Waking up like it has all been a bad dream

So what do you do when you wake up from a depression to discover that you are in fact rather unhappy with your life?

You wake up and you realize that you are out of shape, underachieving academically, without employment and have a life absolutely devoid of extra-curricular activity.

What happened to the little girl who showed so much promise? What happened to the precocious teen who had dreams of making a positive difference in the world?

Every good idea, or exciting job, or interesting volunteer work I have become involved in I have given up on, quit, or abandonned. I have lost track of all the interesting academic ideas I swear I use to have. I could not even add 2.50 to a pizza bill of 18.96 tonight because my brain is actually melting from a lack of use.

I try yoga but my body cannot handle that kind of honesty with itself right now. I try prayer but I am stuck in the athiest vaccuum of the secular west where I cannot get my mind invested in a deity but cannot commit my heart to a religious tradition without one.

Last year when I started getting sick I knew something was wrong because everything in my life was right so I should not have been feeling so sick. A year and a half later I am starting to understand how this illness must have gradually morphed itself into a chronic depression for my mother. You try losing 4 months of every year. Watch what happens. Have the same sad tear-filled conversations with your friends over and over again and watch them lose the ability to listen anymore. (Or worse yet sit on the recieving end of their stories without the ability to process them.) Watch what that does to you. Watch your faith in yourself disappear.

Or worse yet wake up and discover that it slipped away in the night.

And then cry.

For the first time in months real tears. Real big sobs not just the hollow moans of depression.

On Being Proud of What I Do.

I’ve noticed something recently. When people ask me what I study, I get bashful. I say “Cognitive Science”, and immediately clarify that I mean “psychology and philosophy”. Then, without looking them in the eye, I mutter and stutter something about not being able to get a job when I graduate because I’m unqualified for anything. Tonight I even said in a meek voice, as if asking a question “I think I’m looking to teach?”

I don’t know if it’s something I’ve just started to do, or something I’ve done for a while. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve lived in Japan where you have to be incredibly humble and self-deprecating, or if it’s because my sense of self-worth has taken a blow while I’ve been suffering from depression. …What I do know is that I thought long and hard about what I wanted to study and am very proud of the courses I have taken. I’m happy about what I study… and I’m excited and proud about the idea of being involved in education.

I need to stop waffling when people ask me what I do.

Back on the mat and in need of inspiration

I started yoga again. Every morning in the living room with my roommate. We’ve been easing in toward a real ashtanga practice, and it’s been feeling good.

This morning I didn’t want to do it. Like any other facet of my life these days 97% of my body was just like “meh, fuck it, go lie down”. But I remembered my old yoga teacher saying that what you experience on the mat is a reflection of what you experience in life, and since I knew damn well I could complete a practice, doing so seemed to be a good way of showing my body that I can get past this overpowering feeling of motivational apathy.

But the part of me that gets depressed is actually pretty smart. It can out-smart me (and Gabe, or most of the people trying to talk me into feeling better) 9 times out of 10. And it put up a good fight. Why push through? Why do a practice? Why do something you don’t want to do anyway?

I did the practice. I wish I could say I feel satisfied.

I need something to be inspired about right now. I need a goal that is more concrete than running from Canada and exploring as soon as I finish up here at school. …Because that goal isn’t encouraging. That goal doesn’t have anything to do with me doing well while I’m here.

I’ve found a program, in Guelph of all places, that looks interesting. In their faculty of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition they have some neat looking programs, and one in particular seems to be calling out: Family and Couples Therapy.

Why you might ask? …I have some reasons. Maybe I’ll write about them later.

Home Again

I love being away. I love new places.

This time ’round I stayed with a cousin who lives in Eastbourne on the Southern coast of England, a place I had never been. It was absolutely gorgeous. The buildings all seemed to be lower, and of more earthy colours, built lining hills and amongst tall trees. I had a sense that ‘civilization’ was more established there than here at home. It seemed to exist in a better harmony with the natural skylines and environment surrounding it.

Maybe that’s just because settlements in England are so much older than the ones here. Maybe it’s because nothing could be more apposed to natural environment than the suburban neighbourhoods I’m used to in North America. Maybe it’s because I always seem to filter my view of other countries through a rosey pink looking-glass.

Blanketed in snow but still excited to leave

Winter is finally here in all of its beautiful glory. I hate the short days, and I’m expectantly waiting for March I’ll admit–but the only thing worse than the short days this winter has been that they have been short, grey/green/brown days.

This last week the snow has finally arrived, and the Canadian in me rejoices to look outside and see the sun dancing on the myriad of snowflakes and ice. The Canadian in me doesn’t even mind that lately the sun has been hiding alot because it has meant that I can watch snowflakes floating and blowing in every direction on their way down to coat the ground (much more interesting than watching my professor at the front of the classroom).

