I Don't Know and I Don't Care

The other day I posted a blog about my being diagnosed with cyclothymia, or bipolar light. I ended it with a link to The Doors' “I've Been Down So Goddamn Long That it Looks Like Up To Me”. I never really knew how true that could be until just a few weeks ago. I had just started cardiac rehab (details about how my life has pretty much hit rock bottom in a later blog, just roll with it for now) and they screened me for depression. I scored high (or low?) enough that they had me take a follow up. It asked questions just about the previous 7 days. Now, I felt that I had had a pretty good week, mood wise. Not wonderful, to be sure, but I was feeling much better than my recent average. It was a self tally quiz, so I added up my score. Anything over a 16 was cause for major concern. I scored 30.

Yup, on what I thought was a good week, I nearly doubled the “holy shit get yourself some help” bar. I laughed my ass off! For like five minutes. It was the best damn belly laugh I'd had in years. To me, this was so funny, but funny in the sense of it's much better to laugh than cry kind of way. So, I made an appointment with my PCP and got on some anti-depressants. Maybe they're working now, maybe its the exercise I've been getting at rehab, or maybe its just my chemistry, but I am feeling much, much better now. Good enough to write again.

In this blog, we are going to talk about what it's like to be in a low. For me, at least. I can't say what others go trough, exactly. It isn't going to be terribly fun, nor is it a feel good piece. So, to soften the blow a bit, here are some cute cat videos. 

(Note: parts of the following are in the 2^nd person. I'm sure my English teachers and any editors, professional or amateur, out there would berate me for the switching of perspective like that, but it happened naturally, and I like the result. Maybe I did it to distance myself from the memories, but I think it also has the effect of putting the reader into my mind space a bit better. Whatever.)

Older Man to HS Kid: Are you ignorant or just apathetic?

HS Kid: I don't know and I don't care. (ba-da-dum)

So, what's it like to be in a low? Its a lot like being that high school kid, but in like a BAD way. On a good day during a down period, you just sort of exist. If you're lucky, you can ignore most of the terrible things in your life and in your head and just sort of.... make it through to the next sleep cycle. But even in a low, there are fluctuations about how low it can go.

I used to think I was just sort of a down person. For 20 years I would see the commercials about depression and think that maybe I had some of those signs, but it just never seemed that bad. I would hear about the people who could not even get out of bed to get to work, or that tried to kill themselves. Well, I wasn't there, so maybe it was just me and I needed to learn to deal.

Let me tell you this, if you think you may possibly maybe even a little bit need some help, you can use the help! Not all help works for everybody, but trying is a good portion of the battle. Really, ask for help, and get started into some system or program or buddy system or whatever. Just reach out to somebody. PSA over.

So it doesn't have to be like what the ads say, or the “worst case scenario” or something drastic. After a while, and maybe with some negative things happening in life, the best of us just sort of... break. Looking back, I know I've been broke for at least a decade, maybe much longer. Maybe I was never unbroke, but life just hadn't entirely caught up to me yet. After 2003, life and I were neck and neck, and then in 2008 life went right past me. In 2012 or so, life lapped me and bitch slapped me on its way around for good measure. By this year, I wasn't even running any more. And that brings us to what that's like, the lowest of the low.

First off, there's the apathy. Now, this happened after I first sought treatment and was told I was on the bipolar spectrum. They could only give me drugs that still had company sponsored handouts, due to my lack of insurance. I don't know if that was the only reason or not, but I ended up on a few different anti-psychotics that were given to bi-polar I and II patients, as well as schizophrenics. They were all described as “mood stabilizers”. That they did. At first, I was happy with the effects. I was much calmer and could handle things easier. But after a while, I just sort of disappeared. I ignored everyone I should have payed attention to. I stopped cooking, I stopped cleaning, I watched each and every single episode of Star Trek ever made.

Somewhere in there, my girl friend moved out.

I stopped even checking my mail for months at a time. The money I was making at my driving job just wasn't enough to pay everything that had to be paid, and so that got ignored. I stopped reading. I even stopped listening to music. When I was driving nights, I had music on in the car, but never tapped my fingers, never sang along. When I started driving days, I had NPR on all the time, just to have fresh new information to digest, and take my mind off of, you know, existence. I also stopped taking my meds in hopes of regaining some small modicum of interest in things, in people, in myself. It took a while, but things improved until the next major setback, and I was right back to the apathy.

The apathy is destructive enough on it's own, but the much more painful problem is the blackness. We've all heard of the blues. I can live with the blues no problem. But a few times in my life I have hit black. Once, in early 2009, I thought I had gotten as black as I could get, but I now know that was just a dark gray.

The Blackness is much worse. It has a lot to do with self image, and world view, and just pain. Not physical pain, but existential torment. Just being alive, aware of time passing, is intolerable. It's one thing to know you are a failure by many of life's metrics, but it's entirely another thing to feel that you are a failure; to feel it in your bones. On the way down, you feel so terribly lonely, isolated, maybe even abandoned. But then you shun company, you don't seek out others. You only leave your house when needed, and you find any excuse to not need to. You are just barely above a shut in.  The only thing separating you from a hoarder is the time it takes to accumulate 3 feet of junk in your home. When the depression is this bad, you can not even remember what it feels like to have ever felt joy. You can't connect to that happier person you were at some point, even if it was just days ago. In the pit, you are so low you don't even think about killing yourself, you just deeply wish that you had never been born. You come to even resent existing.

And of course, there's the dealing with life.  Or, that is to say, not dealing with it.  Maybe its the apathy, maybe it's the zero sense of self worth, but what ever it is, the effect is that you are paralyzed.  You see the train coming right at your stalled car on the tracks, but you can't move.  You can't even open the door to save yourself, because you are just stuck.  You don't know what to do, or even how to form a plan

The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

It seems like there is so much more to say, but I have rambled on for too long already. I'll just leave you with this: in the last few weeks, I am on an emotional upswing. I am feeling much, much better, but maybe even too good.  My situation hasn't changed much, but my mood has. I can't say for sure, but maybe I'm in a manic phase right now. But more on that later.

For the first installment, go to Cyclothymia. 

For the third installment, go to I get up, I get down.  

For the fourth installment, go to Limb by Limb.