Putting Out the Lights

[cklabyrinth]

Originally Posted by rkzenrage

I've dealt with depression my whole life.
What works for me is trying to stay in the moment, keep the goals that you focus on most of the time in the immediate. It really helps, at least for me.
When I start looking at large things, like my past or the "future" it is very depressing. Focusing on things that are closer to now, things I can actually DO something about does not feel so oppressive or overwhelming. "This is something I am doing" feels good, no matter what it is, gardening, home project, planning a trip, a class at the local college/community college/library, it does not matter... just something.
Now, I am NOT saying that something trite like a hobby or class will cure depression... I am saying that dealing in the now and doing something positive on a regular basis helps.
It also helped me in my marriage when we where having problems. Gave me something to focus on other than our "stuff" all the time. Kept it from festering and helped me be objective and look at things from her perspective... say "I was wrong" or "I don't think I was wrong, but this is why" in a calm, non-threatening way, a lot more.
Dude, please know, this is not advice... it is just what has worked/is working for me.

This sounds a lot like The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, a book I partially read but really should finish reading. It's a lot of Zen and shutting your mind off to only use it when necessary, hence no meaningless thought like fear, regret, whatever.

Thanks for the reminder. . . if nothing else, it's an interesting read. Just sitting and breathing deeply, taking breaks to think about the text when prompted seemed to calm and soothe my nerves when I felt especially down. Maybe it can help someone else, too.

[busterb]

Last year I had a 1/2 ass plan. I realized my health would only get worst with time.
If I die in bed I'm worth about enough to pay for my bar-b-q and a few bills. If I die in an auto accident I'm worth a lot more.
So I thought buy a big Honda bike and make a road trip. West, north west and maybe Alaska. If that trip didn't get me, I might give it a little nudge. I had a Honda interstate back in 80s, think I paid around $ 8 k for it. guess I could still ride.

I priced a new one, wow. Then used, damn. Couldn't find anyone to give me one, so that was end of plan.
Depression and alcohol can really come up with great brain storms. bb


32

[Shawnee123]

I need help.

I keep thinking I am getting a handle on things and I keep falling back into the hole.

I have no problem advising my friends that life will get better and it's worth living.

Lately, my financial problems are not getting better, and my job is getting worse.

I've come so close to walking out of my job...this job that saved my life 5 years ago, this job I used to love, that made me feel important, that gave me some relevance in this shithole world.

They keep piling more and more on our department, historically the most underpaid and overworked, underappreciated department...while I listen to other counselors laughing and joking in each other's offices for a large part of the day.

I'm not saying we're better...I'm saying we're at least as valuable (with close to 50% of our students receiving some sort of financial aid there wouldn't be a school without us.)

I'm at my wit's end here. I think I want to see if I can find Valium on the street or something. I sometimes get so upset I want to punch something, or hurt myself. I just want to give up. This anger arises as I watch things going on around here...it's become so damn political and phony...I feel helpless, like a wild animal cornered who comes out fighting.

My boss even agrees that we have been under SO much pressure for SO long something has to give. She is pretty calm, but she makes money more equal to her tasks, too, and has a very spiritual life that I think helps her. Not much help to me, being agnostic.

I don't know what line of work I could change to. I'm so tired of students mad at us because we have to follow regulations. I'm tired of crunching numbers for hours to reconcile millions of dollars. I'm tired of working late nights to recruit (what admissions supposedly gets paid more for), to process the thousands of records we get from the DOE. I'm tired of hearing the whining, the crying, the "you people are screwing up my life." I'm tired of the thankless, compensation-less, stressful days. I'm tired of students complaining about their financial situations when I'm just about two steps away from homelessness and despair.

I just don't know what to do. The pain is becoming more that I can bear. My two anti-depressants are not making a ding in the kind of stress I am feeling. I can't even afford the 25 dollar co-pay on a med check at this point in time.

I wonder what I have done to deserve this. The rational side of me KNOWS things could be so much worse...but when you're mired in the mud of despair that doesn't sink in very well, no pun intended.

Thanks for listening.

[Perry Winkle]

I made a life list a couple of hours ago. I'm going to go through and start building lists of action-items for some of the things on it.

Tomorrow I'll start checking them off.

I went to Prince William Forest Park the other day and walked the paths for a couple of hours. Why did I ever think I wanted an indoor job?

[Sundae]

Shawnee I really think you have to start looking for other work. It really sounds as if the job is taking far too much of a toll on you - they pay you to work there, not to screw your head up & trash your life.

I know it's really hard when you are already spiralling down, to think of a way of getting out of it. I know application forms and interviews are tough at any time let alone when you are at your lowest, but please think about it, I hate to hear you so lost.

