Feel the Unlove

Since I haven't been publishing this site for very long, it's probably the work of less than an hour to read through my archives chronologically (or, if you're a Memento fan, reverse-chronologically). And if you decide to do so, you will notice a pattern: every once in a while I write about my torrid affair with self-loathing.

That's probably not really the most accurate word for it. Abjection? Do you prefer abjection? It has a nice ring to it. I almost typed "a nice wring to it", and that would have been an amusing parapraxis. Just throttle that bad boy, abjection!

2. The condition or estate of one cast down; abasement, humiliation, degradation; downcastness, abjectness, low estate. --OED

That sounds about right ...

I wish I had some exquisite story to relate about my abasement, humiliation, degradation, and let's not forget my low estate, which I really ought to raise one of these days, but I keep procrastinating and the grass is knee-high, and the price of topsoil has meanwhile gone through the roof. The bitter truth is that there is never a really tangible reason for why I feel like ... Oh! Wait! Shins lyrics from Know Your Onion! say this really well:

When every other part of life seemed locked behind shutters
I knew what worthless dregs we've always been.

Well, I'm sorry--I didn't mean to implicate you, too--especially after you've been so nice, coming by and all.

As I was saying (this is a really scattered post, eh?), there's no reason other than samsara: the Great Big Go-Round you continue to experience if you are making your happiness contingent on ever-changing circumstances.

Even circumstances aren't particularly conspiring against me, but my mind is. I'm feeling horrrrribly isolated, probably the result of leaving my job. Poor Jill! She was able to leave her job, just to make life a little easier on her as she finishes her degree under conditions 100% of her own choosing, and now has nothing to do but help take care of her child and her home, and attend to a ridiculously easy (though boring as shit) summer course! O weep for the pitiable soul as she withers in her comfortable home, lacking no middle-class comfort that her husband's income can buy! Extend the warm rays of compassion to her as she whines and mopes about how nobody loves her, not really, well they wouldn't if they really knew what a sniveling worm she was!

Well--now you do.

Comments

[Suzyn]

Dahling, they have drugs for that now. Uptake inhibitors or downlow exhibitors or whatever they're called. They're the cat's meow. I know.

[Mir]

Yeah, drugs are good, sometimes. ;)

So are volunteer activities, hanging out with existing friends or making some new ones, or just venting once in a while.

We can take it. ;)

[Jo]

Hey, you cut that Shins song off before the next line, which is:

"the selfless, loving saints we are"

So there.

Okay though. Time to get real.

Now you can pretty it up with all the jokes you want, friend, but I know depression, and I'm beginning to think it knows you. In the Biblical sense.

I've been watching you, my dear, and you've been building up to this nasty little thought-circle that's all about beating yourself up until you're miserable, then beating yourself up more for feeling so miserable. I've been there. You need something to jolt you out of it, and I don't know what that something is for you.

For me it was Zoloft, twice, and then insulin regulation via low-carb diet and metformin (obviously that's me-specific, although simple carbohydrates will crash anyone. Really). Exercise and sunlight are helpful too, and that's clinically speaking. I am not ashamed I need antidepressants. Because I needed them to live; I needed them like vitamin C. Why get scurvy, huh?

I beg of you, don't play this game with your brain, where you list all the reasons you have no right to be depressed. You might as well tell me I have no right to be insulin resistant. Might as well tell my husband he has no right to have toenail fungus. You see what I'm getting at.

So. I am here for you, but I have to be straight with you: I see something developing, a Perfect Storm of self-loathing tendencies and isolation and major life changes, and dammit, I can't fix it for you, much as I wish I could. But I can be here when you need some quality cappucino time.

And quit chugging the Hate-orade. Have some love instead, courtesy of Jo.

[Angie]

I hope you feel better soon, I know those days. Oh yeah and if you don't want to get drugs, St, John's Wort does a pretty good job too!

[Mme.Paquin]

Your pattern seems to occur about every four weeks - is it a bird, is it a plane, is it PMS?

Hugs to you, Jill.

[Melissa]

I'm familiar with this phenomenon. What I like to do is load up a truck with all my issues and send them across cyber space to a very nice woman named Jill.

I go through this myself in cycles...is it PMS? I don't know. Sometimes it seems to last too long to be PMS but then other times the fog does lift after my visitor leaves. Great example. For the last two weeks my house has seemed like a small torture chamber. Everywhere I looked there was clutter and dirt and no matter what I got done, there was more to do. Simple tasks like folding laundry made me dream of running away.

Now this week....my house seems tolerable, even though I've done nothing different.

I don't know if you're suffering with depression, even in a mild form. Hell, I don't know if I'm suffering with it. I took zoloft for almost two years and only went off it last summer. I may go back on. Who knows. It's always an option.

Beating yourself up for having feelings isn't. So stop being so mean to Jill, okay? God!

[Chris]

Regardless, we love you. These things happen and most things in life are cyclical in nature. But a previous comment was right - there are drugs. Even legal ones!

[Lee]

I still don't see what your basement has to do with your injection.

[alice]

I second what Jo wrote, my dear. I know whereof I speak, as well. Having been there, the cyclical self-bashing has a familiar ring to it. I say, go to a psychiatrist, talk to him/her about your feelings, see what he/she has to say. I have someone here in NYC I can highly recommend. She's nuts, as all good psychiatrists are.

[zeno]

I have a theory which, if I hang my hat on it, makes me feel marginally better when I take on of the many exits for self loathing from the autoroute of mediocrity. It is this, "talented and smart people always question their value" therefore, as I am questioning my value I am talented and smart QED.

Kid, I think you're a brilliant writer and I look forward to your public displays of brilliance. I enjoy you and I feel a certain kinship (though this may well just be my barely subconscious desire to acquire brilliance by hanging out with brilliant people... hence my obsession with Mindy!).

Anyway, if you would like something else to occupy your mind while sitting around hating yourself, give me an e-mail... I am trying to kickstart an e-zine of sorts and would appreciate having more brilliant people involved...

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