This barren wasteland.

Posted on September 14, 2016 by luckyotter

barren_wasteland

In my life, I’ve rarely experienced true happiness, of the kind I experienced during the week of August 21, when I was on the Florida Gulf coast visiting my son. I wrote a lot on this blog about the experience I had while basking in the warm Gulf waters and exploring the beaches and gazing at the unbelievable sunsets, and just being able to relax, forget my worries, and spend time with an almost 25 year old man who I love with a fierceness I reserve for very, very few people. I felt very close to the divine during that time. Even the 700 mile road trip going there and back was a sort of spiritual experience for me. Everything about that week was perfect. I never felt so much at peace with myself and the world. I felt somehow changed.

It occurred to me today that this weekend will be a month (4 weeks) since I began my vacation. It’s a cherished memory now (and one that changed me in some profound way), but is now receding ever deeper into the past, joining the other few happy memories I have, most which happened much longer ago than this. The memory is probably far enough in the past now that it’s no longer part of my short term memory but has now entered my long term memory.

While I’m grateful beyond words that I got to have this amazing experience, and know it won’t be the last time (I’m tentatively planning to return at the end of March), I feel a deep sadness that it’s over tinged with a kind of yearning to return there forever. Not so much because I miss the location of where I was, or even that I miss being in close proximity to my son (though I miss those things too), but the feeling of pure joy I had unfettered by anything else. Rarely have I felt that kind of joy and lightness, and when I have, it’s been fleeting, like the momentary reflection of the sun on a dragonfly’s wings.

It’s been said that you can’t feel sadness without having known what happiness felt like. Sadness is about loss. In my case the loss of that deep, pure joy is bringing me into contact with the abyss of emptiness that still lives deep inside me, heavy and dark and cold, like a barren wasteland in which a chill wind always howls and it’s always winter and where nothing ever grows.

I tried praying about it, for I know it was really feeling close to the divine that made me feel so full of joy, not the actual surroundings, but it was just so much easier when I was away. It’s hard to get that feeling back. I look around my surroundings here and am reminded of how much I hate this time of year when the days are growing shorter and the nights longer, and nature’s beginning to look tired and spent before going to sleep again for another winter. Being here, without the sun and the sea and the sand, so far inland, back in the daily grind of real life, just reminds me of all the heartbreaks and losses and disappointments and hurts that have contaminated my life and pockmarked my soul full of raw and gaping holes.

This feeling of sad emptiness is very hard to explain. I do suffer from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) so that might have something to do with it, but I go through that every year. This is different. I feel like I’ve suffered a terrible loss, like a death, and like there’s no way I’ll ever feel that kind of joy again. I want to so badly and I know I will, but right now it feels like it’s forever gone.

I imagine normal people feel that kind of joy more often, even if they don’t all the time. I know I need to find a way to feel that lightness of spirit no matter where I am, but at the moment, I’m overwhelmed with this terrible nostalgia and sadness because my memory of that perfect week is no longer that recent and is quickly receding into the distant past, where details are forgotten or corrupted by other memories. For that one week, it seemed as if the emptiness inside me was filled for a change; now it’s just empty again.

I always knew the emptiness was there, but I was so emotionally numb and so used to it that I regarded it as normal. I didn’t really think about it; it was just always there. Now it’s nearly unbearable. It could mean that I’m close to diving into the void because it seems so much nearer than it ever did before. Maybe I’m closer to it because so many of my usual defenses have fallen away. Maybe tomorrow night’s session will be an interesting one; I’ve noticed that just before a breakthrough I become more depressed than usual.

I called my therapist crying today and left a long message about how overwhelmed I felt by this spiritual and emotional barrenness. I’ll be seeing him tomorrow; I guess we need to talk about it. I got a small taste of what it’s like to be mentally and spiritually alive and healthy, without any disorders, but the downside of that is that once you’ve seen heaven, reality seems like hell.

12 reasons why I don’t like autumn.

Posted on September 3, 2016 by luckyotter

ugly_autumn
In my neck of the woods, this is what Autumn looks like.

Yesterday was the first cool-ish day we’ve had since May. While the lower temperature felt nice, I also noticed for the first time that some of the trees are beginning to change colors. It was also overcast and gloomy, and I realized that my SAD symptoms have kicked in full bore. I just felt like crawling into bed to escape from the sadness I felt. After winter, fall is my least favorite season. Here are 12 reasons why I hate it.

