carbonmusing

[carbonmusing]

The past few days have been low ones. My depression has been like an icky wet weight pressing my face into the floor. I’m tired a lot because my job-job is physically taxing. But more than that it’s psychologically draining. It’s very people intensive and I sometimes think that’s a good thing as I’m such a hermit in my regular life. But it’s really challenging interfacing with so many people. And I’m not good at making friends, nor do I want to be in some ways. I work with a lot of white people (I imagine there are going to be some offended readers if anyone actually reads this--then again maybe some of the sexbots will stop following me--as far as I can tell they’re all white.) White people usually aren’t prepared for the real me. So I’m who I need to be to keep jobs. Or who I think I need to be. There’s likely no chance I could be an out gender-fluid person at work, but even if I could I don’t want to talk about it anymore than I want to be the lightening rod for Black thought for white people. As I usually don’t feel Black enough, this is ironic to me. But I can still make White people uncomfortable. That said, sometimes the worst thing is not being able to heal yourself. Knowing you are ill, and what your illness is doesn’t always mean there’s  an answer or a cure. If you can’t cure depression, should there be depression hospice? Is depression always only a chronic illness or can it become a terminal illness? If so, what do you do then?

[carbonmusing]

Actually my fever dreams--when I have them which is often due to a less than stellar immune system--are way more interesting than this. But that wasn’t the point of this. I think a lot of people are canaries in coal mines. They, we are part of that small percentile for whom the traditional treatments not only don’t work, but may kill us. Some of these medications have suicidal ideation as a side effect. I feel like I should pause for effect. Ba-dum-dum. Or maybe, dum-dum-DUM. Unfortunately, the onset of the ideation is often quite subtle. If you don’t have any checks in place, you might kill yourself due to motivations  instigated by pharmacology, not your own chemistry or life circumstances. “One pill makes you smaller, and one pill makes you...” Anyway, sometimes the drugs don’t work. And I have this really stubborn survival instinct, so I “keep on, keepin’ on.”

[carbonmusing]

When I think about mental health & meds, I always hear “The drugs don’t work” that line from the Verve song of the same name. Drugs work for me until they don’t. Sometimes they make me feel like a hamster in one of those running balls, or euphoric and I’m like those people who on Prozac said, “this is the real me, finally.” Like a cult in a little pill. Not to be dismissive. Especially as I’ve never been on Prozac. I’m so sensitive to side effects there was only one medication I could tolerate, but it made me, hmm complacent? Or I got complacent on it.

I was never good at knowing what I really felt about things, and that medication made my life tolerable. Lessened the number of daily, well hourly panic attacks, and lowered the heights of anxiety. I convinced myself I was really neurotypical without calling it that. I wanted to be like everyone else. Well, I got to wear a better grade of mask. That’s kind of like everyone else, and even though I was consistently the fly in the buttermilk I didn’t mind it as much. That’s not really a helpful thing for a drug to do, make isolation and lack of inclusion more tolerable. But then I stopped taking it. I just kept forgetting to take it until one day I realized it was out of my system. It was like I’d woken up from a dream where I’d wasted a lot of time not being completely honest with myself. I guess you can’t blame a drug for that, and I couldn’t exactly blame myself for being too altered by medication to know any better. Still, it sucks sometimes that the drugs don’t work, but sometimes I’m also grateful that they don’t.

[carbonmusing]

OK, so here’s where it gets funny, OK not really. I mean where it gets absurd. The therapist is referring me to ECT like you’d refer someone to hot stone massage--’Well I *heard* it it sometimes leads to red welts, but they’re not painful, and they fade--and afterwards you just feel delicious.’ I did research it. Living with depression for the majority of my life sometimes I glide along in a state of acceptance, practicing mindfulness in the face of yet another panic attack. But then there are times when I’m on a tear for a miracle cure though in the moment I wouldn’t call it that. Sometimes I think it’s the danger of hope. A certain kind of hoe that keeps you distracted from making a full and better life with what you have rather than chasing what you don’t. Anyway, ECT didn’t seem worth it? Why, well that’s what the next page is about. See you then. Also, why do sex-bots follow this account? Weird.

[carbonmusing]

This was funnier in my head. Oh well, perhaps ECT is a hard sell-but also these jokes, nope. Anyway, I’ve always had a fear of being institutionalized or incarcerated. Maybe I had some intuitive sense of how dangerous it is for a Black woman to end up in a legal system with no advocacy and no power. I was terrified, and now it makes sense why. I’m usually good with fear and humor, but, maybe I’m better live than in 2D. But seriously, can you imagine someone with almost no preamble telling you running current through your brain is your only means of escaping death? OK, maybe you can...

[carbonmusing]

Wow, this post is late. Not having the smoothest of mental health days. Kind of fell into a hole, and am inching the parts of myself still stuck there out. These are hard days when I’m working so hard for the future me that I don’t take care of the me in this moment very well. And I get mad at bowls for being shiny, and making slippery ringing sounds. So the Purple Lizard doesn’t have the best rapport with mental health professionals. He (is feeling very “he” today) was raised by one so he has a very easy rapport with them, he calmly and precisely does turns about the floor, or couch. They’re impressed with his intelligence and self-effacing humor. So it’s not the best rapport for actually getting healthy. And he’s Black, so he’s like unicorn to most of them, who are White, even now in 2017. It’s tiring, so he turns it on and lets the clock run down. But then this therapist gives him a slap. You know, metaphorically. But still. What the fuck.

