(Preliminary grumble: WordPress 1.2.1 for iPhone ate a nearly-done draft of this post when I tried to go from local draft to online draft. It also didn’t update to 2.x through the standard App Store update process despite both being free. WTF, WordPress?!?)

Sigh. Another long stretch without posting. It’s not like I have nothing to say. One look at my Twitter feed will tell you that. And I have posts cooking in my brain about favorite topics like Lost and The Best Bands You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of and a bunch of other things as well. (I mean, I saw MUSE live, ferchrissakes! MUSE!!)

So why no blog posts from me? I’ve been feeling really frozen up inside, my guts knotted by anxiety, for months.

You ever get the feeling that you’re standing at a Rubicon in your life? What’s more, have you ever felt terrified, even though you know that crossing over is The Right Thing To Do™?

I’ve been there for a while now…almost a year, really, since I started the current job. In other respects, I’ve been there a lot longer. Depending on how you prefer to look at it, it could be since I had surgery, since I left home en route to college, or even going back to murky childhood. I’ve definitely written on the subject before, though.

And I’m feeling kind of “reinvented out” after the number of times I’ve done it in my life, so I really want to get this one right in order to not have to do it agin anytime soon. It’s hard work, don’tchaknow!

A few things have me brooding on this topic again:

1. Getting ready to move out of the apartment I moved into shortly after starting at my old job, thereby shedding the very last vestige of the life I led during the Tale of Woe™
2. Watching other friends being or becoming all self-actualized ‘n’ stuff. (There are six links in there, folks!)
3. Feeling like I’m finally about ready to start expressing myself in the world now that I’ve finished the process of creating the “release version” of me.

The hardest things I’m going to have to learn are self-motivation and discipline, my twin bugaboos. Need to turn those dreams into action and all that. Like I’ve said before, inspiration is never my problem. It’s that “perspiration” part that always gets me.

Universe, help me channel the Spirit of Nike®…

It’s just that taking that step and really committing to not procrastinate ad infinitum, to not constantly sedate myself with the modern opiate of the masses, and to stop fearing the risk of failure is just pants-wetting terrifying after a lifetime of the bad patterns.

My rational mind knows that doing is a skill like any other, one that anyone can learn regardless of initial talent for it (which is good because my initial talent level is roughly that of a rhinoceros with a neurological disorder taking up skateboarding). My irrational, software-virus-ridden mind tells me something quite again in the voice of my parents, every teacher I ever let down by not fully realizing my Awesome Potential™, and every friend or lover I ever offended in a moment of thoughtlessness. Unfortunately, that voice has always been so much louder than the voice of reason inside my dense cranium. (‘Sides, nowadays, even the voice of reason is starting to sound a bit suspect…)

So, the emotional pressure has built up inside of me and I feel like something’s gonna give. EIther I’m going to become Super Self-Actuated Sonya™ or I’ll just give in to my couch-tuber tendencies forevermore. Ye gods, that sounds emo! >.<

I just hope that, much like Lane Meyer, all I need is a taste of success, and I’ll find it suits me.

In the meantime I stand, tremulant*.

*10 Scooby Snacks™ to the first commenter to correctly identify the source of this title. And yes, I know it’s not a real word!

A writer, they say, writes. This makes me a sysadmin, queer/poly pervert, a geek, but certainly no kind of writer the way I’ve been neglecting my blogging. And, really, the whole point was that I was trying to improve my writing habits. But, I’m not writing it off yet. (See what I did there? It was a pun, people! A writing-related pun! HAH! Oy…)

So, I’m going to check in and tell you about the nosebleed-inducing highs and the soul-grinding lows of late. All three of you who still read this blog after months of basic fallowness.

I’m not breaking down, I’m breaking out…last chance to lose control!

Some of the highs, it turns out, were chemical. And they were helping me screw some things up in epic fashion. If any mental health or medical profession ever again tries to prescribe me any form of Wellbutrin, they’re getting a smack. I mean it. The stuff is seriously no good for me. It and another antidepressant called Remeron were effectively doing bugger-all for me and canceling one another out for some months as my primary-care was at his wit’s end trying to help me medicate myself out of The Tale of Woe™. (One of these days, I’ll post a timeline of that. Long story short, it was about 3.5 years of my life during which the universe seemed to be conspiring to turn me into emotional road-pizza.)

