A Quiet Year

2014 was largely uneventful for me.  Which is good.  I like quiet and uneventful.  Which isn't to say it wasn't a good year: it was.  My husband's job got reorganized and in the process he got a raise and the ability to work from home.  Which was a good thing, because I quit my job...

The Darkness Inside

A number of thoughts and emotions went through my head in the minutes and hours following the announcement that Robin Williams had killed himself.  My first thought was that the world was now a lesser place without his wit and depth of personality.  My second thought was to feel sorry for him, as he was...

Thief of Memory

Most people know about the usual symptoms of depression. The malaise, the inability to enjoy things, the trouble sleeping, so on and so forth. Those who don't suffer from it might not know about one of its more insidious traits, though. It steals your happy memories. When you're depressed, you can't remember ever being happy,...

Tired

Hello depression, my old friend. We've written and called several times in recent months, but we haven't been bosom buddies in quite a while. We seem to be having a right and proper visit at the moment, though. I can't say I'm happy to see you. You tell me I'm a loser and take away...

Patterns

My good friend B has been helping me with my memoir.  She was telling me that I need to make it more personal in places, and suggested there needs to be a section where I talk about myself and how I deal with the world: what my patterns are that help me cope with things....

Reflection

I spent some time today reading over the previous year's worth of blog entries over at Tempest. I'm struck by how much better I feel compared to the way I was feeling when I wrote a lot of those entries. There was still a lot of up and down, and I wasn't really on the...

Not Little Anymore

I've been increasingly sad lately that Zoe's getting so big. She's shedding another 'skin', so to speak, by outgrowing another layer of toys and interests. Every time I see her/us getting rid of something else that she's had since she was very small or a little-little girl, I get really depressed. Other small things will...

Experiment

I underwent an experiment over the last few weeks.  I tried to taper off my lithium, mostly because I didn't like its side effects.  Mostly things like big muscle twitching and vision impairment.  It sucked not to be able to read a book, and it really sucked to be using a mouse and have my...

40

So I hit the big four-oh recently.  40.  I know it's just an arbitrary chronological marker, like 20 or 30, but you remember how seriously you took those particularly markers, don't you?  Crossing 20 was like the loss of your youth.  Only one year away from legally drinking, your days of clandestine partying were just...

Wind and Fire

Praise Buddha, the heat wave has finally broken.  Not before we matched our hottest temperature ever: 112F.  Y'know, if I wanted to live in the fuckin' desert, I would have moved to Las Vegas.  Now it's a much more normal 90F-ish, but we traded almost living on the surface on the Sun to actually being...

Hot Hot Hot

"I tried not to think about the words SEARING.FLESH." - Fight Club It has been blazingly hot lately.  On Tuesday, I measured a temperature of 110F on my back porch.  Some people get SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder)  in the winter.  I get it in the summer.  After all, there's not much going outside.  Not if...

Anhedonia

From the Greek 'an-' meaning against or not, and '-hedone', meaning pleasure.  Therefore, a lack of pleasure.  One of the hallmarks of depression.  Not to mention something I've been suffering from to one degree or another for months (years?) now.  Really, I can't tell how long anymore.  When was the last time I was truly happy and...