So, in my quest to rid myself of regular readers altogether, I’m moving my irregular blog back to the wordpress.com version, and darkentries.info is going to become something of a testbed for my wordpress experimentation for a while. I am working on making WP into a viable content management system for clients who need a CMS, but for whom the regular install of wordpress is too blog orientated, and full on CMS such as Drupal and Joomla is too server intensive and too scary for them.

darkentries.wordpress.com is where it’s at for the forseeable. Stuff will be going on here, but it will be temporary, buggy, and shifty like quicksand.

First walk of summer…

Yes. So. I made it. Another year. Etc.

Maybe, for the first time ever, I can look back and think I actually made some progress this year. That my life is better than it was. That there is some hope. Which is nice.

I have learned a lot in the past year, mostly the hard way. Is that the only way we ever learn anything? I think so.
I’ve learned that recovery from depression is harder and longer than quitting smoking, which I did 3 years ago (I guess, because my memory is apalling). It is so much work. Eternal vigilance, slapping oneself around a lot to avoid slipping into lazy thoughtforms to which one has become accustomed but are no longer the only alternative.

I feel a lot like it is only until the last year, kickstarted by the stability brought on by dedicated prozac swallowing, that I have had the chance to start becoming the person I have always felt capable of being, that depression prevented me from being. Sounds nice, but there is something terrifying about no longer having an excuse for being useless. Well, I have an excuse for finding it difficult, but not for failing completely.
Everything I do is now a distinct choice. If I feel tense, angry, miserable, I know now that there is probably something I can do about it, however hard it may be, to shift my mood to somewhere else. Previously I didn’t have that option. Nothing I did could break through the depressive fog. Or I was too messed up to even want to try. Willpower is not something that is in plentiful supply amongst the depressed.

So recovery is a huge responsibility, especially as I have a relationship I actually care about, and therefore am required to make some effort. Every time I manage to switch mental gears and break out of a stupid moood something clicks inside though. The next time is a little bit easier. Of course there are still bad times, times when I have neither the ability or the will to break out, but I try to ride through those now, try not to take them as signs of the ineffeable pointlessness of all things, but merely what they are, a mood, that will pass.
I am helped in this by my partner. Who understands, but does not enable. Is there when I come out.

So this birthday is something of a new feeling. Not just a waypoint of hopelessness. Something to pin my misery on.
This year I can actually look back and smile (in my mind obviously; if I actually smiled my face might crack).
Things are getting better.

I think the blog is probably a keeper. I realised this today, as my mood has taken a significant turn for the worse, and I’ve had a rough day. Writing has always helped me relieve the pressure in my head, and the relief of pressure helps me to think more clearly. Or at least, clearly enough that I can operate on some kind of level that is a notch above emotional wreck.

I do feel somewhat limited in what I can say on this blog, which kind of belies the purpose of it. My rantings are a way of working out fears, insecurities, depressive miseries and delusions, until I get a grip. I don’t want to expose people who actually know me or are involved in my life to those things, because they may well not be my everyday feelings, just passing emotional turmoil. If anyone was to judge me solely from this blog they would maybe think I was depressed constantly, when this is not the case at all. Not anymore anyway….

But I am loathe to leave behind all these thoughts. Parts of me.

Sometimes I think I am just playing at recovery. Trying to please her. Make her stay. Pretend there is hope. That I am worth it.
Sometimes I just want to let go, not have to try so hard anymore. To give in. The crushing disappointment when I fail, don’t have the energy to overcome the voices, the fears, the insecurity, the black weight.
I feel trapped in a box. Sometimes I just want to be miserable. Sometimes that is ok. Isn’t it? Do I have to be strong all the time?

So. I think the blog stays. I need it. I have no-one else I can talk to like this.

and so that time rolls around again where I ponder killing the blog, for it’s inevitable decline is like a cocktail stick being repeatedly jabbed in my eye, very very slowly, i.e every few days when I remember that it exists and that I never post, and that I miss my blog friends, but really, truly no longer no how to communicate what is going on in my head these days.

Writing about everyday tedious crushing depression is easy. It goes like this ‘lalalala life sucks, I suck, there is no hope of life or me ever not sucking, what is the point of it all, oh the anguish, fuck it all I’m going to listen to some Sigur Ros and cry’…
Repeat.
A lot.

You’d think one would get bored of writing various versions of that essential nubbin, but really, not so much. I managed it for months, and never really seemed to tire of it. It was an outlet, I explained to the world at large my pains, there were some oohs and ahhhs, and I felt justified that my life was indeed a bit crap and there was no hope for anything other than a tortured disappointing half life.

Now, things are a little different - I feel I am actually on the path of ‘recovery’(as gabe terms it, but I prefer to think of it as learning how to manage the crap). I have a full time job, which I am actually managing to not only keep, but almost enjoy, and be involved with. Granted it is exhausting at times, but compared to how I was two years ago, it’s a minor miracle that I can keep going for 8 hours a day never mind doing it 5 days a week.
I have a partner, and am slowly learning how to not let my moods, anxieties, selfishnesses, and general craziness interfere TOOO much with the general enjoyment of the relationship, although I still manage to fuck things up royally from time to time, but you know, who doesn’t?

The problem is, I had built up a whole lexicon of suffering, a dictionary of despair - I knew how to eloquently express my vague sense of disatisfaction with the world, my angst, and my heartache. It rolled off me like so much miserable water.

I have no idea how to communicate what is going on in my life now, I don’t have the words, or the eloquence to effectively portray the more subtle rhythms of recovery. The small triumphs when I avoid anxiety ripping me down into depression, when I breathe deeply and tell myself I am being an idiot, and these thoughts are the result of insecurity and fear. It’s easy to describe the violence and power of a tornado, it’s more difficult to lay down a soliloquy of sanity.

Do I even want to, or need to keep a blog about how things are improving?
Should I start writing about my favourite recipes instead? Was I ever writing for anything other than to reach out to others? Or is it just for myself?

I don’t know. I am pondering it.