Thoughts

[raven]

Half two in the morning and I can't sleep. This is doubly frustrating, because a) I wanted to get up early tomorrow and b) I've spent the whole day, the whole week, nauseous and lurching from exhaustion. Yesterday I woke up mid-afternoon, and Claire and Pat were on my bed and looking serious. It's time for professional help, they said. I wasn't inclined to believe them then, but when I got out of bed and we went out - actually, to lurk on Broad Street and giggle because they're filming the Oxford scenes of Northern Lights - I found myself wobbling a lot. And wobbling is easy to class as not normal.

So, I went this morning to see the college nurse, with some reluctance. I'm no longer sure where the baseline is - when tired and grey is just normal-person tired and grey and when it's properly worrying - but I went, and I got asked a lot of questions. The college nurse is a very nice woman, it must be said, whose only failing is having her open hours before eleven in the morning. And yes, she asked me a lot of questions about my habits and my work and my sex life (grooooan), and then she got to the more crucial questions, so to speak, about failure and worthlessness and talked about it not mattering if it's all in my head, etc., it's still not me making it up, and so on and so forth.

The thing is, I do worry that it's not real and if I just pull myself together and stop being an idiot it'll be fine. Because I don't feel rubbish all the time, I really don't; I feel fairly bouncy right now, for example, and I got geekily excited at the thought of them filming His Dark Materials, I had fun the other night at the party and I can still hold other people up as well as I always have. I feel rubbishy on my own, in the rain, when faced with hundreds of pages of reading, and so on. But then I try and remember what I wrote above, about having no baseline any more, and things like how you can survive rubbishness but not like this, not with stabbing pains in your temples and the encroaching feeling that the world is turning grey around you and everything that was joyous and fun just seems token and uninteresting and grey. And that doesn't make sense. I have, for example, entirely stopped writing, and that's not normal. I mean, I have writers' block for months at a time on occasion, but right now I'm not even opening blank documents and sighing at them, I'm not trying. There's even the momentary lurch in the academic writing, where I know, I just know, that I'm missing a trick - that there's some neat twist of expression to say what I want to say, some perfect phrase that will accurately transliterate thoughts into text - but I can't reach for it, I can't even pull out the energy to get it out.

And yet, here I am writing about it. The curse of meta-recursiveness strikes back and all that. I don't know what is wrong with my brain.

So physical symptoms are easier to deal with - stabbing pains in your head are always stabbing pains in your head - and I think the nurse reached the same conclusion. I am baffling her, she says; I ought to be depressed. I have the physical symptoms of significant depression. But, somehow, sheer bloody-mindedness or whatever, I don't have the matching mental state - I have quiet, mild, hard-headed-and-functional greyness rather than the full-blown "feelings of despair, hopelessness and failure."

(What do you say when asked if you feel depressed, sad and worthless? I don't know. I said, "Yes, yes, no", because that's true, but diagnostically what does that mean? You're surviving one essay a week but not two? Most of the time you get out of bed at twelve rather than three? You listen to lots of Sigur Rós but haven't yet progressed to the Velvet Underground? Or else you're just sick of being addressed in terms of synonymous adjectives in triplicate?)

Er, okay, time to shut up. The final option is that I have some sort of viral scourge that has happened to coincide with a mental low point, or anaemia with a similar sense of bad timing, and they took blood to test for these possibilities. I think I'd much prefer this option. But that said, mild depression is all very well. This has been a happy term. I know this. And to be honest, eighth week being over will make a lot of difference and this is already Tuesday of seventh.

I think I'm going to bed. Sleep is always good.

Comments

[darksideofstorm.livejournal.com]

You know, I'm reading this at... *checks* 3:55am with a similar inability to sleep and all I can think about is printing out your post, taking it to my uni clinic, and going 'There! That's what I was trying to say!'

And I'm trying to think of something to add but... urg. *flops*

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

(What do you say when asked if you feel depressed, sad and worthless? I don't know. I said, "Yes, yes, no", because that's true, but diagnostically what does that mean? You're surviving one essay a week but not two? Most of the time you get out of bed at twelve rather than three? You listen to lots of Sigur Rós but haven't yet progressed to the Velvet Underground? Or else you're just sick of being addressed in terms of synonymous adjectives in triplicate?)

I just love this entire paragraph, because it is witty (haha, haven't yet progressed to the Velvet Underground), but also TRUE. Where is the dividing line? No one has ever satisfactorily explained it to me!

Also, I am kind of impressed by your ability to distinguish, in the moment, among those three adjectives. Because there is a difference; and I'm glad to hear that however gray you feel about things in general, you're not letting it affect too much how you feel about yourself. That's good.

If you ever need to talk, you know where to find me. Seriously. *loves*

[seillean.livejournal.com]

Your situation sounds very like what I experienced, which was (mis)diagnosed/guesstimated as "atypical depression" and/or SAD and which ultimately proved to be a significant thyroid deficiency. You may wish to ask if this is a possibility in your case. Best of luck!

p.s. love your fics, followed a link here since I wanted to see who was behind them!

[seillean.livejournal.com]

Crap, that should have been up a level to loneraven instead of looking like it was in reply to the previous comment - y'all knew what I meant! ;-)

[amchau.livejournal.com]

Oh, my dear, what will we do with you? {{hugs}} I'm glad you went to the nurse; hopefully, the blood test will show something up, and they'll be able to treat you. Or even better, the dmn thing could go away on its own.

I am amused by the idea that tracking lj's 'curent music' option could be a diagonostic tool.

{{more hugs}} If you want to talk-- anytime-- you know how to call me.

[pinkishmew.livejournal.com]

Um, yeah. [hugs] Mostly I wonder if I'm making it all up in my head. Then again, isn't that where all problems live?

[cedara]

*pours you a cuppa Earl Grey tea*

*hugs*

[tau_sigma]

*hugs* I don't think I can say anything that will help, but I'm thinking of you, and I hope you'll be ok. It is entirely legitimate to feel however you feel, and there is a point up to which thinking positively and pulling yourself together can help and then there are times when it can't, and it is hard to tell the difference sometimes.

Sleep is always good, and I wish you much joy in it. :)

Also, I love your icon. *g*

[the-acrobat.livejournal.com]

*hugs*
I don't have anything helpful to say that hasn't been said, but here are a few things:
If you were here, I would bake you a pie.
I love that your friends appear on your bed with advice.
Bloody-mindedness can get you extremely far, when it comes to the greys. That you are perplexing the doctor could be a good thing.
that there's some neat twist of expression to say what I want to say, some perfect phrase that will accurately transliterate thoughts into text. THAT is perfect. That you strive for that makes me love you even more fiercely than I already do.
... I listen to the Velvet Underground quite a bit... Should I be seeking professional help?
Last thing: I tossed a package in the mail for you. It contains a lot of irony, so if you're not feeling up to it, you may not want to do anything other than read the card. It's meant to be funny, but I'm not convinced I succeeded. ;)

[ressie-noldo.livejournal.com]

*tea and sympathy* I am thoroughly useless at thinking of helpful and nice things to say, but I'm trying. Quite hard. (Two patently useless observations, though: Filming for Northern Lights sounds awesome, lucky you; also, if listening to the Velvet Underground is a sign of abject depression, I'm truly in trouble. Eep.)


Sleep is good!

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

HUGS

Hope you slept well.