There’s some glorious rain and thunder and lightning going on in my neck of the woods tonight (see picture for the severe thunderstorm warning area.. I’m in that band of loveliness). It just started two minutes ago, so I’m looking forward to it lasting for a few hours at least since that will pretty much guarantee a good night’s sleep for me.

Or at least maybe once the air conditioning kicks in; it was 86 degrees indoors when I got home 30 minutes ago. I left the air conditioning on to maintain 80 degrees throughout the 96 degree day (because computers and TVs and DVD players and other such devices don’t like the heat too much) but someone else turned it off.

Nothing to do now but wait.

And maybe have a glass of ice water.

I’m still not functioning at 100%, but I do feel better than I have lately. The moments when I feel like a worthless piece of crap aren’t as frequent.

Haircut + antidepressants + some time with friends = good. Psychology Today featured a piece on folic acid recently (from a study published in 2003), so I might go pick some up. Folic acid has been shown to boost the response rate of SSRIs by 40 percent. We need it anyway, and I do have unexplained cravings for citrus fruits, legumes and leafy greens sometimes — perhaps my organism has been aware of a lack of folic acid around the time when depression strikes? I doubt that my body is that smart, but as long as I check out the dosage, it shouldn’t make things worse. Or, I can wait until next week when I have a visit with the doctor and ask him.

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… that makes me forget about feeling shitty for a while. I give you:

Planet Unicorn, episodes 1, 2 and 3.

• the cheesy-ass club MUSIC!
• the catchy THEME SONG!
• the brilliant NAMES!
• the animation…
• the (intentionally?) wooden dialogue
• “Hey, that rhymes!”
• “I’m a bird… goodbyeeeee!”

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… I have been more than a bit taciturn lately.

I haven’t felt much like writing or talking or any kind of self-expression. It’s a nice life-sucking visit from my sometime (mental) companion.

Rather than getting on here and typing up my totally irrational thoughts, re-reading them at a later date and falling deeper into a spiral of self-loathing, I’ve kept them away from the keyboard and reflected a bit instead. I haven’t come to any realizations or found some glimmer of happiness; but I also haven’t logged in and performed the equivalent of drunk-dialing, except I’m not drunk and I’m not talking to anyone.

I’m trying to shake myself of a whole cadre of exceedingly shitty thoughts and beliefs, but this seems totally impossible while I’m feeling the way I do right now. I won’t relive the thoughts and justify them - I’m trying to get these out as WORDS and nothing but words. Maybe I’ll pull a Hamlet (his words, words, words bit where the very repetition of the word “words” renders the words weaker and less meaningful - or at least that was my reading of that segment in college) and I’ll become desensitized to them. They’re basically “you suck, who could ever care about you, you don’t deserve to be happy, you haven’t done anything with your life so why bother, you’re so far behind it’s pathetic, everyone is pitying you because you’re a sad example of a wasted life, you have nothing to look forward to, everything you know is worthless and meaningless, every day is just a distraction to keep you from feeling until you can sleep again - that’s not a life, you’re unattractive, you won’t ever succeed because no one wants to deal with your mental instability and bullshit.”

Except for the bit about every day being a distraction and that this isn’t really a life, the rest of it is irrational and overblown and probably very wrong - and I did talk about that part of it with two friends who assured me that I’m not worthless and that they care about me, providing an external opinion I very much needed. But the rest of it is in my head and I can’t shut it the f–k off (I’ve been dropping f-bombs way too often lately). I’m having a real problem finding some aspect of my life to attach happy feelings to at the moment. Anything that I can think of I can just as easily tear to shreds and deem unimportant and worthless.

So. That’s where I am. Watching movies, reading books, and doing anything I can to keep myself from being alone with my thoughts while conscious (short of drugs and alcohol). The theory is that if I exhaust myself with distractions, I’ll be too tired to fight with myself when I want to sleep. Right now, I’m getting quite tired because I got four hours of sleep last night and worked an 11 hour day (two hours of which were the commute, so it’s not that bad). If I can sit here for a while longer, I’ll be tired enough to fall asleep. And that would be good.

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The daily grind has seemed like more than I can handle these last few weeks. I find myself reliving every comment I’ve made at work or otherwise and lecturing myself on keeping my mouth shut, and keep assuming that I know that other people are thinking negative things about me - which I recognize as being insane, but I’m still doing it.

Since my visit to the doctor on Friday night, I’ve been reading up on a medication he’s prescribed to me (in addition to increasing the dosage of medication A) and finding myself a little wary of the drug. On both reputable medical sites and user-generated sites/discussion boards, the effects of the drug beyond its main purpose are a bit scary. Any drug that can cause memory loss and aphasia doesn’t sound like a good idea and will make me feel crazier than I already feel, but the alternative isn’t particularly pretty either.

The pharmacy couldn’t dispense the drug on Saturday morning since they had a question on the usage instructions and wanted to call my doctor’s office tomorrow. So I have a day, give or take, to figure this out and call the doctor’s office myself. It wouldn’t be something I’d be taking forever; just for a month or two… so the ill effects might be OK for that length of time, but it’s still not a decision I can make blithely.

I just need to stop feeling like this.

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… but then I found this through the Mental_floss blog. It’s “Yellow Ledbetter” by Pearl Jam (and I am thrown back to high school and early college years) but with captions of misheard lyrics.

I don’t think I’ve found a video this surprisingly funny in a long time. Maybe ever. I was sitting here making little shrieking surprise laughs because I was about to lose it.

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