!= Does Not Equal

Living with a depressive disorder is crippling. It limits what you can do, what you're willing to try; it abbreviates your possibilities until you realize that you're living in a tiny little box that is relatively safe (there is no real safety when the monster lives in your head). Any time you reach outside that box, you are taking a huge risk; not just in the pain of trying something and failing, but that in the failure, the monster will use it as a new weapon and this time, it might manage to destroy you. Sometimes it's fine, easy even; sometimes you can even forget it. And sometimes, you are literally fighting to stay alive, when you have to count the reasons to live and argue with the monster in your head that is yelling that they don't add up to a big enough number to outweigh the total of your failures and the people you have hurt and disappointed, or who just don't care.

I say that my depression is "in remission" because it basically is. The medication I'm on suppresses it very well and consistently, allowing me to live like--heh, not a "normal person," but like a person who isn't obsessed with fear and failure. The depression isn't gone, though. If there's an interruption in my medication, if something drastic changes in my life, or if I'm just having a particularly bad mood-affecting hormonal imbalance, it's possible--even likely--that the depression will come right back in.

I also say that I need therapy--not psychotherapy, really, but something more akin to physical therapy for the brain. I need to learn how to live. It would be incredibly useful if there was some guide to this process, if I could get some help, but as far as I can tell, everybody who gets to this point has to figure it out for themselves. And it doesn't help that I get very excited about possibilities, get really emotionally invested and enthusiastic about them, and then pour buckets of energy into them, because if I get to a point where I'm overwhelmed, or when something else breaks down, all these bowling pins I've been juggling come raining down right on my head, and I have nobody to blame but myself.

I've gotten a lot better at dealing with this problem (with practice... bitter, painful practice). Nowdays, I can almost always pinpoint the reason(s) for the break, and I have a pretty good idea of how to fix it before it triggers a complete meltdown.

This current situation has been building for a while. I have a habit of taking on far more social obligations than I can reasonably fulfill, with the limitations of my current capacities. It's a very difficult line for me to judge, since it keeps changing. It's a good thing that the boundary keeps extending outwards, instead of retracting inwards; it means that I'm healing properly. But it also means that I don't know what the boundary is until I've charged right past it--usually by quite a long distance.

When I'm depressive, I fall easily into "guilt loops," where any possible criticism or negative response (even if there isn't one!) is magnified and dominates my perception of social interactions. The guilt leads to avoidance, thanks to years of trying to survive with a depressive disorder. Avoidance leads to lack of communication. If that lack of communication is breached by the other party, then I feel guilty for having caused them distress or made them take an effort to care about me, and withdraw. If it isn't, then I feel justified in my belief that they don't really care about me, and withdraw. This is the equivalent of refusing to check my voicemail, then turning off the phone and crying because nobody is calling me.

Knowing and understanding the problem, what's going on and why, doesn't stop it from happening; but it does wonders for helping me deal with it, just because it gives me ammunition to fight back when the monster in my head tells me that it's just me overreacting, it's all my fault, I'm a failure, etc. It also lets me know which adjustments to make in order to bring the problem down to a level where it's manageable for me.

Now. I swear that I am not writing this part out of self-pity, or in an attempt to accuse anybody, but to try to understand the situation in my own head. You know that meme that goes around sometime, "reblog this if you would notice if I suddenly disappeared?" I seriously hate that meme. It's really, really easy to think "oh gosh I need to show that I care I should reblog," hit the button, post, and then forget it. Which means exactly dick. (not to mention that it then makes you, the person who was attempting to help somebody else feel better, a participant in a passive-aggressive attention-getting scheme)

I know that none of you obsessively follows my life. I know you all have lives of your own; that you have a finite amount of attention, energy, and empathy, and you have to prioritize that, just like I do. I know that a lack of response is not the same as not caring; that sometimes stuff gets missed, or you just don't know what to say. This is especially true in a medium like Tumblr, which moves a lot of information very quickly and puts heavy emphasis on short messages and quick responses. Buuuut... when the depression monster is chewing on my brain, it... bothers me. Most of the time I'm honestly fine. When I'm not fine... it's the nature of insanity; when I'm not fine, I am not sane. I cannot accept the rational answer that I know to be true when the monster is yelling lies in my face. 

The answer to this is not to beg people to respond to me, because if they do the monster says they're only doing it out of obligation and pity, and if they don't the monster says they don't care at all. The answer--what works for me--is to stop looking for responses.

So. If you have read this far: hi! I have another Tumblr that I'm using currently instead of this one. It's read-only; I will not use it to post anything. But it's the only Tumblr I'm using until I get my head enough together again to be able to deal with my regular Tumblr. I'm pretty sure that will happen, eventually; but until then, I'm going to stay on this other account. If you want me to follow you with that Tumblr, please send me a message containing the word "turtle," and I will follow you from there. I want to say that this is an obligation-free request; if you haven't read this post for whatever reason, or don't want to be followed from my other Tumblr, then there's no need to feel bad, no assumptions are being made and no warranty is expressed or implied--but of course, if you haven't read this, it doesn't matter, so I DON'T KNOW HI.

And if I don't get any response at all... I'll get over it. Trust me, I really, really will. I'll be okay. I know what the problem is, and I know how to fix it. Now, if only I could learn how to avoid getting into this situation in the first place...