I've seen this room and I've walked this floor
I seem to be suffering from a continuation of a psychological breakdown that began in Mobile. The longer I lived there, the more I became detached from my surroundings and friends, as well as becoming increasingly cynical, depressed, anxious, dependent on medication. I had the hope that moving would improve my mental state, as I blamed my problems on the stagnation of being in a nowhere town with nothing to do, but that hope has since been dashed. I actually feel worse than ever. But that’s okay, really. It isn’t a country’s job to fix me.
It occurred to be before that I was slowly losing my ability to function like a normal person, and that by the time I got to England, the place would seem like a hospital. Just a quiet sanctuary in which I would go quietly insane.
This is depression unlike any I’ve ever experienced. Usually I can identify my depression as a feeling of hopeless resignation and anger. General existential malaise and loneliness. The knowledge that there is no point to anything because we’re all going to die.
It’s not an emotionally urgent feeling. In fact, it’s barely a feeling at all. It’s more of an anti-feeling. It’s like being in suspended animation. The catharsis of talking or crying doesn’t even occur to me, because I’m too dead inside to do either of them. I usually just write or distract myself out of it, or simply accept that I’m too intelligent and sensitive to ever be as content as most people seem to be, and carry on with my business.
But this present hell I’m living in is a horse of a different color. All I seem to do these days is cry. I fall to pieces at the slightest touch. A song, a movie, a conversation, a childhood memory, etc. Sometimes I don’t need any help dissolving into a river of tears and snot; sometimes I’ll be sitting on a bus or walking down the street, thinking of absolutely nothing at all, and I’ll suddenly realize I’m going to cry and that I need to hide my face in my scarf so I don’t make a spectacle of myself. The fits don’t last more than a few minutes, but they’re enough to give me headaches and puffy eyes.
This is highly unlike me. Crying is something I usually do only when I’m violently upset, and isn’t often that I’m violently upset. Perpetually and boringly melancholy, yes, but not upset.
I feel as if something truly bad has happened. Like, the way I feel now is how I would feel if my mother died or my husband left me. It’s a feeling of grief, of having lost something, of suffering a terrible, unavoidable emotional blow. It’s the kind of sadness that has a cause.
Except in this case it doesn’t.
My mother hasn’t died, and my husband hasn’t left me (yet). I have everything I could want out of life, and I can't think of any reason why I should feel so profoundly heartbroken. There’s a gnawing, black feeling in my chest that’s usually reserved for occasions when I have specific wounds to nurse (of the type that nothing but the passage of time can cure), and I’ve no idea what I’m supposed to do with it.
I’m reluctant to make any guesses about why this is happening. After finally finding a doctor willing to renew my prescription in order to keep me from getting sick, I’m slowly tapering myself off the tranquilizers so I can be drug free and avoid similar emergencies in the future. I’ve been told severe emotional turmoil is a common symptom of the withdrawal process, no matter how gradual it is, and I guess that could possibly be an explanation for my horrendous sadness… but I can’t believe that, because I don’t have any other symptoms, and it’s too early for all of that anyway.
In an attempt to fix it, whatever "it" is, I'm seeing a cognitive behavioral therapist every other week.
It occurred to be before that I was slowly losing my ability to function like a normal person, and that by the time I got to England, the place would seem like a hospital. Just a quiet sanctuary in which I would go quietly insane.
This is depression unlike any I’ve ever experienced. Usually I can identify my depression as a feeling of hopeless resignation and anger. General existential malaise and loneliness. The knowledge that there is no point to anything because we’re all going to die.
It’s not an emotionally urgent feeling. In fact, it’s barely a feeling at all. It’s more of an anti-feeling. It’s like being in suspended animation. The catharsis of talking or crying doesn’t even occur to me, because I’m too dead inside to do either of them. I usually just write or distract myself out of it, or simply accept that I’m too intelligent and sensitive to ever be as content as most people seem to be, and carry on with my business.
But this present hell I’m living in is a horse of a different color. All I seem to do these days is cry. I fall to pieces at the slightest touch. A song, a movie, a conversation, a childhood memory, etc. Sometimes I don’t need any help dissolving into a river of tears and snot; sometimes I’ll be sitting on a bus or walking down the street, thinking of absolutely nothing at all, and I’ll suddenly realize I’m going to cry and that I need to hide my face in my scarf so I don’t make a spectacle of myself. The fits don’t last more than a few minutes, but they’re enough to give me headaches and puffy eyes.
This is highly unlike me. Crying is something I usually do only when I’m violently upset, and isn’t often that I’m violently upset. Perpetually and boringly melancholy, yes, but not upset.
I feel as if something truly bad has happened. Like, the way I feel now is how I would feel if my mother died or my husband left me. It’s a feeling of grief, of having lost something, of suffering a terrible, unavoidable emotional blow. It’s the kind of sadness that has a cause.
Except in this case it doesn’t.
My mother hasn’t died, and my husband hasn’t left me (yet). I have everything I could want out of life, and I can't think of any reason why I should feel so profoundly heartbroken. There’s a gnawing, black feeling in my chest that’s usually reserved for occasions when I have specific wounds to nurse (of the type that nothing but the passage of time can cure), and I’ve no idea what I’m supposed to do with it.
I’m reluctant to make any guesses about why this is happening. After finally finding a doctor willing to renew my prescription in order to keep me from getting sick, I’m slowly tapering myself off the tranquilizers so I can be drug free and avoid similar emergencies in the future. I’ve been told severe emotional turmoil is a common symptom of the withdrawal process, no matter how gradual it is, and I guess that could possibly be an explanation for my horrendous sadness… but I can’t believe that, because I don’t have any other symptoms, and it’s too early for all of that anyway.
In an attempt to fix it, whatever "it" is, I'm seeing a cognitive behavioral therapist every other week.