Complain, complain, complain...

I've been deliberately trying not to write so much about my head and all of my many issues (for which I really wish there was a better word), especially because counselling was really helping there for a while. But alas, it was only a temporary measure (which I realise is better than nothing, but still, it's intensely infuriating to feel like you're just starting to get somewhere, and then the resource is over. But anyway - back to the point). So, given that I'm currently without any sort of counselling provision, maybe it will do me a bit of good to talk about things a bit.

Today, it's complaining. Negativity is a difficult and complicated thing for me. It's a huge part of my personality - I think most people that I know would mention complaining at some point in any description of my characteristics, and certainly being a bit cynical, negative and pessimistic is just a part of who I am, and who I have always been. And I like a lot of things about that - it's just not in my nature to be some happy clappy, sunny, optimistic person who accepts everything around them. It's important to me to question things, to play devil's advocate and see the downsides of things to try to weigh things up, so negativity is a big part of that. Also it's just funnier. It's difficult to have a sarcastic, sardonic sense of humour (which is the sort of humour I've always been attracted to) without being negative, darker, cynical - whatever you want to call it. And god knows I love a good rant.

But dwelling on the negative, complaining about every.little.thing in my life, making mountains out of molehills, and searching out things to get angry and annoyed about - these come down quite firmly on the Not Good side of things. And it's astonishing to me how easily and quickly I can go there without even realising it. There's a little bit of self-righteousness in there too (well, maybe more than a little bit). I seem to get a kick out of finding things to be annoyed about, and putting myself on what I see to be the right side of any argument. Something in there about my high standards, I should think. Maybe I'm constantly trying to find a way to vindicate my way of looking at a situation, trying to find a way to see myself as right so I find all these arguments, even if they're just in my head, and a storm of anger comes down from it.

It gets to the point where I don't know what else to say or think or talk about. I literally have no words left that aren't negative, that aren't complaining or moaning about something. I feel blank inside, like there's just a huge vacuum when I take out the whininess. And then, of course, I get down on myself and start to beat myself up, as if the constant anger and glass-half-empty-and-probably-has-poison-in-it-anyway attitude wasn't bad enough.

So I've been trying to be a lot more conscious of this lately. But when it's such a big part of who I am, it's difficult. I find it hard to come up with anything else to put into my head, to have any other thoughts at all. Which is probably why I end up spending so much time spaced out in front of the tv, trying not to think about anything at all.

And, inevitably, this all comes back down to balance. Finding a middle road that doesn't mean that I have to change my entire personality to be like Alec Baldwin when he guested in Friends that time, but to also not be a complete pain in the ass, and an extremely miserable, depressed and angry one at that.

I don't know why I find balance so hard. I don't know why I inherently seem to oscillate from one extreme to the other. I know that a lot of it is down to the whole perfectionist thing - if something isn't perfect, it's completely shit, so everything starts to exist for me in a solely binary state. But I don't really know why that is. And the question of why is a difficult one in itself. Part of me looks at this as some sort of logical problem, like an equation, or a murder mystery where one clue will suddenly solve the whole thing. And I do think that there's at least some rationale in the idea that if I could figure out why, then I could start to address it better. But it's highly unlikely that I ever will understand why, that's just the nature of these things. Wherever this all came from, it's here and I have to deal with it. These are just some of the rabbit holes that my mind likes to disappear down, to avoid having to actually do anything, to deal with the situation.

So, for the moment I'm trying to just not complain as much. To think twice before I write or say something that's moaning about something that's really not all that important. To stop and think and be conscious of what I'm saying or thinking, before I just let it take over. And as corny as it sounds, I've found that (for the meantime, at least) covering my room in photographs is helping. Photos of everything and anything from the last few years - a reminder that everything isn't all that shit. That I do have good things, and to try to stop the "but..." that tends to come after that. And as much as I don't like photographs of myself all that much, I'm generally grinning like an idiot in most of them and in some weird way that actually seems to help me remember that while I might not have a rose-coloured view of the world by nature, neither am I utterly miserable. I might act like it a lot of the time, but it's not really who I am. I just have to keep trying to remember that.