Actually, that’s not true, it wasn’t accomplishing nothing. It was draining my pocketbook horribly on my current employer’s horrible high-deductible + HSA health care plan.

So, my newly-referred psychiatrist thought it would be peachy-keen to step me down off the Remeron first, leaving the Wellbutrin unchecked (and the truly marvelous Cymbalta as the only really effective med for me in the cocktail). And the resulting behavior prompted my therapist to say I was acting like a bipolar person in their “manic” phase—euphoric, out of control, and in my case even more oblivious to the concerns and needs of those around me.

I ended up burning my romantic relationship with wee Amy (tho thankfully not my friendship), screwing up so badly at Bawdy they asked me not to come back, and so obsessively seeking new partners that I almost drove the lovely Renie away completely.

Once I came down, I was (to continue to overuse the word) mortified at myself. I can’t think of a single relationship I didn’t strain, romantic, platonic, or employment.

Don’t try to keep your composure, I’m only having a laugh…

But there were happy things, too! My relationship with Renie has been intense and amazing. Even if we don’t make it (though I still have this odd presentiment that we will…I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am), it’s nice to know that I can feel chemistry that intense for anyone, and that someone so miraculous could feel it for me.

I’ve also been seeing two delightful women named Amy C and Kanane, who’ve just been wonderful to me. I guess my polyamory isn’t “academic” anymore, and what’s more it’s really nice to settle into a groove without feeling obsessive about meeting new partners every which where and all the time.

My longstanding friendship with a woman who’s always impressed the hell out of me—Heather—deepened in a wondrous way, as has my friendship with Amy of Chasing Amy, who’s also damned impressive. Chasing Amy has also been responsible for some of the more interesting and sexy stories of my recent life, for which there will be future blog posts, have no fear. (Teases: “Best…housewarming…EVAR,” “Pasta and strippers!” and, “FIVE?!? And a boy in the room?”)

I’ve also made new friends, like the astonishing Mags, and reconnected via the Internet panopticon of Facebook with two friends I’ve known from birth (mine or theirs, depending), Nick and Sam.

And Polly! Never has anyone made me look so good as this camera-slinging Photoshop goddess. She’s sweet, kind, and talented. How could I know her for a couple of years and only now start to realize how cool she is?

I am so surrounded by exceptional people. And they all, oddly, seem to like me. How cool is that?

The psychiatrist poses as psychologist…

And my therapy has gotten in-fucking-tense. We’re into all the crappy childhood imprints I took that have been holding me back since time immemorial and perennially making me feel like a loser and a failure. I’ve been avoiding talking to my mother for months now knowing that, after our last conversation was the straw that broke the camel’s back, the next time I talk to her I was have to read her the riot act. She still wants me in her life things are gonna have to change, swiftly and permanently, ’cause I’m not having it anymore.

*sighs* What a fucking cliché.

But this is going out to all my friends…I need your help. I need your encouragement. I need you all to check in with me and help me overcome all this crap in my head that keeps me from doing things for me. Doing things for others, never a problem. Other people deserve things, and the people around me are so worthy of happiness and success.

But I’m having such a hard time making those baby steps toward feeling like I deserve things, too, and not neglecting myself horribly. So help me not lose sight of my goals and wants, OK? I really need you guys now.

You all rock. And speaking of rock, 10 Scooby Snacks to whoever can name all the songs quoted in my section headers without Googling ‘em. (Not that I could prove you didn’t Google them, of course…)

But I won’t wait two %^@!*($#^ing months to write again.

My first draft of this was even more emo than this, so just be glad I came to my senses. It was going to be sorta-kinda poetry. Free verse and worth every penny. This is what I get for having thrown out all my bad poetry from when I was 15…I almost subject you, my dear readers (all three of you), to the spectacle of a 37-year-old bleating on about being too this and not enough that and oh, how life is unfair, but even more so when you’re a lazy bitch with depression and crap self-esteem.

So, consider yourself lucky.

But the fact remains that, much like my dear friend, Dana, I have no idea here at midlife-ish who I want to be when I grow up.

