I am struggling right now--March hasn't been so good to me. First i failed to complete an entire week's task on Beck and now this week's thank yous... one finished letter and two nearly finished letters is not enough. Let alone the three long overdue and very nearly finished (but "not yet perfect") mixes sit on my proverbial dashboard... and I haven't run in five days. If i had to label a "loser week" so far this year, this is surely it.
Unfortunately right now I'm struggling to get through the most significant depression I've felt in a while. I float through work like a zombie, struggling to do enough just to be ok, and then i get home and sit motionless on the couch or at the kitchen table or on my bed, held captive by my runaway brain waves. Self-esteem is low and sense of self lower. The last few days especially have been rough, and it hasn't helped that the apartment has been empty most of the week due to SXSW and other roommate life requirements. All day long and especially at home I am bombarded by destructive thoughts of sadness and loss and emptiness and despair and they take complete and total control of me, shutting everything down.
How do you block this kind of shit out? This is what I am trying to learn, and what, thus far, I have failed mightily at discovering. When I've got things going right (which admittedly in my life hasn't seemed often enough), everything clicks. But when things get out of hand, or go downhill, my spirit bends and sways and then ultimately collapses, knocked over by the powerful and seizing winds of depression.
Something has happened to my brain also, musically speaking, where I am listening to a handful of fucking songs OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER again. It's bizarre--never in my life have I wanted to put songs on repeat, but over the past two and a half months there are five specific songs that I've listened to over and over again. These songs, even though two of them are half-joyful, all speak to what's been going on in my life these past few months and I guess they just clicked with me representing different phases of feeling I've had (umm maybe Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's Five Stages of Grief?). Three of them are on the "Anglophilia" mix that will come someday soon, another on a mix I made a few months back. Beck week has inspired my most recent of these obsessions, as evidenced via my Last.FM recent play count of 15 listens (so far) over today and yesterday.
Anyway, as He says, I think/hope that "the cruelest days are almost over now," so hopefully i'll be back on track soon, maybe starting today. Next week though is "just" going to bed early, so outside of the fact that I'm unconvinced that my body knows how to fall asleep before 1 a.m., I think i'll be able to get through it and feel good about myself again (Doorknobs and Shrimp Cracker have promised to remove all electrical devices, including my phone, laptop, and even lamp from my bedroom, save my alarm clock, which honestly I probably won't need if I fall asleep before midnight since my body seems to wake up on its own after five or six hours of sleep.
if you've got any thoughts for me on getting over this kinda shit, hit me up here or at yearofhyperliving AT gmail.com. I'm always interested in the different ways that people deal with things; sometimes hearing another perspective reminds you to how to look at yourself anew and see new answers to old problems.
Stumble It!
2 comments:
i recommend patience, brother benjamin, and admitting that you were never in control to begin with.
continue what you're doing now:
1)sink in it to the point where you get tired of it.
2)in the meanwhile, the one thing to try to achieve to re-boot your motivation. look for it everywhere, and eventually you'll be on your feet again.
sometimes you just need to give yourself a break. runners take regular breaks all the time, to let their bodies recharge.
you'll come out of it freshened up and ready to back to hyper living.
Post a Comment