Minor rant for a Tuesday lunchtime

Things that are bothering me today:

• Why does knitwear from Primark very often smell weird? I've had this happen to me a lot. Nothing I do seems to get rid of the smell, either. I'm practically drowning in perfume today, yet I still smell like I've been dossing in a musty warehouse. Nice. 
• Rihanna. She's not done anything today to annoy me, but her general existence usually does the trick.
• The fact that I can't decide if I like Lana Del Ray or not. I'd probably like her more if she wasn't getting airplay on Cool FM. Anyone getting airplay on Cool FM raises my suspicions immediately.
• The woman in the advert for whatever new toothpaste Sensodyne are hawking now - the one going on about how her healthy diet is destroying her enamel or some such crap. I can't put my finger on exactly what it is about her that annoys me. I just know that I'd like to put my finger - and, indeed, the rest of my fist - into her face at a rather sharp velocity.
• People who walk too heavily. I should not be able to hear you coming ten minutes before I see you. 
• My insatiable quest for junk food. No matter how much proper food I eat, I still want to stuff my fat face with crisps, chocolate and anything in between. 
• People in work who insist on drumming loudly (and badly) on their desks, to the point that I've now got a headache. Ditto whistling.
• The fact that I never seem to want to be doing anything that I'm doing. When I'm at work, despite being overloaded with things to do, I'm bored out of my skull and keep planning out all the things I need to do when I get home. But when I'm home I never do any of them. If I do anything other than spend the whole night in front of Mock The Week and QI repeats, it's a minor miracle.

 That'll do for now.

Normal?

Man, does life suck sometimes. Everytime I think I'm getting somewhere, something just comes and smashes me right back down again. With everything, even the little things. I thought I was getting on top of things at work, but there's tons more to do than I thought so I'm screwed. I thought I was getting to being ok with myself, and with the break-up with my ex, but I am so, so, so not.

I don't know why I do this. I don't even know how I do it. I live in this little fantasy world all the time, where I banish all bad thoughts with imaginings and fantasies about everything being fine. And then reality rears its head, and I'm right back where I started again. I just feel like I do not know what I'm doing. At all. I don't know what's the right thing to do, what's the wrong thing.

I'm told that I catastrophise things all the time - always imagine the worst case scenario, become convinced that that's what's going to happen, and freak out. But when I try to rationalise that maybe that's not what's going to happen, that I don't have much evidence for that, I end up being proven right about the disaster. Like with my ex - we've been keeping in touch since we broke up. Not the way it used to be before - we used to talk all day every day then. We'd tell each other everything. Now it's just the odd message and email here and there. And I don't know what it's ok to talk to him about. I used to be able to talk to him about anything, and I just don't know what the rules are for this sort of thing, and it's awkward to talk about that via phones and email. Every now and then I'd get freaked out that he was seeing someone else. I had no evidence for this, just paranoia on my part. So I'd tell myself that - that chances are he probably wasn't. That chances were, he was telling me the truth when he said he wasn't ready for a relationship and that it was bad timing with us, so he wouldn't be looking to get involved with anyone else so soon after us breaking up.

But now I'm not so sure. It seems like I was maybe right in the first place - that he just didn't want to be with me, and that he might be seeing someone else. And I cannot handle this. At all. I'm completely falling to pieces. I was so looking forward to his coming home from university for Christmas, so we could try to get our friendship back on track. So we could just hang out and talk crap and get used to being just friends again. And since he was suggesting things for us to do, it seemed like this would all be great.

Until now. Just a passing remark, but something about it is stabbing me in the stomach. And I just do not know what to do at all. Do I just cry my way through this for god knows how long? Do I cut him out of my life? I don't want either. The only thing that got me through the break up in one piece was his insistance that we would still be friends, still be best friends. That nothing could change that. The idea of my life without him is terrifying. It's dark, lonely, cold and utterly, utterly horrible. But everytime I think of him with someone else, it's like being stabbed. Over and over again. So which is the best option?