Can you have a word with your boss and take some time off? I know it's a short term solution but you're not going to be able to think straight while you are under daily pressure. Can you get signed off for a couple of weeks by a GP (don't know how that works over there - many companies in the UK pay sick leave, at least to start with). If you could get signed off until payday, then you can afford to get your meds checked?

I dunno, I'm probably not coming up with anything you haven't thought of yourself. Sorry - I wish I had a great solution but I'm barely balancing as it is.

Don't think people don't care though, keep posting your feelings if it helps to let it out. Good luck.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Sundae Girl

Don't think people don't care though, keep posting your feelings if it helps to let it out. Good luck.

Yeah, Shawnee. I read your post and wanted to be able to help, but I've just got nothing to offer, so I didn't post. Hang in there.

[Shawnee123]

Thanks you guys! I really didn't expect a response, I just needed to get it out. I know there is no easy solution; I am trying to find the gumption to make a real move.

Just that , some days it is so overwhelming. I know it isn't normal to live under a high level of stress for an extended period of time.

I'm glad I have the Cellar and the wonderful Cellar Dwellars to listen and offer a kind word.

[Undertoad]

I don't know what to say either, but you deserve better. Don't let the bastards grind you down... just look for other work. The choice isn't between walking out or not walking out. You CAN make your own exit, your own way. You CAN build the world you want.

[limey]

Like glatt I didn't know what to say yesterday, but UT and SG are right. Perhaps even the small rebellious action of considering the job ads will help you to feel a little more in control; then sending in one application may also help you to feel that there are things you can do to change your situation ... Can you do temping (temporary secretarial work) to have an income without the sort of shit you're having to put up with? Hang in there, Shawnee ...

[xoxoxoBruce]

Shawnee, I suspect if start looking for something else you'll feel a little better right away because you know it's not going to last forever. It suddenly becomes a temporary hassle.
You've been putting up with it for years so I know you can go through the motions a while longer. Just knowing you have options is a boost.
Spend your lunch with your feet on your desk reading the want ads. If they say anything...light up a cigar.

[Shawnee123]

Thanks all. I am definitely going to fix up my resume (I need to update my job description anyway, which when I'm done will be pretty impressive with all the tasks I have) and keep my eyes peeled. I know that one way or another it will work out.

You are all great...thanks!

PS My computer died today (it's fairly new) and IT had to haul it in. I'm across the hall using a spare computer. I'm thinking of employing Bruce's cigar idea!

[sandypossum]

I haven't been back to the Cellar for a few years, mainly due to my collapse. I am right at the edge of my precipice, and thought I would look and see if there was a Cellar thread for this. And of course, there is.

I read through the whole thread, most of it from 7 years ago. I recognised quite a few names, which surprised me. After I finished I did a quick check on two names that stuck with me, Shawnee123 and Sundae. Shawnee hasn't posted since 2012 - anyone know anything? - but I was so relieved to see Sundae was still posting. (Remember me, Sundae? Satan's Claw?)

So here's why I'm at my precipice.

I am 53. I am an agnostic. I have no children. My parents are both long dead, one by suicide, one from a gruesome form of cancer which had her die in the most excruciating pain. The doctors and nurses had compulsory weekly counselling.

They were both immigrants, my mother from Japan, my father from Germany. Both immigrated alone, so I never grew up with any other family in Australia. I have met my relatives in both countries, and had been close to some for a while, but the contact dwindled - primarily from their side - over the years, and we have let it go.

My partner immigrated from Holland. We had lived in his country for 6 years. He has a large family, but they do not particularly like me - surely I forced him to leave there? - and none have ever visited in the 10 years we have lived here.

I have always had a difficult personality, although I have been working hard at it since my teenage years, trying to be more acceptable without selling my soul together with my ethics.

My parents, like many immigrants, remained stuck in the time warp of their own country in the 50s. I was raised very harshly, with frequent beatings. I never felt loved, never felt safe. My parents didn't just have a strict attitude to child raising - they had different attitudes to it, while I lived in a third world of Australian families and their (generally quite different) social rules. They also didn't like each other.

At school I did exceptionally well, but due to being fat, plain, and unsporty, being good academically was a very bad thing. Also, Australia in the 1960s still an unpleasant place for Japanese and Germans (understandably in some ways) and as the child of both I copped racism on a daily basis. I was one of two children in my school who was not of Ango-Irish ancestry.

High school took that up a notch. My life consisted of emotional, verbal and physical abuse at home and at school. I developed a classic case of BPD, although it was not diagnosed until 2005.

