Less Interruption, Less Sound

This most recent depressive peak seems to be tapering off. I'm able to smile on a moment's notice. I can laugh at jokes. I can even make jokes again. This is encouraging. It's not perfect, mind you. I had another crash today I'm working my way back out of. But it's encouraging. I'll take what I can get.

Something else has cropped up, however. My earlier suspicions of CAPD are coming back. Nothing is different with me hearing-wise, but enough has changed with my situation at work that being able to understand verbal commands in a noisy environment has become a requirement. Unfortunately it's a requirement I can't meet.

I let the folks at work know the circumstances under which I can't hear, and told them my concerns about safety that my hearing problems may be causing. They were more than receptive, thank goodness. I think there are some things that can be done to alleviate the problem, but in the mean time I'm trying to arrange a full blown APD hearing test. I'm finding that it's not easy.

My GP referred me to a hearing specialist. They kicked the referral back, saying I had to visit an ear-nose-throat doctor first before they would see me. So now I'm back to the GP trying to get a referral for an ENT doctor. They leave voicemail, I leave voicemail. The wheels on the bus go round and round... round and round... round and round...

I'm looking forward to getting to the bottom of this, at least. From the reading I've done there isn't much I can do to improve the situation. But simply knowing would be nice. And if it means I need to change my work responsibilities, so be it. But at least I wouldn't be doing it from a position of ignorance.

As for the depression, who can tell. On a whim I decided to make an overall mood chart from birth 'till now. It was eerie. With the exception of college, which is a confusing time by anyone's standards, there's a strong three year cyclic pattern starting in tenth grade and continuing until now. Oddly enough, I'm in the middle of the depressive part of the cycle right now. Who'd have guessed?

What was more interesting, in some ways, was jotting down the anecdotes that let me know what kind of a mood I was in at the time. About three cycles back I remembered walking down a hallway at work and knowing that if I was angry enough I could walk through walls. I knew that my anger could project me straight through the wall. I know that must seem outlandish. It does to me now. But at the time it didn't seem outlandish at all. It made perfect sense, even in the face of everything I had learned getting my degree (in science), and a lifetime of experience.

I wish ignorance really was bliss, and that I could just throw the chart away with a casual "Oh well! That was fun!" But what's done is done. There's no forgetting it now.

Girl, Interrupted

There is some measure of comfort in knowing that the words I write here will likely never be read. I have given no one the URL to this site and have no plans to do so. If you know this assumption to be false, please do me the favor of keeping it to yourself and read on. I enjoy the comfort my misconception gives me and would hate for it to be dispelled.

The changes of the last week came at a time when I really wasn't able to handle them. A combination of stress and other factors put me in a situation where I wasn't able to bounce back, and misinterpreted many of the things I was told. As a result I was disoriented and depressed, as the previous two posts can attest. In the middle of the week I was explosively enraged to the point where people were avoiding me and I was kicked out of my own home. By the end of the week I was almost catatonic, finding it almost impossible to muster the energy to speak or move. I asked for a day off.

I still had to come in the next morning to fill out some paperwork. I did everything I could to avoid people, but since filling out paperwork and getting it signed involves people my attempts failed miserably. I can't count the number of people I ran into and had to interact with. I think at one point someone asked me where I was going on my day off. I remember replying, "Crazy." Not far from the truth.

I drove into "the big city", which really isn't all that big. But it's what we have so I take it as it is. There are two routes. I took the route that has large cliffs. There are no guardrails, which at times can be quite thrilling. This time it was altogether too inviting. It's been a long time since I've thought seriously of suicide. I could feel the thoughts leaking in like water from a broken pipe in the ceiling. By the time I got into the city I was seriously considering driving to the mental hospital and admitting myself. I'd been thinking of it since the middle of the week, but now I had the opportunity.

I'd brought my writing things. My original thought for how to spend my day off had been to go somewhere to write. Almost by default I went to the local bookstore. If I wrote, I wrote. If I looked up the phone number to the mental hospital, I knew they had pay phones and phone books. At the very least I could get a cup of coffee to try to sort things out.

I've had a couple of people suggest Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen. I never saw the movie when it came out and probably wouldn't have been receptive at the time. I really wasn't interested in reading the book, either. The times I've read books with TS characters in them, I invariably wind up ticcing worse, feeling worse, and wishing I hadn't. The thought of reading a book about a depressed character in a mental hospital had no appeal whatsoever. Nevertheless I bought a copy along with Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.

