Treatment Records

One of the most prominent characteristics of my depression is and always has been the intractable feeling that no one cares about me in general. The closer I am to any given person, the stronger and more distressing that feeling is. While it never fully goes away, just being asked how I'm doing helps a ton in alleviating that sense, and by extension improving my headspace a little bit for a little while. All that being said, no one ever really checks in with me - KH doesn't, and Curly generally doesn't if I'm not clearly agitated - and asking people to do so makes me feel like a pest. Even though it is the one small thing that almost anyone can do to help me, even if I don't really have an answer or, worst case scenario, I'm so deep in an episode that I'm physically and mentally incapable of really responding.  I think that being asked how I'm doing is so deeply reassuring because when I ask someone that, I genuinely am concerned about their wel...

" You're a fucking alcoholic. Do you want to be like Loretta? Because Loretta does that shit. " This is what a friend of mine said to me when she came to my place last night, partly to check up on me - I'd sent her a string of increasingly unhappy and kind of distressed messages - and partly to be supportive, because I felt like garbage and my outlook was correspondingly bleak. And she's almost right; I've recognized my own alcoholic tendencies for a while now, though I haven't exactly done much by way of keeping them in check. Whatever part of the brain that typically goes hey, maybe I shouldn't drink an entire bottle of wine on a Wednesday and while I'm dehydrated doesn't work in me, because drink an entire bottle of wine on a Wednesday while dehydrated is exactly what I did. I'm a lot less concerned about my drinking habits than I probably should be, considering. Downing a whole bottle of wine in a sitting, desiring to get still more alc...

My world is on fire and more often than not, it feels good to fan those flames onto the people around me. I know that it's not a good thing to do, and it's generally something that I try to keep contained when possible, but I would be a liar if I said that loosening my resolve and turning into a ball of thorns to the people close to me doesn't feel good . It's something that I discussed with my counselor last semester - at least the ball of thorns bit, not it feeling good. I know why I do it; it gives justification to the feeling that people don't want me around, which in turn stems from the feeling of being unworthy of the friendship of those that for some reason haven't gotten rid of me already. Be nasty, be mean, push them away - do that before they have opportunity to ruin you. Be a ball of thorns and be lonely but not hurt, because people will always cause hurt, it's all people are capable of, it's all they want to do. Or at least that's how the...

I feel like I'm trying to get somewhere that I've never been to without a map or a clear idea of where I'm going. I'm frustrated to tears and I just want to make things right, even if I don't know exactly how.

I drink way too much.  That much is becoming clear to me. Sure, I've never blacked out, been hungover, or thrown up, but I still drink too much nonetheless.  It's never a reasonable amount. It's always a binge - half, an entire bottle of wine; three or four ciders in under an hour; not stopping until I can feel that my equilibrium is affected. I'm not even sure anymore what my motivations for quaffing multiple glasses of wine in a sitting are. I used to get a sort of pleasant fuzziness in my head, a soft block on all the garbage that normally churns around, but not anymore. At best, my thoughts are slower, and my tongue is looser, which is a help because while I've always had a hard time voicing my thoughts/feelings, it's become especially pronounced lately. The old benefits don't happen anymore, but the reflex remains. Even though there's an awareness that my coping habit is beyond unhealthy, I'm reluctant to outright stop, even though it's ...

My worst dreams are never the nightmares that leave me feeling thoroughly unsettled for days after, where the amorphous, unstated fears and anxieties I try not to address in waking decide to wreak havoc in my sleep. No, my worst dreams are the ones that are objectively normal in every sense of the term, because they're of a reality that I desperately wish were mine. I dream about being happy, and most prominently, about being easy friends with my roommates. All of them, even Dave, who in life is on the extremely short list of people I actively dislike. I dream about laughing, about sharing meals, about sitting outside and watching the antics of the dogs. One such dream played out last night. The two details that stand out in my memory are of watching Morris (the chihuahua puppy that Curly and Favorite Person are fostering at present [I don't feel comfortable using an inclusive "we" here because those two are doing all the work {I'm somewhere between annoyed and hu...

