What I Hated the Least Today 223/365: Depressed Is the New Drugged

Zenning out

I apologise for another depressing depression post. I somehow can’t get it out of my head (quite literally). I’m trying to look at the bright side of darkness (which is oxymoronic, or just moronic) and while doing so, I discovered that depressed is the new drugged.

You get a plethora of altered consciousness experiences when you’re depressed.  It’s like you’re constantly on drugs (which I am, literally; on four kinds of antidepressants, specifically). Unlike a drug habit, a depression habit is easy and cheap to maintain. Conveniently, you have an unlimited supply of substances that make you high (or rather low) lodged right in your brain.

My most favourite drugged-like state is when I’m going peacefully about my business, and suddenly I get a strong impression that my surroundings and people in them are unreal. It’s often accompanied by short-circuit thoughts based on the What if premise. Say, I’m in a supermarket, everything around me feels surreal, and I think, what if I poke the shopper next to me, slip an item from the shelf in my purse or set the place on fire?

Are you scared? Before you advise me to seek out medical advice, I assure you I am consulting my broken brain with specialists. I am told that short-circuit thoughts are normal in abnormal (as in depressed) people. Also, I haven’t actually poked anyone, stolen anything or burnt anything down (yet). Now, will you please excuse me, it’s time to pop my evening pills. For the next Christmas, I want a pill organiser (and a kitten).

What I Hated the Least Today 222/365: Happy Grumpy Holiday

I’m not a huge fan of holidays of any kind, which doesn’t prevent me from wishing everyone who feels otherwise a satisfactory holiday season. On top of it, here’s a link to my old article, in case you missed it last year, which details in detail some shocking local seasonal traditions. Included is live fish in a tub, melted metals and golden swines. Yup.

What I Hated the Least Today 221/365: This Be the Verse

Very ugly and totally unrelated

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

—Philip Larkin, “This Be the Verse”

I blame my parents for everything bad that happens to me (when I currently don’t blame myself, which is even more common). The parents are the obvious culprits. After all, they brought me to this world in the first place.

At the moment, a rare family constellation is occurring when I talk both to my father and mother. Not simultaneously, but concurrently; plus, one mustn’t know that I talk to the other (they divorced in an uncivilised manner ages ago but still bear grudge).

However, I don’t talk to my brother, who is my only sibling, and who doesn’t wish to talk. If I had a larger family, I’m perfectly sure there’d be more members with whom I wouldn’t be on speaking terms (or vice versa).

The nice thing about my talks with parents is supposed to be that I’m being a well-behaved offspring and am doing the right thing (or what). The downside is that these communications put a bit too much strain on my clinically depressed nervous system.

Talking to both of my parents, it becomes rather obvious how come I grew up to end up in the hands of psychiatrists. Some kids are naturally resilient, shut up, deal with it and survive their upbringing. Inconveniently, I was apparently a fragile, impressionable child who internalised a gazillion harmful thinking patterns.

On the thinking note, I think I forgot what my point was (if any). In lieu of a point then, let’s make a (supposedly) therapeutic selective list of what I learned from my father during our today’s phone call. (I called him once, after a year of not speaking, to say hello, and now he calls me anytime he’s drunk and feeling frisky – which is often, he is alcoholic.)

Father: How’s your so-called depression? 
Me: Not great, but I’m trying to cope.
Father: Look, it’s a question of will, you just lack the willpower. 

Father: So, are you finally earning enough to support yourself?
Me: No, but business is improving, this month is my best so far.
Father: “Improving” is a shitty business model, I told you you wouldn’t manage.

I probably shouldn’t take my father too seriously, but it’s difficult for me to tell apart what’s my own thinking and what’s a thinking conditioned by my upbringing. Somewhat tragically, I tend to agree with my father: “improving” isn’t good enough and depression isn’t a thing (which doesn’t prevent me from having it).

What I Hated the Least Today 220/365: Not-Date

Not-coffee

I’ve been to a not-date with a fellow patient from the psychiatric ward. (An intriguing premise, right?) His diagnoses include but are not limited to depression, alcoholism and asocial tendencies. (Getting interesting, huh?) I share the same diagnoses, minus alcoholism, plus anxiety. (Gotta have something extra, you know.) Nothing of note happened. (Anticlimactic, I know.)

On my not-date, I had not-coffee. That is, tea. The asocial alcoholic, let’s call him John Doe, had tiny coffee, in which he dipped his biscuit British-style. I ate my biscuit dry and was disappointed that John hasn’t given me his. I’m used to gifts of coffee biscuits from the mental ward because all the patients, on learning these are my faves, would bring me theirs in an attempt to fatten me up. (Didn’t work out.)

John is mildly scary and appreciates my morbid sense of humour. Hence, to start with, I observed that should he wish to drag me in a dark alley and kill me, he can feel free to do so because, being depressed, I wouldn’t be particularly upset to be dead. John didn’t feel like it. So we proceeded to sit in a smokers cafe and discuss the delightful graphic images on cigarette packages, which are probably intended to discourage smokers but which cheer me up.

I neither loved nor hated my not-date. However, as I’m socially isolated, I welcomed the opportunity to socialise, be it with an asocial person or not. My therapeutic programme involves at least one face-to-face social interaction per week, so I was pleased to have fulfilled my duty for the week. That’s how I go about my therapy – I duly do what I’m supposed to, and it does nothing for me, besides a rather weak and short-lasting satisfaction when I cross an item, like social interaction, off my to-do list.

What I Hated the Least Today 219/365: Cat Show

Caged cat

I’ve been to a cat show today. It consists of people paying to be able to look at cats who do absolutely nothing (and mostly sleep while doing so). I paid the (admittedly smallish) fee willingly.

I undertook torturous effort to be able to see the cats. I ventured out in the inhumane cold. I used two trams and one bus to get to the exhibition hall. Normally, it would take one tram, but there was a diversion. Tram rails cracked on the usual line, apparently from the frost.

There were dozens of cats to see, probably nearing to a hundred. I moved from exhibit to exhibit, going aw all the time as I went. Disappointingly, the cats were placed in cages, though they didn’t seem to be too bothered and just slept in a perfectly nonplussed manner.

I exhibited extreme willpower because I didn’t take any of the cats home. Some of them were actually for sale, which rather puzzled me. What kind of a person would sell their cat? It’s akin to selling a child. When I returned home to my own cat, she either didn’t realise I was cheating on her or didn’t let on.

What I Hated the Least Today 218/365: New Workstation

All new and nice

I’ve been arguing with my workstation for months on end before I decided to ditch it and get me a new model.

I couldn’t find a ready-made desk of the size I needed and with the specifications I wanted, so I went extravagant and got my new desk custom-made. It cost about the same as a regular one from the shop. It’s a more spacious and more ingenious copy of my old desk. The desk maker (cabinet maker?) proved to be a man of great insight and fantasy, because he managed to read my crooked hand-drawn sketch of my desired desk and make it just as I wanted.

My new chair I didn’t get custom-made but got it online. It’s quite badass and allows for a number of different positions. I like positions. I take weird positions on my chair, typically sitting cross-legged or squatting. I’m weird. I didn’t explain why I didn’t want armrests to be mounted on the chair when the guys brought it in and assembled it for me. Armrests aren’t compatible with the cross-legged position.

The best thing about everything is that I miraculously managed to get rid of the old furniture for half its original price. I was advised a good site for second-hand items trading and I sold both the old chair and the old table in quite a short time. I even sold the old chair before I got the new chair, so I spent three days crouching precariously on a foldable stool. I consider myself lucky that I didn’t break any bone or lose any teeth while using it. Something to hate the least today.