Usually I would be nothing but excited to be going somewhere a bit warmer for two weeks, but I have to admit that a tiny bit of my heart is broken to know that during a winter this short I’ll be spending two of the only snow-filled weeks somewhere else (not to mention somewhere that is destined to be grey/green/brown).

…that being said I’m getting extremely excited. 8 days and I’m on a plane. …it’s been too long. Ireland here I come!

Finding a Balance

I had a breakdown yesterday.

It had been coming for a while, and I was in denial about it. I was working on this paper for my Celtic Culture class. I had all sorts of research done, and a pretty solid outline which even went as far as detailing what points I needed to communicate in each paragraph. But I couldn’t write it. I didn’t know how. I didn’t feel comfortable trying to communicate my thoughts in a manner which would be appropriote for this paper and so everytime I tried I froze.

Teusday was the day after it was due, and I’d promised myself and my prof I would get it in Wednesday morning. Teusday I was a little crazy. I would yell, and bang on the table, and sulk and whine, and then finally I started to cry and eventually I went to bed. ….but I was sure it was just the paper–that I couldn’t do it. That I was “out of my element”.

Yesterday I still could not work on it. Yesterday I called my boyfriend (the most wonderful guy ever) and snapped at him for anything he said. Yesterday I wanted to throw the phone, throw my books– so I put it aside and went to edit my psych paper. And yesterday I couldn’t do that either.

For a couple of days Gabe had been trying to help calm me down by saying, “Don’t stress about this paper. Just relax and work on staying happy.” And I would think “Shuttup, I am happy. I’m fine. My light therapy is working. It’s this stupid (explicitives removed) paper”.

I was not happy.

Yesterday I admitted it to myself. I had been fending it off for a few days-but the truth was I was angry, frustrated and on the verge of tears most of the day for three days in a row–I was not happy at all.

So as planned I went to talk to my prof about the paper, but contrary to the plan I ended up admitting all about this S.A.D. thing. And she was so understanding. We had already talked about the penalties involved in handing it in later, or after exams and they were big (and I was soooo okay with that), but when I got to the S.A.D. bit she melted and said “ok, Padraigin, then we’re dealing with something different. This is medical. I’ll tell you what. Do not do your essay. Focus on exams. Enjoy Christmas. And get me your essay in the new year”.

I cried for about an hour. First in a parking lot behind her building folded over in a ball. Then walking to somewhere I thought would be more private. Then sitting up against a wall in a hallway on campus. I felt guilty, and worthless, and releived all at once and I didn’t know how to deal with it. Plus I worried about what it meant for me. Would I have to consider meds all over again? What if my light isn’t working? I messaged my roommate, and prepared for a night of brainless vegging with the T.V..

Then I realized my psych paper wasn’t due for another hour and I still had time to edit it. So I got up, went to the library and edited that paper. Which may not seem like a big deal–but it was. It was me proving to my body that I could do it.

Then I was o.k. The depression was gone. I ate some food, got energy–and was motivated all night.

So does that mean it wasn’t real to begin with? I really don’t think so.

I think it means that my light is working, but it isn’t magic. This time last year I was sleeping all the time, I had dropped one of my courses and I wasn’t ever showing up to work. I’m doing a lot better. But then I added an essay that I didn’t have a clue how to write to the mix, and it extended past its deadline and started threatening to need attention during exams–that’s stressful for absolutely anyone, and I’m in a time of year where I have to respect and be nice to my body.

This light and my shakes are not all-powerful. I’m not supposed to be able to do any and everything I want to do. I need to get to a balance between what I would like to do and what my body can handle.

I’m not proud of having an open-ended extension (for the record). I feel pretty guilty about it, because I was raised to think that you can’t get down from the table until you’ve eaten all the food you put on your plate. I signed up for all these courses–that was my choice…

But I will learn. I will learn what I can handle and I will work within it. It will be a process, but it’s a process that is well on its way…

Walking in a Dream

My dreams are close to the surface of my consciousness today, and I don’t know what that means.

Standing by a photocopier, sitting over my notes, working away at the lab I’ve suddenly felt and imagined myself in a setting of a dream I’ve had at some point in my life–not like deja vu: not as if where I was just then reminded me of the dream. The setting could be from any dream that occured in any of a million places. And one-by-one I have been overcome by the elaborate constructions of reality that each of those dreams held even as I’ve sat here in this reality we share.

Some were of dreams I’d forgotten about, that took place years ago–whose details I still don’t remember. I just remember what it felt like to be in them. And in every case it somehow felt differant than how it feels to be here in this life.

A Balance in Symbiosis

As a young, middle-class, white Canadian I have had the joy of being told I could be or become anything I wanted: to follow my dreams, to follow my heart–to do what felt right. I do not belive that this is the ‘right’ way to raise/indoctrinate a person by any means, but it is how I was raised and is thus the framework within which I have always constructed (and edited and revised) my life plans.

