I was floating along enjoying my new commitment to reasonable wellness, and now I find myself feeling very depressed and anxious. I can't resist the urge to take a klonopin to make my job more bearable. On Monday night when I felt myself submerging into this feeling, I appreciated that I tried to do the healthy thing and just sit with my feelings. A bad mood is not a failure. No one can be happy all of the time. In a culture that profits off of either our expected happiness or desire to be happy, it can feel like a complete failure when I find myself having a dark week mentally.
It feels like nothing is going right. All of these little things at work keep confounding me. I feel so tired and spent by any task requested of me. I don't want to talk with my coworker who always has a cheery disposition, and I feel guilty as hell about it because I genuinely like her. This is why I fought for my one working day from home. Because I am certain these moods would be much more bearable from the comfort of my home, where I can pet my dog and put on a sitcom and enjoy some silence and maybe even a meditation. But in the office you are confined to appearing normal, not crying, pretending that every sentence that comes out of someone's mouth doesn't make you want to rip your face off. Resisting the urge to ask if I can go home early, because what is the point. More often than not, of course my mental would benefit from being able to go home halfway through the day so I can leave my work brain behind and focus on helping myself feel better. But the institution of "work" as we know it is not very accommodating for mental illness, for 28-year-old women with major depressive disorder. It all looks like weakness, laziness, lack of work ethic. A bunch of Boomer shit that pisses me off and makes me believe that I am all of those things.
The most overwhelming thing about these moments is it gives me this urgency to make a change. What can I do to fix this? To make things better for myself? Do I change antidepressants, do I add another, do I try ketamine therapy, do I try Sam-E, is there some magical supplement I'm missing out on, do I quit my job, do I change job fields completely, do I plan a trip, do I commit myself to going to more yoga classes, do I make plans with friends, do I get drunk and do drugs, do I write, do I try to get a passion project off the ground, and the list goes on and on and on.
So I'll try to find peace in my dumb little lunch break walk as I rush back to make sure I don't use more than my allotted 30 minutes, for fear of looking like I'm taking advantage. Maybe do a quick car cry, my favorite of all the things I do to try to relieve myself when I'm struggling at work. Try to find solace in my favorite thing about working; going to get lunch, while not allowing my depression to encourage me to get one of my favorite high sodium indulgences, an italian hero or 3 specialty slices of pizza. Because I'm going to the doctor next week and preparing myself for all of the health related scolding, how personally I will take it because I feel like I've really been trying to be better, in the small steps that I find manageable.
It really hurts when you're trying to be better and it feels like it's going nowhere. No one notices, my life doesn't improve, and I begin to believe it is all for nothing. That shit hurts a lot. And brings me back to the very sad "What is the point?" point of view. Because I don't have the answer to that either. I can't see what the point is right now.
All I know is that it is going to be a lifelong journey to learn how to be with myself. And right now the simple idea of that exhausts me to my bones.
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