Tag Archives: depression

Small Victories

01 Saturday Dec 2012

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I am
a series of
small victories
and large defeats
and I am as
amazed
as any other
that
I have gotten
from there to
here.”

—Charles Bukowski, “The People Look Like Flowers At Last

When you’re depressed, sometimes small victories matter as much as the big ones, because they take so much effort to achieve. To a (quote-unquote) normal adult, something like doing all your dishes or throwing out that carton of milk in your fridge that has been slowly curdling for two weeks is easy, but for me, depending on how my week has gone and how much serotonin my brain has produced, it can be incredibly difficult.

So I’ve started to measure my running accomplishments in small victories, like how I’ve gone running two or three days a week for the past two months. Or how I went from running for 1 1/2 minute stretches to 6 to 10 minute stretches, or how I’ve gone at least five runs without getting a lung cramp, which means I’ve been regulating my breathing more consistently.

Elspeth and I started running with an app called C25K, which is… a good app, really it is. It ramps up its expectations each day, which is good because it presents a challenge and doesn’t allow you to plateau. However, it also kind of sucks because this means it’s anti-small victory. The app works by ramping up and up and up until SURPRISE! You can run a 5 k! Big victory!

I hated it. I hated running. It was hard and it kept getting harder. Every day it wanted me to run further for longer and longer. All I could think is “I ran for five minutes without stopping yesterday and now you want me to run for 12? I’m not Wonder Woman, you demon.”

So Elspeth (wise trainer that she is), altered our training schedule. Instead of ramping up and suddenly running 20 minutes at once, we’re running 3 six minute stretches with 1 minute walking intervals.

And yesterday something amazing happened. I enjoyed my entire run. Not just the first half, while my legs were fresh and my lungs were full. The entire run.

Tomorrow I’m going on my first run alone. And (don’t tell Elspeth) I’m considering trying to lengthen a couple running intervals.

Maybe 8-6-8.

Or 6-8-6.

I don’t want to get too crazy.

A clouded mind (and a clear voice)

07 Friday Sep 2012

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Sometimes I get a little overexcited. In the good way (which my coworker commented on earlier when I earnestly told another coworker that the law of diminishing comedic returns did, in my opinion, apply to the number of Bigfoot mentions per episode in The Newsroom), but also in a bad way. Sometimes I let my emotions (and my anxiety, and the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness that lurk in the back of a depressive mind) run away with me until all I can think is “I can’t do this. I can’t do this.”

Let me back up.

At my internship I’m paid as an independent contractor, which means my employer doesn’t take out my taxes; I do it myself. I also pay both the employer and employee taxes (and because of this I get a deduction). Independent contractors have the choice to pay their income tax in small amounts four times a year (quarterly) or in one big amount on April 15th with everyone else.

This is a totally valid method of payment, especially for a temporary employee like an intern. Unfortunately it makes life a little complicated.

When I lived in Los Angeles I worked part-time as a personal assistant’s assistant (only in LA, let me tell you), where I was also paid as an independent contractor. This kind of bit me in the ass in the spring because I foolishly disregarded my mother’s advice to set aside a percentage of every paycheck to, you know, pay my taxes, so I owed the government a lot more than I was expecting. So this time around, I decided that I was going to be an adult and set aside the tax so I wouldn’t blow it all on books and soda or whatever I spend my money on (pretty much just those two things).

Here’s the thing about being an adult: it’s kind of stupid. And I don’t even have a house or a husband or a kid or anything, so God only knows how I’m going to survive the next 70 to 80 years of my life. My problem was that I a) didn’t really understand how the estimated taxes worked, no matter how often my dad tried to explain them to me and b) whenever I tried to figure it out it would trigger a panic attack. So there I was, trying to be all responsible and simultaneously annoying my parents (who know as much about quarterly taxes and 1099s as I do) and making myself sick while I was doing it.

But tonight was a Friday, and I had a pretty solid week, and I was excited about seeing some friends tomorrow and I had good news to tell my therapist, so I figured… why not tackle my taxes tonight? So I did.

The first thing I learned is that the next quarterly payment is due in 10 days. The next thing I learned is that even if you take the lines one at a time there will always be a section of weirdly worded legalese that will trip you up. There were a couple isolated crying moments, a lot of swearing when my (borrowed) internet crapped out, one full-fledged panic attack, a half-written stream-of-consciousness email to my dad (I wanted to call him, but it’s late in Massachusetts, so I treated a blank message in my mail client like my father to try to work through some confusion. It was… actually surprisingly helpful). Then came a moment of pure joy when I realized that my mother is in Oregon with my sister (and thus in a time zone where it’s 7:30 pm!) so I called her.

To her credit, she was a great help. Especially for someone who has never filed estimated or quarterly taxes. She listened to me sob and choke out my issues and then she calmly said, “Laura. It’s estimated.”

