Willfulness in the Face of Necessary Medication

Anxiety and frequent panic attacks have been the menu du jour for weeks, now.  I have had my Klonopin prescribed as a scheduled medication, have had the med treater add Xanax as a PRN, and have been trying various and different DBT skills.  Very little works.  It probably works a lot less, because I am not very compliant with taking three to four Klonopin per day at scheduled times, nor allowing myself to take any of the Xanax that have been prescribed.  I have tried explaining it to my therapist, the not wanting to take more and more medication, the not wanting to become a “Klonopin whore,” the not wanting to start an addiction (because life is rough enough with *just* your regular, garden-variety mental illnesses to combat every day).

This has been a “problem” for me over the years — my distaste for (what I see as) excessive use of addictive pharmaceuticals, and, in general, not wanting to let myself just be numbed out day after day.  Is it better to suffer the multiple-times-daily breakdowns, than it is to just take a wee bit of Klonopin here and there?  My brain and heart are in a battle over it.  Those who know me best, who see me on a regular basis, they plead with me just to take a Klonopin.  Why am I being so willful, over some damn Klonopin?  Just take one!  It won’t hurt!

I have had years worth of numbing myself out with various psychiatric medications, a very brief (very, very brief) relationship with marijuana in college, and a couple very short-lived love affairs with alcohol over my 35 years.  I say “No, thank you,” to all of it.  It may seem strange, like, “what Rosa, you don’t want to get some peace?  Even your med provider thinks it is a good idea!” but it is a different scenario in my mind.  I will never go back to alcohol, to marijuana, to popping this pill and that in the hopes that I will get a bit of relief.  I never let it get to a point where it destroys my life, but I have seen so many other lives destroyed by chemical dependency, and so it is very easy for me to say, “no, not for me.”

Could I just take a little bit of Klonopin here, a tiny nibble of Xanax there, and be just fine?  Yes, probably so.  I have a hard time justifying my refusal to take medications that are prescribed to me, and I revealed to my therapist this week that, really, what is behind this refusal to take medications is the thought, the feeling, that maybe I don’t feel I should be taking ANY medications.  Maybe I don’t really have bipolar disorder, maybe I can be one of those people with bipolar disorder that does not NEED medication, but can manage things with a strict schedule and diet and exercise and meditation.  Maybe I am meant to be medication-free.

At the exact moment these words come to my mouth, I know they are untrue.  I quickly scan through the years that I tried just that, to treat my bipolar disorder without medication, and just how very dangerous it was for me.  How many terrible situations I landed myself in, how I barely made it through living in the big city alive, how I hardly escaped not one but multiple abusive relationships, how the thoughts of wanting to die and dancing on the edge of the Earth with death and Satan, himself, were a daily occurrence.

So, yes, I am prescribed quite the boatload of psychotropic medication.  I don’t want to take it, but I will keep doing so because I know in the wisest part of wise mind, that it is that medication that is making me “stable enough” to exist as I am.  I will think some more about the Klonopin and the Xanax, and eventually the daily breakdowns will become too exhausting to continue, and I might try taking some.  I won’t like it, and I will worry that I am doping myself into a corner, about becoming a Klonopin-whore  but it is quite possible that a little bit of Klonopin and Xanax thrown down my gullet on a semi-regular basis will decrease the multiple daily breakdowns, and that is something that needs to happen.

 

 

Moments of Willingness

 

We can choose to react to any one thing, any one person, any one task with either willingness or willfulness.  We can greet people, ideas, solutions with open arms, giving at least one first open-minded chance (as in willingness).  Or we can refuse to get up, refuse to examine our reality, and refusing mostly, well, for the sake of refusing.

There is generally little rhyme or reason to willfulness, and when you think you can put a reason or an explanation to it, it is still wrong and any explanation doesn’t “fix it.”  You are staying closed-off, staying silent (or being really loud), you are complaining instead of accepting your fate or listening to the advice that might make it better.  You are not giving anyone or anything (including yourself) a fair shake.

Having spent most of my life in a willful state, I had a huge breakthrough in an intensive DBT program.  I think this particular breakthrough was in the neighborhood of 2007, but I’m not sure — because DBT has saved my skin over and over, and there is always a new realization, it is difficult to keep track of the specific “when’s” which is really fine, because why and how matter much more than when, as it comes time to freeing yourself from negative coping patters and interjecting brand new ideas into your mind about how you could possibly cope, if you tried.