I'll fast track this to a few decades later. My emotional instability fecked up my life despite all efforts to alter my behaviour. My friendships, relationships, workplaces, groups I went to - all were affected sooner or later by my behaviour, although each and every time some people would say, "it's not your fault, you did nothing wrong."

It seemed like I had been cursed at birth to always have conflict, loss and abandonment in my life. Not just in my imagination - I have witnesses to all events. But what were the chances that these things always happened to me simply by random chance? Things that just rarely seemed to happen to anyone else. (And that IS being objective.) I was the only common factor. It had to be me.

I was diagnosed with a inherited mood disorder, and was put on medication. The psychiatrist made it clear that this would not fix my life. It would stop the cycles of extreme depression (about twice a year in my 30s, and lasting about a fortnight) but I would still need to attend to the psychological trauma and patterns.

I began a 12 month course of DBT. It was hard work, with 6 hours weekly of group therapy, and one session of individual therapy, additional to seeing my psychiatrist. I finished it not long after we had bought a farm in the country. A new person for a new life.

For about 4 years it worked pretty well. I did not feel as emotionally affected by events, and was able to maintain some reasonable social relationships with people. But I had not let them get close yet.

When I did, that’s when it all went wrong again. My best friend for 3 years stopped speaking to me because I tried – very gently, supportively and non-judgementally – to tell her about how I had thought of a way she could have her dog untethered. I had only recently learned that her Blue Heeler (an Australian working dog) had been on a one metre chain all the time for the last 7 years. I had always been there in the evenings and thought it was just chained up for the night. The same sort of thing happened with two other “close” friends.

And then something awful happened in my marriage, and I nearly died. That was the moment that my husband, “thought I was actually going to lose you” and decided we could go to marriage counselling after all. I won’t go into more of that except to say from the point on I lost interest in life, and it hasn’t really come back since. He has been as good as his word, and has seen a counsellor to understand and change his ways, to a relationship counsellor, and has been the best husband I could ask for. I trust him again now, after almost three years of not trusting him at all. But I can’t feel any connection to him. There is a big wall between us that my emotions have thrown up, and I cannot find a way to lower it. I have tried tricking it with drugs. No go. Our therapists have made suggestions but just keep saying “it needs more time”.

The awful things with other people have continued to happen, despite the fact that I have kept it to minimal contact.

My best friend for the last three has been my neighbour, Trish. We are like chalk and cheese. She likes reality TV, glossy mags, buying the latest fashion, couldn’t give a damn about the environment, and gave her 2 year old daughter a hot pink Barbie flat screen TV and DVD player. Not me at all. But we were really close. We lives about 1km from us and saw each other every other day, and phoned the other days. Last December she demanded I throw out Derek, a 19 yr old American guy who was staying with us as a HelpXer. His motorcycle was broken and he had been waiting on parts for two months (we helped him track the parts, so we know it is true.) We invited Derek to stay on for Christmas. Mid December he did something wrong – naively and without ill iintent – but he corrected it, and did not do it again. Trish demanded I throw him out because of it. It did not actually affect her in any way, and could not at any time in the future, but she was outraged all the same. I said I could and would not do it. She insisted, saying otherwise I was turning Christmas to shit. She said I had to understand this was her moral universe. I said I understood that but this was my ethical universe.

She has not spoken to me since. She will not look at me, she will not meet me to discuss it. My husband went to speak to her about it on the weekend, and she is adamant. Curiously, but as usual, even though my husband agreed with me, and was co-responsible for Derek staying, she has no issue with him.

This has been my life as far as I remember it. Taking the blame for things that just everyone else knows was not my fault.

I’m not putting all this very well, as I am slightly enhanced at the moment. I can barely cope with life without it at the moment. But for the last week I have been thinking: nothing I have done has changed the path of my life. I have lived in several different countries and cultures. I have tried to alter my behaviour to be more acceptable. I have tried being myself (bad). I have seen various therapists. Taken courses. Read a shit load about it. It seems to make no difference at all, and to be honest, if this is how much life is likely to be for the next 20-30 years, then what is the bloody point of it?

We are going to Myanmar / Burma in early February, my first real holiday away from the farm in 8 years. I worked for human rights in Burma for years. It has been a dream for just as long to go there. I’m not really that excited about it, but I am counting on the culture shock to get me out of my frame of mind, at least for the few weeks we are there.

I have promised my husband not to “put any lights out” until we return from Myanmar. But I feel very calm when I think of doing it. It is a comfort to me, to think I can do it. I know how. There are two options. When I think of not doing it I started to feel hysteria rising.