1. Around here, the “changing colors” just means the trees change from green to brown to bare. A few turn this unattractive shade of deep maroon or this dirty looking yellow, but unless you go up to the Parkway, we really don’t get the brilliant fall colors you see in places further north, like Vermont. To me, fall is not only not pretty, it’s actually sort of ugly. The traditional “fall colors”–gold, brown, red and orange–look like ’70s colors to me–I much prefer the ’80s colors of spring.

2. Everyone crowing about how great fall is. Shut up. Please. Just shut up.

3. I have to deal with the school traffic again every morning on my way to work.

4. “Pumpkin spice” everything. Makes me want to puke in my mouth. Take your damn pumpkin scents and flavors (newsflash–pumpkin tastes like nothing) and GTFO.

5. It gets dark early and it’s dark when you get up for work, and every day is darker and shorter than the last.

6. The gloom. November and December are the worst, but October is guilty too. Gray, overcast, dark, rainy, and depressing doesn’t bode well for my SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). And in late fall, around here it rains. And rains. And rains. And it’s not the life-giving, energizing sudden showers of spring, it’s all-day-and-all-night-long, cold, dismal, continuous drizzle that sometimes turns icy and makes you want to go hibernate until spring.

7. All the “fall-foliage” seeking idiots who clog the roads on their way to the Parkway. Go to Vermont instead. The colors there are much nicer.

8. Fake, over-commercialized holidays — in particular the extended Christmas season which seems to start earlier every year–which seem intended to bring some “cheer” to the gloomy last half of fall, but really just makes everyone a nervous wreck instead because of its unrealistic expectations of “family togetherness,” over the top commercialization, and extravagant gift-giving that no one can really afford. Oh, and let’s not forget Thanksgiving, with its heavy, fatty, depressing food and its gross PUMPKIN pie. And these days, Thanksgiving is eclipsed by Black Friday anyway, which now starts on Thanksgiving, so all the turkey stuffed lemmings go rushing out to stand on line all night in the rainy cold for a new flat screen TV. Halloween is okay, but is overrated as f.

9. I could give a rat’s arse about football, and that’s all anyone talks about besides their holiday plans.

10. Fall means winter is coming and winter is torture to me on every level.

11. Let’s stop denying it. In the fall, everything’s dying. Those “brilliant colors” you see for about two weeks? It’s just the leaves attempting to get your attention one last time before they drop dead and turn into worm-food, that’s all.

12. Once you get into the months ending in -ber, you know one more year is in its death throes and for some reason that’s really depressing.

Fall2008
A sad little twig with its wilting, dying leaves just makes me want to cry.

*****

Further reading:

My Seasonal Affective Disorder makes me want to hibernate until spring.

My posting habits and S.A.D.

Posted on January 25, 2016 by luckyotter

I thought this was pretty interesting.

posting_activity

My number of posts peaked in May and June, then leveled off, and began to fall until December, when the days are at their shortest. I made very few posts in November and December and many of those were reblogs or very short (I can’t show you that on the graph, you will have to take my word for it or check for yourself). This month they are rising again. This coincides with the chart below which I made a few months ago. It shows the level of my moods at different times of the year. My mood begins to decline as early as July, and starts to improve in January. It’s the lengthening and shortening of days my brain and body reacts to, not the cold or heat.

seasonal_moods

My blogging mojo is back!

Posted on January 23, 2016 by luckyotter

This is my 10th post today. I don’t think I’ve ever made 10 posts in one day before. Yes, I realize they’re all either pretty short or reblogs, but still! I’m very proud of myself. Maybe I should give Jonas the credit though, since he trapped me inside my house all day today.

In general though, my interest in blogging has returned after a couple of months of feeling like it was becoming a chore. I think bloggers go through the doldrums every so often and you just have to keep on writing and wait for them to pass. I think my Seasonal Affective Disorder had something to do with it too. In the fall, I lose interest in pretty much everything. Once the days start getting longer, my mood improves and my interest in things and my creativity returns.

I think my Winter Blues are saying adieu!

Posted on January 10, 2016 by luckyotter

I’ve posted before about my SAD (seasonal affective disorder). I also explained that for me, a sufferer of the Fall/Winter type (the most common type), I’m extremely sensitive to changes in daylight.

The Winter Solstice falls around December 21 or 22 every year. That’s the shortest day of the year, but also the last day the days are going to get any shorter. The next day, the sunlight-hours increase every day by increments of about a minute a day, as they march toward the Summer Solstice which falls from June 20 – June 22 every year.

