It’s sort of frightening how quickly I can find myself sliding down the slope towards a depressive episode. Part of it, I’m sure, is that I’ve missed taking my medication for the last two days… and another part of it has been stress. I think that the stress led to forgetfulness which led in turn to missing the medication which now leads to ickiness.

When my cubicle neighbor bid me a good weekend, she asked me if I had any exciting plans - and I said that I was basically planning on staying home, reading and launching the redesign of the site. Since it was raining pretty heavily at that point, she commented, “Well, at least you didn’t have plans that the rain would ruin.” And I responded, “Well, my dance card isn’t exactly full any weekend.” It’s the sort of self-deprecating comment that I find myself making more and more often when an episode is upon me… the crappy feelings I have inside manifest themselves outside.

Four of my friends have specifically spoken to me about the self-deprecating comments I make and told me that it bothers them when I do it… and asked me to stop. I have tried, and I do very well when I’m aware of it. However, I honestly don’t catch myself until later, in hindsight or when I’m feeling better. And I feel regret and shame when I realize it.

I suppose there’s something about getting the crappiness that’s inside my head out that makes me feel a little better. Almost like I’m admitting to the world that I know I’m not perfect, and that I’m messed up and whatever else is bothering me at that point… because I don’t want to seem like I’m all happy-go-lucky and oblivious to the pitfalls and crap in my life. Now that I think about it, it’s probably me trying to rectify the disparity between my external/public life and my internal/psychological life.

When I’m at work or around friends (most of the time) I am positive and outgoing and confident and gregarious and talkative. Emphasis on talkative. When I walk out of work and am in the general public - on the train, at the supermarket, in my room lost in my own thoughts, etc. - I am quite the opposite. I am generally negative, insecure, shy, lonely and quiet. 90% of the time when I get home, I won’t speak another word aloud until the next morning at work. Thus, I get home around 6:30 or 7, will say “hello” to any family members I cross paths with, and will retreat to my room or go out to run errands without speaking to anyone on the phone or in person (save for a sales clerk or bank teller - which is usually, “Thank you” and “Have a good night.”) Then I’m silent for the rest of the night, through the morning, throughout the train ride, on the walk to work and usually until I get to my desk. Even then, it’s email and voicemail and I won’t actually open my mouth to speak until 10 am.

So, on a standard day, I won’t speak at all between 6pm and 10am the next morning. 16 hours of silence. That’s a lot of time to spend alone with one’s own thoughts. No wonder I feel the need to do so much reading, watching movies, website work, etc… I need distractions to get me the hell out of my head, even just a little.

Plus I just remembered my observation about post lengths being directly (inversely) related to deepening feelings of depression. As happiness decreases, post length increases. When I start rambling on like this and feeling, for lack of better term, “philosophical”, something’s rotten in the state of Denmark. I’m going to sleep. I might even rely on sleeping pills tonight if I don’t want to stay up crying tonight.

Tomorrow, I’m going out to dinner with my family since Tuesday is my father’s birthday and we’re all home this weekend, so it makes sense to celebrate sooner rather than later. I have to get in a better mood by then - and do some laundry. Another thing that didn’t help me to feel any better was wanting to wear my jeans this morning and trying them on only to find that I couldn’t zip them up. Maybe it’s bloating… maybe it’s the change in medication… maybe I’m just in a strange in-between state… because all my other clothing has been feeling looser. Ugh.

It’s frustrating. If nothing else, I will consider it to be a great accomplishment if I gather up the will to get on the treadmill tomorrow. It won’t be nearly as hot as it’s been lately. Yes, we have air conditioning, but it seems to be a lot less effective when it’s ridiculously hot outside AND you’re working out. Perhaps it’s psychological - I know that the air conditioning is a lie and a fake climate, and I imagine that it’s warmer than it is.

My doctor says that liars and bullshitters are pretty transparent to me (and he laughs at the idea of any guy trying to use a pick-up line on me - which I tell him doesn’t happen since I don’t go anywhere where someone would have that opportunity - but he still thinks it would be a comical scene since I would apparently emasculate said guy the moment he tried any sort of bullshit line on me), as well as people who are trying to be something they’re not… so perhaps that extends to some sort of paranoia or perhaps I just don’t believe anything to be what it is and don’t accept anything at face value.

So, you see, I’m not a man-hater or a lesbian or frigid. I just don’t like games. And games are the bread-and-butter of relationships. It’s all cat-and-mouse or other bullshit like that.

Perhaps “singlehood” is as much a sexual orientation or lifestyle as being gay or straight or bisexual. It’s the asexual orientation. However, it’s not exactly correct since asexual signifies “outside of sexual” - or alien to it. The prefix a-, if I recall, means outside of or without (which originally meant the same thing)… as in amoral, amenorrhea, amnesia, etc. The dictionary says asexual is “Lacking interest in or desire for sex.” That’s both correct and incorrect - I have an interest, but no desire currently since there isn’t anyone in my life with whom I would desire it… and I also have a huge hang-up right now about getting close to anyone since I can’t see how I could be found attractive in my current mental and physical state… unless someone had a weird fetish for chubby depressed girls.

And chances are it exists - there are amputee fetishists and senior citizen fetishists and fat women fetishists and hairy women fetishists and all sorts of other interests. A pot for every lid, as they say. However, I don’t want to be the object of a fetish or obsession, so there go those options.

Now I must really get to bed. I’m getting more and more introspective and down on myself by the minute. If I can escape into a book, it might help me. That is, if I can focus on reading a book and not wander off into thought instead.

My boss got an email from a friend of hers advertising a sublet/apartment sharing situation in NYC. She forwarded it to me since she knows I am doing the apartment-hunting thing soon, but I had to thank her for the thought and say no since I cannot live with someone - even someone who’s looking just for a roommate and not a friend/roommate. I need to be alone, both for my sake and for the sake of any person who’d live with me. It’s not easy, and it’s not fun.

Any normal person who got home from work at the end of the day to find their roommate weeping for hours with no apparent reason, for days on end or pacing at night and watching movies until 2 in the morning or crying in the middle of the night - well, that person would express concern. It’s not the kind of “I’ll mind my business, you mind yours” situation that is appropriate to the roommate relationship. It’s disruptive and can take an emotional and psychological toll on the person living with you. There’s a book called, “Speaking of Sadness” that I ordered for myself from Amazon which I lent to my mother and which she also ended up buying. It’s written by a doctor who himself suffers from depression - and he talks about how it’s affected his life, his work and his family, but it’s not a memoir. He just uses his personal experiences to supplement case studies and interviews with other people suffering from depression.

A lot of the issues I’ve had with my family these last few years have been related to that - and to the fact that none of my family members are particularly easy to live with, or very understanding of my situation and illness. They seem to think that when I’m depressed, I’m “doing it” just to anger them or annoy them. The first thing they can’t grasp is that I’m not “doing” it… I have little to no control over the when and how and why and where of it. I can’t just “snap out of it.” I can’t “cheer up.” I need to get through it; it runs its course when it runs its course, and that’s that.

I am shutting up now. This mental diarrhea is getting tiresome.