11 Jun 2017 - Still Not Home
Afternoon. Today's post is early, relatively speaking, because I have little better to do with my life at present.
Day 107 on escitalopram.
Mood: 5.
I'm beginning to think that the effects I'd noticed when going off Lexapro for a few days - the mood boost, not the withdrawal - were some kind of elaborate placebo. Because my medicine (well, medicines, since Lexapro isn't the only thing I have to take to function from day to day) has been packed away for a few days, I've missed a couple doses, and there has been absolutely no uptick in how I feel.
Today was spent getting more situated in my new room. I still don't have a mattress, which sucks. My family got me a shelving unit, which is great. All of the books that I brought with me now have places to live. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find a desk to my liking, so my room is without workspace. I need something that can hold 100lbs or more, since the larger of my two aquaria will be on my desk. The mattress shipment also included bed risers, which means that I just have storage containers kind of haphazardly placed around my meager living space.
Things are everywhere, and my inability to do anything about that fact is more than a little distressing.
I dislike how poorly soundproofed this townhouse is. Not having an even somewhat acoustically insulated space to retreat to is deeply frustrating, and tiring. There are times when I just need to be able to not hear other humans. The sounds of Favorite Person and Dave - one of my other roommates, whom I find highly distasteful, and don't hold in a high enough regard for an anonym, though the name is effectively an anonym not of my choosing - puttering around the kitchen, and the fact that there's little I can do to block them out, grates on my nerves.
I should probably be up there helping with whatever they're doing, but I'd rather be alone, in my hole. Like I always am.
This townhouse still doesn't feel like home to me. It's a place that I have to stay without truly belonging, an extra piece to a social machine that doesn't need me, doesn't want me, and functions just fine without my presence. I'm some additional, unneeded thing here; I predict that much of my time will be spent slowly isolating myself to death in my room. My mind has spent too much time examining the idea of ending my life in here, turning it over and over and over, never letting it go, adding more detail as time passes. It's a pastime that I feel has crossed from borne of depression territory into just how I am territory, though at this point, the distinctions between the two are blurry at best.
Something I've been brooding about a lot lately has been the ultimate end goal of my depression treatment. At this point, given the fact that I was first diagnosed over 7 years ago but have experienced depression-like symptoms for most of my life, I have very little hope that I'll ever be technically cured. I don't see a point coming in the near or distant future where I can say to myself "yes, I am completely rid of this thing". I've been dealing with it for so long that the best I can strive for is managing it, so that maybe I'll have a period of my life when I'm not controlled by it.
Another thing that I've contemplated for years now is the fact that, since I've struggled with my depression for such a large portion of my life, I quite literally don't know who I am without it. Depression was right there as my personality emerged, matured, took on more complete forms. It was a factor in the gradual formation of me as I know myself, of my quirks and irregularities, of the things that make me me. I can't fathom how differently that process may have gone without my illness in the picture, and I can't predict how I may change if it were somehow absent. That inability to predict any kind of outcome scares me in a way that not many other things do.
This isn't to say that I don't want to someday be free of the monster that rules me, nothing of the sort. I just can't imagine life without it.
Tomorrow is my first day of field work for the summer, which gives me a small hope. My job is something that I truly enjoy, even though the task is hot and grueling to say the least. It's something that will occupy my mind for the better part of the day, giving me something external to focus on. Knowing me, I'll likely spend more time working on this project than anyone else on the team, not out of some desire for greater recognition, but out of a strong distaste for being at the place where I live, and an even stronger need to keep my attention on something outside of the self.
I need to begin treating my field clothes with permethrin, so that I don't get too many ticks on me. Lyme disease is something I'd like to avoid, if at all possible.
Posts over the summer will likely be very similar to each other, since I'll be doing field work most every day. I'll still post, though; maybe discussing interesting sites or specimens found.
Until then.
11 Jun 2017
Day 107 on escitalopram.
Mood: 5.
I'm beginning to think that the effects I'd noticed when going off Lexapro for a few days - the mood boost, not the withdrawal - were some kind of elaborate placebo. Because my medicine (well, medicines, since Lexapro isn't the only thing I have to take to function from day to day) has been packed away for a few days, I've missed a couple doses, and there has been absolutely no uptick in how I feel.
Today was spent getting more situated in my new room. I still don't have a mattress, which sucks. My family got me a shelving unit, which is great. All of the books that I brought with me now have places to live. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find a desk to my liking, so my room is without workspace. I need something that can hold 100lbs or more, since the larger of my two aquaria will be on my desk. The mattress shipment also included bed risers, which means that I just have storage containers kind of haphazardly placed around my meager living space.
Things are everywhere, and my inability to do anything about that fact is more than a little distressing.
I dislike how poorly soundproofed this townhouse is. Not having an even somewhat acoustically insulated space to retreat to is deeply frustrating, and tiring. There are times when I just need to be able to not hear other humans. The sounds of Favorite Person and Dave - one of my other roommates, whom I find highly distasteful, and don't hold in a high enough regard for an anonym, though the name is effectively an anonym not of my choosing - puttering around the kitchen, and the fact that there's little I can do to block them out, grates on my nerves.
I should probably be up there helping with whatever they're doing, but I'd rather be alone, in my hole. Like I always am.
This townhouse still doesn't feel like home to me. It's a place that I have to stay without truly belonging, an extra piece to a social machine that doesn't need me, doesn't want me, and functions just fine without my presence. I'm some additional, unneeded thing here; I predict that much of my time will be spent slowly isolating myself to death in my room. My mind has spent too much time examining the idea of ending my life in here, turning it over and over and over, never letting it go, adding more detail as time passes. It's a pastime that I feel has crossed from borne of depression territory into just how I am territory, though at this point, the distinctions between the two are blurry at best.
Something I've been brooding about a lot lately has been the ultimate end goal of my depression treatment. At this point, given the fact that I was first diagnosed over 7 years ago but have experienced depression-like symptoms for most of my life, I have very little hope that I'll ever be technically cured. I don't see a point coming in the near or distant future where I can say to myself "yes, I am completely rid of this thing". I've been dealing with it for so long that the best I can strive for is managing it, so that maybe I'll have a period of my life when I'm not controlled by it.
Another thing that I've contemplated for years now is the fact that, since I've struggled with my depression for such a large portion of my life, I quite literally don't know who I am without it. Depression was right there as my personality emerged, matured, took on more complete forms. It was a factor in the gradual formation of me as I know myself, of my quirks and irregularities, of the things that make me me. I can't fathom how differently that process may have gone without my illness in the picture, and I can't predict how I may change if it were somehow absent. That inability to predict any kind of outcome scares me in a way that not many other things do.
This isn't to say that I don't want to someday be free of the monster that rules me, nothing of the sort. I just can't imagine life without it.
Tomorrow is my first day of field work for the summer, which gives me a small hope. My job is something that I truly enjoy, even though the task is hot and grueling to say the least. It's something that will occupy my mind for the better part of the day, giving me something external to focus on. Knowing me, I'll likely spend more time working on this project than anyone else on the team, not out of some desire for greater recognition, but out of a strong distaste for being at the place where I live, and an even stronger need to keep my attention on something outside of the self.
I need to begin treating my field clothes with permethrin, so that I don't get too many ticks on me. Lyme disease is something I'd like to avoid, if at all possible.
Posts over the summer will likely be very similar to each other, since I'll be doing field work most every day. I'll still post, though; maybe discussing interesting sites or specimens found.
Until then.
11 Jun 2017
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