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ravenI remember, when LJ was still running out of a back room in San Francisco and I had a free account and it would go down for hours just as I'd done my homework for the night and I'd sit and fume that I couldn't pour my fourteen-year-old angst into it.
...I tell this story as evidence of how much things change, really. I have spent the evening not doing my homework; I failed to do contract; then I failed to examine the insanity defence for murder; then my mother phoned and talked at me solidly for an hour; then I failed at offences against the person. I shall shortly give up and go to bed, I think.
Anyway! I am Doing Things for my Mental Health. This gets long, and somewhat self-obsessive, so it shall be duly cut.
-Step one. Stop using hormonal contraception. Well, I have already done this. It occurred to me that it was strange that I have good weeks and bad weeks - not days, not months, definitely weeks. So I stopped taking the pills, lost sixteen pints of blood an hour for a few days, swore a lot, stopped doing both of those things, felt better. Actually, a lot better. On Monday, I was going over my notes on the EU, got to a sheaf of paper on the free movement of goods, and thought, huh, there was a lecture on this, why don't I have any notes from it?
And took entirely too long to remember: ah, yes, I didn't go to that lecture. Because I was suicidally depressed.
I had the horrible thought, then, that oh god, maybe I have been horribly depressed for six months because I have been on hormonal contraception for six months. I don't think this is actually true; I mean, there are very definitely other contributory factors, but I don't think it can have helped. So, no more hormones for me, at least, no more endogenous ones.
-Step two. Think about stuff. My Headshrinky Dude, whom I have to say is a rather excellent person, has been a great help, really. (Last time I was depressed, I also had a counsellor; she was so horrific I ran away after one session, and thus, this guy has been a very pleasant surprise.) His main conclusion, after spending six weeks talking to me, is that I'm fine. Not in the sense that this isn't happening to me, but in the sense that he could talk to me about my tragic childhood and my fucked-up family, but my childhood wasn't tragic and my family aren't more than normally fucked up, and he could teach me coping strategies to help me with my depression, but I have my own coping strategies, and they have worked for me. How do you know? I asked. Because you're here, he said. Because you're having a major depressive episode and you haven't dropped out of school, you haven't checked yourself into A&E, you've got out of bed in the morning most days, you've even submitted yourself to unecessary standardised testing.
That, I said, is only what my mother calls sheer bloody-minded stubbornness.
Right, he said, and invited me to make something of it.
So, the headshrinking has mostly just been about giving me a space to talk. And to give the disease its own space - its own hour in a week - so it bleeds less over the rest of the time. I'm not sure about the boundaries of what I've learned from it, but broadly speaking, I'm probably a Slytherin, and there's nothing really wrong with that.
Step three. Read. In the last week, I have read a Dorothy Sayers novel, Passage (Connie Willis), and I'm halfway through a non-fiction piece, Nickel and Dimed. I just finished A.P. Herbert's Misleading Cases, I want to finish The White Tiger soon, and then I want to nab a piece of silly science fiction off![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shimgray called Escape from Kathmandu.
...I think, a little bit, maybe, possibly, I might like reading again. I never actually stopped reading altogether during my degree, but I remember loving it, always carrying a book around with me, getting through three or four a week, and I lost that, completely, while I was at Oxford. I'll never read that much again, simply because I'll never do my homework in five minutes again, but... maybe, some of it's coming back. (I didn't realise this until last week, when I had been sitting mutely and balefully across from Headshrinky Dude for about twenty minutes and he, in desperation, asked me what the book was that was sticking out of my bag, and I suddenly livened up and explained to him exhaustively the plot of Passage.)
So, I fully plan to go with the flow with this. And, also, no worthy books. Absolutely none. No literature. Nothing before 1900 unless it's Jerome K. Jerome, nothing non-fiction unless it's a jaunty travelogue about hitch-hiking around Ireland with a fridge. I want to read. I want to read happy funny SF and good chick-lit and YA and Star Trek tie-ins. In fact, soon I shall make a post detailing what I like and getting people to rec me stuff, yes.
-Step three. Throw out all my clothes. In case it's not really obvious, I love clothes. I like simple clothes, I like cotton and wool and linen and leather, and things that are simple and unfussy and nice. And while I haven't stopped buying clothes, the last time I actually went through my wardrobe as a cohesive whole was the week before I left home. So, I am going to do this. I am going to give my clothes to my friends, give them to Oxfam and put them on eBay, and I am going to use the proceeds to buy new clothes (probably also off eBay, to be honest) that I like, and that suit me-at-twenty-one rather than me-at-eighteen.
Also? Glitter eyeliner. I have five colours, now, but not purple. I shall get purple.
-Step four. Return to myself. Work at my desk, with some coffee next to me, rather than in bed; go for walks when I get restless; eat fruit continuously if I feel like it. And try not to be an outgrown-skin of myself. I was many things when I was a teenager and many things during my degree, and I still am a lot of those things, but not all. Unfortunately, so many job applications I filled out asked such exhaustive questions about me, my attributes, my passions, that they were captured on paper, frozen. I haven't changed when I ought to have done, or, rather, I haven't let myself change. I love being a graduate. I love being a baby lawyer. I still love being a writer and a feminist and a great big geek. I think I'll leave it as an open question who I am and who I'll be. In the meantime, I'll sit at my desk, drink coffee and read about the law, and know I can be happy to start from there.