How do people get over things? I've never really understood this. I've never really gotten over anything. Time and distance has helped a bit, I suppose, but I can still burst into tears when I think of past things and people that have broken my heart. My heart is still broken from all those hurts. It feels like I just don't have the bit of your brain that you're meant to have to get over things. I do not know how people do it. I suppose there's one or two things I have gotten over in the past. They still make me sad when I think about them, and I regret screwing things up, but I don't exactly cry over it anymore. But it took me 7 years to get to that point. That is clearly not normal.

And all of the things that I supposedly should be doing to try to get better mean turning my life upside down, all at once. And I just can't do that. I'm literally not in a position to do that. I need somewhere new to live, with different people or preferably on my own (and I have nowhere near enough money for that to be likely at any point in the near or even distant future). I need a new job. I need more money. I need new friends. And as someone stuck in a crappy job in a recession, who's gotten used to not having anyone around me, and spending 100% of my time alone, I just can't even imagine what not being like that looks like.

I still keep trying not to get annoyed at myself over all of this - to not my simply being upset and sad turn into self loathing and getting angry at myself, but that's getting harder and harder. Because the more I fail at fixing things, the more it is my fault. And even if I just try to accept that, without piling blame and guilt on myself, it doesn't seem to be doing much for me.

And possibly more than anything, I hate that it's Christmas right now. I love Christmas. Always have. But I always manage to get so, so, so sad that I'm alone every year. I mean, yeah, I go to my parents and everything for the holiday itself, but not having close friends and/or a boyfriend to hang out with and do all the things that everyone around me seems to do at Christmas is a torture that increases year on year. And I thought for a while there that this Christmas would be different. That I wouldn't be alone, because I'd have my boyfriend. My best friend. But now I feel like that's being ripped away from me at the worst possible time of year.

I know that it all comes down to the fantasizing - I imagine things being better instead of doing anything to achieve it. And I let my imagination run away with me. Why do I keep doing that? Why can't I get those things out of my head?

I just don't know what to do anymore. And I'm really, really tired of that.

Ranty McRanterson

I feel like a good rant today. Trouble is, there are so many things to rant about that I can't seem to pick a topic.

Cos everything is stupid. The bus company here is stupid. They faffed around with the timetable which means that if I miss the one bus, I have to walk a good 15 mins to the bus stop for the next bus (they alternate routes every half hour - end up getting me to the same place but get there a different way, one of which is 2 mins from me, one of which is at least 15). This means I end up having to get taxis to work a lot, because I'm apparently incapable of dragging my ass out of bed in time. This means that I haz no monies for noms. Beans on toast for the next two weeks it is! Woo!

There's a book about "The story of baked beans"? Seriously?! And I'm not a paid writer how, exactly? Sheesh.

Next, I am annoyed that there are too many things that I need to do in work that rely on another person to do things for me first, and that person is super busy so I have to sit around waiting a lot. Can't be helped, but it's infuriating and wasting my time.

Hmm, what next? The economy, I guess. Why not, eh? The economy is basically fucked. As are all of us. Screwed with our pants on, as Toby Ziegler would say. Inflation went up again today, the cost of living is going up and up and up because of massive increases in gas and electricity prices (from companies who, by the way, are currently making a veeeery comfortable profit). Fuel and oil prices are just getting to stupid numbers by now, I'm looking at a packet of cream crackers and cheese and thinking "Mmmm, dinner for a week!" and I'm not even that badly off compared to some people. But the government seems content to sit back and make empty gestures about it all. They don't have the first fucking clue what it is like to not know how you're going to pay your next mortgage or rent payment. How you're going to feed yourself, how you're going to pay for heating. There are people all over the country - families with kids, old people - who have to choose between food and heating. They can't have both. My own parents are having a pretty hard time of it - when they run out of diesel for the car, they can't just go and get more, they have to wait for their next pension payment to come in and see if they can afford it. When they run out of oil, they have to scrape together some money to buy coal to use the fire for heating instead, because filling up the oil tank costs too much. And neither myself nor my brother are in much of a position to help them, because everyone is finding it tough. And that's before you even start thinking about Christmas. But sure, so long as Cameron and that stupid pasty faced mouth breather Osborne are living the life of luxury, what the hell should they care? How about they swap lives with my parents for a week or two, see how it feels? Fucking Tory bastards.