That I’ve been dragging my feet on my small business idea (a Mac-based, full-service IT consulting firm, for the record) just reinforces what I already knew, namely that IT isn’t What I Want to Do For the Rest of My Life™.  Do I have the skillz to pay the billz in that business? Well, on a technical level, you betcha. On a business-admnistration and self-promotion level, I’m not so sure. That I’ve been dragging my feet on my Geek Salon idea (long story…tell you about it later if you don’t already know) tells me just how fearful I am of trying and failing. That I’ve been dragging my feet on my own writing really fills me with dread because, much as I’ve always felt I had a few good books or scripts or what-have-you in me going back to when I was a kid, it makes me wonder if I didn’t defer that dream a bit too long. To say nothing of being thoroughly cowed by the skill of writers I’ve been reading lately, like Neal Stephenson, Neil Gaiman, or Alan Moore.

So I finished my transition…so what? What difference does it make that I’m as close to biologically female as medical science can make a male-to-female transsexual when I have no idea just who this woman is supposed to be for the next 40 years or so. Nothing is pulling on my heart and mind the way my transition did, saying, “You have to finish before you die. You can not let yourself give up before then!” I have no purpose…and it’s eating me from the inside out.

You know that feeling you get when you want to go out to eat with a bunch of friends, but every single restaurant or cuisine that’s suggested feels like a no-go? You don’t know what you do want, but you know you don’t want anything suggested thus far. That’s been my life for the last three years ever since I got back from Scottsdale and the last brief stint of true happiness I’ve known so far.

Political activism and crusading law certainly inflame my passions…and hell, I’d probably make for a damned fine lawyer given my penchant for arguing minutiae and my obscene memory for endless trivial details. Only trouble is that the quixotic nature of that life, the never-ending compromises, and the inevitable disillusionment with my own alleged allies would drive me to drink in short order.

Creating literature, moviles/TV, and/or music still has an allure to my heart, but feels too risky for me. I’m living on borrowed money, which means borrowed time if the old adage is to be believed. And it’s not making me burn the candle at both ends to do it regardless of “success” or “failure,” either. *sighs*

And more hardcore science or math would mean going back to school on money I don’t have to build skills never gained or long in disuse to do something I’m not sure I’d like anyway. The only part of that scenario that I’m sure I’d like is going back to school, but that would still require a goal. “Life-long student” is not a viable profession, whatever some of my former UCSC classmates might think.

It’s really enough to make me wish I could make myself content to be an IT technician and want to do that enough to make myself jump out of bed at a respectable hour.

If anyone has any suggestions for (re-)finding one’s bliss, I have to say I’m all ears.

Within the last couple of months, I’ve undertaken something that would probably leave most of the people who’ve known me at any time in my adult life more than a little speechless: I started exercising regularly.

There have been previous abortive attempts at same scattered throughout my life — a few months of Shorinji Kempo in my teens, a personal trainer in my mid-twenties, wrestling lessons from a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu mistress and former GLOW girl (seriously!) — but they all had one thing in common. I never did a damned thing outside of class, and none of them lasted more than a few months.

This time, I started climbing fake rocks at a place in Sunnyvale called Planet Granite with a mix of new and old friends, spurred by new friend, Joyce. To my amazing surprise, I was actually able to get all 260 lbs. of me up some of the easier climbs once I got them to dig me up a harness in “extra lard-ass” size. Truth be told, I didn’t expect to be able to do even that. This last week, I actually managed a 5.6 climb (they’re graded 5.1-12, though that’s a bit misleading as 5.10-12 each have sub-gradations a-d, so a 5.6 is still a relative beginner climb).

It quickly became apparent that, even doing this once a week (so 4 or 5 times a month) which is how often this particular group meets, it was going to be  more economical to get a monthly membership. And, conveniently, Planet Granite also has more conventional gym equipment. So, I made something of an “exercise buddy pact” with one of my bestest friends, Dana. I figure it beat any of the alternative pacts we might be making since both of us also struggle with depression.

(Side note: Conventional gyms seem to really engage my “panic” reflex…there’s some combination of the usually excessive lights, general “fishbowl” atmosphere of gym-rats in stylin’ exercise togs showing off their svelteness, and the loud and driving eternal 120-140 bpm techno-throb that just stimulates me in all the wrong ways. But not Planet Granite. The gym equipment is off to the side in a shadier part of the building, everyone’s either focused on the climbing or in their own little world, and the music ranges from tolerable to actually enjoyable while staying at lower volumes. Exercising there just doesn’t bug me, thank goodness.)

So, I’ve been keeping up with that a little bit every day, which is a first in my life. So, yay me and all that.

But do you know what it feels like to go from stiff, sedentary, and 36 to exercising 5 days a week for a good hour a day? OWWWWW. Even stretching out when not exercising doesn’t help. When I’m home working my semi-job or plotting my new direction(s), my limbs feel like lead.