-Step five. Remember it's an awful condition, and the treatments are sometimes as bad as the disease itself; remember sleeping the day away happens, and so does not sleeping through the night.
-Step six. Forget my pills. Forget to do work on time. Say, "I can't be bothered," and go out dancing instead. Drink pine wine. Be secretly delighted that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
lunatunes are having a "boybands" week. Eat sweets. Be human.
And, lastly - pick a topic for my baby-dissertation! (It's not a dissertation, they say; it's just... a long research project. Uh-huh. Yeah. Not at all the same thing.) I was telling my father about it this evening, and he said, thoughtfully, "Well, it was to be expected. Baby's first step, baby's first word, baby's first thesis."
...yeah. And now to bed.
...I tell this story as evidence of how much things change, really. I have spent the evening not doing my homework; I failed to do contract; then I failed to examine the insanity defence for murder; then my mother phoned and talked at me solidly for an hour; then I failed at offences against the person. I shall shortly give up and go to bed, I think.
Anyway! I am Doing Things for my Mental Health. This gets long, and somewhat self-obsessive, so it shall be duly cut.
-Step one. Stop using hormonal contraception. Well, I have already done this. It occurred to me that it was strange that I have good weeks and bad weeks - not days, not months, definitely weeks. So I stopped taking the pills, lost sixteen pints of blood an hour for a few days, swore a lot, stopped doing both of those things, felt better. Actually, a lot better. On Monday, I was going over my notes on the EU, got to a sheaf of paper on the free movement of goods, and thought, huh, there was a lecture on this, why don't I have any notes from it?
And took entirely too long to remember: ah, yes, I didn't go to that lecture. Because I was suicidally depressed.
I had the horrible thought, then, that oh god, maybe I have been horribly depressed for six months because I have been on hormonal contraception for six months. I don't think this is actually true; I mean, there are very definitely other contributory factors, but I don't think it can have helped. So, no more hormones for me, at least, no more endogenous ones.
-Step two. Think about stuff. My Headshrinky Dude, whom I have to say is a rather excellent person, has been a great help, really. (Last time I was depressed, I also had a counsellor; she was so horrific I ran away after one session, and thus, this guy has been a very pleasant surprise.) His main conclusion, after spending six weeks talking to me, is that I'm fine. Not in the sense that this isn't happening to me, but in the sense that he could talk to me about my tragic childhood and my fucked-up family, but my childhood wasn't tragic and my family aren't more than normally fucked up, and he could teach me coping strategies to help me with my depression, but I have my own coping strategies, and they have worked for me. How do you know? I asked. Because you're here, he said. Because you're having a major depressive episode and you haven't dropped out of school, you haven't checked yourself into A&E, you've got out of bed in the morning most days, you've even submitted yourself to unecessary standardised testing.
That, I said, is only what my mother calls sheer bloody-minded stubbornness.
Right, he said, and invited me to make something of it.
So, the headshrinking has mostly just been about giving me a space to talk. And to give the disease its own space - its own hour in a week - so it bleeds less over the rest of the time. I'm not sure about the boundaries of what I've learned from it, but broadly speaking, I'm probably a Slytherin, and there's nothing really wrong with that.
Step three. Read. In the last week, I have read a Dorothy Sayers novel, Passage (Connie Willis), and I'm halfway through a non-fiction piece, Nickel and Dimed. I just finished A.P. Herbert's Misleading Cases, I want to finish The White Tiger soon, and then I want to nab a piece of silly science fiction off
shimgray called Escape from Kathmandu. ...I think, a little bit, maybe, possibly, I might like reading again. I never actually stopped reading altogether during my degree, but I remember loving it, always carrying a book around with me, getting through three or four a week, and I lost that, completely, while I was at Oxford. I'll never read that much again, simply because I'll never do my homework in five minutes again, but... maybe, some of it's coming back. (I didn't realise this until last week, when I had been sitting mutely and balefully across from Headshrinky Dude for about twenty minutes and he, in desperation, asked me what the book was that was sticking out of my bag, and I suddenly livened up and explained to him exhaustively the plot of Passage.)
So, I fully plan to go with the flow with this. And, also, no worthy books. Absolutely none. No literature. Nothing before 1900 unless it's Jerome K. Jerome, nothing non-fiction unless it's a jaunty travelogue about hitch-hiking around Ireland with a fridge. I want to read. I want to read happy funny SF and good chick-lit and YA and Star Trek tie-ins. In fact, soon I shall make a post detailing what I like and getting people to rec me stuff, yes.
-Step three. Throw out all my clothes. In case it's not really obvious, I love clothes. I like simple clothes, I like cotton and wool and linen and leather, and things that are simple and unfussy and nice. And while I haven't stopped buying clothes, the last time I actually went through my wardrobe as a cohesive whole was the week before I left home. So, I am going to do this. I am going to give my clothes to my friends, give them to Oxfam and put them on eBay, and I am going to use the proceeds to buy new clothes (probably also off eBay, to be honest) that I like, and that suit me-at-twenty-one rather than me-at-eighteen.
