I decided not to wait until the next update to write this.
The short of this is, I think I need some kind of a break. After I publish the new novel, besides doing whatever work I can on Raw IV, I’m going to step away for a bit. Not too long, because the writing game is a constant grind, but I have to do something.
I’m not even sure why I’m writing this.
I’ve never been a happy person. First there was a lot of anger, then a lot of angry depression, and subtle anxiety laced through all that.
I didn’t even attempt medication until 2015, and I didn’t even attempt therapy until 2018. Although the medication worked for awhile, and helped lead to a few revelations (surprise! I’m brain damaged because my brain formed while not having nearly enough dopamine), the therapy really hasn’t helped that much.
For a long time, I was more or less okay. Then things got a lot better when I started publishing as this name and taking the meds. I had a good several years there (with still a lot misery thrown in, if you’ve been following along), but now…
I don’t know. Something feels different since 2019. I know a LOT of people now are far more intimately familiar with depression and anxiety because the collective global trauma that is Covid, and certainly it’s made things worse for me in some vague, nebulous way (I somehow still haven’t caught Covid, as far as I know, despite a lot of exposure, or lost anyone to it, we’ll see how long that luck holds out), but I was already beginning to have some kind of problem.
I know part of it is that in 2018, Amazon threatened me and triggered an existential crisis that has given me hitherto unexplored realms of anxiety to this very day. I’m likely stuck with it. Although I was a somewhat anxious person before, it’s obvious to me now that permanent damage was done in 2018 when Amazon did that.
But it’s more than that now. The best word I have for it is: anhedonia. It means the inability to feel pleasure. I know there are treatments for this, but nothing seems to work. The medications I still take to help don’t really seem to help anymore, (but oh boy do I feel it if I STOP taking them!). I’ve tried over half a dozen new meds over the past two years and every last one of them fucked with me in a new, often intolerable way. (One of them literally removed my empathy for about a month.)
My problem is that more and more I just have this feeling of “what fucking difference does anything make?”. And it isn’t necessarily a conclusion I’m logically reaching, (because I certainly could reach that conclusion with how absolutely FUCKED the world is right now, and the fact that I’ll likely see the end of humanity within my lifetime), it’s more just an emotional sense that is being forced on me.
Believe me, I would fucking LOVE to be able to just distract myself with video games, movies, books, music, whatever. And sometimes I still can, but there’s longer stretches of ‘I actively don’t want to do anything’. It’s hard to describe, but there are times where every single thing I might do, (go for a walk, play a video game old or brand new, read a book, talk to someone), my brain violently rejects it, so I’m stuck with this torturous feeling of wanting to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING, but also intensely rejecting every single thing that comes to mind.
As in, anything I decide to try, my brain convinces me: trying this will actually make you feel worse than you do right now.
This makes writing basically impossible a lot of the time.
I’m not suicidal, but something has changed. Before 2018, if I was ever asked if I’d commit suicide, my answer had always been an immediate ‘no’. It was a no brainer. Mostly because I’m scared to die, but also because I like a lot about life. But now? I don’t really want to die, but there are times where I don’t necessarily want to keep living.
The real problem that I’m seeing is this: I am familiar with despair and hopelessness, but the only times I felt hopeless before 2018-2019 was during extremely emotionally volatile times. It’d pass, usually within a few hours. But now I have times where I feel logically hopeless. Because there’s a crucial difference between having an emotional response and coming to a conclusion.
I don’t really know how to end this blog post. I’m still working on my new novel. I know people are going to want to offer me advice, but it just feels fucked. I was on Vitamin D supplements earlier this year and for awhile that helped, but then it stopped helping, even though I’m still taking them. I should exercise more, but I can’t seem to tolerate it long enough to make it a habit. It’s like there’s some hard block in my brain. People always say ‘find an exercise you like or can tolerate and do that’ but I can’t tolerate fucking any of it. Even when I do it, it never seems to help. I know there’s always more meds, and that’s likely my only real recourse, but getting to a doctor is so fucking hard these days, and I’m more reluctant than ever to try yet another new antidepressant that might fuck me up in some new way.
I don’t know. I haven’t lost hope, but the needle has definitely moved in the wrong direction over the past few years, and I don’t know how to fix any of this.