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.

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”
—Ancient Chinese After-Dinner Prognostication Slogan

Well, I suppose in my case it would actually be closer to the 116th day of the rest of my life given that it was on November 30, 2008 that I lost most of my job. Like I mentioned in my last post, I’ve kind of been dragging my feet some in getting serious about building The Rest Of My Life™. I’ve already bitched in these pages about the steady, inexorable way in which the nice life I’d built by the beginning of 2006 had torn itself apart, so I won’t go launching into that laundry list here. I’m going to try to stay more positive.

Much like our old friend the fortune cookie tells me, I’m in a place of flux in my life right now and a new life is going to emerge from the ashes of the old. I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by the smoking crater of the past, to be sure, but I’m starting to get a flavor for what the new life is going to be and how I’m going to have to challenge myself to improve to make it work.

I know that January 1st is more traditional for announcing resolutions, but that’s only for the new year and I’m talking about the new life. So, on to the resolutions…

1. I’m going to make myself get up no later than 8AM on the weekdays and 10AM on the weekends. Sleeping away my life, as comfy as my memory-foam mattress is and as cuddly as Pi is, is not a terribly useful thing to do.
2. Conversely, no more of this “staying awake until 3 and 4AM or even later” stuff on a school night.
3. I will be on time to things (barring extreme calamity) and stop making my friends, or anyone else, wait for my happy ass. I try to pull that shit with clients and I’ll be on the street and starving in no time.
4. I’ve invested in and will actually use the organizational software, Things (also available for iPhone so you can stay organized on the go!), in conjunction with my other existing tools (like iCal) to be better organized.
5. Actually get things done for myself.

Oh yeah…in addition to all those good intentions and starting a new business and other entrepreneurial endeavors (Geek Salon, an iPhone app idea I’m pursuing with a friend…more on that another time, though), I’m also going to have to find shared housing and move at the end of next month. Oy!

But in order to do all this, I’m going to need the help and support of my friends, loved ones, co-workers, and other well-meaning folks.

Living alone has given me a feeling of isolation that really hasn’t helped me in trying to get my life jump-started. So, please…if you have my contact info, use it! Call me, IM me, email me. Check in with me, see how I’m doing, ask how things are progressing, maybe invite me out to stuff. The more momentum I can generate during these difficult first steps, the better, so help me not do my counterproductive withdrawing thing I’ve been doing so much of lately.

I’m going to start living The Rest of My Life™ rather than mourning the passing of what was, but like the man sang, “I get by with a little help from my friends.”

Thanks, everyone!

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.

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.

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.