But I have to do it. I have to keep my promise to myself. I have to do the hard thing, the boring thing, the slow progress thing, the repetitive thing. I just keep telling myself that I will see improvement if I keep it up. I’m not even hung up on any one number…weight, inches, dress size…’cause I know that way lies madness for someone like me. Setting milestones for things I’m doing strictly for me and for my own good is a recipe for missing them. As Douglas Adams once said, “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

No, I’m doing this because I know that, even if I don’t see drastic change in these metrics anytime soon, my mood will still benefit from the endorphins, my heart will become healthier, I’ll develop more endurance, and I might be able to do some harder climbs…though I have no real desire to do the hardest ones or ever climb a rock outdoors. That said, I do like the wall as metaphor. Facing it, struggling up it, overcoming the harder bits, and getting to the top even if I don’t do it the 1st time. (Or the next few times for that matter…)

So it’s not just about physical toughness for me, but mental toughness as well, which is something I’ve been sorely lacking lately. “I give up” had been my middle name for a while now.

And even just getting sick with your standard-issue creeping crud this past weekend and having to miss one workout caused a nasty backslide. It left me feeling really down, going back into the vicious cycle of hiding alone at home, kicking myself, and then kicking myself some more for feeling bad after I kicked myself.

I don’t know what it is about rock climbing that’s done it for me so far, though. I guess it has at least a little bit to do with the fact that my general lack of coordination isn’t nearly as much of a factor as in something like a martial art. It’s just you and the wall. I’m sure some skill will become more necessary as I try to do anything higher than a 5.6, which I figure is probably about as far as I’m going to be able to go on pure bloody-mindedness until such time as I lose fat and gain strength — particularly arm and upper-body strength — and develop some modicum of skill. It also doesn’t hurt that I have a whole cadre of climbing buddies, some of whom are very near and dear to me.

But for now, it’s the metaphor that really counts. All my life, I’ve felt a massive internal resistance to anything that excessively resembles hard work or drudge-work. Is it some childhood rebellion turned toxic in adulthood? Early-prodigy burnout writ large? Do the whys and wherefores even matter anymore?

Regardless, it feels a lot like starting a climb…staring up the wall and feeling like I’ll never make it, like I’ll never be able to haul my economy-sized carcass up some strategically-placed hand- and foot-holds to where I can touch the top and enjoy the little reward of either abseiling or rappelling back down, depending on how much the climb took out of me. That bit is fun, actually. You feel kinda like Spider-Man.

Between the climbing and the blogging, who knows what other good habit I might be able to inculcate in myself. Maybe I’ll finally make better use of the lovely USB keyboard controller Dana gave me (so she would feel moved to get a better one *chuckles*) and start re-learning music, of which I’ve done none since minoring in it at college.

But, lest this sound too positive or optimistic, I have one hard, high internal climb ahead of me, and I’m probably going to fall. A lot. Sometimes you get the wall, and sometimes the wall gets you. I just hope I keep having the wherewithal to take a wee rest and make another, better try at it at least one more time than I fall.

Warning: Downer post. Please self-medicate before reading. Got an extra dose of your Paxil, Xanax, or Ecstasy in you? Good. If you’re rolling, look at the pretty colors and keep stroking that piece of faux-fur and have fun, but otherwise read on…

As I mentioned in a previous post, the last few years haven’t exactly been kind to me, leaving me more prone than ever to depressive episodes. (See? Told you this one wasn’t going to be all rainbows and kittens…) Part of the problem is that I’m having a really hard time finding my passion for life, and I honestly don’t know how to remedy this. Deaths (plural) in the family, losing most of my job and watching the company that used to pay me a living wage teeter on the brink of insolvency, deeply unintended physical and psychological consequences to achieving my surgical goal, watching a project of utopian intent eat itself in petty histrionics, and a recent relationship history that starts with a knife in my back, progresses through short-lived disappointments, and culminates with the longest stretch of involuntary celibacy in my adult life have all conspired to leave me afraid to want anything.

How does one get motivated to achieve — especially with my history — when all that buys you is disappointment and broken dreams? How does one bring love into her life beset by feelings of unworthiness and abandonment anxiety…to say nothing of a flatlined libido? How does one find contentment when perennially afraid that the rug will be rudely snatched out from under her feet?

