Failing

Having depression feels like being a failure.

I tell myself that this is not true. That depression is a disease, not a weakness.

I tell myself this often.

If another depressed person told me they felt like a failure for having this disease, I would yell at them, telling them how ridiculous that is, rolling my eyes at the stupidity of it.

Yet the feelings still creeps in.

I am weak. I am less then.

I am pitied more than liked.

Like a dickhead older brother, depression likes to fuck with your head.

“Hey dumbass, why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?”

I have been having a feeling low and shitty day today. Not regular low and shitty, but depression low and shitty. There’s a difference.

I have spent the “feeling low and shitty day” being angry at myself for feeling anything but good.

I have spent it feeling like a failure.

Feeling like the fact that I am feeling anything less than good is my fault.

Feeling like a person who lacks the basic skills it takes to feel undepressed

Of course it is chemical make-up, not skill, but that same chemical make-up is what likes to fuck with your mind.

But here’s the shock therapy/medication assisted-lining in this chemical rain cloud: Even feeling this shitty, I still feel hope.

That’s a big fuckin deal.

Acceptance: Part 3

I can improvise right now but it is not easy and not really fun. For me, improv is usually a shit-ton of fun. Improv is where I go to have a flippin good time.

In my non-improv life I am feeling healthier than I was, in order to get healthy my brain has been shocked.

My brain was shocked before with few negative side effects. Now I am getting more of my brain shocked. This has made for some wonkiness

How has shock therapy changed my brain:

• I lose my train of thought very easily
• I can see what I am thinking but many times can’t put it into the action or sentences I want
• I have trouble appropriately (with the words I want) responding to people
• Putting thoughts together is a lot harder
• I don’t recognize quite a few of my facebook acquaintances
• Talking makes me tired
• I ask/say the same things over and over
• I don’t remember doing things I’ve recently done (played a game, hung out with people)
• Things that I knew how to instinctively do (drive places, improvise, run errands) I now need to think about. A lot

Another way shock therapy has changed my brain

• I no longer want my life to be over

So yeah, the one plus definitely outweighs the minuses.
That doesn’t mean I can ignore the minuses but I’ve tried to.
I didn’t want to have to adapt, to admit I might need to change, to allow myself to get annoyed.
Those are silly things to fight.

My brain is different, its not just memory, it’s functionality. I feel —I  just forgot what I was going to say.
I feel like my brain is a bunch of wires that can’t connect.
Writing is so hard.
Expressing myself used to be effortless, it is now effort-filled.

These side effects seem to increase and get worse with each treatment. I am told a while after the treatment ends these effects will dissipate.

Most of the time I have a pretty good sense of humor about having a wonked out brain. I tell people they can confess their secrets to me the night before I get shocked. I won’t remember them, so no worries about them getting told to someone else. I laugh at the nights I spent with people, that I don’t remember at all. Most of the time there is a way to find the silly.

Last night I went to Columbus to improvise. Being on stage was not fun. I loved who I was on stage with, I just couldn’t be there the way I wanted. I got sad about this and then I got angry at myself for being sad. By the end of the night I felt okay about all of it, realizing this: having a sense of humor about a situation doesn’t mean you can’t allow yourself to see the sadness in it. It just means you can help the sadness move through you quicker. Like what stewed prunes do for matzahed-up Jew on Passover.

Today I had the pleasure of talking to two great people (and improvisers) about all of this, my dear friend Kim, and the kickass, kind, improv guru Susan Messing and basically came up with the following conclusion: I can stop doing improv till it seems like it might be fun again, and that is totally okay, or I can play with the people I love playing with, like the ones I played with last night, and go on stage and just forget trying to do my usual stuff. I can rely on them to help me find what my current self has to offer. I can just do what feels good and silly and know I am lucky to play with the best people to feel good and silly with.

That seems like a pretty good route to go.

And now I shall publish these thoughts on this blog as I most likely won’t remember having any of them on Monday.

Forgetting what I’ve Forgotten

I have had conversations this week I can no longer remember. I’ve had whole evenings I can’t recall. They are now gone.

And you know what, it might be weird, and funny, but it is not a tragedy.

I can focus on the memories I am losing, but it seems like it would be more enjoyable to focus on the fact that I am feeling better and more than that, on all the things I’m not losing:

Sure, I might have had to relearn the password to this website, but I didn’t lose the ability to write on it.

I can still improvise.

That’s huge. This thing I love doing, I am still able to do.

I might have forgotten events but I remember feelings.

I remember who matters to me and how I am loved by a shit ton of people.

A friend jokingly asked if the ECT could just filter out all the bad memories and leave the good?

Maybe it can’t.

But it can filter out the suicidal depression and leave me with a life where I can still do the things I love and be with those I care about. And that’s pretty much the same thing.

Forgotten but not gone

And then there is the night where you find yourself sobbing into the couch “Can I please just feel something different already?”

This was my Saturday night

And then like a fever breaking, the depression started to lift.

It isn’t gone, but it is so much better.

On Friday I began a different type of ECT, the kind more associated with memory loss. I am experiencing said memory loss.

I have gone from one kind of losing my mind to another.

It is odd, a little unsettling, somewhat entertaining, and, in my case, totally worth it.

I am lucky. Unlike someone with Alzheimer’s, I have a totally manageable, totally temporary type of memory loss. A type that will improve when I am done with treatment.

I don’t even know if “loss” is the correct word for what I have, more like “shit up there has been rearranged.”

Will my memory get worse before I am done getting ECT? I don’t know, and frankly it is not worth worrying over.

If the trade off is the fact that I am now smiling more and thinking of suicide less, then the choice, is a no brainer.

(I am aware how bad of a pun that is and I don’t give a fuck.)

Acceptance: Take 2

Depression is a chronic illness, an illness I live with.

I have said this many times.

If only saying things was the same as accepting things.

If only the idea of acceptance was the same as actual acceptance. (government shutdown joke here.)

I accepted the idea that I would have several bouts of depression over my lifetime, I did not, however, accept the actual “real thing” –  that I would not have control over when these bouts came, how often, how severe, how long.

Yes, I can do my part to make these bouts easier, but I am trying to accept that it is just that, a part of what can be done. I don’t get to determine what treatment will work and what won’t, and that sucks, but I am trying to accept that.

I am also trying to accept that there will never ever be a second season of Amish in the City

Wish me luck on both.

Trying not to feel like shit (and other things that aren’t working)

I originally started blogging after I felt better the first time I had ECT. I was hoping this go around, even if stuff felt shitty, I would still be able to blog about it, for me, maybe for others, but I don’t have the concentration to write long things. I have taken to facebook writing instead. Short, light posts, but it is hard to make everything quippy or quick.

On Saturday I felt like the ECT was beginning to work. I was cautiously optimistic, but remaining cautious is so hard, you want to believe it will keep going in the right direction.

It did not.

Last night I felt it, this familiar heaviness, it feels like I am wearing one of those lead vests they give you to protect your junk and stuff  when you’re getting a dental x-ray. It feels like that vest is on constantly.

I went to treatment today and I told the Dr. of my ups and downs and he said it might be time to try bilateral ECT.

Currently, I get ECT on just the right side of my brain. Doing it on just one side has reduced side effects (memory loss) by a huge amount among most  patients.

Bilateral scares me. ECT not working scares me. And more then fear, is this weight of sadness. Blech.

But who knows, tomorrow can bring better health.