An open letter to my friends

This is the non-trivial post.

It's a bit jumbled. I'm drunk. Apparently that's the only way I can get it out.

So I've made mention of having brain chemistry issues lately. The depression is trying to come back. Or as I prefer to call it, "The Creeping Brain Rot".

I know some of you can relate.

I've dealt with this before, and I know I can get through it. I'm nowhere near as bad this time as I have been in the past. But after the last episode, when I talked about it, some of my friends said they didn't know, or they didn't know how bad it was. Because all I do is talk about it in euphemisms. Make jokes about wanting people to shoot me. Because they only see me when I'm out at the pub and having a good time and not when I'm alone and fighting.

So this is me trying to talk about it. Not for sympathy or help, or anything like that, just so you know why if I feel a bit distant or something.

Urm. Hi.

*cough*

Depression for me is a result of frustration, of feeling trapped. If I stop moving I go stagnant, like water pooling too long.

Depression wants me to curl up in a ball and stay there. Fear of depression, of what I know it can do to me, makes me move. I am desperation made physical. So I'm moving, trying to find ways to get out from under the things that are pressing me down.

Some things are working. Some things in my life are making it better. Some things are making it worse.

I can deal with it, I can deal with feeling like shit. I can function feeling like shit. What makes it harder to pretend to be normal is that when things get bad I start to get really bad agoraphobia. When it kicked in the first time, it actually took me a while to figure out what the hell was going on because I normally have no fear of going pretty much anywhere by myself -- but yet suddenly I have trouble forcing myself to leave the house. Before I figured out what it was, I flunked classes because I couldn't force myself to go to school.

It does make it easier when I know what's going on, but that doesm't make the physical reaction go away. I actually got anxious this weekend to the point of nausea about going to a party ferfucksakes, one where I had a reasonably high expectation of knowing everybody there. I threw up tonight. On my way to a bar. Hardly the most intimidating environment in the world. I mean, What the fuck?

And I can do it, I know from experience I can force myself and I know I'll ulimately be alright, but it's like work, it's getting out the mental picks and wheelbarrows, and quite honestly some days I'm tired of the job. Especially on those days when it was a major accomplishment just to be able to do the fucking dishes without breaking into tears.

Some days I just can't force myself to do it. I don't want to have to carry that extra 50 pounds.

Sorry, blankinfinity. I feel like I've been a crap friend while you have been here.

And the worst part. Without question.

I can't deal with feelings. Other people's. Hell, even my own. I have too many of them and they are too close to the surface and I just can't get them out. My emotiotions feel handicapped, like I have a little tiny pipeline through the shitswamp that connects me to the outside world, and most of the time it can't take all the things I want to stuff in there on my own behalf. When I touch somebody who is going through their own emotional burdens -- whatever they are -- I just get stuck.

And it's not like it's complicated to reach out. All I want to say is, "I'm sorry you are going through this." Or, "I understand." Or "Hang in there." And instead there is this blue crystalline wall between me and the words, and I freeze solid whenever I touch it, and I just can't get at them. So I sit here nad wave my fingers ineffectually over the keyboard, or over the phone pad, or hell, even in person, and -- nothing.

Nothing at all.

It's not because I don't hear you. Or because I don't care. I'm just -- stuck. Frozen. I'm having trouble crossing the gap between the inside of my head and the rest of the world. I feel seperated. Like no matter what I say or type or feel, it is just going to slide off the side.

I am feeling very alone.

I wrote this while drunk, of course. Becaue that way I can get it out. Which carries it's own problems, also of course.

The view from the inside of my head is not very pretty right now.

It will get better. I'll be back, I promise. Soon.

Just not right now.