After grabbing a cup of coffee and sitting down at a table I tried reading The Bell Jar. I couldn't get into it any more than I could get into the other books I was trying to read at the time. I found the main character alien with alien desires. The desire to interact with people, to wear fine clothes, to go to parties, none of these made any sense to me so I couldn't relate. I've also been trying to read A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. This, too, has been difficult at best. The characters are strong with ambitions and desires to the point that they'd murder others just to get their way. Both of these are well-written. Don't get me wrong. But at the time I was thinking of admitting myself to the hospital or kililng myself. I was not in a mindset to understand either book.

So I put all the books down and wrote. It was glorious. I wrote one of the first set pieces in the book I'm working on. Sixteen pages. I know it'll need serious revision before I'm happy with it, but it's done. It's written. I can move on, knowing the plot moved ahead the way I needed it to. It was nice getting to know my characters again after so long. I've missed them.

As a break I picked up Girl, Interrupted with some trepidation. An hour later I realized I needed to get lunch. I did get lunch, but I kept reading. I'd also come to town to run some other errands. Nothing I especially wanted to do, but things I knew were expected of me. I finished them, then went right back to reading. By the time I had to leave I'd finished the book and wished there was more.

I know Kaysen was writing to an audience that might read with disbelief or morbid curiosity, not knowing what such a world could be like. For me it was eye-opening. For starters I could identify with most of the characters, which hasn't happened with me while reading for quite some time. Their strengths made sense. Their weaknesses made sense. When they lashed out I would've lashed out. When they curled up I curled up, too. It was wonderful.

It was also revealing to me. The chapter on suicide is one of the most accurate descriptions I've ever seen. It doesn't talk about weakness or inability to cope. It doesn't talk about depression. I talks about hows, whys, and whats. I won't go into this further because it spoils one of the most beautiful parts of this book for me. It helped explain something I'd never put together for myself, and had never understood about my one attempt. I didn't have the same experience Kaysen had. Quite the opposite, in fact. But I'm a little closer to understanding my experience now.

The book also served as a warning. I never did look up the phone number and address of the hospital. I still don't know where it is. I can't say that it will always be this way. But this time, at least, I chose not to. I've never been in a mental hospital. There was a time when my therapist told me she would put me in one, if I breached the following things in her presence. I was always careful not to breach any of them -- not in her presence, anyway. I have had friends go to mental hospitals. One described it as one of the more horrid and enlightening experiences she'd had. It gave me energy to work this round out on my own and look for another doctor.

But it also raised some problems for me. I'm beginning to see there's a strong three year pattern going on. I'd hoped it was situational, and in some ways I can still convince myself that's the case. And yet, here it is again and my situation is still quite good. I'm beginning to see another scenario in which chemistry drove the situation, and the situation explained the reaction to the chemistry. I finally have a situation I'm unwilling to poison, yet I still feel the same feelings.

So what am I to do? I could stay the course, do what I always do, burn out, scream, rage, change jobs, move, and start over again. I could contact a doctor, which would require scheduled outages from work. This would mean discussing all this with the Powers that Be. That would mean disclosure. It might also mean not being able to handle it and going back to choice number one anyway. Or I could simply leave a note for my supervisor saying I'll be out for a while and check in to the hospital. Only how long will that be? A few days? A few weeks? What if the doctor decides I simply cannot be released into the public again? Is that what I want? Is that what's best for me? Is it what's best for everyone around me?

I'm actually doing better. I'm re-reading Girl, Interrupted more slowly this time. It's giving me plenty of food for thought. I don't think it'll give me answers. That's not the point. But it might give me a framework to figure this out. It's all I can ask for. It's certainly more than I've had.

Unanticipated Changes

I hate to post twice in a day, but sometimes one needs to vent, regardless of niceties.

I do not handle changes well. I'm getting better at it, but it's an acquired taste I haven't entirely acquired. I do fine if I know a change is coming, or better yet know what the change is. But when changes come with no warning, changes that directly affect me, they tends to stress me out in ways I'd rather not be stressed.

Over the past few years my office at work has undergone changes, almost none of them for the better. Shortly after starting work my desk was moved into a room that doubled as a reference library. More accurately, the reference library acquired my desk and me with it. It never became an office. Privacy was never guranteed. And having three or four people walk in and launch into loud debates having nothing to do with me became the norm.

I don't always work in my office, thank goodness. I work at a remote worksite from time to time. This does give relief from the working conditions, but it also leaves the door open for unexpected remodeling. One fine day I came in from having been at the remote work site for several solid weeks to find my office had been compressed so a filing cabinet could be moved in for more reference materials. Needless to say this didn't sit well, especially since I hadn't been told, much less asked. Over the years my office was reduced in size to a 6x7 patch of floor. I think the only reason that hasn't been intruded on is once you've rammed a desk and bookshelf against the wall there really isn't anything else you can do to compress it.

