The Questing Beast

This is a depression post. Sorry. Except not really sorry. My blog. You deal.

The problem is that I can't deal. Somehow in the process of my life experience, I never learned how to deal with the living of life itself. I can handle the big stuff. Death. Trauma. Crisis. But I must have missed the lesssons about motivation and will power. About how to get out of bed in the morning and face the day and work a job to make ends meet even if it's not what you want out of your life. I must have been absent that day.

Of course, the truth is, I've been absent from a lot of my life. Dissociation has been key to my survival as a functioning human being. Dissociation and fantasy. So for at least ten years of my life (formative years, too -- we're talking all through adolescence and into young adulthood) I lived in alternate realities for large portions of the day. This is how I deal, Mandy Moore. Or rather, this is how I don't deal.

When I quit that cold turkey on November 1st, 2009, I vowed that I would actually live my life.

Except that here I am, October 16, 2012, sitting on my couch marathoning Star Trek because the reality of my current position is bleak and my depression is making it worse. Because I don't know how to get a job or go out and meet people and I've had one actual honest-to-God boyfriend in my entire life and that was when I was 18 - 20 and now I'm twenty-six and sometimes I think something horrible must be wrong with me.

But the only thing actually wrong with me, the only thing that really probably keeps me from dealing? Depression.

Fuckin' depression.

Some days I feel great. And then there are days like today where I feel like I can't breathe and I'm crying by myself on the couch with my hands pressed to my forehead and trying desperately to think of someone I can call who's actually gonna give a shit and understand.

Please don't misunderstand. I know I have friends. I have great friends. I have a family that loves me and would be perfectly willing to have me call them sobbing, mid-panic attack for the millionth time.

Part of it is that I don't want to be that girl to anyone. Because once upon a time I was that girl to people and they dropped me like an AT&T call in New York City (topical humor!). And because I am fairly proud and I do like to maintain a little bit of dignity. What little bit of dignity I have left.

Do I have dignity left? I hope so.

The difference between this swing of depression and most of my previous swings of depression is very important: AWARENESS.

Oh my God, awareness is a wonderful thing. Depression lies. And now I know that. So when a thought pops into my mind saying that I can't do something, I usually can say, "That's not true. I can absolutely do that. And it's going to be fine."

And I have some really incredible people in my life, so I (almost) never feel isolated and ostracized. I mean, I feel self-isolated and self-ostracized at times, but for the most part, there's always someone who wants to have me around. For that I am grateful.

I'm not really sure where this post is going. It was, originally, a way to stop myself from crying (and to do something that feels even mildly productive) and to talk about money.

But not a lot about money because, in fact, that's a very tricky and complicated subject.

But to talk about the fact that I'm getting into what I just now decided to call The Danger Zone with depression. I've been walking a fine line for some time now, dipping a toe on one side or the other, but never really losing my balance. Just a-wobblin'.

Well, it's getting worse. There are signs: panic attacks that include difficulty breathing, a burning sensation in my chest, a crushing pressure on my sternum, occasionally dizziness; bouts of crying for no reason in particular or for a very deep reason that a healthy person might not delve into with that magical dwelling ability that depression gives me (many's the time lately I've cried over things that are long since past or things that have yet to happen...I'm like Mr. Scrooge with tears); jealousy; an inability to leave my apartment most of the time; insomnia; etc.

These signs? They're all there right now. Now I know very well that if I can get my exercise regimen back to where it was before Labor Day and before I lost my gym membership, that will fix a lot of things. The insomnia, for instance, and the sitting around my apartment. It'll help with the stress and cut down my dwelling and crying alone time. And I actually feel totally capable of making myself go work out, so that's good. Therefore I am not so long gone as I have been previously.

You wanna know something ridiculous? I remembered today that one of the big reasons I stopped taking my medication at the beginning of second year was because I was feeling very complacent with myself as an actor instead of taking big risks all the time just to see if I could take them. In retrospect, maybe I had just reached a place of confidence and I should have stayed the medicated course. Whoops.

I like to think I'm an exceptionally intelligent human being, but then sometimes I cannot believe the dumb shit I do.