I always noticed a darkening of my overall mood and loss of energy very shortly after the first day of summer, since the days are already becoming shorter even as they grow hotter. My body perceives these changes as early as mid-July!

There’s probably an evolutionary reason for this. Our distant ancestors were nocturnal, tree climbing, shrew like animals who may have needed to hibernate during colder weather to conserve energy and calories, while food was scarce. Many mammals today have a need to hibernate, and this tendency may have been retained in human genes to some extent, causing many of us to feel tired and depressed when they days begin to shorten. How nice if hibernation were an option for some of us humans!

Getting back to the topic at hand, my mood is already starting to improve, even though the first day of winter was only about 3 weeks ago (that long already???)
That’s early even for me. My body and spirits don’t usually start reacting to these increases until the end of January at the earliest.

But maybe my improving mood is due to more than just the lengthening days. Since I’ve been in therapy, I’ve been feeling a little bit happier and less anxious overall. For example, I have a serious car issue, but I’m actually not freaking out the way I would have a year or two ago. I’ve also noticed people are responding to me in a more positive way (or maybe nothing has really changed but I’m just perceiving they are perceiving me less negatively than before).

My creativity is increasing, and my motivation to write, and–I dearly hope I don’t sound narcissistic saying this–I think my writing lately has improved immensely and I’m beginning to find my humorous voice too and seeing how funny things can be I never would have found the humor in before.

I still have a long road ahead (my therapist thinks it’s going to take a while) and maybe this is just the honeymoon stage of therapy before the work starts getting really emotionally draining, but it’s a taste of what might be to come and I’ll enjoy this as long as it lasts.

The first sign of spring.

Posted on December 21, 2015 by luckyotter

It’s just like old times! I just counted, and this weekend I made 10 new posts (11 if I count this one), most of them original content. I don’t think I’ve written that much in a few months. It seems like my inspiration’s back, at least for now. Maybe I’m just feeling better because in 2 days the days will start getting longer as they march toward Spring, and with that, an end to this year’s bout of Seasonal Affective Disorder. As far as I’m concerned, the first day of winter is like the first sign of spring.

I may or may not continue in this vein, but I’m not going to worry about it. I just feel great about how busy I was blogging this weekend. I actually found time to read and comment on other blogs too, something I’m really not very good about keeping up with.

Writer’s block.

Posted on October 29, 2015 by luckyotter

I feel like there’s a traffic jam in my brain. Or perhaps, no traffic at all. For some reason I can’t fathom, I can’t work up the motivation to write anything. I feel like my creativity has gone AWOL. I wake up feeling depressed. I go to sleep feeling depressed. It’s a numb, zombie-like depression but underneath that…there’s something coming to the surface. There’s an underlying anxiety and a feeling of impending insanity. I don’t know why. I pray for an answer, some clarity, some ability to process the stuff going on in my head right now, but there don’t seem to be any answers.

I can’t think straight. I had a bad panic attack at work yesterday; it came out of nowhere. I was out of control. I embarrassed myself and was shaken the rest of the day.

I’m using various techniques (prayer, meditation, long hot baths) to calm myself down, but it’s only a temporary fix and I still have no creative ideas for new posts. I forced myself to write this one. I’ve said many times before that writing is at least in part a discipline. You have to make yourself write, even when you don’t want to. Then it gets easier. But I’m ignoring my own advice.

I feel like my small life is growing smaller. I’m isolating myself more. I think about death a lot (not suicide, just the idea of death and it scares me). I keep asking God to intervene and lift my mood but this time he’s sleeping on the job.

I know I have to take responsibility and make myself get out of the house sometimes and make myself write. But when the time comes, I just find it so hard to get motivated. I have problems with the seasons and always get depressed this time of year. But this didn’t happen last year. I wrote like a maniac a year ago and worked through a lot of emotional stuff. I was full of ideas and writing allayed any depression I would have experienced.

I have faith though. I know this is temporary. I know God is there and is sitting back for a reason. He wants me to work through this on my own. I feel like I’m on the edge of an epiphany, something new I need to discover about myself.

I know this post won’t win any Pulitzer prizes and isn’t at all inspiring but at least it’s something. I know I need to just sit down and make myself write SOMETHING every day, even if it sounds uninspired or even stupid. I need to tell my inner critic to STFU. I’m not trying to impress anyone, just get my thoughts on “paper” so I can process them and learn from them. This is only meant to be a journal, after all. Maybe this will even open a discussion about writer’s block and I won’t feel so alone. I’m also going to look into therapy.