A few weeks ago a plan to move the reference library to a new location, a plan that has been in the works for years, finally came to fruition. Miracle of miracles, the books and shelves began to move. At last, the threat of having my office undergo a random change while my back is turned seemed to be a thing of the past.

Until today: I found out the "extra space" outside my 6x7 patch of floor is going to be used for storage. So I trade an ever-expanding reference library for an ever-expanding storage space. I'm no less likely to have people come in my "office" than I was before. If anything I expect more traffic, despite the assurances of everyone involved in this new plan.

I can't even watch the movie Office Space anymore. The scenes where Milton is relocated over and over don't even get a chuckle out of me these days. And since the architects of this plan met my objections with an offer to put up cubicle partitions to separate me from the storage area, most of the other scenes in that movie are equally hard to watch. So far about the only scene I have left is the one where the printer is sacrificed in the field. Thank goodness HP got rid of the "PC Load Letter" message on their printers. I'd be tempted.

I offered to change my duty station to the remote worksite. I was refused. I offered to move into some of our lab space. I was also refused. I can already feel the walls closing in. In the previous post today I wrote that I tend to become more and more asocial as I get more and more depressed. Right now moving into a closet is sounding like the best option of all. I'm sure I'll be refused.

The irony is no other office in the company is treated this way. I asked if anyone else had made this observation. Apparently not. Even pointing this out to those involved hasn't changed things. The response: "It's not like you're using the space." No, and I'm not likely to. I don't much go in for extravagant office decorations. A chair, a desk, power, and network are about all I need. But I do long for some control over my work environment. I hope that's not too much to ask for. Everyone else does. They even seem to get it.

Had this come at any other time I might've been receptive. The timing was just terrible. As I'm sure it will be the next time things are changed out from under me with no warning, no asking. Here's hoping I can find a decent closet to move into and that no one objects.

Depression and Measurement of the Self

I've been rolling in and out of depression again. Today isn't as bad as a week ago, but it's still not fun. I can see triggers better now, but when I'm in the middle of a funk knowing the trigger is more of an academic exercise than it is a clue for how to fix things so I don't wind up depressed again.

The most recent two episodes were triggered by the opinions of others, and the way in which they were expressed to me. Isn't it wonderful being judged? Isn't it even more wonderful to be judged and to receive sentence in full public view? Gosh that makes me feel good.

Part of the problem is that I do have a bleak view of myself. I've known this for years. I can see the worth and merit in others, but never in myself. Maybe this is why narcissistic people simply confuse me. I can't put myself into that mindset so I can't relate. This has caused problems with character developmen when I'm writing, but I digress.

Because I have this blind spot when it comes to self-evaluation, I do rely on the opinions of others far more than I should. I can't tell when I'm being sociable. I can't tell when I'm becoming a hermit. I can't tell when I'm doing well. I can tell when I am not doing well. Since that's the one observation I can make, that's the one I tend to focus on.

I guess another side to this is the whole OCD aspect. I've worked very hard at not applying my hangups to other people. I have to wash my hands. Others don't. I have to clean. Others don't. After watching Sleeping with the Enemy I was bound and determined not to fall into that trap. In the process I fell into another trap, though. I don't apply my OC tendencies to others, but I do apply them to myself.

In looking at what others are doing I can almost always see room for improvement, but I can also give credit for effort and success. In looking at what I'm doing I can always see room for improvement. Because something was not done perfectly it was done poorly. As a result I almost never really take pride or pleasure in a job well-done because by definition it wasn't done as well as it could've been. I'm glad I don't push this off on other people. But I wish I could stop pushing it on myself. It's exhausting.

So when people tell me their opinions of me, I tend to discount the positives because obviously they don't know the whole truth. But I latch onto the negatives because it only justifies what I know to be true. The rational part of me can stand back and call foul, but it's hard to listen to it.

When I do get depressed I get more asocial than I normally am. This tends to make people more critical, which doesn't exactly help matters. Sometimes I wish I could just go somewhere by myself and not have to interact with people on a daily basis. Unfortunately there aren't many places like that left in the world, and I have social ties I cannot sever so easily.

I just wish people could stop judging me for a little while. I do that well enough on my own. I don't need the help. I know I'm flawed. There's no need to tell me. There's certainly no need to rub my face in it.