My particular breakthrough was simply this:  willfulness made my life dark and painful and difficult, and mindfulness set all that negativity free, made me a happier person.

Unfortunately, these lessons don’t always stay stuck in the brain, so every now and again, GoM gives a gentle nudge or QoB will say something or I will read something that sets my chest to loosening.  And I remember, just how much happier I, Rosa, am, when I set my heart and mind on being willing, becoming willing, practicing willingness.

Freeing myself from willfulness is perhaps as easy as just practicing.  It’s not hard, and now that I’ve been quite willful for the last several months, it is time to make that tiny adjustment, and tweak my mind and heart back to willingness, back to progress, back to believing that I can save my own emotional skin with the power of mindfulness, meditation, and for me, writing.

Yesterday’s goal, to blog every day no matter what, was validated by several  commenters and I really do appreciate that.  I think it will be helpful, and can actually already feel it helping.  If you can just get the awkwardness out of the way, and start to write what you believe in your mind, you can go places.

Having been heavy into not accomplishing and not working on goals lately, it struck me that I wasn’t listing anything that I personally felt was important.  They were the goals of other people.  From today forward, all new goals will ones that I personally desire to achieve.

In keeping with the necessity of mindfulness practice in DBT, and the importance of practicing practicing practicing, I am making the small goal of setting aside at least ten minutes every day for mindfulness exercise.  I know it will grow larger than that on its own, but it’s where I wanted to start.

Recovery Stalling Out: Why I’m Afraid to Get Better

I am hoping I’m getting ready to process an epiphany of some kind.  I am so fucking frustrated right now with life and processes and change and with being terrified of realizing any success.

I have had mental health issues the majority of my life.  I  have spent some of it unmedicated and miserable, and a lot of it medicated and miserable.  It has only been in the last several months that I have achieved some semblance of stability.  My life is very slowly coming together.  I haven’t had a serious suicidal thought in months, haven’t been manic in over a year, and haven’t had a depressive episode lasting longer than a month in quite some time.  That’s progress, right?

Every reasonable part of my brain screams, “Yes, dumbass!  That’s progress.  REAL progress!”  Every other part of it tells me I’m still a failure and, in all honesty, that’s how I feel.  It all comes back down to that stupid fucking worksheet that my therapist gave me about the “stages of recovery” at which time she told me that I was the stage below what I would have put myself at.  My therapist thinks that I am just now accepting my diagnosis and starting to think about making changes.

I feel like I am making fucking changes already, but then if I sit really still and quiet, it’s clear in my brain that I’m not and putting myself out as such makes me a fraud. The stumbling block is the fucking changes.  There are various things about myself and my environment that I want to change, but I can’t seem to get it done.

I have set a goal to shower every other day.  And I can’t make myself do it.  Just can’t.  It’s like I have this mental block about it.  The thought of getting in the shower terrifies me, even though I know I’ll feel better when I’m done.  Taking a shower is a long process during which I often have to sit and psych myself up about for hours.  Hours, people.  Fuck.

I have a personal goal to get my house cleaned and keep it that way.  I do a pretty good job of keeping up with my kitchen, but the rest of my house looks like a dust storm full of dog hair blew through it.  Every surface is dirty.  There is some clutter, but not terrible.  I look around and I just see all this random shit and I am so overwhelmed, I can’t even take a breath.

My anxiety about making even the most minute change in my life is totally unreal.  It takes my breath and sets a grand piano on my chest.  It renders me immobile, literally.  My heart is starting to race and my breathing is becoming rapid just thinking about all of these FUCKING CHANGES I need to make.

Because the real question is, when/if I do make these changes, what then?  Will me not keeping up with it be a sign that I am slipping, or is it human to revert back to old behaviors?  What will happen when/if I am able to take a shower every other day?  What will happen when/if I can get my house clean and maintain it?  Terrifying shit.  It probably sounds trivial to most people, and I can imagine people reading this and thinking, “Just get in the fucking shower already!” but it really isn’t that easy.

I am afraid to get better because I am afraid of change and of who I will become if I make these changes.  Will people expect more of me?  Will I be able to live up to new expectations?  Will even more progress be requested of me?  At what point do we wrap things up and say, “Rose is okay now, just the way she is.”  I don’t see a point like that in the future.

Unconcerned Concern

Seems like I have been getting online less and less lately, which means even fewer blog posts.  I have been getting caught up in my little bitty part-time job, therapy, making an effort to spend quality time with DSB, and am also enjoying spending some time weekly with my dad.