Also? Glitter eyeliner. I have five colours, now, but not purple. I shall get purple.
-Step four. Return to myself. Work at my desk, with some coffee next to me, rather than in bed; go for walks when I get restless; eat fruit continuously if I feel like it. And try not to be an outgrown-skin of myself. I was many things when I was a teenager and many things during my degree, and I still am a lot of those things, but not all. Unfortunately, so many job applications I filled out asked such exhaustive questions about me, my attributes, my passions, that they were captured on paper, frozen. I haven't changed when I ought to have done, or, rather, I haven't let myself change. I love being a graduate. I love being a baby lawyer. I still love being a writer and a feminist and a great big geek. I think I'll leave it as an open question who I am and who I'll be. In the meantime, I'll sit at my desk, drink coffee and read about the law, and know I can be happy to start from there.
-Step five. Remember it's an awful condition, and the treatments are sometimes as bad as the disease itself; remember sleeping the day away happens, and so does not sleeping through the night.
-Step six. Forget my pills. Forget to do work on time. Say, "I can't be bothered," and go out dancing instead. Drink pine wine. Be secretly delighted that
lunatunes are having a "boybands" week. Eat sweets. Be human.And, lastly - pick a topic for my baby-dissertation! (It's not a dissertation, they say; it's just... a long research project. Uh-huh. Yeah. Not at all the same thing.) I was telling my father about it this evening, and he said, thoughtfully, "Well, it was to be expected. Baby's first step, baby's first word, baby's first thesis."
...yeah. And now to bed.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2008-11-19 12:47 am (UTC)Oddly, my experience with hormonal contraceptives is entirely the opposite: suicidal depression for two days a month before going on them, merely apathetic "what's the point?" depression two days a month with contraceptives. Everyone reacts differently.
I understand about scary headshrinky people. My doctors decided that I needed counselling for my chronic insomnia as a teenager and my parents found the Uber Christian Headshrink for me. Oddly, that one didn't help and I have a mortal fear of ever being offered talk therapy again for anything. I have learned to live with the insomnia. And I have coping strategies for my low points when I can't remember quite why I should bother getting up when everything hurts to move.
no subject
on 2008-11-21 11:56 am (UTC)My original headshrinky person was possibly not as scary as yours; the reason I didn't like her was because she thought I was crazy. As in, proper-criminally-insane. It was very disconcerting, although quite funny in retrospect.
no subject
on 2008-11-19 12:58 am (UTC)Also, hugs, we all believe in you and love you and will see you through this.
no subject
on 2008-11-19 01:44 am (UTC)no subject
on 2008-11-19 01:47 am (UTC)no subject
on 2008-11-19 01:49 am (UTC)no subject
on 2008-11-19 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
on 2008-11-21 12:01 pm (UTC)Eyeliner: I tend to like liquid and metallics. There's Urban Decay, which I only ever buy in January sales because it's the only time I can afford it but is very lovely, and I also like Sephora (in green, oddly), because it goes on very cleanly. Also, MAC, which does a really lovely jet black (again, duty-free or eBay is the only way I get it). I have a feeling, though, that I like the things I do because they work on South Asians, so plz to be taking this advice with a pinch of salt.
Rec me books! And see you tonight. xx
no subject
on 2008-11-19 03:05 am (UTC)I adore Passage. I adore it so much. I actually bought it in hardcover back in the days when I had no money of my own and simply didn't do that.
And you probably have hit upon something. Hormonal contraceptive can really fuck people up. (I had floaters in my vision. . . which I believed were fairies. . . and heard them talking to me. They wanted me to come play with them. By jumping off, oh, a three story dorm. Or the bridge over the train tracks. So.)
no subject
on 2008-11-19 05:35 am (UTC)In other news, all the steps sound good, and I will participate in book recs as best I can.
no subject
on 2008-11-21 12:05 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2008-11-19 06:40 am (UTC)All excellent plans.
no subject
on 2008-11-21 12:05 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2008-11-19 07:29 am (UTC)Also, this is predictable, but--I will SO be waiting eagerly for that book rec post. Both to give you suggestions and to steal some for myself!
*loves*
no subject
on 2008-11-21 12:16 pm (UTC)And - hell, yeah. :) I was entirely planning to jump on you for book recs, believe me.
no subject
on 2008-11-19 12:25 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2008-11-21 12:11 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2008-11-19 03:11 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2008-11-21 12:11 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2008-11-20 01:07 pm (UTC)And yes, I remember codes for LJ! My god, we're old.
no subject
on 2008-11-21 12:11 pm (UTC)Codes for LJ! We're ancient and old.
no subject
on 2008-11-20 07:47 pm (UTC)Re: glitter eyeliner - the Body Shop is giving sticks away if you spend £20 on makeup, and La Senza has some for £2...is there a LS in Oxford? I can get some if you tell me colours you lack. xxx
no subject
on 2008-11-21 12:10 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2008-11-22 05:11 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2008-11-22 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2008-11-23 05:16 pm (UTC)