Thoughts on life, woods and words

It's currently 7.25am. I haven't slept since a nap late on the 23rd February. I can't concentrate on the work in front of me (several interesting papers on different aspects of separating sperm on the basis of the sex chromosomes therein).

Time for an update on my life, no?

----

Not to be too blunt about it, but the last few months have been, in a word, depressing. In a misguided act of kindness (vanity? pride?) I avoided writing about these things and the feelings that accompanied them. I say "kindness" because I know that at least part of this avoidance was due to an unwillingness to have other people worrying about me. I've always tried to keep people happy. I can sincerely say that I'm often more able to feel happy for others and their achievements than I am able to draw honest, uplifting happiness from a job I've done well, from new relationship experiences, or even from something as simple as finding a photo of myself that I don't dislike.

The other part of the blog avoidance, setting aside for now the fact that I really did not want to reawaken all the emotions raised by the events in question, was the mistaken assurance of a fairly simple and, I'm led to believe, common lie-to-self.

"It's not that bad."

It was, and I refused to realise this for a long time. Each time my thoughts spiralled to particularly dark and painful places my mental response was pure failure - no consideration of how real or not the hurt actually was, just the stubborn belief that I was wrong to think such things when other people seemed perfectly happy, followed by a metaphorical slap on the wrist and mental instruction to pull it together.

There are only so many times anyone can do this before the aforementioned light slaps descend into a real need to punish the mind for failing in this way. It's confusing, and hurtful, and on some level there is recognition that positive emotions should not be so difficult or require so much effort, but this only increases the resentment against oneself - if it's difficult, it should still be attainable somehow, and if it requires effort, why hasn't enough effort been made?

It's perhaps a good thing that this kind of inward anger wasn't the main part of my thoughts. More than anything else, the overwhelming emotion of the past while - if "emotion" is what it can be called - was that of feeling nothing. I spent a lot of time sleeping or just lying in bed staring at the wall or ceiling with my mind completely blank; occasionally, I moved to a chair in the living room and did exactly the same. I knew I should be around other people, but at the same time I knew I'd push myself to look happy for them, and that seemed like too much effort - so I'd stay in, stare into space, and sometimes wonder why the few people who did see me regularly never noticed a difference in my mood.

I lost interest in a lot of things. Keeping myself and my room tidy and organised stopped feeling important, as did feeding myself - just things that I did when I remembered because I was aware that, for some reason, they did have to be done sometimes.

I'm guessing the turnaround might have been, of all things, due to an MSN conversation with a friend. I still can't quite remember, but I believe I'd jokingly mentioned my now-complete lack of money and how it fit in so well with the series of unfortunate events of the past few months. Curiosity was piqued and the story was requested. I warned that the "story" was long and not enjoyable.

"That's fine. Just talk."

----

I've had to tell the whole story of the run of bad luck multiple times now to different people - the time for hiding it has definitely passed at this point. Friends have been so supportive I'm almost ashamed of how long it took me to learn to lean on them... I really don't have the words to get across all the little things that kept me going.

I have a backlog of missed lectures that I'm still catching up on, and a lot more work to do on my dissertation now I can (almost) face it again. I do currently have a fairly nice set of A3 project presentation posters I was somehow able to put together; they're hanging on my wall now that the presentation is done. I'm hoping they'll be a good enough reminder of the fact that work should never be an insurmountable thing for me.

----

One of my biggest regrets about my depression - and the fact that I couldn't ask for help for so long - is that it proved to be a breaking point for Steve and me as a couple. I have no doubt that it was the right thing to do, but I wish things hadn't ended like that. I don't really know what more to say on that topic, but some things are better left unworded.

----

As I'm now waiting on the results of a blood test (ugh. Hate. Needlessss. Inmyflesh. wrgh) and will be seeing a doctor again soon to sort out some kind of treatments, whatever those may be, I guess it's fair enough to say that even if I'm not quite out of the woods yet, I'm quite possibly on the right road out.

I guess now is the time to focus on doing things that will make me happy.

I'm a bit rusty, but I'll give it a try anyway.

It'll be interesting.