The transparency standard that I've established for this blog seems to keep driving me to "confessions" that I had no intention of making. The list is becoming rather long. Writing hasn't been the clinical, sanitized experience I'd anticipated. It's pretty danged "blood and guts" at times.
Tourettes and OCD bring with it a fairly insidious "feature" known as random depression. For those who don't understand true, "clinical depression", this term is confusing. Everyone gets "the blues" from time-to-time. It has a triggering event, or sequence of events. Pain can be processed and things are better, if not "good as new". Clinical depression is not the blues. Neurochemically driven depression isn't sadness as most experience being sad. Sadness may be a part of it, but not necessarily. In depression, much of life becomes bland. The things I enjoy become tasteless and uninviting. I lose my ability to concentrate, remember things, reason, and make good decisions.
Depression may or may not have a trigger. Without a trigger, there may not be anything identifiable to work through. It's like being in a fog. I can't seem to spot "landmarks" that would show me the path out. With experience I've learned that it will "blow out" just like it "blew in". My job is to stay put, so to speak. I've made it a firm policy to make no decisions when "in the fog". The vast majority of choices can wait a bit. As I've aged, I've gained the ability to "hang in there" until it passes, and realize that my reality hasn't changed, only my perspective.
The really maddening part of it is its lack of trigger or reason. If the fog only rolled in when the "weather" in my life was heading south in my life anyway, it would make far more sense. No such luck. This bout is starting only minutes after I sat to lunch with some of my favorite people. Great things are happening in my life right now. I have ZERO reason to be depressed. Still, the fog rolls in. Nothing like a little chaos to bring out the best in an obsessive!
Over time, I've learned to hide it well. Most of humanity never sees my change in mood. I put on the mask and they buy it. It's as it should be. I want people to see me for who I want to be and strive to be, not who I'm forced to be by a neurochemical malfunction.
I can't see it at the moment, but I know the sun is shining. The fog is an illusion, a lie, a misprint in the story of my life. I know what the text was meant to say.
Tourettes and OCD bring with it a fairly insidious "feature" known as random depression. For those who don't understand true, "clinical depression", this term is confusing. Everyone gets "the blues" from time-to-time. It has a triggering event, or sequence of events. Pain can be processed and things are better, if not "good as new". Clinical depression is not the blues. Neurochemically driven depression isn't sadness as most experience being sad. Sadness may be a part of it, but not necessarily. In depression, much of life becomes bland. The things I enjoy become tasteless and uninviting. I lose my ability to concentrate, remember things, reason, and make good decisions.
Depression may or may not have a trigger. Without a trigger, there may not be anything identifiable to work through. It's like being in a fog. I can't seem to spot "landmarks" that would show me the path out. With experience I've learned that it will "blow out" just like it "blew in". My job is to stay put, so to speak. I've made it a firm policy to make no decisions when "in the fog". The vast majority of choices can wait a bit. As I've aged, I've gained the ability to "hang in there" until it passes, and realize that my reality hasn't changed, only my perspective.
The really maddening part of it is its lack of trigger or reason. If the fog only rolled in when the "weather" in my life was heading south in my life anyway, it would make far more sense. No such luck. This bout is starting only minutes after I sat to lunch with some of my favorite people. Great things are happening in my life right now. I have ZERO reason to be depressed. Still, the fog rolls in. Nothing like a little chaos to bring out the best in an obsessive!
Over time, I've learned to hide it well. Most of humanity never sees my change in mood. I put on the mask and they buy it. It's as it should be. I want people to see me for who I want to be and strive to be, not who I'm forced to be by a neurochemical malfunction.
I can't see it at the moment, but I know the sun is shining. The fog is an illusion, a lie, a misprint in the story of my life. I know what the text was meant to say.
I love the transparency of your writing. I'm praying it passes very quickly! I understand masks. I wear one a lot of days and I'll readily admit it. That comment that we are only as sick as our secrets has seemed to stick with me.
ReplyDelete"Random Depression" has been the story of my life, even without Tourettes and OCD. Like you, learning to hide it has made me convinced I could have had a career in acting.
ReplyDeleteAs always, thank you for your honesty & transparency; it's a good thing!