5 Ways to Beat the Blues

In my last post, I talked about having cabin fever. This post is about things I've done to fight back those blues.

1. Sort out every junk drawer in my home. This was fun for the first 30 seconds. I was intending to get rid of things I hadn't used (or even thought about for a while), but I just ended up finding crap I might need again. Bottom line: I didn't get rid of anything, but I did buy a small trunk to store all the old makeup, lotions, hair items and keys that unlock something somewhere.
2. Actually watch the videos on my YouTube "Watch Later" list. 4 videos in, I had bored myself to pity. I spent the next hour trying to figure the state of mind I'd been in when I'd bookmarked videos explaining fractal math or they why's and how's of home insulation. I mean, really?
3. Pull out the bag of hair I bought a few months ago. Yes, hair. Hair for braiding in extensions. I'd watched a video that made the shit look do-able, but after I got an entire 6-inch braid completed, I realized the damn thing wasn't even still attached to my own hair. (I put the braid in the junk trunk because it might make a cool key-chain later on.) If I'd paid more than $0.99 for the bag of fake horsetail, I'd really be pissed. At least I got a good laugh out of the experience. And I did enjoy the video.
4. Read actual books - the kind with paper pages. Remember those? I barely did. I was thumbing through "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Biblical Mysteries" and got upset because I couldn't just click on the index and shoot right to the page I wanted. (When did I, a wanna-be author, stop reading "real" books? I only have a collection because of the freebies cart at the local library. That right there is a sad thing to admit.)
5. Remind myself how freaking old I'm getting. This is something I do every now and then, no matter the season. I'll try doing a back-bend or the splits and my body will let me know just how bad my muscle memory is. I almost didn't put this next part in here, but I have no shame, so here ya go: I can barely jump rope anymore. I don't know what the problem is. I can still dance pretty good, so it's not a rhythm thing. Is coordination something that goes with age? Well, damnit.

Just so you know, except for the laughing I do, none of this really does keep my blues completely away. Usually, after I finish laughing, I end up slightly more depressed. Who the hell wouldn't be depressed about not being able to skip rope? That's okay. I read somewhere that 10 or 15 minutes spent laughing can burn the calories found in a piece of chocolate. Great. At the rate that I eat chocolate, I'd have to laugh my way through the entire winter season.

Point of this post? Just another thing to get me through twenty more minutes of winter.

Peace

--Free

Cabin Fever

Cabin Fever.

Wikipedia defines it as : "an idiomatic term, first recorded in 1918, for a claustrophobic reaction that takes place when a person or group is isolated and/or shit in a small space, with nothing to do for an extended period."

I just call it Cabin Crazy.

Too tired to raise my hand

I've been suffering from CF/CC, or whatever you want to call it, for the past couple weeks.

I'm tired of winter. I'm tired of snow and slush and cold and dark and having to run my damn car for twenty minutes before it wants to go anywhere. The other day, I got so tired of this shit that, I swear, if my crazy ex had asked me to visit him in Texas for a few days, I might have considered it. Thankfully, that mood has passed, but... If this winter keeps up much longer, I might feel that desperate again.

My attitude has more cabin fever than I do. Everything is irritating the crap out of me. I can't even stand to read the news because, if it's good news, I'm jealous. If it's bad news, I'm hateful. Don't even let me catch a glimpse of a TV ad where some skinny bitch is eating yogurt on a beach. My brain goes into stalker mode and the only thing stopping me from finding that happy heifer and cramming a yogurt container down her throat is the fact that I'd have to go out and warm up my fucking car first.

Ugh!

I need to live somewhere with seasons that know how to come and go on a normal cycle. Who the hell wouldn't have cabin fever or murder on their mind living in a place when winter starts in October and lasts til it feels like leaving? I mean, we might see light-jacket weather sometime around the end of May. And that's only for between the hours of noon and maybe four o'oclock. Yeah, the sun will be up half the night, but it won't be so you can show off your booty-shorts and tank tops.

Seriously, I need a vacation. I'm not talking hotel and planned events. I'd settle for a roadside inn or truck stop and a decent vending machine selection - as long as it's somewhere warm and sunny. And the idea of any kind of a vacation brings up the other thing that makes me crazy about living here: you damn near have to cash in an IRA or some stock options to get out of here. It's not like you can just hop in your car (after warming it up) and take a day trip to a neighboring state. Even if we wanted to take a two-week trip and drive through the mountains, we can no longer just cruise through Canada anymore. No. Now it takes one of those passport card things to do that. It's like the universe is working to keep us here.

The only thing saving me from going completely mad this winter is my Netflix subscription. I've watched entire seasons of shows that a person with a normal life would never have time to squeeze into the past three months. I just ran out of episodes of "Breaking Bad" and there are still weeks and weeks and weeks  to go of this winter.

Someone (who happens to live where they feel the warmth of the sun on their skin all year round) made a comment to me about how living here must be good for writers. You'd think, wouldn't you? All this closed in solitude and darkness, right? Think again. Most writers are people who create characters they can hold conversations with and create worlds out of nothing because they have problems dealing with the one they live in. We're already a little crazy. I don't think solitude and darkness are things we need more of.