I have this fleeting concern about something, however, and what better place to process it than here?  I am really, really, really getting tired of therapy.  For a lot of reasons.  It doesn’t feel like much progress is being made.  I am reluctant to talk with my therapist about many things, and oftentimes it seems like a session goes by with just general bullshit.  And sometimes, I even find myself thinking that way about DBT.  Sure, its a good practice and has been helpful, but do I really need to be completely entrenched in it, with everything going back to it?

I just don’t feel like I am moving forward, and a big part of my issue with feeling like I am not moving forward is that I am completely and totally goal-less.  I don’t really have any big hopes and dreams.  I would like to be a bit (or a lot) better in the domestic realm, and take care of myself better, but other than that, really nothing.

It is almost like I have become ambivalent about progressing.  I think that boils down two a few things.  One, there are a couple of big issues that I just don’t want to tackle.  Two, I really do like my life how it is for the most part and I don’t like hearing my therapist say I am not in the “action” stage of recovery, but in the “acceptance” stage of recovery.  What kind of bullshit is that?

Well, I asked her that.  And she immediately said she must have been wrong.  No, seriously, you think something about me, you can at least be honest about it.  But, no.  I really don’t know what I want to get out of therapy and I don’t know that it is helping me at this point, persay.  I think I am going to have to have this discussion with her tomorrow.  Maybe I need to get away from DBT and do something else for awhile.  Maybe DBT isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  I used to work with a psychologist at my last job who said that DBT was for people who couldn’t think.  I wonder if maybe she is right.

It’s also possible that I am just pissed off at my therapist that she smacked that label on me about being in the “acceptance” stage of recovery and then withdrew it so quickly.  If that’s what you really think, then man up and have the balls to tell me why you think that, even if we disagree.

Willfullness is rearing it’s ugly head again and I don’t know if I have enough of the king’s horses and men to tamp it back down again.

Go Home

Sometimes, when I’m out and about, I get this feeling that I just don’t want to go home yet.  It’s almost a sense that there is something bad waiting for me there.  Don’t get me wrong, there really isn’t.  DSB is kind and sweet and the pups are the best.  But still, sometimes, I don’t want to go home.

On occasion, I don’t want to go home because I don’t want to interact.  I would rather think and be still and not have to utter a word, even if it was only one word. There are times that I don’t want to go home because I don’t want to face my poor housekeeping.  Other times, I just don’t wanna.

Today in particular, I didn’t want to go home.  I wanted to go see my mom and talk to her.  DSB and I had stopped by my godparents’ home, now vacant, with the Bird Lady dead and my godfather in a nursing home.  I have some happy memories of that place, and it reminded me and I remembered and now I feel sad.

I also was reminded of the year I spent there with Dr. Love, a year of near-constant bickering and arguing and passive-agressiveness and almost no love.  I feel sick when I think about that relationship.  It should have never happened.  But, it did.  I have to deal with that and those memories, and that made me sad and anxious and mad.

So, we did end up coming almost directly home from there.  I feel almost sick over today, when there is so much to be grateful for, which makes me feel even the more sick that I feel this way.

DSB saw his doctor and the cancer has not spread.  They are going to remove his left kidney, but he’ll be fine.  No chemo, no radiation, just a short hospital visit and about a month’s recovery time.

I saw my orthopedic specialist who informed me that my foot has healed completely and perfectly, and that I am in pain because I need to wean myself off the boot instead of trying to do everything all at once without it.

So, two happy, good, awesome things happened today.  I am not appreciating it and I hate that.

I feel as if I may cry, I feel as if I may throw a chair out the window.  I also feel as if I may just get naked and go huddle into the fetal position in bed and not come out until today has passed.

This isn’t fair.  I can’t let my emotions get hijacked like that.  I should have been on higher alert, or something.  I should feel positive and happy and relieved.  Instead, I feel anxious, sad, and angry.  I can’t see the good for the bad and that just isn’t fair to DSB.  I need to snap the fuck out of this ASAP before something truly dire does happen, like breaking all the glass windows out in my sunroom.  Because that sounds pretty good about now.

Willfulness is …

Willfulness is SITTING ON YOUR HANDS when action is needed, refusing to make changes that are needed.

Willfulness is GIVING UP.

Willfulness is the OPPOSITE OF “DOING WHAT WORKS,” being effective.

