The Dirt Field

I changed my medication a few weeks ago because the Lexapro I was taking had some side effects that I finally got tired of having in my life. Now I’m taking Wellbutrin, but I don’t think I quite have the dosage dialed in correctly, mostly because I hate everything and everyone in the world.

Did I mention I’m starting a side career as a motivational speaker?

Anyhoo, I have an appointment next Tuesday to recalibrate (in other words double or maybe quadruple) my daily dosage in hopes of getting back to a place that is normal and maybe even happy. When I went to this doctor last time to discuss my prescription switch, he tactfully asked if I had considered therapy, which I have many times. So many times, in fact, that I wouldn’t be surprised if I got a medical bill for all the thinking about therapy I’ve done. I explained to the doctor that I have been meaning to go see a therapist for some time now and that I would really actually be doing it soon.

I probably won’t. First of all, this depression thing sucks motivation out of me completely. I get my training done, do my chores, attend work, pay bills, and care for the dogs, and that’s about all I can manage. By the time these things done each day, I have nothing left to give. You probably don’t understand at all and that’s okay. It even seems stupid to me that a little research and a single phone call seem cripplingly difficult, but they are. That’s where I am right now.

The second reason I don’t call is because I don’t do the whole talking thing very well. I don’t like to talk about these issues; it’s not even that I’m uncomfortable talking about them (although I am) but rather that the words just will not come. I can talk all day about biking and work and dogs and beer and news and socks and everything, but I can’t get out a single sentence about how I feel. I don’t even like talking about this with my parents or Bobby, so the idea of broaching the issue with a complete stranger that I am paying to be my friend seems impossible. Therapy requires input and effort, and I am not at a place yet where I am ready to do that.

But I can write, and so at this point, when I can’t find the words to tell the people around me that I am unhappy, I will write it here so that it will be out in the world and no longer just in my head. Things feel like crap right now. It is hard to describe this feeling accurately, but I will try. If you are a happy, normal person, this may not make any sense; you will have logical responses about how to overcome these feelings. Trust me – I know the same answers as you. I just can’t seem to internalize them in a meaningful way. But onward.

Imagine that you are unhappy, maybe having a particularly long bad day. You think to yourself, “Thank god when I get home, I can sit down on the couch and have a beer.” But then you realize that when you get home, you have to go to the gym, pay some bills, and do a few loads of laundry. These things are doable, but they feel like dead weights and certainly don’t make you any happier. You go home, get them done, eat dinner, and before you know it, it’s time to go to bed. And that’s depressing, because an entire day just ended and you feel like you just lost another day of your life. So you think, “Hey, maybe I’ll get up early and at least have breakfast with my significant other.” And that gives you some hope for a second, until you realize that your beloved can’t go into work late and you have a workout to do anyway. So you start to wonder what the point is of all of this, if each day is just about getting things done and getting through the day and on to the next one to start over. Why bother?

We all know that the things I just described are simply part of life and part of being an adult. There are responsibilities, and it is our job to find a way to enjoy life anyway. The problem with depression is that it interferes with a person’s ability to get to the “enjoy life anyway” part. Where you might go in your mind and see open doors and opportunities and reasons to be happy, I see closed doors. Each place I turn to as a source of optimism seems closed off for one reason or another, so I end up frozen in a suspended state of unhappiness. I would make changes and take action, but nowhere seems like a place I want to be, so how do I take steps to go anywhere?

The result of all this is that I am moving through each day feeling fine at best and completely indifferent to continuing on at worst. I know that sounds like I’m thinking of killing myself, but I’m not. As I see it, people who pick suicide are in a different place, a more decisive and final place than me. When I am feeling the worst, I just feel indifferent about life. I could take it or leave it, but I’m certainly not going to go out of my way to do anything. Hell, in those moments, I don’t even have the desire to lift a finger, let alone my own personal guillotine.

Sometimes, though, I think that this feeling is worse because it seems inescapable. When I look at the future, it feels long and wide open, but like an expanse that I often can’t even imagine crossing. The necessities of everyday life become overwhelming when you look at them as a whole. Like flossing my teeth, for example: I am twenty-three now, and if I live to be eighty and floss every day, that’s nearly 21,000 occasions of flossing. Multiply that 21,000 by the number of daily obligations I fulfill, and there hardly seems room in the rest of my life for actually living.

I understand that this is not a healthy train of thought, which is why I am going back to the doctor to change my prescription to something that will at least help a little more. Starting today, I have also begun making changes and decisions that will remove obstacles in my life. I’m paying off my debt nearly in full and lowered my credit limit so I no longer stress about spending beyond my means, I’m cleaning out clothes I don’t love so I don’t feel guilty about ignoring things I spent money on, and I’m getting rid of unnecessary responsibilities that weigh me down. These may seem like small steps, but I’m hoping that if I take bricks out of the wall one at a time, I will eventually be able to knock it down entirely.

The last thing I have already done is to take Kiko back to the animal shelter where we got her. I could spend thirty paragraphs explaining why it was honestly the right thing to do for her, for Bobby, for Kobe, blah blah blah, but all of that doesn’t matter. When you really get down to it, I brought a second dog into our home for which I was unable to care. Kiko had a lot of issues, some of them serious and concerning, but I’m certain that consistent, professionally-guided training would have ironed out the kinks. I just didn’t have the time, the money, or the desire to put in more effort. As much as I liked her, she was making my life feel so much more overwhelming and so I took her back. I could say things now in my defense, but it’s not even worth it anymore. I’d rather just say I made a mistake, took on more than I could handle, and now I’ve made a really sad decision in order to make things better.

So that’s where I am. In place of endless closed doors, I am trying to open some proverbial windows. And so long as therapy visits cannot be conducted by email, I will return here to periodically air out my thoughts and hopefully let some light in.