Yeah, so...

This coming week, I'm going to force myself to be more social. I'm going to get my head out of the book I'm writing and touch bases with all my social networks. I'm not really in the mood for people I have to actually deal with, but I can handle logging in and out of Google and Twitter. Maybe. We'll see.

Peace
--Free

Coming Off The Ledge

I had a few very bad days of being super-depressed. When I get like that and nothing else can bring me around, I go off the grid; close myself up away from everyone and everything so that I can do my praying and thinking in peace. I also try to find reasons to deal better with everything.

The other day - about Day 5 into my time in the abyss - I was re-reading a book about the band INXS. I just loved  this group back in the day. The singer, Michael Hutchence committed suicide (or at least, gave in to sadness) at such a young age, 37. Like a lot of people, I was surprised and had to ask the usual "Why?"

A good way to revive yourself out of a funk - or at least talk yourself off the ledge - is to think of someone who didn't make it out. You think of how much they must be missed by the people who loved them, and all the wonderful things they did not live to see. You think, or I did in the case of Hutchence, of  how the talent they shared with us is the only thing left. I still use the lyrics that Hutch and Andrew Farris put out there for us. And Hutch isn't the only sweet soul who didn't make it; he's just a famous face of so many people's pain. They just didn't make it out of a very bad, and probably very temporary, place. As Bono put it about Hutchence: he was just stuck in a moment.

Now, know one thing about me: I get stuck in moments, but I've always made it out. I have a secret weapon in the war on depression. I have a deep faith in Jesus. If I didn't, I'd have not made it through things that came years before this bad time. Trust that.

Jesus promised, "I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you." (John 14:18)

Some people don't have faith in anything. Some people just teeter alone into the bad places that depression can take any of us. If you are depressed, please find a positive way to deal with it. Call someone, hold on tight to someone, pray - just don't give in to it.

Anyway, my bad moment has passed. I celebrated last night by listening to some of  my favorite INXS songs. My "favorites" in anything change with my mood. Right now, this is my favorite:

R.I.P. Hutch

Peace

--Free

P.S.: If you don't understand faith, I don't either; I just have it. This is a story of a woman who seems to have & understand it.

U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline:

1-800-273-8255

Save.org

Suicide Awareness Voices of Education

**Wikipedia has list or resources for those of you who live outside the USA**

Afflicted

Definitions of "depression"

Psychiatry . a condition of general emotional dejection andwithdrawal; sadness greater and more prolonged than thatwarranted by any objective reason. 

A depressed  or sunken place or part; an area lower than thesurrounding surface.

Both work when talking about the state of our minds and lives.

There are so many amazing people using Google Plus. Someone there was brave enough to announce his personal battles with depression. Another person remarked that "Silence is deadly." So I am speaking following example and speaking out here about my own battle. (Not that regular readers probably haven't guessed at it before!)

I don't really know how to address the issue except to point out some things I have noticed:

• My depression is mine and no one else's. I don't understand it fully and I can't expect others to understand it with or for me.
• I don't need people to understand it. I just need them to accept me with my depression and it's weight.
• Some people feel that depression is just a bad mood that a person can "snap out of." 
• Being depressed is not the worst part of this battle. Trying to pretend I am not depressed is the worst part. Trying to appear "normal" and "happy" when I am not.
• Depression for me is sometimes a force of  sudden "Un-ness."  Un-expected, un-controllable, un-explainable, un-definable tears and grief and ground-opening-up-beneath emotional terror. There is a sense of being un-tethered from life, un-loved, un-lovable, un-needed, un-able, un-salvageable. 
• Depression for me is a sense of complete alone-ness. For long moments (minutes, hours, days...), I will feel as if I am locked in glass walls of sadness while I can see other people moving on around me, living their lives so normally while normal is not something I can comprehend at the time.
• When depressed, I am not only sad but disappointed that others cannot see my pain. The things they do and say that have such profound impact on me - it means nothing to them because the can't understand my depression.

Maybe that explains it all somewhat. Maybe not.

Part of my depression is due to my Sarcoidosis. I was in a period of depression for months before I was diagnosed. It seems to have gotten worse with the raging of the Sarc. I think that some of my depression is due to the disease itself and some is due to my dealing with the disease. I don't know if that makes sense, but having the disease is one thing in a physical way and another thing is a daily living way.

Since I have been diagnosed, some people treat me as though I am less than I was before. Less smart, less capable, less human, less real, less worthy. God forbid I have a mood swing and get grumpy. This disease gives some people an excuse to be cruel and superior. But in a very nice and loving kind of way, mind you.

Depression is tough, but so is life. Depression is part of my life so I treat it as such. I am lucky to have an understanding and truly compassionate doctor and a best friend who deserves wings and a halo. They keep me steady (for the most part) and constantly repair me when I break myself into mental pieces and the rest of the world steps on those pieces. 

If you know someone who you think might be depressed, pray for them. Try to approach the subject of their getting help. Make it easy for them to open up. It's okay for you not to understand the depression; you can still love the person. And don't let their smiles fool you. No one can appear happier than a person who is about to drown in depression. 

Peace

--Free