Willfulness is trying to FIX every situation.

Willfulness is REFUSING TO TOLERATE the moment.

Replace WILLFULNESS with WILLINGNESS

Taken from the DBT Self-Help Website.  I believe it was Karl Menninger that wrote that particular bit, but am not certain.  

I love DBT and it has loved me back, for the most part.  DBT has been better to me than I have been to it, though, that’s for sure.  Dearest DBT, I haven’t always been true.  I haven’t always been mindful or effective and Lord knows I haven’t always tried my hardest.

DBT has a saying that I have posted about before…”You are doing the best you can, and you can do better.”  When I first started DBT, I thought that was crap and it drove me crazy when the leaders would say it.  But, it is genuinely believed!  And now, I’m on that wagon, too.  I can see that I am truly doing the best I can, and yet I do try to do a little bit better every day.

It took me forever to start a post today, because everything that flew out of my fingers came across as super-negative, whiny, and selfish.  Now, deep down I know I am not any of those things so I wanted to come up with something a liittle better.  I thought about the past week and what I really wanted to say, and it came to me:  I have been the the epitome of willfulness over the last five days!

(Hence the quote.  You may have thought I would never get around to my point.  Glad you stuck around!)  😀

I had recently posted about DSB’s medical problems and about how I wasn’t letting that stress get to me.  Well, I’ve been letting it get to me lately.  I  have been snappy and mean and, on top of that, defensive about my snappy meanness.  I have been taking out my worry and anger and frustration on the people I love most, the people that least deserve it, and the person that needs my support the most.  I haven’t been fair.  At all.

I am not sitting with my feelings and letting them go.  I am holding on, letting them bother me and fill me with negativity.  I am not tolerating the moment.  I am fighting, fighting, fighting.

I once had a therapist who told me the following…

Depression is like being lost at sea.  If you learn to float, you live. If you struggle, you drown.

There are variations on the saying, but you get the idea.  When we struggle with our emotions, bad things happen.  When we learn to float with, to tolerate them, we get better and good things happen.  

As DBT teaches us, sitting on our hands and doing nothing when change is needed is willfulness.  I have been doing a lot of sitting on my hands.  I need to change my outlook on the struggles that DSB and I share.  Instead of arguing and fighting, I need to love and give comfort.  I need to change my ways and get back to bettering myself instead of being in a “slow suicide” mode, as DSB calls it.  I am living a completely unhealthy lifestyle.  Smoking, bingeing constantly, no exercise, and so on.  I want to live to see at least 90, and at the rate I’m going, that’s not going to happen.  I need to get off my hands and make that change.

I could really go on and on about willfulness.  Let there be a Part II to come!

 

Off-Key, Out of Tune

I have been sick now, in some form or another, since early September.  Now that I’ve been through staph, removal of huge pilonidal cyst, bronchitis twice, my doctor tells me this week that I have pneumonia.  Seriously?

All of this sickness is making me depressed.  It is throwing my world off-kilter and I can’t seem to get it to straighten out.  I am not interested in anything, feel like sleeping all of the time, and am not enjoying being around people.  I am annoyed and irritable.  I can’t see a way out.  My brain is telling me that all of these physical illnessess will never go away.

I thought blogging might help, but my heart isn’t in it.  I just came home from QoB’s and, while I almost always enjoy my time there, it wasn’t doing it for me.  Trying to keep up a conversation took such energy and I just didn’t have it.  I found myself being annoyed with myself that I couldn’t just be happy and enjoy her company.  So I left.

Now I’m at home.  I like being at home.  My dogs are here, I have nice places to sit and relax, it is comforting.  But sometimes I feel lonesome.  At the same time, however, I can’t stand the thought of being around anyone.  It all takes too much effort, and that seems to be effort that I don’t have right now.

Part of me thinks that I am talking myself into being depressed, that this is all my fault.  These feelings are not true and I am giving up and giving in.  Because that is what I do.  I have been trying to do things to ward off these feelings — meditating, sacred self, sitting in front of my sun lamp, staying in a routine.  But I feel like my whole heart isn’t in it.

I keep hearing this voice inside my head, “You’re depressed.  You’re letting yourself go down that road.  You are so lazy.  Why can’t you just be happy?”  That last one…”why can’t you just be happy…” bothers me the most.  I don’t understand why I can’t just be happy.  I am pretty sure that I was enjoying being happy before all of this illness came upon me.  Now everything feels wrong.

