God only knows

Today I’m working really hard on blame and believing that it’s not my fault.

One of the most difficult things I find when dealing with depression is that it doesn’t take much to let the monster rage through my head. It’s the little things that make me feel so tired and worthless. For example, I just realized that I forgot to mail out an important form to my employers about authorizing a background check. This isn’t a big deal. I’ll mail it out tomorrow and everything will be fine. Yet it’s made me feel like I am truly incompetent and that maybe I’d be better off without the job anyway. All because this form was in the wrong pile of papers.

There are thousands of these moments through the day, each with an opportunity to be equally damaging. Is it any wonder that depression makes it so difficult to get through the day? It’s been found that those suffering from depression have a skewed sense of proportion about the importance of things and I’m certainly feeling that today.

I realize that the reason I’m having such a difficult day is because I forgot to take my meds this morning. At least I have a reason, but it would be so nice not to have to deal with it at all.

On being medicated

Medication messes with your head. This isn’t the painfully obvious statement that it sounds like.

Dreams: I didn’t expect the dreams. Dreams on medication are vivid and multiple. Before, I didn’t dream that much and didn’t often remember them. Now I dream constantly and usually remember at least one dream I had the night before. Sometimes, if I’m dreaming about being in my room at night, I can’t tell if it’s a dream or if it really happened. Because, and this deserves mentioning twice, dreams on medication are vivid. Now it isn’t unusual for me to wake up in the middle of acting out my action in the dream. I recently woke up in the middle of handing someone money and the feel of the money in my hand dissolved. Weirdest feeling ever. I’ve taken to sleeping with my room unlocked because I don’t want to wake up somewhere on campus without any way of getting back in my room.

The ability to stop thinking: I’m a worrier. At times like this, at the end of the year with so much work to do, I worry almost constantly. With the medication, I’ve discovered an ability that I didn’t think I had; I can stop worrying. I can take a break, a shower, a walk and come back to the project or thought without so much worry tagged onto it. This extends to bad moods too. I can now go to bed after a bad day and expect a good day to follow it.

Stability: It is extremely tiring and fairly unsettling to turn moods on a dime. Usually there wouldn’t be any provocation from good to bad or bad to good except a turn of phrase or passing thought. I don’t do that anymore and that’s such a relief. I still have bad and good days, but the bad days are bad and the good days are good. There aren’t any surprises.