Today is Dr. day. I have to wait three months to see my Dr. and now I will have a short period of time in which to try to explain how not being severely depressed is not enough. Clinicians seem to think if I can take a shower, comb my hair, get dressed, smear on a little makeup and show up on time I must be okay.  I am much better than I was in April, when I felt suicidal.  Part of my brain was thinking up painless non-intrusive ways to kill me and the other part was saying “Bad idea!  We need more meds.”  I am much better than I was a few weeks ago, when I was getting things done, but walking around in psychic pain all the time, but it is not enough.  There is a huge space between feeling suicidal, entirely cut off, entirely unnecessary and wanting, really wanting to live. I fully appreciate not being in pain but I am so very tired of that huge gray space where I exist but never really get to live.  I exist and provide service to others and I exist and provide service to others-because I do not know how to give up and I do not know how to stay down long enough to die.  The best I can do is find some way to create an adrenaline rush and I have pretty much run out of energy for that, unless I become hypomanic….

Perhaps I can tell the Dr. I am not dead, but I’m not alive.  I can get things done, but I can’t see what I’ve done and I never believe I’ve done enough.  I am a work machine, and I have always been a work machine.  Decades ago I wrote a poem called Imitation “She’s a perfect imitation of a real person, she does her job. Then she turns herself off and goes home alone.” The only difference is now I work at home much of the time.  I could go to a party next Saturday night; part of me wants to go the other part is starting to feel ambivalent and a little sick already, so I avoid thinking about it.  That’s good, that will assure that I am completely unprepared, that I have not made the necessary plans.
The wonderful little aluminum trailer I was going to fix up has been sitting in the yard for over a year now. It’s now a wonderful little aluminum storeroom. I don’t have enough life in me to get started on it. 

I think of Halloween and what a pain it is to put up decorations.  It might however be nice to get in a good disguise and behave really badly…. I think of Christmas and what a pain in the butt it is to put up decorations, go shopping where there are lots of people, go any place where there are lots of people and watch all the cheer and not have access to a bit of it. I do it for the kids, for the neighbors, for my clients, for friends but I can’t do it for myself.  I want to feel what other people feel, I want to stop watching myself all the time.
           I read and I study – to escape ANHEDONIA.  I felt alive and connected once, for a week or so, over 20 years ago.  That’s the only way I know it can happen.  That time the meds were just right and I don’t remember exactly what happened.  Ultimately because of severe hypertensive reactions I had to quit taking that class of medication. I don’t even care if I have hypertensive reactions anymore.  I will try anything or anything again.
I always go to the doctor with my ‘papers’, new meds, new studies, or mood charts.  I’m taking a little lithium to protect and rehabilitate my brain.  I’m taking a little Metformin to protect my brain (I have the study someplace).  The Wellbutrin keeps me moving and producing.  The Buspar keeps me from having so much anxiety I can’t focus or breathe. The levothyroxine should help it all work.  5000u Vitamin D, lots of fish oil, melatonin, therapy, you should’ve seen me before I had all this stuff!!  Can you imagine a severely depressed person who can’t stop moving around but can’t focus or concentrate, who is always afraid “something bad” is about to happen, who is on the edge of a panic attack and trying hard to breathe, who is also trying desperately to look like they are okay-for 40+ years?  That was me.  So of course it’s better, incredibly better – but not good.  From a song, “It’s all very nice, but not very good”.  Later. Diane