What the fuck am I writing this to you for? I cannot talk to anyone here about it anymore. Even my psychiatrist and psychologist seem to have run out of things to say or suggest, other than to encourage and support my decision to defer it to when we return from Burma.

I respect so many of the people on the Cellar for their intelligence, their maturity, their objectivity and their sensibility. If any of you have been in this sort of situation – no cancer, no kids, financially stable if not rich, a supportive husband despite the lack of connection – then please tell me what made you decide not to. I only thought of asking it here today and I hope you will forgive my long rant if you have come this far.

[Sundae]

Of course I remember you Sandy.
Christ on a bike, this isn't the welcome back post I want to write though.

Shawnee has morphed into Infinite Monkey. She's still a very valued member of the Cellar and I wouldn't presume to speak for her regarding her mental state these days.
All I can tell you is that Brianna has been our only suicide as far as I know.

I am so close to the edge myself. Or to use the "putting out the lights" analogy, let's say my finger hovers over the switch on a daily basis, in my mind if not to the extent of making actual plans. Even as I sit typing this I am aware of how hyper-sensitive to noise I am, my nerves are turned up to screaming pitch and just the click click fucking click of that man's cutlery as he eats his breakfast makes me want to grab his fork and bury it in his throat.

My story is very different than yours, except for the point we've reached.
You've had a successful relationship for a start, my longest was with my cat, and I left him long enough to die in a stranger's arms. It may be troubled/ over/ in its death throes, but the man exists.

You were bullied at school but were an academic success; I was teased but in hindsight I was considered popular. They were still talking about me when my brother went to the same school a year after I left, apparently. I heard years later about how I was perceived and it did not match how I saw myself at the time. I certainly have never lived up to the potential of my intelligence. One of the many incorrect sobriquets applied to me over the years has been "well educated" despite leaving school at 16.

I've even been called refined, as if I'd been to the Sorbonne rather than state school.
The only way I've been refined is like sugar - treated in a way that made me more damaging...

What are we going to do?
Those of us with our impossible first world problems, our unsolvable personalities?
Just depend on the sufferance of those we've allowed to get close. Keep breathing. Enjoy wearing tight sparkly sweaters with rabbits on them.
And know that one day this will be done and whether we we're Victor Mature or Zsa Zsa Gabor we're all worm food.

Sorry hon. I'm a bad person to ask right now.
I hope one of the successful and clever people here replies.
I'm neither. But I really do look good in this sweater. Even with the arterial spray on it.

[glatt]

Hi Sandy! Welcome back. I'm glad the Cellar is still here for you. I remember your name, but don't really remember much about you.

It looks like just being able to post about what you are thinking and feeling is of some help to you. If you find yourself having trouble connecting with people in real life, why not try to connect with people online? There are communities like the Cellar where you can do things like share your experiences on a trip to Burma (I can't bring myself to call it Myanmar) and get interaction with people that way. Suicide seems like such a permanent and drastic solution to the problem. Don't you have any curiosity about what's going to happen next? What more you can do and experience in the world? It seems to me that if you are willing to do something so drastic, that you could do something less drastic just for the experience. After all, there is always the suicide option later.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Sandy, round sunburned face with freckles and a killer smile, as I recall. Hi!
A lot of us had parents with notions of child rearing that haven’t proven to give the most desirable results… and some were really fucked up. The same goes for family, schools, employers, and the people in general, but like it or not they shape who we become. Since we can’t change the past, the best we can do is decide what we’re working with and what we want the future to be. Should we change ourselves, or our perception of ourselves, or work with what we feel we have?

You seem to be firmly convinced of who and what you are, and you’re the reason friends don’t come easy or last long. Is that because your idea of what a friendship should entail, how it should work, is out of step with other people? I’m guessing Trish was offended by Derek and feels you betrayed her by forgiving him. She wouldn’t feel betrayed by your husband because she didn’t consider him a friend.

At 53 you’ve been through the mill long enough to see a pattern you don’t like, but feel you-am-who-you-am-and-that’s-all-that-you-am.
Avoiding lame jokes about living upside down in Australia, the $64 question is can you figure out an acceptable future? Can you write a script of a life where you, with all your perceived pluses/minuses, can control your environment enough to avoid conflict and aggravation.

It’s a tall order and shit happens, but by trying to avoid situations you feel won’t turn out well, if shit happens you know you tried, so fuck it, their problem not yours. If you have a craving for a Doris Day/Donna Reed lifestyle, that’s going to be a problem unless you change yourself… a lot. But if you can be reasonably happy on the farm with your husband and minimum outside people, you’ve got a shot at it.

Hope your trip is as good as you've dreamed it would be, and let us know how you’re making out, because we’re family and we care, goddamn it, that's why!