Sunday, September 25, 2011

Another day of numbth

Sunny weekend at the start of a Capetonian spring. The weather is fantastic.

...I am sitting in my underwear in front of the computer. I don't remember why I took my clothes off. I think I was getting ready to shower and forgot to leave my seat.

I fit through the window in my balcony. This is fucking ridiculous. I am half-naked in my apartment half-listening to Anthony and the Johnsons, half on my way to the shower, and all I can think about is how it would feel to fall out the third story of this apartment complex. It would probably hurt. Or halfway down with air friction in my ears I'll regret what I did when it's too late.

Almost on my fourth week of bupropion. Before I took it I laughed off the black box warning about suicide risk as inherent to the study group. If you're depressed enough to take antidepressants, it makes sense that you'd consider suicide more than your average Jane.

I am not laughing anymore. This shit feels BAD. I don't know if it's the drug removing some emotional mechanism that damps my suicidal thoughts, or if by some action is inducing the suicidal thoughts, but either way, the change is real, and it's getting more and more difficult to restrain myself.

Suicide isn't something I would plan out. If I have enough rationality left to plan a suicide, I have enough rationality left to dwell on the reasons I shouldn't go through with it. It would almost certainly be a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing. It's laughable, walking home at night and staring into tens of headlights, into truck carriages, and thinking about momentum. Then the cars go past me and I flinch. Playing chicken with the traffic. It's laughable.

I wonder if one day I'll read back on this stuff and be ashamed of what I wrote. I appreciate the optimism that comes with the assumption that I'll live that far into the future. But yeah, probably. I know I'm ashamed of all of this now, about how meta and cynical and rueful I am. I don't know how anyone could form any sort of lasting bond with someone who has no drive to live. Those who do do it out of the hope that things will change one day. I'm not sure about this myself.

The fuck kind of life am I living? I feel like some comatose guy on life-support. I'd love to get closer to people but I'm so fucking scared I'll hurt them so much by virtue of being like this, and they'll lose hope and move on. I don't blame them, but it's painful nonetheless.

I wish I were normal and happy and productive or I wish I were dead. Not like this. Living like this is like being in limbo. I hope the drug works properly soon. I've been getting some pretty shitty side-effects, so hopefully that means that I am a typical case and the situation will improve in a week or so.

If I say that I hate my life and why, there's always the question of "why don't you do something about it?". I am. I spend every waking moment trying to change what I hate about my life. I try to go home less. I try to eat right. I distract myself. I take vitamins. I try to see people more often. I try to study harder through the fog. I go to therapy. I am taking antidepressants. I walk everywhere. I have limits, though. I think I feel hopeless because I am trying everything I can think of, and I still feel like this. I hate this. I have no fucking idea if this is a losing battle or my perception is just clouded at the moment, even though everyone tells me it is the latter.

I wish I could give my assets away to people who'd appreciate them and just fucking disappear. The things that I have to live for, like my skill with language, problem solving, making people laugh, dressing up, sharp pitch sensitivity, ability to fake confidence and a body in reasonably good condition, it's all wasted on me. It's sad to think that people wish they had some of the things I have, who would use it to its full potential in life, while I squander it all fantasising about death.

Please drug, work. Work like you mean it. For fuck's sake, work.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Not subtractive, but additive.

There is the age-old adage about life being too short for x, where x is some compromise, or unfelicitous action, or undesirable attitude. I wonder if the length of the life in question is the average human life expectancy, or if the length is as variable as each individual is, in which case the premise of the adage is a mockery. I don't know why I expect truth in idioms.

I can't shake the feeling that I don't have much time left. The years have left their mark. I'm tired of restraining my impulses, although I'm still fully capable of doing it. All I can hope is to distract myself from the sinking feeling, and the fear of being swallowed whole by the void. Every moment distracted is another moment I am alive. And at this point, it is another moment closer to when these drugs will work. If there will be such a moment.

I like Scrabble. There is something comforting about scanning for the optimal play in a game with so many restrictions. It eliminates some of the uncertainty that is inherent to life. You play with the hand you are dealt with, within certain universal constraints. Plays are not acataleptic in the way that humans are. All you need to do is to respond to the plays of your opponent, under these universal constraints. Humans don't work that way. People restrict themselves in different ways, at different times, with different strengths. Even the social structure that arises from a group is not enough. You do not lose by default if you do not subscribe to them. And even without this problem, reality still has too many variables.

I wonder how well I can play with my hand. It's a bad hand, but I am not a weak player. Sometimes the feeling is overwhelming, the challenges that I perceive to be insurmountable by myself. Rationally, there are none.

I am not a perfectly rational being.

I wonder if I am buying into the gambler's fallacy, or if my outlook is clouded by my depression. Come to think of it, there's no reason why it couldn't be both. It doesn't matter how much I intellectualise all of this. The truth is that I want to die, but I can't, and I won't. The rational reasons for why I should not is one of them, but I also made a promise not to.

That is my restriction. To keep playing. And in a way, I like restrictions.

I am not counting down to the day I die. I am counting the days that I stay alive. Not subtractive, but additive.