“I KNOW,” I wailed. “But is it what I’ve been paid so far or what I’m probably going to get paid by the end of the year?”

“Just do what you’ve been paid so far.”

“But they want to know my required annual payment based on last year’s tax and I looked it up online and it said it would give me step by step instructions but all it gave me was an example and there were so many numbers and it really confused me!”

At this point I stopped to take a (deep, shuddering) breath, trying to stave off another panic attack, and my mom’s calm (slightly frustrated voice) broke through everything.

“Laura, it doesn’t matter how much you pay them. Either you pay them too much now and they’ll give you a deduction or you’ll pay too little and you’ll owe some more in April.”

It sounded way too easy. After all there was the work sheet! And the forms! And line 10 subtracted from line 8 and multiplied by 92.35%! My mother calmly assured me that the worksheet was just a worksheet, and that the IRS had no use for it.

You guys, it was like a light went on in my mind. I could give them five bucks (I won’t) and they would just credit it to my tax account and then in April they would just send me a bill (so to speak) for 295 bucks (or whatever I owed based on my 1099).

The IRS didn’t want rocket science. They just wanted money. Like a deposit.

So the moral of the story is that sometimes you just need to take a step back (or five) and call your mom (which is the moral of every story) and that when you get down to it all the IRS wants is money–the paperwork is just a side bonus.

Depression and Anxiety (they go together like rotten milk and moldy cereal)

11 Saturday Aug 2012

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I promise I will take pictures of my apartment. I promise I promise I promise.

But first I want to give everyone an update as part of my new resolution to be 100% open and honest with everyone when it comes to the topic of my depression. And I thank the anonymous nature of the internet (even though I’m not anonymous) that makes me feel better about sharing parts of my life this way.

Many people know that depression and anxiety disorders often go hand-in-hand. And it sucks. It sucks a lot. When I moved back to Chicago (and during those last, tumultuous months in Los Angeles) I was worried that my depression symptoms (which had been dormant for a couple years, due to medication and talk therapy) were popping up again. I was crying, I was stressed, I kept having panic attacks and withdrawing from people. It was difficult to write, difficult to be social, occasionally difficult to sleep.

Soon after arriving in Chicago my mood stabilized… but my panic did not. I had roughly three panic attacks in a two week period, which was particularly stressful, because prior to that I had only had one or two in the past two years. It was starting to impact my internship, it was starting to impact the way I interacted with my new friends at church, and quite frankly I was sick and tired of it all.

Thanks to my mother’s suggestion, I had a therapist appointment lined up before I even got to Chicago. My therapist assessed my symptoms, and after a couple sessions she told me that she thought I was experiencing a great deal of social anxiety. She talked me though the symptoms–a persistent, intense, chronic fear of being judged by others and of being embarrassed or humiliated by one’s own actions–and it made sense, in a weird way.

I can point to episodes of my life where I can say “yes, I was depressed. I felt like absolute shit and I wanted to die” and “no, I was not depressed. Life was wonderful and everything was shiny,” I honestly can’t remember a time I wasn’t preoccupied with social anxieties.

I used be afraid of getting a pedicure because I was 100% certain that the pedicure ladies would be so horrendously grossed out by my feet that they would gossip about me when I left. I hate going to the dentist because I thought he would judge me for my oral cleaning habits. I hate getting my haircut because I thought they would judge me for how I treat my hair, and also because I knew that I was “supposed to” make conversation with hair stylists, and I never knew what to say. I hate shopping, because sales people talk to me and look at me and I feel like I’m on display. I hate performing, I hate reading things out loud, I hate one-on-one conferences and above all, more than anything else, I hate the word “inappropriate,” because I feel like I’m being scolded.

Until I started having semi-regular panic attacks (for the strangest reasons–I got lost on my way to my internship and now I’m late; I accidentally unfolded this double-folded table cloth while setting up the alter at church; I don’t understand this work assignment), it never once occurred to me that those were strange habits to have, or that they, in some way, impacted my life negatively. I was able to muddle along and figure out life and it was okay that I was a little shy, because I was an introvert and many (though not all) introverts are shy. I thought it was just the way I was–the way life was–and that there was nothing I could do about it. Unlike my depression (where I could remember what it was like to feel genuinely happy, and thus I noticed when I felt soul-crushingly sad), I had no recent memories of a time 100%, totally, completely unaffected by social anxieties.

Needless to say I am very excited to work with my therapist on tackling some of these. We’ve outlines some short- and long-term goals, and we’re going to work on building up a de-sensitivity to social situations that cause me anxiety–starting with the least intense (reading out loud at Bible study), and work up to the more intense situations (attending a social event where I know very few people, or perhaps going on a date).

