Gimme A Break

So I may go on antidepressants. I really didn't want to originally but I've been with my therapist for a while now and we both were going to suggest it because I've been having so much trouble just functioning lately. She left me a message today saying she also has some other suggestions that we'll discuss this week. I think antidepressants may be the way to go temporarily, though. At least until we can deal with some of the causes rather than the symptoms and I feel more capable of being an actual human being.

For the moment, though, my ability to interact with people is practically gone. I perceive almost everything as people not wanting to be around me. I get exhausted just trying to make conversation. I have to escape to a corner by myself or to my room if people are talking about something I don't care about or don't want to hear about anymore. I'm paranoid. I'm overly sensitive. I'm scared and shut down and reclusive.

Not entirely new, certainly, but now I don't have RP to fall back on to keep me company. So I end up just being really lonely and getting absolutely no social interaction.

But school is almost over and soon I'll go home for two weeks and hopefully recharge. I hope my cousin isn't there. But he will be. That will make recharging harder. And then when I get back, a job and maybe antidepressants and some free time that won't necessarily be haunted by 'I have to memorize that scene for Tuesday'.

I feel that I used to be so easily social. I don't know when that stopped or why. I didn't even notice it.

Being Vanessa is so much work.

Checked Out

I was going to post "I give up on being social."

But we all know that's not true.

All the same, that's how I'm feeling. How I've been feeling. For weeks.

I give up.

Vanessa Through The Looking Glass

Magic came from her fingers, flowing like the winds that bring the first flurries of snow over a leaf-spackled autumn ground. There was no telling what would come of it, but for once in her life, she didn't care. All she knew was the magic itself and that she needed it. She needed the magic desperately.

She could not hesitate and could not falter, for at any moment the magic could spurt suddenly, dry up, turn off, sputter and ebb and die, leaving behind nothing but the dreary, brown world that had neither born her nor raised her but that she now inhabited -- had inhabited now for years.

There were moments of weakness, when her fingertips felt as if they might burst and it was all she could do to encourage herself onward until the very last of it was done...until she had no need of it anymore, if only for the moment. She could not doubt herself. To second guess would be deadly. The magic, and she with it, must express themselves as one. It would have to be her magic, too. There are many different kinds of magic, as wise people and children will tell you, but the best magic -- the kind that not only sustains and inspires but creates anew and blossoms wildflowers of fire in the soul and the imagination -- is not borrowed but born within each of us, a separate kind of magic that is as individual as a fingerprint and just as complicated. To tap into it is ecstasy. To lose it is madness. To never know it exists is to never come to life. This magic is electricity within us and just a spark of it can leave us twitching for the rest of our lives. This magic likes other magic. It feasts on it like a cannibal, devouring whole chapters of Carroll, endless pages of Baum, of Tolkien, books of Rowling, worlds of Lewis. It is the descendent of da Vinci. It was nursed by fairies and ghosts, who told it bedtime stories of bridge trolls and bandaged its scraped knees with King Arthur. But it is not these magics. It eats them. It digests them. They become a part of it, but it is more than these universal flames. They are ineffable, our magics, as near and dear to us as our own souls. Best when shared, but often neglected, abandoned, rejected in the name of logic and reality. As if the whole point of inner magic weren't to color the mundane and soften the cruel that comes with what is real and logical.

It is a great shame that so often the magic goes unseen, unknown, unshared.

But this is who I am.

And now maybe I can get some sleep.

Be 'I' Forever More In This World

I've been very depressed and very anxious for the past month or more. I recognize that this probably makes me obnoxious, cynical, troglodytic, stand-offish, grumpy, moody, paranoid, weepy, unpredictable, and just generally unpleasant to be around and that sometimes I just imagine that I am all those things and that people just generally don't find it pleasant to be around me.

Please bear with me. I have a therapist. I'm working on it.

Apparently I have a lot of issues with interpersonal relationships and interactions.

Who didn't see that coming?


* Addendum: That is to say that I imagine that it's generally unpleasant to be around me, not that I imagine I am all those things, but that it is in fact generally unpleasant to be around me. If that makes sense. What I'm saying is that I sometimes imagine that people don't find it pleasant to be around me, but I can never tell if that's paranoia or truth.