[carbonmusing]

I’m trying to update this twice a week, but haven’t settled on specific days yet. This week it’ll be Thursday (today) and Friday. I was going to post this last week, but that would have been kind of a downer note right? Well, it is a somewhat surreal webcomic about depression. Maybe a little scary? Too much of a possible real-life cliffhanger: 👀. But this is pretty harsh, hunh? Yeah, I wouldn’t advise this as a method for therapists to use with their patients--I mean radical honesty, or whatever, has its limits for effectiveness. Fortunately, Purple Lizard aka Fearless Mastermind (their Wu-Tang Clan name) still has a mind of their own.

[carbonmusing]

Can you imagine PTSD in the afterlife? Immortal PTSD? That’s the kind of presence that would require it’s own room, and cereal bowl. Definitely it’s own pair of bowling shoes. I guess this raises the question of if there’s there’s a “next,” whether or not there’s a heaven and hell. If yiu take your own life which after-life do you get? I think of that movie Wrist-cutters, that was kind of bleak. Or the scene in Beetlejuice where their in the After-Life Waiting Room and find out that people who commit suicide become civil servants in the After-Life: the equivalent of an endless day working at the DMV. Again bleak--if you really work at the DMV you actually get days off from dealing with customers who don’t read signs, get salty with you, improperly fill out paperwork, and make jokes about going to the DMV.

[carbonmusing]

Yeah, one problem with depression is not feeling anything. I become a different person under the weight of depression. I just don’t give a shit. Unfortunately, this isn’t the same freeing “I have zero fucks to give” declaration about others’ judgements. It’s just like walking around with a void. And a slightly sinking feeling about it. Did you catch that? Yeah, sorry, that was pretty bad. Depression can really wet blanket your humor.

[carbonmusing]

The purple lizard is environmentally minded and sensitive to the needs of its fellow quadrapeds. Recycling and feeding. But this is ridiculous, right? I mean bartering with a bear not to eat you alive, so you can die from an overdose. But feeling like you want to end your life isn’t always the same as wanting to die. Sometimes it’s just about ending suffering. So you can see the problem with a bear gnawing on you while you’re still alive. Bummer.

[carbonmusing]

Yep, this is a lo-fi comic folks. Don’t get it twisted.

[carbonmusing]

Yeah, bears. As this story develops I’ll have a better sense of what they’re a stand-in for. But generally the furries, as they’ll be called in this world, they’re a stand-in for those people who seem to organically understand how things work: How to understand one’s own worth, how to make friends, how to know when to leave a situation, how to know when to fight, how to comfort oneself. How to be brave, but not reckless, how to hold others in affection, not in fear.

Of course in real life these folks don’t devour others who are more clueless about how to navigate life and social situations. But the way they can leave those folks behind, or pass them by with a “ho-hum/”oh well” can feel like those folks--the lizards--are just fodder for their story. Just a little garnish for the banquet that really matters: their life. I don’t want to be bitter; really it’s like drinking poison to spite someone else. I, like many a lizard in this world, just want to figure out how to matter and care for myself without having to discard others. But the truth is sometimes one has to let go of people in order to have a healthy life or meet a cherished goal, but knowing that intellectually doesn’t always help when the person being left behind is you. Or when that connection is helping you sustain yourself, but it’s one of many and perhaps less significant for the other person. In other words, the furries are the cool kids. Lizards. Not so much. (I like words, doesn’t mean I’m especially profound).

[carbonmusing]

I had been reading about health care, black folks, and hospice and a piece about the Zen Hospice Project <https://www.zenhospice.org/>  in the SFBay Area. Their focus is on mindfulness, rather than focus on the future of impending death, or scattered regrets of the past, being present in and living in the moment you’re in. It sounds cliche, but it’s living like you’re going to die tomorrow. Upon noting one patient’s music and visual arts background, they supplied her a with an electronic keyboard and art supplies, and encouraged her self-expression. When a hospice supports folks in this manner, they sometimes live beyond their diagnosed mortality date. But when they do die, it’s arguably a better death. Mindfulness work has been at the center of my therapy for the past few years, but more recently I’ve been doing it on my own not in a group. Plus, I’m generally quite isolated. Is there an equivalent hospice for depression? For me it’s been dialectical behavioral therapy and bad art-making.

[carbonmusing]

The cover of my lo-fi, really awful comic about depression, lizards, goats, and bears: Inching Towards Oblivion. Page one coming soon...

[carbonmusing]

Warnings from your goat

1. A few weeks ago my therapist told me that I was dying. My life was erasing itself as I was sitting in front of her, and apparently I was in profound denial. Until then when I heard people talk about someone dying due to mental health problems my mind went to dying in the legal system or suicide. As a metaphor suicide is a 90º angle. A person is here and then—abruptly gone. A hard drop off a tall cliff. (Yeah, sometimes that’s literal.) Their prior emotional struggle may or may not have been evident. Still, my experience has been people being caught off guard by a person’s suicide, asking all those clichéd yet inevitable questions: “Why? Why did they do it? Why didn’t they ask for help? I can’t believe they’re gone—I was just talking/planning/dancing with them yesterday/last week/last month.” In this instance my therapist was talking about a slow death. A death you associate with a chronic illness that’s become terminal. The slow progression of loss: loss of vibrance, loss of focus, loss of purpose, loss of cognitive ability, loss of imagination, loss of hope. I was completely underwater, still breathing—but just.

I didn’t know I could still be breathing and yet feel compressed, deflated as though breathing had been reduced to its mechanical repetitions with no transmission of life. I got really mad. Then I made this lo-fi, or just plain bad, comic. The title of this post comes from page 7 of the comic. Here goes...oh yeah, your indulgence is appreciated. Welcome to Inching Towards Oblivion...