What happened to all of that energy, all of those good feelings?  Why didn’t I enjoy it more when I had it and what can I do to get it back?  When will I start feeling less sick all of the time?  Am I still sick or am I just depressed and my mind is telling me I’m sick?

I can’t find anything truly good to say.  I have cases at work that are stressing me out, and I feel like there isn’t anything I can do to make some of these situations better.  There is a lot of in-fighting in my office area and it is becoming just so very clear to me that my supervisor likes to stir the pot.  I am almost dreading going to work every day because I am being faced with these impossible cases and all of the tension and back-stabbing that is going on in my office area.  I just don’t know how to move forward, tell myself that I am doing all I can.  I really feel off my game.

At work, a lot of times I feel like I give and give and give and help and help and help and no one gives a shit.  I guess if, at this age, I am still expecting to be patted on the back and given an “atta girl” that I am out of my damn mind.  It used to be different, though.  At least I thought it did.

I want to be a good person, a better person.  I want to be happy and live my life free.  I want to have the energy that it takes to do these things.  I want to not have to take all of these pills and inhalers and pills and inhalers and pills and still feel sick.

I am annoying myself, so I must end.

When You’re Gone, The Cranberries

When Things End

I do not even know how to start this post, I have been doing it so infrequently.  It doesn’t help that my mind is racing and I am doing my oh.so.very.best to ignore, block, avoid.  Ignore, block, avoid, repeat.  And so on and so on.  It just seems like there has been so much going on, and I haven’t been able to handle it all at once.

Two things can be true:  1) You can have an ended relationship and know it is for the best, while at the same time, 2) not be able to get your shit together, your new routine going, your scattered life to come back to one piece again.  That is how I feel, I think.  I feel like I have been broken into a million pieces and I am trying to put them all together again, and it is too painful/hard/irritating/overwhelming, so I just sit around, still functional, but in pieces.

I don’t think it helped that I went through another rough spot this winter right before Dr. Love and I broke up.  I hadn’t exactly recovered when we did break up, and, while sometimes things seem much brighter, there is this lingering and poisonous fog that hover.  And the mind can play tricks on you.  I am up and down, up and down — life is great/life is shit, I can’t deal/I can do anything, I want to quit smoking/I’ll never quit, feels great to be healthy/feels like home to throw self-control out the window.

I have been doing better about taking my Cymbalta, but nowhere near perfect.  I have this huge mental block around it, and try as I do to go through it, over it, under it, around it, I just keep getting stuck.  Sometimes I have this thought:

If I feel good, I might start doing more, and I might meet someone, and then they will break me in two.

Ok, so it’s not sometimes I have this thought, it’s all the time.  I absolutely do not want another relationship and the thought that someday I might feel up to it again terrifies me.  Yet, I sometime seek out these situations where I might meet someone.

I am lonely/I am terrified

QoB keeps on telling me that I’ve spent a lot of time alone in my life, so she knows I can do it again.  I don’t remember many alone times.  I was thinking about it, and I don’t think I have been without a boyfriend for longer than five months since early in high school.  It’s hard and it’s scary and lonely as hell.  The thought of being with someone though, makes me feel sick to my stomach and I whisper t0 myself over and over again that I don’t need love, and I don’t need kindness.  All I need is myself.

And you know, that’s just not true.  It’s a nice thought, that humans can be totally an island unto themselves, never needing, never seeking.  People can practice their lives that way, but true happiness does not shine through.  There is always a special friendship, caring family, someone that brings light into the life of that person.

I have my people and they know who they are.  Sometimes it is hard for me to reach out, but when I do, I feel relief.  And I continue to reach out to God, and sometimes I feel like He hears me and sees me.  Other times, I feel an oppressive weight upon myself and I feel that there is no hope for any change, so depressed that there are no gifts to be happy for, so agitated that all I can do is curl up in bed and hope I can fall asleep so the world will become silent to me.

I saw Goddess of Mindfulness yesterday.  I have goals for the week, although I am not sure I was able to process this therapy session appropriately because my mind was wrapped so tight.  I have not embraced these goals, but I know that I will try, because I said I would, and because I feel like I must constantly try and pry myself open and let new ideas and thoughts in.  But it hurts, so I am not getting too excited about it.

