Health Diaries > Bipolar Disorder > Handcuffed to the Roller Coaster

October 11, 2004

What It Means Part 2

Depression takes the meaning from everything. It takes the pleasure from everything. For instance, I don't especially like my job. But depression makes me not care about it. I just don't want to be there, but I don't want to be home. I don't want anything. If I could stop dead in my tracks and just stand in one spot, I would.

Today, I signed up for a career college. It's like a private college, so the fees are quite high. In this case, about 50K for the entire course. I don't qualify for any grants, since I already have a BA, so I have to rely on loans, which will be expensive to pay back. So I come home and tell this to my mother, and the first thing she says is, "You can't afford that!" This, after telling me I ought to go back to school. *SIGH* I will find a way to pay it, I said. There are ways and ways.

Depression is lack of motivation. Depression isn't feeling sad or moping around or being bored. Depression is just not being able to do anything, and yet feeling upset with yourself because you're not able to do anything. It's being stuck in that terrible contradiction between needing to do something and not being able to do anything.

In ancient Greece, there were two monsters, Scylla and Charybdis, who lived on opposite sides of a narrow strait. Scylla had wild dogs for legs and they tore ships to pieces if they strayed too close. Charybdis had a huge sucking mouth that drew ships into a deadly whirlpool. Depression is like that. You are trapped in a narrow channel between two deadly monsters, and any move you make away from one only pushes you nearer to the other. The despair can easily take you down.

Either my depression's getting worse, or I'm giving up on getting better. I had a laundry list of things to do today; got exactly one thing done: Laundry. And signing up for school, which might have been a mistake. But if I wait till I can afford it, on 7 dollars an hour, when am I supposed to sign up?

When I'm in this sort of mood, I take razor blades to my arms, that's what. I'm getting into a mixed state, which means the old rollercoaster's starting up again. I'm going in to see my dr. on Wednesday, so hopefully I've forestalled that one. We'll see.

Posted by Susan on October 11, 2004 11:19 PM