Getting the spare room ready.

Posted on October 9, 2015 by luckyotter

The weather has improved significantly (lots of sunshine) so I’ve had a little more energy and my mood has been slightly more upbeat. I’m incredibly sensitive to the weather due to my SAD.

Last week I was depressed about my roommate moving out, even though most of the time she got on my nerves. I think it triggered some abandonment issues for me. Today I actually got a burst of energy and cleaned up the room for whoever moves in next. Stacey had already done a pretty good job cleaning the room before she left, but it needed a lot more attention. So I vacuumed the floor, and also the walls and ceiling (lots of cobwebs), scrubbed the baseboards and woodwork, and put a new set of sheets I’d bought last weekend on the single bed. This weekend I want to purchase a small rug, a comforter for the bed, and maybe a plant to make the room look more inviting.

The rooms’s pretty basic (not really worth posting a photo of) but it’s clean now and for what my new housemate will be paying, they can’t expect a whole lot. But I think when I’m done sprucing it up, I’ll be proud to show it.

I’ve been feeling lonely in this house alone, and I’m actually getting excited about having a new housemate. A gay man I’ve spoken to seems the most promising so far. I felt comfortable talking with him over the phone and he has a steady income (he’s a forklift operator!) I’ve been avoiding calling back most of the other people who’ve shown interest so far, and I think it’s because I’m holding out for this guy. He’s coming on Saturday to see the room.

The neverending rain and depression.

Posted on October 3, 2015 by luckyotter

I can’t seem to shake this seasonal funk I’m in. It’s been raining steadily for a week now–gloomy, overcast, steady rain that goes on all day and night, not the intense but shortlived thunderstorms of summer that are somehow energizing.

I don’t like fall in this part of the country. It always rains a lot, and as much as everyone crows about the “fall colors,” I don’t think they’re that special. This isn’t Vermont with its sugar maples that turn brilliant orange and red, or Colorado with its neon yellow Aspens–here the trees just look unhealthy. There’s a few spots of bright color here and there, but the numerous oaks and sycamores just turn from green to brown or a deep purplish red before they go bare for another winter. It’s depressing. Maybe up on the Blue Ridge Parkway the sight is prettier, but I don’t have a running car right now so I can’t go there.

I’ve been stuck inside my house for days, waging war on the camel crickets and the fleas I can’t seem to get rid of. I’m working a lot more. My roommate is moving on Tuesday and I haven’t found a replacement yet. It’s dark when I get up in the morning. It’s getting dark shortly after I come home from work. Yesterday was actually cold and I had to crank up the heat for the first time since April. I’m tired and draggy all the time. I barely have the energy or motivation to cook dinner. I’ve even been avoiding my friends because I just feel like I’m going to drag them down with me.

As far as my writing, the ideas have been coming like an old man’s teeth–few and far between. I’ve been resorting to either reblogging other people’s stuff, posting fluff or pictures, or recycling old articles I wrote, due to the dearth of original ideas. Actually I do have one good idea for a new long article, but I can’t seem to motivate myself to write it. I’d promise I’d write it today, but I don’t trust myself to stick to that promise. I know if I don’t though, I’ll be feeling terrible about it.

Last fall wasn’t any different from this one weather-wise, but I was new to blogging and the excitement and novelty of that kept me motivated and able to beat my SAD symptoms. I did have a lot of worries, as I recall. My daughter was still having drug issues and was facing 30 days in jail (she is doing a lot better a year later–she has matured a lot and become much more responsible). I wasn’t sure I was going to get along with my new roommate. My ex was still abusing me through text messages. But blogging was like a whole new world, it felt like doors were opening everywhere.

Sam Vaknin, the “god of narcissism,” found this blog in November (my least favorite month other than December) by Googling himself (haha!) and actually made some nice comments and shared some of my articles on his sites and social media. That gave my blog the early jumpstart it needed and I was ecstatic. As far as I know, he still comes here to read but he no longer comments or shares anything. That’s okay because this blog is doing well on its own now, without anyone’s help. But the novelty and newness of it is gone. I don’t see any new doors opening. I know I have to open those doors myself (the next step would probably be writing a book) but I just don’t seem to have the energy or motivation.

Last year at this time the ideas were almost coming too fast–it was actually frustrating because I didn’t have enough time to write about everything I wanted to write about. Now it’s all I can do to think of any original ideas at all. As far as writing about narcissism, what more is there to write about it that I haven’t already? I don’t know whether to keep the focus on narcissism, or shift the focus to general mental health, or just turn it into general purpose blog. I’m stuck. Blogging has brought me so much joy; what happened?

