3/14/05 Shower Clarity

EDIT as I compile these for this new blog: This is a very interesting post to look back at. This was a pivotal time for me when I was coping with the basic belief that I was made wrong. I was trying so hard to make sense of everything in my messed up world and to find a way to cope with it. Of course, I still to this day do believe that I was "made wrong," but now I have found a way to untangle some of the mess, to fix it, and to heal enough to live a normal life.

March 14, 2005 Shower Clarity

So it hits me in the shower when it was that this latest depression started. I mean I've been mildly depressed off and on over the past few years, but I think the worst of it here lately, was triggered the night I first realized how deep and multi-faceted my "crazy" was. The night I realized that I had a complex, layered problem with my brain and that it wasn't just a mere inability to order a pizza or speak in public.

The night before we left for festival, September 2004. T and I had a ridiculous fight over making piles of stuff to take and not to take. At the time it was not ridiculous to me though. It was the end of the world. After hashing all that out, I saw for myself for the very first time, the extent of my inability to comprehend basic logic chains and my inability to incorporate change into my brain sometimes. I realized just how messed up the way my brain processes and deals with information really is. I felt defeated and "made wrong". I actually entertained brief moments of suicidal thought. Thinking my kids would be better off without a crazy mother. That was a rough evening. I knew I wouldn't actually go through with anything, but the despair and hopelessness felt so inescapable. I have never felt so joyless, so hopeless, so numb and apathetic to the world as I did that night. I think I've been trying to climb out of the hole that I fell in that night ever since.

In a way that night was good. It opened the door for me to understand exactly what it is I'm dealing with. It led to my discovery of the myriad of thought processes associated with avoidant personality disorder and how closely they resembled my own brain and struggles. And yet somehow it has also propagated a self-defeating message that pops up whenever my mental inabilities present themselves. I see every defeat as evidence of how messed up I am and my inability to change the way I perceive things. That spirals me into self-defeating thought. That breeds depression. It is a never ending cycle of defeat.

I have occasionally since then had brief moments of semi-suicidal thought. Nothing as numb and low as that first night, but nevertheless it has popped up as a fleeting thought from time to time. Thoughts that I am a horrible influence on my children, that I am incapable of functioning as a normal human being. I immediately squelch the thought before it even has a chance to take shape. I KNOW that I would never DO anything, and yet the fact that they pop up in even fleeting moments tells me that I am still unable to cope with the realization I made that first night. I view myself as "made wrong" with a brain that is miswired and incapable of perceiving reality. As hard as I try to overcome, when something happens to remind me that I'm still perceiving things wrong, all those self defeating thoughts rush in and I feel like my mom. Crazy, immature.... I realize now that ruminating on those thoughts must be what is provoking my depression. And yet I still feel powerless to stop.

The basic fact is that I am wired wrong. I know this is something I must deal with for the rest of my life. But at times I just feel so powerless. How can I break the cycle of depression when at its core is my ineffectiveness at overcoming this avoidant personality thing? I hate the feeling I get when I realize that I'm "doing it again". I feel like it is who I am, wired at so deep of a level that I am incapable of change. How does one get around such self-defeating thoughts when one believes them so deeply to be true?

I cope by hiding in the happy moments, trying to escape the crazy that is within. I can be happy, I can enjoy moments of life, but when I exhibit my crazy I'm once again launched downward in that self-defeating spiral. How can I change my reaction to those realization moments?