Throughout all of this, I can see God’s fingerprints on everything. I live in a neighborhood with many friends (including my best friend) within walking distance, and we travel places together (such as church or Bible study). This lowers the chances that I will back out of attending church every week, because I don’t have to walk in alone, and because I have a group of people who are expecting me to attend. My therapist is a Christian and works for a Christian clinic (which I found quite accidentally!). I live by myself, which creates a safe sanctuary where I can control the social situations, and a place for me to retreat when I need to recharge my batteries. In short: a place I know with all certainty that no one will judge me. My family is, and always has been, incredibly supportive.

So if I behave strangely–if I have to take several deep breaths or recite the L Red Line stops from Harrison to Morse; if I have to excuse myself or if I suddenly start stuttering and stop speaking; if I apologize for something that doesn’t need to be apologized for, or if I turn down an invitation to dinner or a party, it’s not personal. I promise I’m working on it.

A Tribute to my “Sam”

30 Friday Mar 2012

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To Write Love on Her Arm (affectionately known on the internet as TWLOHA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing support and hope to people struggling with depression, self-injury and suicide. March 30 is the day the first TWLOHA shirt was worn. It’s a strange anniversary, but it works.

On this anniversary, I want to give a tribute to my “Sam.” Her name is Elspeth and she’s my best friend.

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Depression.

13 Saturday Nov 2010

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Depression is a big, complicated mess that is different for everyone.  I don’t know how it affects others, so all I can do is tell you how it affected me.

I think that I was–to some degree–depressed as far back as my sophomore year of high school, but it was never “bad” enough for me to do anything about it.  I used to think about suicide, not in a “I’m going to do it this weekend” sort of way, but with a slightly unhealthy academic interest.  I remember wondering what the headmaster of my school would tell people.  I remember wondering whether anyone would say that they saw it coming.  But this morbidity passed and it didn’t resurface until four years later, during college.

It started slowly.  I stayed in my apartment more, and I wrote less.  I’ve always loved to watch television (my collection of TV on DVD borders on obsessive), but my TV watching habits became exactly that–a habit.  I didn’t find joy in it anymore.  I spent most of my time in my bed, curled under the covers.  I ate less frequently, talked less frequently, snapped at my roommates more and more.  I didn’t sleep more–I actually think I slept less.  And I started crying, constantly, at the littlest things.  It was like PMS, except 24 hours a day for a week straight.

And then it would stop, and I’d be fine.  I’d write a scene of my play and I’d go on an adventure and I’d think that the crying wasn’t a big deal, because if I was depressed, wouldn’t I feel sad ALL the time?  Wouldn’t I think about suicide ALL the time?  So I didn’t do anything.  I didn’t go to a doctor or talk to my roommates or call my mom, because I was ashamed.  Because everyone gets sad, don’t they?  And life is hard, isn’t it?  And whenever I tried to explain how I felt, it seemed like I was making a mountain out of a molehill–that I was whining about nothing.

But the bad days were getting really, really bad.  There were moments when I couldn’t remember what “happy” felt like; moments where I thought that this was it, this was life, and there was no way to get better because this was just who I was.  But one day, I just had enough.  I had been silent–pissy-silent, which is how I get when I’m angry and I don’t want to talk about it–for days with my roommate and best friend.  Suddenly I felt a weight on my heart, telling me to tell her how I was feeling.  So I went to her and I started crying (of course) and for a brief instant I saw this look on her face, this look that seemed to say “this again?”  And I told her I thought I was depressed and that I wanted to talk to someone about anti-depressants.

And she hugged me, and held my hand, and we went down to our school’s counseling center (located conveniently in our dorm’s building) and made an appointment.

And that was the beginning.  I started going to see a wonderful, wonderful counselor, who gave me what I needed all along: confirmation that what I was feeling wasn’t normal.  She gave it a name (depression) and that was enough for me to start looking for a way to feel better.  After wrestling with my parent’s insurance, (which many mental health professionals don’t take) I found a general practitioner who put me on some meds.  I know many people don’t agree with taking medication for depression, and that is entirely your right, but I honestly feel that I needed those little blue and grey pills to help pull me out of the black hole I was in.

And it did.  I have good days and bad days, but my good days significantly outweigh the bad and my bad days aren’t nearly as awful as they once were.  I’m no longer on my medication, which is a personal triumph for me, but I still have to be aware of my moods and I’m constantly on the look-out for warning signs that another depressive episode is beginning.

Saying that my episode was hard is a huge understatement.  It was the largest period of suffering in my otherwise blessed life. In a weird way, however, I wouldn’t trade it in for the world.  My episode taught me a lot about trust and dependence–on my family, on my friends and on God.

I remember in my first session with my therapist she seemed pleased when I was able to tell her how supportive and loving my family and friends are.  She was pleased that I had faith and a higher power to devote my life to, because that meant I had the support of a church.  One of the most important thing my episode taught me is that even when I was the most unpleasant person to be around, I was never alone and I was never unloved.