Apathy, Good Intentions and Blogging on Empty

Even though it’s just a litany of whining misery and suicidal self-hatred, I’ve really become rather fond of this blog. I’ve certainly put a lot of work into both its content and, since the move to a self-hosted WordPress domain, its aesthetics. I even invested money in moving it to its own domain, so that’s my committment to it. In short, despite my sometime criticism of my writing, in subtle ways I am proud of this journal, and have found it to have become a very significant part of my life.

I don’t want to stop writing. I really don’t. I want this blog to chronicle all my future negotiating of NHS (and possibly private) mental health services, all my thoughts, emotions, psychoses, episodes of all descriptions – the works vis a vis my mental illnesses. I want it for my own benefit, and I want it for others. I wish blogging had been in existence when I was a teenager, as I don’t think I would have felt quite so horribly alone back then had I been able to read that others were in exactly the same boat.

The problem is this. I am right in the midst of a major depression. I want to die. I have no energy, I have no focus, I hardly even have any thoughts beyond how much I don’t want to exist. I am consumed by my complete and utter misery. Typing a fucking Twitter message at 140 characters or less is a desperate effort, so you can imagine how profoundly difficult blogging is.

I am forcing myself to write this – and it is genuinely a physical effort that feels on a par with the gym on a bad day – because I know if I don’t write it, that the blog will progressively fall by the wayside, and that is the last thing I want. But I am not sure how much longer I can sustain any writing. Part of my all-consuming lethargy is probably attributable to the introduction of Quetiapine into my medication cocktail, but the cycle of depression had started before I started taking it, so it’s not entirely to blame. Ergo, in short, I’m concerned that even if the sedative effects of my new medication do pass soon, that I’ll still be finding it hard to write this blog.

I am not the first person to be afflicted by a major depressive episode that has a blog. How do the rest of you sustain your writing when your mood is at its lowest? Any advice would be appreciated.

A often tells me that I should describe how I feel whilst in the middle of an episode, so let me see how well I can do that:

• Suicidal ideation. I’ll not act on it in this state though – I simply do not have the energy to try to kill myself. Nevertheless, I’m completely pre-occupied with my death and how I can bring it about.
• Distracted, unmotivated. I can’t concentrate on anything. This post has been written in bits and pieces, has taken ages and is probably still disjointed and figuratively illegible.
• Emptiness. I don’t know how to describe this any better
• Worthless, listless. I have no function. I am pointless and (justifiably) disenfranchised and useless.
• Apathy. I don’t care about anything, and that includes feeling better. I can’t explain this; I feel so indescribably low and miserable, but I couldn’t care less about feeling less low and miserable. I just don’t care. I can only assume that that is because it seems like too much effort.
• Self-hate. Not as strong as it could be, though; I don’t have the energy to hate myself as much as I sometimes do. But I still do feel self-disgust. I feel worthless and horrid and fetid and disgusting.
• Lack of interest in anything. I don’t want to engage in anything that ordinarily gives me pleasure, including this writing. It has taken me absolutely ages to get to this point, and it is still requiring every last ounce of willpower that I have (which isn’t very much).
• Lethargy, exhaustion. I am utterly buggered. All I want to do is sleep. Despite my moniker on this blog, insomnia has been less of an issue (presumably) thanks to my new medication (I’m still waking at random times and finding it hard to get back to sleep, but that’s better than no sleep at all). I’m oversleeping at the moment, actually – maybe 10 or 12 hours on and off – but I am still absolutely shattered. All I want to do is sleep.
• Inability to concentrate. So forgive me if this is a bizarre entry.
• Psychotic. ‘They’ are hassling me. Not in the all-consuming way that they did in October and December, but they’re babbling on and on and on at the back of my head, with their usual ‘slut’, ‘whore’, ‘bitch’ mantras. I don’t have the energy to ignore or rail against them.
• Don’t want to talk to anyone. Self-explanatory.
• Sick of do-gooding. Ah yes, well-meaning interference…

This is going to make me sound like a miserable sod, perhaps with good reason, but I am so sick of peoples’ good intentions. I am not sick of good people’s support for me of course, but there are certain misguided manifestations of that that are driving me up the walls.

Telling me that I should remain in existence because I am intelligent or kind or whatever positive adjective you find appropriate does not make a blind bit of difference to how I feel. I still want to die. Wittering on about how I should have a course of CBT because getting better “can be that simple” denies the truth that CBT is a patronising load of wank, touted as a mental illness panacea by a government hell-bent on reducing costs, whatever they may say to the contrary. I still want to die. Telling me I have to “think more positively” serves frankly only to make me want to punch you in the face. I still want to die. It is not that simple.

I have a mental illness. I am not just having a bad few days; I am mentally fucking ill. Yes, I’m lucky that people care, but there are limits to that in terms of how they present their concern. Some of those that are engaging in this well-intentioned but horribly intrusive do-gooding I don’t even know well. How can they consider it appropriate to get involved in discussion of my (poor) health at all, let alone express such profound failures of understanding about the diseases with which I am afflicted?

Right now I don’t care if I get better. I just crave the comfort of unconsciousness, whether that is death or whether it is more bloody sleep. I am grateful for people’s simple understanding, and their offers to be there for me should I wish to avail of them, but their well-meaning pursuit of dialogue that goes beyond that merely serves to irritate.

I know I’m selfish and nasty and horrible for even thinking these things, and I know I should be grateful and to that end I’m sorry, but I’m so fucking miserable that I don’t care. It took me all my time to write this shit so I’m going to publish it anyway. At least it chronicles one of the bad days in an accurate, if intensely negative, fashion. Let’s see if I can manage to write up last week’s C session whilst continuing to endure this abject psychological torture. Hedge your bets now, my dears!

Related posts:

1. Things are Bad
2. What’s Annoying Me Today, and Ruminations on Seeing the Psychiatrist
3. Reflecting on Being a Psychotic Bitch