I'm also annoyed at my skin. Or more generally, my body. I know it's quite possibly all my own fault, since I'm far from the healthiest of people, but it's just been conspiring against me of late. I had a couple of infections requiring antibiotics over the summer, a cold that hit at the absolute worst time and lingered for a lot longer than was polite, quite frankly, and now my skin is fucking about. I have some sort of dermatitis for which I'm on yet more antibiotics, it's refusing to clear up and apparently putting anything on it is likely to make it worse. And I have a job interview tomorrow. Brilliant(!) I look like some sort of semi-diseased leper or something. That'll make a cracking first impression.

Let's see, what else am I annoyed about/by? Mary Portas, my constant urge to shop, my inability to stop biting at my lips, Coldplay, commercial radio, inaccurate weather forecasts, how disappointing Sainsbury's own brand caramel chocolate biscuity things are, my compulsion for checking my phone every 3 minutes despite the fact that it's sat beside me and I'd see and hear if it went off (and it never does *sad face*), how my hair won't behave itself, my lack of having a butler, my laziness, the constant sense of surprise that my boss has when I'm behind on my work, despite my doing the job of at least 2 people, the delay in getting my new shoes that I ordered online that I wanted to wear to my interview tomorrow.

Ok, I think that'll do for now. No doubt I'll think of more things to rant about later.

Addicted to misery?

Well. That was a slightly longer hiatus than I intended. It seems that my body chose almost the exact moment that I handed in my final assignment (well, the exact day anyway) to have me come down with the mother of all colds. And of course I've been way too busy at work to even contemplate taking proper time off to get better, so I've been shuffling and snivelling along as best as I could. Finally starting to feel a bit better, but still really tired. Which has been fairly fatal for my motivation and energy levels. I was so looking forward to getting my course over with so that I could get started on the million of other things I want to do, then I have to take to my sick bed. Typical!

What's also typical is that I'm writing this when I should be working. In fairness, it's after 9pm at night and I'm at home so I really shouldn't *have* to be working, but there you go. It's just one of those weeks and my lack of productivity due to this lovely lurgy I've had has gotten me really far behind.

But anyway. None of that is remotely interesting or informative, unless you had a desperate desire to know what's up with my work schedule and immune system. And frankly, if that is the case, I think you might need a little more help than reading this blog can possibly give you.

I've had a post floating around my mind for the past week or so. I'm still not sure if I'm ready to write it, but I guess we'll see by the end of this.

It's occurred to me lately that my depression and anxiety issues have a lot in common with addiction, for me at least. I've been thinking about how come I've changed now; how come I've had this revelation, this clarity now and not before? Or later? And is it just sheer luck - do you just have to sit around waiting for this revelation to hit? It seems to me that it's a lot like when addicts reach that last straw, their rock bottom or whichever other cliche you choose to use, that finally makes them want to change and gives them the strength to be more successful with change than they were before.

But the problem with that is that it suggests that it's up to the fates to decide when that moment is. That doesn't seem quite right.  Or fair. But I honestly don't know why I came to my sense now instead of years ago. I know that I had a bigger wake up call than I've had in a long time - someone was incredibly honest with me and (after hours of crying and wailing) that somehow finally made me see things more clearly. It made me realise how much of my life I was wasting, how many opportunities were being ruined and how this would never change if I didn't change.

But I have no idea how anyone else is supposed to get to that moment. Part of the reason that this has been floating around my head was that I was wondering if maybe I should consider doing some sort of voluntary work within the mental health/counselling sector. I have no idea if I'd be any good at it, as I'm not generally a very touchy feely sort of person, but I feel like I'd like to make my experiences count for something. But if having this sort of moment of clarity is so arbitrary, what could I really do for someone?

And whilst I'm talking about this in terms of addiction, it brings up the whole idea of balance. I've never been very good with balance - always been all or nothing. That's part of the perfectionist trait in me, I suppose - that it's completely perfect, or it's completely shit. No in betweens. But this is more like an eating disorder than an alcohol or drug addiction - I may have gotten addicted to misery to some degree, but I can't avoid negative emotions anymore than an anorexic can avoid food. So I have to find some way to balance things. To know when it's ok to be upset, and let myself feel that, and when enough is enough.