Originally, today's post was going to be on how I've been feeling somewhat better over the past couple of days. I'd planned on musing on how the urge to harm myself had lessened, how I didn't feel a strong compulsion to drink, how the endless ruminating on death and how best to bring about my own was less constant. That's changed. I've returned to how I've been. I made it home a bit earlier than I usually do yesterday, early enough that there was still activity in the house. Likewise, I turned in earlier than I normally do, and for a while, as I worked to quiet my thoughts for long enough to fall asleep, I found it impossible to tear my attention away from the conversations happening in other rooms. The apartment's walls are paper-thin, and I can hear essentially anything said on my floor or on the main level.  I found the sounds of voices incredibly loud. They were no higher in volume than normal, and yet the discussions were intolerably loud. Aside f...

Everything hurts, and I want to die.  This has been my mantra for the past month or so. I'm not sure anymore if it's a statement of how I am at present, or some sort of prayer for relief put out to the universe.  Wellbutrin does not work for me anymore.  I don't have access to counseling anymore - not the kind of extended counseling I need.  I can't try to voice what's going on in my head to Favorite Person anymore, and after the way that things have soured between us, I'm terrified to completely open up to anyone else.  It's getting harder and harder to maintain an image of being okay to the people I work with.  I've been somewhere in that grey area between being passively suicidal and actively suicidal for over a month now, and I can feel myself spending more and more time in the latter region.  Fantasizing about suicidal gestures is a continuous background process, no matter how I may be doing at the moment or what may be going on....

Each day that passes reduces my faith that things will get better. This evening, I began drafting the letters I would leave behind, should my pain finally reach the point of completely exceeding my ability to cope. Favorite Person, Curly, Soul Sister, my mother, my father, my dear sister, my grandmother. Other friends that have touched my life in some way. They will all have some last vestige of me, once I've gone. If I leave. A normal person would be deeply disturbed by this, by the urge to begin putting down the thoughts I'll leave behind, but this feels more like an inevitability than anything. It's as though the whole of my existence has led to my inhabiting the depths of distress that drives people to contemplate ending their own lives.  It's truly a strange state to exist in. There's the continued awareness that this...this urge  is completely nonsensical, and that it won't actually solve anything, and that regardless of what the depression tells me, oth...

I'm not getting any better. This morning, the intense, desperate desire to die was a horrible complement to the empty hopelessness that I'm all too familiar with. For the first time in a while, I was completely unable to attend any of my classes today, and didn't have the energy to leave the house until nearly 6pm. I'm used to this sort of thing happening over the weekend, but having that sort of smothering, heavy distress come over me on a day when I have responsibilities to attend to is frightening. I already know that I struggle to take proper care of myself, not eating, drinking, socializing, or exercising nearly as much as I should, but having this kind of nonfunctionality during a time it doesn't typically happen makes me afraid that I'm slipping into being completely unable to care for myself in any regard.  I'm deeply afraid that I'm getting to the point of needing to be admitted. Favorite Person has asked if I've looked into inpatient trea...

More than anything, this blog is feeling less like a record of my experience than a gaping hole to toss thoughts I can't otherwise express into. Hardly anyone will read these, so whatever I say here is more or less shouting into an infinite void that will never respond, no matter how much I want it to. I know that a lot of people talk to themselves more or less continuously in their minds, but I wonder how many have to endure a constant internal war between two mutually exclusive perspectives. A constant war where you have no idea which side is real, or if either side is real, or if anything that goes on can be trusted in any capacity. It's a miracle that I'm able to function at all when I can't trust any thought that crosses my mind. She doesn't give a shit about you, and she probably never has. Probably wants you gone, out of her space, out of her life.         She does care, she just needs space. You know exactly the toll you've taken; she deserves to take...

Hello, anyone that reads this. I'm not really in a state much better than I was when the last post was published. I felt for a while that today was going to be a good one, but the feeling evaporated once I was fully awake. This is the kind of thing that a normal person would be concerned about, but this is my standard; it's the state I occupy most frequently now. I have no appetite. I very rarely speak to anyone more than once a day. I hardly see other people; days go by between sightings of or interactions with my roommates, and no one  seems to be hugely concerned about how withdrawn I am now, more so than normal. They probably are, or at least one is, but I don't see it. Or, more likely, I can't see it. I seldom get enough sleep, and when I do, I wake up still feeling unrested. I don't see much of a future ahead of me for myself. There are things that I still want to do and experience, but I don't believe that any potential joy or sense of achievement that I ...