Depression Is Boring Depression Is Boring Depression Is Boring Depression Is Bo

(NOTE: Based on time elapsed since the posting of this entry, the BS-o-meter calculates this is 13.266% likely to be something that Ferrett now regrets.)

I’m never sure why I write about depression.
I mean, I know why I’ve written about depression – it helps other depressives to feel normal, knowing that other people have gone through it.  But I’ve written enough entries on being depressed that frankly, you can go look it up.
And the big secret to being depressed is that it’s repetitive.  It’s like writing about breathing.  It’s a fact in your life, and not much changes when it arrives: Woke up depressed.  Again.  Didn’t feel much like getting out of bed.  Again.  Pondered calling in sick to work.  Again.  Went to work and did what was required.  Again.  Hated my novel.  Again.  Wrote 800 words anyway.  Again.  Felt guilty for not writing 1,500 like I’d promised.  Again.  Did the bare minimum of socializing so as not to worry people.  Again.
It’s not that I’m sad this time around, exactly, I’m just… unmotivated.  I appear to be a functional human being because I have accreted tons of habits to keep me going until such a time as I’m loving life again, and I am working on the novel (which I hate, which will take longer to finish now, and I really wanted this fucking thing done by October but I don’t think that’s happening), but I’m feeling very dead inside.
Gini tells me it’s probably Rebecca.  Could be.  Could also be that my Seasonal Affective Disorder, which usually strikes in the spring, has finally flipped and people will stop annoying me by saying, “You know, SAD happens in the fall, not the spring!”
But the fundamental problem with depression is that as a writer, it doesn’t give you much to work with.  You have no strong motivations except, perhaps, to dissolve into nothingness for a time.  You have nothing interesting to discuss because you don’t find much interesting.  I can fake passion in my essays because they’re reflexive now, but even so I feel a sort of Oh, that’s what I should write about instead of the solid Yes! that pulls me out of my chair.
There’s but one thing I’m looking forward to in life right now, and that’s tomorrow.  I’ll write about that then. That’s important.
But today, I’m writing about my depression because – well, I don’t know why.  It’s not like you don’t know I get depressed.  It’s not like I’m desiring support – honestly, I feel overwhelmed by all the social interaction as it is.
I think I’m writing it because it feels vaguely dishonest to be writing semi-daily entries about life and to pretend this isn’t saturating everything I do.  I’m working.  I’m writing.  I’m talking to people, albeit sporadically and in fits.  But inside, I’m just this gray numbness, waiting in life like you’d wait in line at the bank, waiting for something to change so I can feel again.
Right now, I’m just a mass of old habits, ticking along, more clockwork than man.  If I were in a better mood, I’d write about how habits become a survival trait when you’re depressed, but that would require energy I have.  But at the moment, I’m on auto-pilot, a degrading collection of learned behaviors acting in sequence.  Maybe it’s not important that you know that.  Maybe it is.
But now you know.  Take whatever you can get from it.  And move on.
 

4 Comments

  1. ellixis
    Sep 18, 2014

    It’s nothing new for you, it’s nothing new for me, but a small reassurance that I’m not alone goes a long way toward helping me keep trudging along on the bad, down days. It lets us know that you’re still going, one foot after the next, and that even though you seem to be functioning normally, it’s still with you. And that’s a slightly lighter weight on us, the other ones out here who are slogging through the day toward the next day.

  2. Sandra
    Sep 19, 2014

    You know, I just like hearing what’s going on with you. Good, bad, and boring. Miss you.

  3. Pishkin
    Sep 24, 2014

    My SAD happens in the spring too.

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