Sometimes I sit out in my backyard and repeat prayers and loving-kindness meditations, mixing them, and whispering them to myself in some attempt to connect with God, to connect with my own soul, to remember people I love who are no longer here, and try to forgive, forgive, accept, accept.  Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t.  I do this sometimes when I am driving from place to place, as well.  One might think that driving a car down the highway, or the boulevard, or wherever, would really limit one’s ability to connect to anything other than the highway, but I know that I have found myself over and over again, wandering out there on that road.

Dashboard Confessional, Vindicated

You’ll have to just click the link.  Apparently YouTube hates my blog and has decided that, because of me, they must ban embedding.  Either that or I have fallen behind the technology.

ABC 123

Life has been quite the struggle later.  Between crippling anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, negative tapes, and insecurity, it’s been miserable.  I think I had a real wake-up call when I realized I was spending five to six nights per week at QoB’s house, calling Goddess of Mindfulness frequently, and being told to get a grip by my med doc.  Sometimes you don’t realize how bad it is getting until you’re already there.

So, I made a conscious decision to do things to make myself feel better.  I have started taking my Cymbalta regularly.  I am doing my sunlamp every morning.  I have tried to decrease my dependence on QoB and Big Dog by not going over every night, and instead, getting things done around my house.  Staying busy has been the key.

I know that both Dr. Love and QoB say it is ok to just “hang” but there are so many things that I want to do that I haven’t been doing due to the lack of motivation that depression and anxiety brings, that it is feeling good to get caught up.

I have cleaned the top two levels of my house, and it’s just a matter of time before I get the basement finished.  I’ve tackled some small projects that have been bugging me, and have been working at building mastery by cooking.  I have also really been working on mindfulness, especially in regards to my eating habits.  I find that if I pay attention, I am not really hungry during the times when I was usually eating.

It doesn’t take as much as I think it does to feel satisfied, and the integration of some new-found foods has much helped.  I was really in a rut with eating junk food and am now eating a lot of vegetables and some fruit.  I have also been concentrating on eating whole grains, and limiting sugar and salt.  No more empty carbs!

For example, I have been eating a lot of spinach salads, squash, sweet potatoes, brown rice, chicken breast, and the like.  I am making a meatloaf for dinner tonight that isn’t particularly healthy (covered in bacon), but it’s for Dr. Love and he deserves some good comfort food, taking a break from eating work food.  I fully believe that I can be rational about the meatloaf and just eat a normal portion.  YES I CAN!

Sacred self has also been a big part in feeling better.  I took Kizz for a walk last night and am trying to get into that routine.  I bought myself some new shower stuff and am spending time doing things that I enjoy.  Some of the skills mix together, but it never ceases to amaze me how much they work.  I am not keeping a diary card, but maybe I should be.

Back to basics, baby.  Goddess of Mindfulness and the IOP program gave me the greatest gift — my DBT skills — and they are something I can always bring more focus onto when the going gets rough.  It’s just getting around the willfulness that depression and anxiety create.

Keane, Somewhere Only We Know

Losing My Grip

A few weeks has passed since my last post, and I must say, my anxiety has escalated to unreal levels.  To boot, fairly severe depression has come a’calling.  To the point where I am missing work and going in late and I have blown almost every hour in my vacation and sick leave account.  Just not good at all.  So much for a Spring/Summer vacation. 

Being this depressed is really miserable.  Everything is a huge effort and expenditure of energy, from doing simple things like taking a shower and packing my lunch for work, to interacting with anyone other than a select few (and even that takes some doing) to getting ready for work in the morning.  It all becomes overwhelming and too much when really, it’s just simple.little.things.  Unfortunately, it’s those simple little things that become so difficult but are so essential to survival (going to work, duh). 

Like right now, I’m sitting here, barely able to make it through this post.  Drinking coffee and burning a candle, because that’s what I do.  Sitting in front of my sunlamp.  I’ve even taken my Cymbalta this a.m., although sometimes it seems to have no effect. 

I think a lot of this is weather related.  Damn February and snow and cold and no sun.  We had better have a nice long spring/summer/fall to make up for it.   I keep thinking that if I could just go camping, just go sit on my back porch and BBQ, that everything would feel better.  Because right now, everything hurts, physically and mentally.  Right here in this moment, I have chosen to survive it.  And sometimes that’s all you can do.

Gerard Butler Greece, Love You ‘Till the End from the movie PS I Love You

I realize I played this not too long ago, but it’s what I’ve been listening to a lot, so plug your ears if you’re sick of it.  (Did I mention all the underlying hostility I’ve been feeling?)