I feel like I’ve reached a blockade in my path to recovery. I know that isn’t really true, and it’s just depression making me feel so negative, and it’s just a matter of working through it or waiting it out. I know it will pass; it always does. But I feel like I’m running in place but going nowhere. The weather isn’t helping.

This too shall pass.

I know the only way through this is self discipline. I have to make myself write even when I don’t want to. Once I get started, I get into it and that tends to lift my mood and my imagination begins to work again. I also have to make myself get out, in spite of the gloomy weather and no car. I have the company car to drive; I can at least go up to the store in that. Walks in the light drizzly rain aren’t so bad; it isn’t freezing cold out. I haven’t been to church in several weeks either. It always make me feel good to go, but for some reason I’ve been sleeping in instead. Then I wind up feeling guilty and miserable (not because I’m offending God–I don’t think attending church is necessary to “please God”–but because I know I’m doing myself a disservice by skipping).

So today, instead of sleeping in, as I’ve been doing on weekends lately, I’m going to make myself write, make myself go out for a walk in spite of the dreary weather, maybe even take a short drive. Read a book. Clean the house (it needs it). Do something that will make me feel like one of the living. Sitting around feeling sorry for myself and sleeping half the day away is going to get me nowhere fast. I got away from my abusers, but the way I’ve been treating myself is self abuse! It’s possible to be as toxic to myself as my narcissists were to me. I know I’m not the only person in the world who struggles with this time of year. And spring is only 5 1/2 months away!

Hey, I actually wrote a new article that’s more than two sentences long! I think I feel a little better already.

My Seasonal Affective Disorder makes me want to hibernate until spring.

Posted on September 27, 2015 by luckyotter

Graph I made showing my mood pattern throughout the year. It’s this way every year.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my SAD.

SAD is triggered by the lack of light and shortening days for those affected with it. During the shorter days the brain produces more melatonin, a naturally occurring hormone that induces sleepiness in certain animals, like bears. It’s the reason why some mammals hibernate until the warmer, longer days of spring. Unfortunately, some humans retain this biological urge to hibernate, but because we must continue to live productive lives, our natural urge to sleep is ignored and seasonal depression is the result.

I seem to suffer from a weird form of SAD. The fall is much more depressing to me than winter. Most people with SAD feel terrible in late fall AND all winter. But for me, I start feeling depressed sometime in mid-August, when the days are growing noticeably shorter. Obviously, for me, the heat as nothing to do with it.

My SAD really kicks in once Fall officially starts and the trees start changing colors. My worst months are by far November and December. I absolutely hate them. I can’t stand the holidays (too stressful), so they do nothing to lighten or bring cheer to my low mood. All I want to do is curl into a little ball and hibernate until early spring.

In mid-late fall, everything looks so grim and barren to me–shades of gray, brown, and black, and everything is dying/going to sleep. The cold, gloomy, overcast days don’t help either. It’s dark when I get up and dark when I come home from work. It’s everything I can do to drag myself through these dark, depressing days.

Although I hate ice and cold and snow, sometime around the end of January (which I read is statistically the most depressing month of the year) my mood begins to perk up as my body begins to notice the lengthening days. Actually, I feel relief after the first day of winter, just knowing the days are going to get longer for 6 more months. I feel even more relief once the Holiday season is over (which I find really stressful).

My mood continues to improve until mid-late spring, then starts to level off, until early August when it starts to sink again.

My mood is at it’s highest around the end of April/early May. I have no idea why. Maybe because the days are fairly long by then, but the oppressive heat (which I don’t really like) hasn’t kicked in yet.

I think it might also have to do with the fact there are so many happy colors in the spring–and they aren’t the dreary 1970s-like browns, golds and oranges of fall. They’re more like 1980s colors–or even 1960s colors in some cases (and weren’t both those decades less depressing than the 1970s?) Everything isn’t all the same boring shade of green the way it is in summer either. I love spring.

My body/brain seems to mimic the cycle of hibernating animals–except that in the winter I actually feel better than in the fall. That I can’t really figure out because I hate cold weather so much (and it’s coldest here in February, but my mood is not that bad anymore by then).

I face this same strange pattern every single year. I’m coming into the worst of it in about another month or so. Blah.

For further reading: How to Beat Seasonal Affective Disorder/Winter Blues: