Impending March Madness

You know, it might just be some quirk of being bipolar, but since I caught the flu from Brendan, I'm actually feeling emotionally better. Figure that one out! I have a fever and I'm so congested that I can't sleep--which is very unusual for me when I'm down--and yet, I'm being more productive than I was when I was physically healthy.

Anyway, lots of exciting stuff is going on. On February 25th, Brendan and I celebrated our dating anniversary--->six years! And I can tell that he's rubbed off on me because I'm soooo excited for the NCAA basketball tournament to begin. I can't wait for Selection Sunday so I can start agonizing over my bracket. To boot, we're heading down to St. Louis for a conference tournament so we can get a sneak peak at how good the bracket busters are this year. I love basketball and I have a theory that March Madness helps pull me out of my yearly February funk.

Spring Break is also right around the corner and anytime I can leave South Bend and reset my internal mojo is a good thing. There's this kick-ass Renaissance Festival that I go to every year. It was actually there that I decided that I wanted to adopt a greyhound after asking about a bazillion questions to the volunteers for the greyhound adoption tent. And of all the crazy decisions I've made, adopting my pooch is one of the best.

So anyway, here's hoping that the storm clouds will lift sooner rather than later.

|

The haze of 'bluh'

As I was considering the last six months or so, it comes to me that I'm rather depressed. I was paging through Kathy Cronkite's The Edge of Darkness and as she was describing her emotions--hopelessness, irrationality, hyper-emotionalism and apathy--I was like, "aw shit." I never feel motivated to go out or to socialize. I've lost interest in almost everything, although I have developed a disconcerting habit of watching college men's basketball, mostly because I can sit catatonically and alternate gazing at my computer screen and gazing at the TV, occasionally absorbing what's going on. I've been a complete bum about calling my old friends and I'm certainly not making any new ones--not that I'm particularly fond of other people at the moment. I'm more self-conscious than I've been in years; I feel like I'm 13 again.

Brendan keeps poking me, telling me to clean the house or get a job or at least make him dinner. But I just don't have the energy or the motivation to do much of anything. This sloth is all encompassing. I go days without a shower. I'll wake up after sleeping for 11 hours and flub on my couch all day long. And it's been like this for months.

It's kind of odd that I'm just realizing it now. I can't actually dismiss this pattern of behavior as normal situational depression; it's too persistent and symptomatic for a simplistic cause--effect funk. I've been waiting for it to pass for too long, been stuck in these frustrating mental doldrums for months. More problematic is my aversion to doing pretty much anything. Brendan's been picking up my slack and he doesn't complain all that much to me about it, but it's not really fair to him that I'm wallowing in some relentless sadness when life is walking by.

Being the goal-oriented girl that I usually am when I'm moderately cheerful, I recognize that I have a two-pronged attack I can take against this monster. First, I most definitely need to talk to my doctor about my sudden insight into my rather blatant depression. And second, I need to dig out my old "this is what you should do if you're _____" forms. When I was in the hospital, one of the therapists had these real fun worksheets about how to cope with extreme thoughts, feelings and behaviors. At the time, I just colored them--evidently, crazy people like their crayons--but after I left the hospital and went home, I kept those forms so that I could fill them in when I was a little more stable and rational. Those forms actually do help. It's almost like reading a letter from yourself; if someone else says I should walk my dog every morning, I'll roll my eyes but if I say I should do it, then I better bundle up and get my ass outside. I'm not sure if that makes much sense and when push comes to shove, I'm still far too lazy and tired to do half the stuff on my forms, but I suppose it's a start.

In other news, I'm officially an aunt as of yesterday. I wonder if I'll sleep more often than my niece does. :)

|