In short, the lesson here is that dreams inevitably lead to hideous implosions. Or at least my combination of messed-up neurochemistry and body-blows from the proverbial school of hard knocks would teach me.

I’ve been trying new things, meeting new people, and am starting new ventures. I’m not just laying in bed hiding from life and the world. Well, at least not all the time. Listening to the history of my week, you’d think things were looking up. My 401(k) loan to tide me over while I start the new business went through, I tried and enjoyed faux-rock climbing with a circle of really cool new friends, I saved the towns of Arkham and Kingsport from the Elder Gods with one of my very best friends and her SO, I went for sushi and hot-tubbing with the Chasing Amy girls, I hacked up a really nice design for the new venture’s web site. And hey, Lost is back in just a couple of weeks!

Given all that, I would seem to have every reason to be as upbeat as a semi-employed grrl can.

And yet, I still have days where, even with a full night’s sleep and a decidedly pleasant previous evening, I can barely drag my carcass out of bed. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to nurture and hold on to happy feelings (assuming I ever learned how to in the first place).  I’m happy in the moment, but it fades quickly like a light morning fog, as if it was never there in the first place.

Leading up to my surgery in the latter half of 2005 and the first two months of 2006, I was happy and content for quite possibly the only time in my life. I was in my best relationship to date (or so I thought), had a job I loved, a promising new project, and a life-goal almost conquered. In the actual hospital in Scottsdale, I was ecstatically happy all through my convalescence. I felt so ready to start the next chapter in my life, so capable of moving on to the next thing with all that in place.

Then it all fell apart, and there was literally nothing I could do about any of it. I couldn’t fix my ex’s nervous breakdown and subsequent involvement with a man so toxic he deserves to be regulated by the EPA. Nothing I said or did seemed to do anything to stop my beloved new online community from destroying itself. I couldn’t prevent whatever burst in my father’s head from taking him from me and my remaining family. I couldn’t stop the major bank from imploding which so deeply savaged my employer that they couldn’t afford me full-time anymore and let a lot of long-time employees go wholesale.

Now, even when I accomplish something, even when I find some good company, even when I take a new lover…the cloud hovers there ready to leech away the joy the second I’m alone in my little apartment.

I don’t have the faintest clue how or where to find a new passion. I don’t know what on Earth can possibly have the motivating power that my transition did to pull me through the trying times by making me say to myself, “I can not lie down and die until I do this!”

But I still have all the usual needs. I need to make ends meet. I need love and companionship. I need satisfaction and contentment. I need joy and passion.

How can I find those in a state like this? And this is the attitude I’m bringing into trying to start a new business. All the skills, intelligence, and confidence in the world can fail with lead in the heart rather than fire in the belly. And even if I succeed, I’ve never been able to take satisfaction in that. It’s the very least that’s expected of me, after all.

Depression and neediness…so sexy.

Anyway, I’m sorry. I’ll get back to my usual ranting and raving in upcoming posts.

Now, like I promised, something a bit more positive and fun than castigating people for their unresponsiveness. A spoon-full (or is that a cube? ) of sugar, and all that.

My experiences with mind-altering substances of a non-prescription nature have been few and far between for many reasons, none of them being any resistance on my part to the idea of illicit substances. Indeed, as any of you who know me know, I find the idea of criminalizing victimless acts to be, well, criminal and just one more sign of the cultural insanity bequeathed upon this schizoid country by its original European settlers: Puritans and their fundamentalist religious zealot ilk.

No…I just don’t find it very constructive or alluring to take (IMHO) too-frequent vacations from reality. This is one of those small things in my psyche for which I’m very grateful. When it comes to substances, legal or not, I just don’t have addictive tendencies. I suppose I should add this to my Thanksgiving “thankful list.” Sex, intimacy, codependence…they’re another story, though at least the sex part is easier for me to deal with courtesy of my greatly-diminished post-op libido.

I also pass no judgment about the desire to either “take the edge off” or to take lengthy leaves of absence from everyday reality. Believe me, I can sympathize. Ever since puberty, “reality” has been something of a sworn nemesis of mine for relatively obvious reasons. Fantasy worlds like Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games or those of sci-fi/fantasy novels and comics were my escape of choice through adolescence. In college, it was sex and hedonism (though, admittedly, that was also quite a bit to do with self-exploration as well since, without those adventures, my most profound personal epiphany would have certainly taken much, much longer!).