I've been struggling a little with that lately. Being sick but having so much to do at work wiped me out, and now I'm finding it hard to get out of that 'just make it home and crawl into bed' phase, even though I'm mostly better by now. It's been too easy to slip back into old habits of spending the entire night in various states of consciousness in front of a tv and/or computer screen.

And there's lots of other things where I find it hard to find some acceptable balance. I shan't go into all of that now, because I don't have the time (and this post has been in my drafts folder for far too long), and I don't really have the mental energy for it either. I'm finding less impetus to think or write about what's going on in my head. I can't quite figure out if that's part of the post-cold laziness, or if I'm getting sick of talking about it, and whether either of those is a good thing or a bad thing.

All in all, that's a rather meandering, pointless post, for which I apologise. I have funner posts in the works but I apparently now have a slightly busy weekend ahead of me involving hyperactive children, so it may be a while before those come to complete fruition. In the meantime, I'm thanking the big spaghetti monster in the sky that it's Friday and I'm gonna enjoy the hell out of this Wispa that's been in my office drawer for two days. It's the little things, y'know?

Lost weekend

I'd like to say it was a lost weekend due to partying hard or something like that, but unfortunately it was just my being lazy and a bit crap. I slept far too much (partly thanks to my neighbours keeping me up till at least 5 or 6am on Friday night/Saturday morning) and just lay around watching tv instead of doing any of the things that I intended to. I'm giving myself a by ball for that one, and I'll get back on track today. Things to do include working on my CV, an application form, and completing my next CBT session.

I think I did slip a little this weekend. The devil makes work for idle hands indeed - all that time spent alone, with my own thoughts, and little else to engage my mind was not that good for me. I was either getting worried about things, or off daydreaming about everything being ok. Neither of those activities are particularly productive. But the important thing is to just accept that, and move on. No point beating myself up for slipping a bit, and getting mad at myself. I'm only human, of course I'm going to slip occasionally. But so long as I don't let it overwhelm me and start to define me again, I think I'm still moving in the right direction.

In other news, it's flipping cold here, thanks to gale force winds courtesy of the tail end of Hurricane Katia. Summer is definitely over, then. I've finally given up hope of us getting a brief blast of summery weather so that I can wear my summer clothes, and I'm embracing the boots, jumpers and coats of autumn and winter. Thankfully, I love winter clothes (especially coats - I think I have an actual problem with coats). And with winter comes Christmas, which I also completely love and get super excited and hyperactive about. Although I'm a tad apprehensive about it this year - all the plans I had for it in my head are now rapidly dissolving alongside my relationship, so it won't be quite what I had hoped. I'm trying not to dwell on that too much, though. Instead, I'm just thinking of the awesome floppy felt hat I saw in New Look recently that I must have. And the one I bought a little while ago that I've not had a chance to wear yet. Apparently hats make me happy.

Anyway, this has been a decidedly random post, for which I apologise. I've got a lot of work ahead of me over the next couple of weeks as my course (finally!) comes to an end, so hopefully after that I'll have a lot more time for proper writing and actually getting into some of the ideas that I've had recently. That should give me October to plan, and November to do NaNoWriMo. If the wind hasn't whisked me away to Oz before then.

...in which I lose my mind listening to local radio.

Oof, things are getting a bit tougher. I'm under a lot of pressure in work today and have literally no idea how to do everything that I need to do in time. I've not really been feeling the stress this much since my whole big revelation thing (really, that sounds so lame, I need a better word for it. Suggestions on a postcard, please!). And there are various irritants that have been bugging me today, but I'm still determined not to give into it. I don't want to slip into bad habits of getting angry and trying to make other people angry on my behalf, or at least try to make them feel sympathy for me. That way madness lies.

