?
I don’t even feed you yet somehow you grow
If I only knew how, I would ban you forever
Depression, by far you’re the worst houseguest ever.