I guess it's getting cool to blog about depression now, thanx to the big
emo and vampire 'me' generation coming through, but now it's even cooler because
it's not just for the kids and 20 somethings any more since The Bloggess came out with Let's
Pretend This Never Happened and is getting tv interviews. It's rare
for a new author to bulldoze their way into my top ten faves reading list, so
she gets a gold star on her forehead.
I'm a blog watcher, but I don't hang with the typical cool crowd. No, I
watched Wil Wheaton struggle through his whole angsty thing, watched Chris
Hardwick reconstruct himself into the Nerdist. Years and years ago I watched
Leonard Nimoy deal with his I Am Not Spock and then his I Am
Spock phases. I'm not one for biographies, but I do love a good angst with
survival tips wrapping up the morals. I started my life on Aesop's fables, a
method in thought experiment which I think is a dying art in today's
world.
Ok, ok, here are book links, stop interrupting before this turns into a
whole reading list.
Just
a Geek: Unflinchingly honest tales of the search for life, love,
and fulfillment beyond the Starship Enterprise -Wil Wheaton
The
Nerdist Way -Chris Hardwick
I
Am Not Spock -Leonard Nimoy
I
Am Spock -Leonard Nimoy
My depression goes back 4 generations that I can trace through living
people. It's definitely genetic, and it's more a lifestyle than anything. The
problem with surviving depression (as with Asperger's, essentially, as with all
neuro challenges) is that we usually don't get guide books that actually help.
Yes, anyone can get counseling and go on pills and write a book, but are they
really *surviving*? Have they found a way to successfully live with their
depression?
Ok, stop, I know, everyone wants to chime in with their own definition of
depression. Instead of turning this blog post into a medical dictionary, I'll
just urban slang it into these somewhat standard flags.
1. It's easier and way more fun to curl up in a little closet in your head
than it is to smile at people and put a mask on.
2. It's easier and way more fun to lose time with virtual simulations in
your head than doing something real.
3. It's easier and way more fun to have brain sex on the computer or in a
book or watching tv than it is to have a real life.
4. You wake up one day and another ten years has gone by and you're fatter
and uglier (or skinnier and uglier) and any effort to change that involves
making lists, crying jags, making all kinds of new rules about your health and
personality and looks, and then collapsing back into your hole after a
week.
And all these steps are easily rationalized away with being busy, having an
injury of some kind, accepting who you really are, and somewhat bitterly
gritting your teeth and marching forward into a grim future of getting older.
Some people drink or pop pills, some people obsess with collections, some people
grow roots in tiny little social cliques, but some people suddenly emerge with
cool awesome books about how they actually figured it all out.
Wil Wheaton says he laid around for two years fretting with depression, so
I feel pretty normal now. Chris Hardwick's anxiety attacks were apparently way
worse than mine have been, so I feel pretty normal now. Jenny Lawson blurts
stupid things to strangers and hides in public bathrooms, so I feel pretty
normal now.
I have literally had to pull out of traffic and get out of my car, many
times. I take a stuffed monkey into MRIs with me because my claustrophobia is
so bad. I have literally had to leave stores and restaurants before I'm done
shopping or eating. I have literally driven 10 miles to town just to sit in a
parking lot so I won't be alone if I die (I live out of town). I have spent
months at a time being too sick to get up and do laundry, too messed up to make
a phone call to straighten out a billing problem, too freaked out to buy myself
a pair of shoes.
On the outside I seem really normal. People like me and think I'm cool,
because I'm so dang good at faking it. They even mimic me and follow me
around. On the inside, I'm an alien named mRpl. I'm lost and don't fit in and can't
seem to do anything right and sometimes I'm afraid none of this is real. I know
I'm not crazy, I had myself tested. My psychologist seems to think I'm doing
pretty good. But I have developed such an elaborate way of coping with
depression since my tiny childhood that I can't even imagine living without
depression.
I made a comment on someone's very excellent blog post about depression a
month ago, and a person commented after me something about the mental illness of
being so self obsessed (I checked him out, one of those bloggers that simply
repeats the news, like we need another broadcaster...), so I had a good think
about that. Yeah, I might *look* a little self obsessed with the way I blog
now, but this guy doesn't know I was mRpl for a few years because I absolutely
couldn't blog about my own life. It took me years to post a real picture of
myself, and even longer to admit I lived in the United States and what state I
was born in. If anything, I was so obsessed with distraction and avoidance that
no one had a clue who I was, dare I say least of all *moi*. My social anxiety
is so far off the wall that I still can't locate myself on a facebook map
without spending hours cringing and feeling sick. I actually have a reason for
that, but I can't share it yet.
The problem with coming out about depression and survival tactics is that
someone else feels the need to hit you over the head with a hammer and tell you
how dumb or ugly you are. But the dumb and ugly one is the person with the
hammer. And you know what? That's not really my head, that's your keyboard,
and if you're the one having to write that mean comment then YOU are the one
with the issues. If I'm awesome enough to elicit a negative Freudian response,
then I am a light to this world. That person needs *help*, and thank goodness I
came along just in the nick of time for them to hit with a hammer, because that
person is more lost and alone than I am.
Brave people blog real stuff. They get brutally honest about how they fall
on their faces and have to pick themselves back up and the crap they take the
whole time doing it. Real people who know life sux and keep going on anyway
while other people in masks and plastic personalities throw rocks are the
coolest people on the planet in my eyes. Anyone can throw a rock. Not just
anyone can keep going along with all those rocks flying at them.
Well, thanx to Chris Hardwick, Wil Wheaton, and Jenny Lawson writing their
books, and to @
ThatKevinSmith friending me on my new myspace when it was only
11 hours old (maybe he hits up all the noobs, but it still felt good), I know
I'm cool, too. And I took Chris Hardwick's good advice and bought a bunch of
cool spirals and stickers and made charts and lists and got a personal trainer,
and this nerd is going in a real direction now.
My depression is still a sucky thing I'm having to live with, but it's a
lifestyle I'm getting a grip on. I might still be weird and a little freaked
out, but I'm not afraid of an unseen future any more, because the future is me
and it is mine. For the record, I don't do head pills, and I don't drink. I'm
winging it in real time with real brain chemicals and a real psychologist, and
there is no way I'm apologizing to anyone for being who I am. Anyone who gives
me crap can suck it and admire the cover art on my book when it comes out.
