{"id":3289,"date":"2011-10-06T17:28:49","date_gmt":"2011-10-06T21:28:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/?p=3289"},"modified":"2011-10-06T17:29:31","modified_gmt":"2011-10-06T21:29:31","slug":"making-things-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/06\/making-things-worse\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Things Worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can see how people who’ve never been depressed dismiss it as a figment, because when I’m not depressed, I can actually talk myself out of the idea that I ever was. You just needed to buck up. You were being dramatic. You should’ve gotten more exercise.<\/p>\n

But depression is real. It’s real, and it’s not sadness or histrionics or lethargy. It’s an uncontrollable, unrelenting all-of-that, mixed with something else. The only term that comes close is bleakness. A sense that nothing’s working out, nothing will ever work out, why even try?<\/p>\n

Events can aggravate it: an internet troll trashes your work; your 92-year-old uncle’s cat gets killed by a coyote, and you realize he can’t get another cat, he was hoping to die before that cat; the touch-screen on the grocery store credit card keypad won’t register your finger’s warmth. You watch the movie About a Boy<\/em>\u00a0and, as Toni Collette’s character bursts into tears when she can’t quite reach to put a bowl on a high shelf, you think,<\/p>\n

Yes.<\/p>\n

Exactly.<\/p>\n

But there need not be an event. Circumstances can be perfect<\/a>. You can be on vacation, walking the dogs on a sunny-but-cool day after eating your home-cooked breakfast at the picnic table on the deck, and it comes. The bleakness. Your cheeks and temples tighten. You have thoughts like, “I’ll never [do X] again because I’ll never be really good at it, so why bother?” Then you beat yourself up for feeling this way on such a perfect sunny-but-cool day. Which makes things worse.<\/p>\n

And you can be Sunny Smiles-a-Lot in public. So people never have to know. Which makes things worse because alone? Alone, it’s bad, so you kind of feel like you’re lying all the time.<\/p>\n

Three weeks ago, I stopped taking the amino acid supplements I started a year ago. Why? Because I talked myself into thinking maybe I could. Because they cost over two hundred dollars a month. Because I wanted to use that money to get a different car<\/a>. Within days, I started having depressive episodes.<\/p>\n

I had asked my osteopath a long time ago if there were a cheaper brand. He said the ones he sold were the ones he’d found to be of highest quality. But last week, I thought, I’ll try some others. I looked at labels and did some math and got on the internet. I ordered L-tyrosine, L-lysine, 5-HTP, all of them—plus calcium, selenium, all the -iums—for about half of the cost. Still expensive but better.\u00a0I filled up my<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
gargantuan geriatric pill organizer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’m on day 5, and so far I feel no change. I know I need to give it some time, and I’ll go back on the super-expensive ones if the others don’t work. But right now it’s bad, and all I can do is worry it’ll get worse. Which makes things worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can see how people who’ve never been depressed dismiss it as a figment, because when I’m not depressed, I can actually talk myself out of the idea that I ever was. You just needed to buck up. You were being dramatic. You should’ve gotten more exercise. But depression is real. It’s real, and it’s … Continue reading Making Things Worse<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-call-me-crazy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3289"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3308,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3289\/revisions\/3308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}