Another thing that's been bothering me a little is how much I'm daydreaming. I find it really hard not to. I have a lot of alone time - whether it's when I start getting a little bored with my work (I have my own office so I have to actually get up and go somewhere else to talk to people), sitting on the bus, in bed at night/in the morning when I can't sleep etc etc - it's a lot of time in my own head and I don't really know what I should do about that. What do other people have in their heads in those sort of situations? I genuinely am not sure if what I do is normal or not. I try to come up with things to think about to distract me - dinner, laundry that needs done, what I'm going to wear tomorrow, all that sort of stuff. But almost before I know it my head has wandered onto things that don't do me any good. I've gotten so used to entertaining myself in my head with these sort of daydreams that it's a really difficult habit to break. But I know I need to - it's not good for me, and I am trying.

I hope that these sort of posts don't sound negative/complaining. I'm mostly just trying to work things out by getting them out of me, and I'm trying to just acknowledge my behaviour/thinking, rather than give myself grief for it. I think I'm doing pretty ok on that front so far - I've not been beating myself up about things, just trying to stop when I catch myself doing something counterproductive.

Well, this has been a thoroughly uninteresting post. I guess that's what spending the morning listening to local talk radio does for you. Frankly, I'm just lucky not to be trying to jump off the roof after listening to all this crap. I defy anyone to have to listen to this on a regular basis and not lose at least a little bit of their sanity! I will endeavour to think of something more awesome later on.

To do:

I've been talking about all the things that I need to do to change, to make myself the person I want to be, blah blah blah, but it occurs to me that it might be a good idea to actually list them out so that I can better work on them, and make myself a bit more accountable when it comes to the things I want to achieve. Again, probably of absolutely no interest to anyone else - I really am going to try to come up with something non-head related to write about very soon - but this seems to be keeping me together at the minute, so I'm just going to crack on with it.

So. In no particular order, things I need to stop or start doing:

• Write. I need to write more. About everything and anything. This sort of stuff about myself so that I can try to benchmark what I'm doing (I'm in the middle of a management practices course, can you tell?), and since they do tell you to write about what you know. But I want to write about other stuff too, whether it be short stories, random articles, reviews of music, tv, movies - whatever. I just need to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard in this instance). But I do want to set myself a target of doing the NaNoWriMo thing in November. I want to complete a whole something. Probably not a novel, more likely to be a screenplay or something, but I want to do actually finish something. Doesn't matter if it's crap, just need to finish it. 

• Recruitment stuff. I need to sort out my CV, talk to recruitment agencies and careers guidance people and get a better plan (or even, a plan) for how to get a new job.

• Put my foot down at work. I need to stop giving into everything at work and bending over backwards, doing stupid hours and taking on far too much because I feel it's expected of me or that there's no other option. I have to make it clear that there are limits, and that we have to find another solution. No exception. 

• Re-connect with people. I've drifted away from so many friends over the years. I put it down to them not making the effort to keep in touch with me, and taken it very personally, but I can't know any of that for sure so I really ought to just put it behind me. I don't have to be suddenly best friends with these people, but it would be nice to get in touch again, occasionally talk to and see each other and enjoy each other's company again. I guess under this heading also comes spending more time around my flatmates. I've become so good at avoiding them and keeping a low profile at home that I'm practically a domestic ninja (note to self: write treatment for sitcom called Ninjaz In Da House). All that time spent alone isn't good for me - too much time to day dream and dwell on things. 

• Stop daydreaming. It's sort of an odd thing to say, I suppose, but it's a big problem for me. I spend so much time daydreaming and fantasizing about how I want things to go that I become convinced that that's how they actually will go, making it well nigh impossible to deal with anything that diverges from the fantasy. 

• Treatment. I need to get serious about treatment for this depression/anxiety stuff. I've upped my meds already, so I'll be keeping an eye on that with my doctor, and I've started the Beating the Blues thing. I think I quite like it so far. It's Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which I've never had much luck with before, but I understand more than ever now that I need to have certain things to each day, and to hold myself accountable for doing or not doing them. It's a session every week conducted online, and it gives you weekly projects to complete. I've only done the first session so far, so I'll see how it goes. But I think it could be a good support.