Anyway, the point of talking about money was this:

There are two things I want right now, health-wise. Okay, three. The first is that I want my birth control to not cost me $80 a month because that is fucking ridiculous. And Republicans can take it right up the damn ass on that one because screw you guys. I haven't had sex in going on seven years, so these pills are solely to keep my body in its healthy rhythm and for, you know, in case I get raped. Because I would rather not get pregnant with the child of an assault. Just a personal preference. ANYWAY. The second thing is that I really need to go in to a TMJD specialist in NYC so that I can get a new mouth guard and reduce the life-interrupting tension and pain that comes from having a way messed up jaw. The third and perhaps most important thing, though, is that I probably need to go back into therapy. I think even if I were not as depressed as I am, it would be a good idea because I have some major sexual issues I need to work through and probably some serious abandonment issues as well before I think I can actually be a socially normal adult.

The problem is that I'm twenty-six and still living off my parents. Because I'm a depressive loser. Okay, maybe I'm not a loser. I'm a depressive child. And I cannot ask them for the money for something like that when they're already paying for everything else.

"Why don't you just get a job waiting tables?" you ask.

Fuck you. Haven't you read anything I've written so far? Depression is hard. And my depression makes things like regular full-time jobs terrifying. Terrifying to the point where I fall even deeper into depression and keep calling in sick and then I get fired. Welcome to my life, all you people with actual work ethics and sadnesses that manifest in ways that don't completely debilitate you. (Although if things don't start working out the way I'd like them to work out, I may have to just suck it up and deal and hope that I don't fall apart like wet toilet paper.)

And also don't think that I don't ever do anything with my time. I'm actually very busy, considering how often I end up useless and miserable, trapped inside my apartment walls.

When I didn't realize I was depressed -- or when my depression was latent and held back by a nuclear bunker wall of Ignoring My Feelings -- I used to read the posts of people with depression and be like, "Get over it. My life is shitty and I'm not complaining all the time about my feelings. Your life is totally normal for a suburban teenager. What are you crying about?" People would post something dramatic (this is all back on LiveJournal, mind) about how they should just kill themselves and then everybody would be like, "Oh, no, don't do that! You're so great!" And I'd be like, "Seriously? They're just trying to get attention." (But, obviously, I never actually said that out loud or posted it as a comment.) And to be fair, they were. But that doesn't make it any less serious or painful for them.

It wasn't until someone I love very much attempted suicide that I finally got it. Got what depression can make a person think. Got how far it can take them away from who they really are. And it wasn't until I went to college for the first time that my depression (good ol' late bloomer that it is) finally completely took over and ransacked my life that I figured out what it's all about.

Guys, depression is super fuckin' hard.

I consider myself a very brave person. I've dealt with a lot, I've survived a lot, I take a lot of emotional risks in my acting work, and these days when I notice I'm very afraid of something, I find the most extreme thing I can do within that fear...and I do it. Just to prove I can. I do a lot of things just to prove I can.

But in reality, in my life as a whole, I'm a coward. I'm a little kid curled up in a corner, afraid of the dark. There's a light on in the hallway if I would just open my eyes, run screaming across the room, and throw open the door. But mostly I sit in the corner and I tremble and I wonder why my room has to be so dark and when did the lights get turned off anyway?

My life is ruled by fear. Fear of failure. Fear of abandonment. Fear of getting hurt. Fear of losing something or someone I love. Fear of being judged negatively for who I am. Fear of not being good enough.

Of never being good enough or worthy enough for the things that I want. Even the things that seem to be the right of every human being. Life. Liberty. The pursuit of happiness.

But then, the unalienable right isn't "happiness," is it. Just the pursuit of it.

Each human being is on a life-long quest for happiness, like Pellinore in The Once and Future King. They chase the Questing Beast of Happiness their whole long lives and maybe they catch it sometimes and maybe they keep it for a while, but ultimately it will always get away and they'll have to chase it again.

Depression is a peat bog on the Quest. You stumble into it without even really realizing it's there and you struggle on because that's life and there's the Questing Beast ahead of you, just out of reach. By the time you notice that you're no longer moving ahead, it's too late. You look down and realize you're waist-deep or chest-deep or chin-deep in muck and the more you fight, the more you sink. You feel like someone else will have to come along and pull you out, but no one can. You're too deep in and they'll risk themselves if they get in it with you (and anyway, they probably don't understand how you even got that deep in the first place) and Happiness has long since gone loping out of sight and it's been so long since you've seen it, you start to doubt that it ever existed in the first place. You don't remember what it looks like or what sound it makes. And you sit, barely holding your head above the sludge, watching other people go racing by after the Beast and hating them because they somehow missed the bog entirely.

I think there are very few people who will read this that knew me before I fell into the bog. I wonder what kind of adult I would have been if I'd run right past it. I wonder what kind of adult I'll be if I can just climb to my freedom.

What must it be like to have healthy sadness. I imagine it must be beautiful.