All that said, the changes imposed on me by circumstance in 2008, and really in the last 3 years if I want to be completely honest, have left me depressed and ill-equipped to cope. Finding my way out of the rut I’ve been in has been difficult and frustrating. So, when a new friend offered me an opportunity to make my neurons fire differently, I didn’t pass it up. Perhaps, I thought, this was just the kind of rut-buster I needed.

I wasn’t without some trepidation. The particular “vehicle” for this journey was one with which I’d had a handful of experiences in the past, all of which were both unenjoyable and non-constructive. Still, with a different set and setting and with people I knew would a) be sharing this journey, and b) be very warm, caring, and supportive despite not knowing them very well, I thought it would be worth the chance. How right I was.

The experience itself was not at all what I expected, perhaps even hoped, it would be, but it was very much the one I needed. Instead of gaudy visible or synesthesic effects, I was treated to what I can only describe as an “instant imprinting” effect coupled with an ease and satisfaction with simply being, both alone and among my fellow psychonauts, that has escaped me in daily life.

I connected easily with the others on many levels, including sexually. That’s one thing that’s really been missing for me since I dated Jenny during the first half of last year. I’ve had sex since then, but it was without that feeling of connection that was facilitated this past weekend by our “ticket to ride.” Real connection, despite my ability to make “fast friends” (thank you, vagrant youth!) and my willingness to be wide open with new people, is very hard to come by for me. Thank you three (and everyone else whos been reminding me of this at other times) for helping me feel desirable and worthy of it.

I also, on the tail end of the trip, had a very helpful and cathartic discussion with my hostess about the extreme likelihood that I was an undiagnosed hyperlexic as a child, and the effects that this has had on me on into adulthood. I count the vehemence and rigidity with which I hold certain ideas and opinions (most notably to do with words and meanings), the almost painful discomfort I feel when exposed to stimuli I find distasteful, and my extreme difficulties with nonverbal communication among these.

I also think that the chemicals involved had a lot to do with easing the passage of a message that had been having trouble penetrating my thick cranium in regular life from people like my therapist when they were expressed to me during our wee voyage. Namely, that I somehow need to find it within myself to be OK with being in the space I’m currently in even with all its uncertainty, questions, and fear. The traumatic stripping away over the last few years of all the things that made me feel happy and on the right track during the latter half of 2005 and the first two months of 2006 were, perhaps, necessary to put me into the chrysalis I’m in now. Then, perhaps, I can emerge from it changed again and better able to deal with this new phase of my life…to find new purpose and new satisfaction…to go beyond the carefully-controlled and increasingly narrow comfort zone I’d carved out for myself.

It’s not going to be easy. I know this. It’s one reason I’ve been so paralyzed of late by fear, anxiety, and depression. I had recognized even before becoming semi-employed that this was going to be a journey of 1,000 miles which was going to take me to a new place that likely didn’t include staying on (or, as the case may be, staying on full-time) with my erstwhile employers and co-workers, as much as I really do like them.

It’s also been too easy to give in to feelings of aloneness and despair at the prospect of, once again, pulling myself up by my own emotional and fiscal bootstraps, especially when my personal reserves of wherewithal have felt so drained. I see now that I owe all the friends who were there for me, listening to me express those very feelings, a deep and heartfelt apology for the fact that those feelings were demeaning to them whether I meant them to be or not. I’m sorry. I really am. I’m sorry now, and I’m sorry if I lapse in the future. I’m not really alone even when staring at my own four walls, and I resolve to remind myself of this regularly.

I know that one trip over one night and day isn’t the whole 1,000-mile journey. It’s just the proverbial first step of more than I can count and possibly more than I’ll even have time for in my allotted span.

Finally, I think that my next step is, by necessity, going to have to be learning to accept that I’m never going to be able to achieve or learn or experience everything in this life that I might care to…hell, I won’t even have time to consider all the available worthy options! Whatever choices I make don’t have to be The Best of All Possible Choices™, just good and worthwhile ones. In the previous phase, my pursuit was obvious: find myself and make myself out of the given materials. The question of what to do with myself needs to be one I can allow myself to answer without those stresses.

*sighs*

Does this mean I’m going to have to learn the Getting Things Done™ system? Bloody hell!

Still, amazing what progress one can make when one has the right tools at one’s disposal and a willingness to actually use them. Happy New Year, indeed.

I’ve been a depressive as far back as I can remember.