• Lose weight/get healthy. I'm not setting myself specific targets for this just yet. I've basically not been eating much for over a week or so because I'd gotten myself into such a state that I was nauseous and completely devoid of appetite. That is slowly starting to return, but I don't want to just jump back into my bad habits of eating junk all the time, I want to start eating healthily again. But (and apologies for the TMI nature of this, but...) healthy food when you've not been eating can have a bit of a fight with your innards, so I'm trying to do it all gradually. I've lost a little bit of weight thanks to the nausea so I want to make sure I keep that off, and it's been a good motivation for me to avoid junk food and comfort eating. The exercise portion of this will need to wait a little bit till I feel physically a bit stronger and have work a bit more sorted out so I can plan out when I'll do things. 

• Do the things I love again. I used to love music and movies. LOVE. I lived for them, they were the only things that kept me going sometimes, and touched and moved me in ways I can't put words to. But lately, I've just been using them as vague distractions, if even. I've found that I couldn't watch or listen to anything 'serious' (for want of a better word) - anything that encouraged much of an emotional reaction in me. Because I was trying to avoid emotional reactions, I guess. I'm a bit wary still of putting myself through the wringer with anything like that, but I want to get into a place again where I live and breathe this stuff like I used to.

• Stop procrastinating. I realise there's a great irony in me saying this, as I often take to this blog when there's something else I want to not do or distract myself from, but I need to just get off my arse and do things when they need doing. It's the only way to build momentum and thus energy. I've had huge problems with it lately, but I think I'm making some tiny inroads with it. 

• Finish and pass my course. I had, of course, wanted to pass my course with a distinction (I'm  a perfectionist, which I will write about at some point in the future), and did well on the first couple of assignments, but since everything sort of fell apart a bit after that I'm just going for a pass now. I was pretty close to throwing in the towel with the whole thing recently, so I just want to get it over and done with, pass it and put it on my CV. Thankfully I've less than a month to go with it, so hopefully I can cross that one off the list soon!

And so, back to work for me. 

Thoughts of a rainy afternoon

Rather predictably, things are getting a tad harder each day. Energy and motivation are drifting off a little bit (though the tiredness may be partly down to the increase in meds, I can't tell for sure), but I guess that's to be expected. I'm very much aware that it's getting closer to the discussion I'm supposed to be having with my boyfriend (if I can even call him that anymore, I'm honestly not sure) about everything, and I'm getting nervous. Which is, in turn, making me retreat into daydreaming that things will work out.

But, the point is, I'm still trying. I'm trying not to do that, I'm trying to get my work done, I'm trying not to think about my self worth. I think that's sort of the key to this whole thing - not to sweep my low self-esteem under the carpet by any means, but to stop dwelling on it so much. I will never feel better about myself if I continually think about nothing but how bad I feel about myself. I have to focus on doing, rather than thinking - making the changes I need to make to be the person I want to be, so that I don't have these feelings of low/non-existent self worth. That probably sounds both incredibly corny and really, really obvious.

This is all really obvious though, that's the thing. All of this is stuff I've heard over and over again in counselling over the years. I've nodded my head and said yes, I understand. And I thought I did, but it never really hit home till this past week. I'm trying as hard as I can not to let go of that realization. I really do feel differently about it all now. As I mentioned previously, I used to use this depression stuff as some sort of badge or label to make excuses for myself, and to try to garner sympathy and attention. Maybe I thought people couldn't care about me as I was, they'd only care if I made them feel sorry for me? I don't know, and it doesn't really matter anyway. I'm done with that. I don't want to be the victim or the martyr anymore. I want to kick this thing's ass. If anyone thinks of me as special, I want it to be because I've fought this and managed to be a decent person through it (well, from now on - whether or not I've been a decent person in the past needs to be irrelevant to me now, it's past and gone). And I want to be proud of myself for doing that.

Anyway, that's just some of today's thoughts. As much as this is probably rather self-indulgent, I'm trying to make it a productive and positive thing, even if it doesn't read that way! I do definitely want to start writing about things other than myself and what goes on in my head, though. But I've spent a lot of time up in there over the years, so it's kinda hard to figure out what I want to write about, or even how. I've never done so well with writing without any kind of structure - I like to be given deadlines and tasks. I seem to need some sort of constraints to keep me focused when I'm writing. So I guess I just need a lot more practice at writing to be more disciplined with it. We'll see what happens with that, I guess. (And yes, I'm aware that this waffling does not bode well for that....)

