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.