I say this not to elicit a “poor Sonya” response from my dozen or so readers. I say it, along with the rest of this post, so they and others will understand just how crippling depression can be.

At this point, a lot of my childhood is opaque to me. No, I don’t have any of the major traumas of physical or sexual abuse in my past, thank goodness—though my heartfelt sympathy goes out to anyone who does. I just don’t want to remember it because I never remember being happy or even content for any sustained period of time as a kid. Not ever. I’ve only had a couple of short stints as an adult, for that matter, and none in the last nearly 3 years.

I honestly don’t know how much of it is simply my brain chemistry and how much of it is situational. Once you’ve spent enough of your life as a depressive, it becomes almost impossible to separate the two and the difference certainly feels academic from where I sit, even if that’s medically and/or psychologically not the case.

Depression is like many other chronic conditions—chronic pain, for example—in in that it’s invisible and therefore hard to sympathize with or truly understand for most people. It also doesn’t help that the word, “depression,” is used to also describe more transient mood-troughs. If clinical depression had some visible stigmata to compare to the spots of chicken pox or the yellow skin of hepatitis, perhaps people would take it more seriously and wouldn’t say things like “cheer up!” as if it were somehow that simple.

But what it does to you is horrible. Now, I’m not looking to set up a debate about who has it worse than whom here, either. Every chronic medical or psychological issue and every trauma is horrible in its own unique, debilitating, life-sucking way. I’m just saying that clinical depression blows goats for cab fare, regardless of where it may rank on any scale of comparative horribleness. 

It taints everything in your life. It leeches the joy out of your triumphs, makes you say “why bother?” to things you once found satisfying, and puts any moment of happiness or contentment under a warped microscope to find its inevitable doom (thereby, of course, hastening that doom). Success becomes impossible, failure assured. It can severely damage your personal relationships…with family, friends, lovers, anyone…and prevent you from seeking out new ones.

It is trying your best to snap shut Pandora’s Box and finding that you’ve only retained despair rather than hope under the lid. Omnipresent, it lurks to strike anew when any short respite is drawing to a close, like something out of HP Lovecraft, draining any happiness away and reminding you that your struggle with it simply will not end until you die.

I say these things as someone who’s been in psychological therapy for years with a very good therapist and whose mood-altering regimen is currently comprised of no less than three separate medications (Lexapro, Wellbutrin XL, and Remeron, if you were wondering). Once upon a time an for many years, one drug—Paxil—was enough to get me through. Now, my system laughs at just one.

I’ve tried hobbies, exercise (yes, really), diets, supplements, “keeping myself too busy to be depressed,” affirmations…everything but religion (’cause, yaknow, I’m just a bit too smart to be believing stories about invisible men in the sky and crucified people becoming zombies or gardens filled with 72 virgins—and really, wouldn’t 72 sluts be so much better in terms of the experience to be had? just asking—or burning bushes or “magick” spells or energy-channeling crystals or cheap neurological tricks, just to name a few). Nothing works for me, and each attempt only deepens the depression for being another “failure” in a long series of them going all the way back to my squandered “potential” to be the next fucking Einstein or something. Long story, written about it elsewhere, won’t get into it here right now.

I’ve just lost another weekend of my life to this disease, though, and my wherewithal is really flagging now. Between the way the last few years have gone (in so many ways) and the recent development of spending way too much time at home thanks to my company “going virtual” I find myself with way too much time to stew in my own psychological juices and no hope, no goal, no light at the end of the tunnel to pull me through and keep me putting one figurative foot in front of the other.

Needless to say, this makes me great fun at parties and oh-so-attractive to everyone I meet. (Never mind that, even assuming I could find someone interested in me, finding even one woman who actually fits my needs is starting to feel like searching for unicorns or moderate Republicans after 8 years of Dubya…makes being “poly” feel like an academic exercise.)

Just do one thing for me…if you have a friend who’s depressive (or has any other chronic, “invisible” ailment, for that matter), reach out to them and keep reaching out. Don’t stop, even if you meet with tepid response…it’s the depression talking. Nothing feeds depression more than feeling like the whole world really wouldn’t care one way or the other if you lived or died. Isolation is a killer to the depressive, and its unfortunately something that’s all too easy to fall into when it’s bad and it’s leeching away your will to so much as pick up the phone and call a friend. Sometimes that little effort from you is all they need to “kick-start” and keep some forward momentum going for a while.

It’s worth it, I promise.