Just a few quick thoughts from today while I wait till it's time for my bus.

Today is a bit harder. I'm unbelievably tired, despite sleeping for quite a while (though I had some strange dreams - at least one of which involved a lot of cats) and don't feel quite as fired up to implement all these changes that I was rabbiting on about yesterday. But I will persevere. That's kind of the point of this whole thing. I cannot let it beat me, I just can't. That is not an option for me anymore. Maybe I just need a montage of shadow boxing whilst Eye of the Tiger plays in the background. Now, where'd I put that headband.....

I did go to the doctor this morning, and we agreed to up my medication (which I think has been a long time coming, really). I felt like she wasn't really 'getting' it entirely, but that might have just been her manner. She's one of those people who goes 'yeah, yeah, yeah' the whole way through what you're trying to say and I found that a little off putting so I didn't perhaps express myself quite as clearly as I would've liked.  I know it'll be a few weeks before I start to feel the effects of the medication increase but at least I feel like I'm doing something. Hopefully that will be some sort of help.

Also, the doctor mentioned this website, which I've never heard of before (odd, given how long I've been going to the doctors about these problems, or maybe it's just quite new) - http://www.beatingtheblues.co.uk/ It's a CBT-based thing, you have sessions online whenever suits you, and it's free through the NHS, you just have to talk to your doctor and get them to give you an activation code. I haven't tried it out just yet, but it seems interesting. I've tried CBT before and felt like I wasn't really in the right place for it, but I think I might be now - I feel much more like I need to be 'doing' things, if that makes any sense.

It's funny. This last week or so has been the worst my depression and anxiety have been in years. Possibly, ever. But somehow I feel like I've made the biggest leap I've ever made at the same time. That doesn't mean I feel brilliant and full of the joys of spring and like I'm turning a corner or anything. I still feel like crap, to be honest. And I'm completely petrified about the future and in particular what is going to happen with my relationship, but I really feel like I've made a connection or something in my head that wasn't fully there before. Like something has changed in me and I've realised just what is at stake here. Or something like that anyway.

And something else while it occurs to me...

Something else that I left out of that previous post, or that I didn't fully formulate in my head or something - can anyone tell me why it is that we whine so much to other people when we're depressed? Whether it's people who know about the depression, or just general complaints about life to other people, I don't think I'm the only depression sufferer who does this.

I just complain all the bloody time. It's like a compulsion. What is that? A cry for help and/or attention? Some sort of need to wave my arms about and say "someone look at me, I'm special, I'm different, I have all these problems"? I mean, it's just weird to me, and I'm the one doing it. It's weird that I am so protective and secretive about this on the one hand, yet don't bloody shut up about it (implicitly or explicitly) on the other.

I'm trying to figure out why it is that I have felt the need to bombard people with my misery. Because it's more than just a mere statement of how I'm feeling. There's some fucked up part of me that almost *likes* doing this, that wants to keep complaining to other people. I suppose it's for the attention, it's to have people feel sorry for me and be nice to me. And then I think it just takes on a life of its own. I was talking to my friend last night - an incredibly patient and wonderful person, who has had a lot to deal with from me lately! - and I said that my head feels like a separate entity sometimes, an independent being with an agenda of its own. Mainly, to fuck me over.

I feel now like it's almost as if I have some sort of symbiotic parasite (is that the one where you feed off each other? I can't remember and can't be arsed wikipedia-ing it). Or is there a parasite where you feed off each other but it eventually kills you? That's what I feel like. I keep giving into this familiar and almost compulsive behaviour, because I have some sort of bizarre need to do this, yet it is cumulatively (is that even a word? Clearly I'd be shit at Countdown) damaging me. But I can't cut it out, it doesn't work like that. I need to train it to leave or something. I'm not sure, my analogy has now completely fallen down.

But I really have to pay more attention to that. I know I can't bottle everything up, but I just perpetuate the cycle if I'm constantly complaining and dwelling on the negatives. But there's just something in me that feels like that's something that I need to do sometimes. This has all made me realise that I can't be like that anymore. I need to be "special" or whatever by kicking this thing's ass, not by letting it kick mine.