It is a simultaneously challenging and exciting thing then, to now have the one desire that is paramount above all others be that I spend my life together with someone else–to support one another in all facets of our life, to build a home together, and eventually to raise children together.

Because suddenly “doing what you want”, must be read in a new light. It is “doing what you want, considering that ultimately you want this relationship to flourish and through it both of you to grow, enjoy life and build a loving home.”

So suddenly the biggest choices in my life require the very serious consideration of another’s life goals, and how my choices will impact him and vice versa.

This arose powerfully at first a month or so ago when I was putting together my next trip to Ireland. I wanted to go–that was simple enough– and I had the money to do it. But I wasn’t willing to spend a 10-day holiday away from Gabe, even if it was in Ireland, and while he is indescribably excited about meeting my family and friends in Ireland the money for such a short trip (when we would be going again in the summer) didn’t seem immediately warrented.

I (for better or for worse) tend to put a great deal of stock in my gut feelings and intuitions about choices like this, to try to balance exactly how I feel with what I think. But here I found myself in the position of needing to make a choice with someone while balancing both of our intuitions with both of our thoughts on the matter. It was such a strange feeling to be stuck in this place where a choice had to be made, but I didn’t have immediate access to all the information I needed to make it–in fact by its very nature it was a choice I couldn’t make alone.

Now we find ourselves discussing the much more life-altering choices of what to do next year–my final year of my undergrad and his first year having completed his. What city will we live in? What kinds of jobs will we try to get? What will we do for the summer?

How much of what we want as individuals can be brought together in a unified plan? What sacrifices will have to be made?

Are the sacrifices warrented?

I think I am starting to understand the idea of being blinded by love. But I like it. I can feel myself growing. I would like to stay here as long as I can.

On Being an Emotional Masochist

What do you do when you feel yourself starting to want to make bad decisions?

Do you ever find yourself sitting back looking at your life, and noticing how splendidly it is all rolling along, and suddenly think “Wow I really wish I could _____ (insert a stupid act that would jeapordize something good about your life)”? Or perhaps if your not as obsessively overanalytical as I am it comes in as more of a retroactive assessment of an act you’ve just commited. i.e. “Shit why did I do that? That was really stupid. Things were going really well.”

This is all quite abstract and ridiculous–I know…but it is a concept I’ve been tossing around the last couple of days. I feel like spicing things up. I feel like getting dirty. I feel like screwing something up.

Suggestions anyone?

(yep, symptoms have arrived)

The Days are Getting Shorter

Last year I spent a great deal of time from early October though until mid-January determining that I seemed to have Seasonal Affective Disorder.

A summary of what this means might look a bit like this:
1. apparently the winter blues hit me a little (read: alot) harder than they do most people
2. during the winter my desire to sleep increases like crazy as does my desire to eat incredable amounts of straight carbs
3. for a short period in the spring and fall I can expect to be relatively hyperactive

So the story goes that I think I am coming to the end of the hyperactive period. Damn it felt good. Seriously.

The last couple of days haven’t been quite so great. It’s getting a little bit harder for me to get my body to agree with me when I suggest it might be time to get out of bed (or move at all). I’m starting to get “damn I’m tired” headaches. I can ever so slightly feel that sense of being asleep on my feet as I go about certain tasks, and I’ve started falling asleep in class (I know I know, falling asleep in class is normal. …but we’re talking conking out and dreaming during a fully interesting lecture!).

So tonight when my roommates and I were down in the basement I brought my super duper 10,000 Lux Bright Light Therapy System, which I will probably start using some time in the next week or so.

I imagine, think, hope that this year is going to be alot better. I believe (in part out of necessity) that it will. I know what to expect, I can identify the symptoms–if only for those reasons this year will be differant.

That is all
Bring on fall leaves.

So find a sweater
And you’ll be better
Until the kindling is tinder dry
We can be quiet
As we walk down
To see the graveyard
Where they are now
I wonder how
They brought their piano
To holdene hill
From old berlin
Be hard to keep it
It well in tune
With winters like the one
That’s coming soon

Cause auntumn’s here, autumn’s here
It’s time to cry now
That autumn’s here,autumn’s here, autumn’s
It’s ok if you want to cry
Because autumn’s here

I think that ghosts like
The cooler weather
When leaves turn colour
They get together
And walk along ways
These old back roads
Where no one lives and
And no one goes
With all their hopes set
On the railway
That never came and
that no one stayed
I guess that autumn
Gets you remembering
And the smallest things
Just make you cry.

Autumn’s here, autumn’s here, autumn’s here that autumn’s here
Autumn’s here, it’s time to cry
Cause autumn’s here ooooooo
Autumn’s here, autumn’s here
It’s ok now, cause autumn’s heeeere
woooooo wooooo
–hawksley