Depression has set in again. I didn't recognize it for some time, but after a mild emotional break down on Sunday, a lack of apatite all week and a migraine yesterday, the symptoms are now fairly clear. Since I'm currently reading the Harry Potter series (I'm on book 4), I now have an image for depression that works quite well- Dementors. Creatures that look like drowned, half-rotten corpses floating in torn black shrouds who feed on happy emotions and memories.
I was texting a friend just a few moments ago, and he told me that I've lost my spunk. I tried to remember something happy in order to conjure up the emotion necessary to respond to his text, but I couldn't. Every happy memory that started to come into focus blanked out, like someone clicking off the television screen. I thought about the dementors and suddenly realized that I'm depressed.
That made me smile. I've been depressed before, and I know that the worst lie a depressed person can believe, and also the easiest, is that this is how it will be forever. Nothing will change.
But I know better. It's changed before, and it will change again. For me, it will get better. At some point. But even if that Some Point is sixty years away, it will get better.
Now that I've named what is going on, I expect I'll handle it okay. I sat outside for a little bit yesterday, reading a book in the grass. I might just make an effort to do that again, since that is a prescribed remedy for depression. It's so funny to me how quickly I become covered in the smallest, strangest creatures if I sit still long enough. As annoying as their tininess can be on my sensitive skin, they are quite comforting. I didn't know that they existed until our lives intersected in that little patch of grass. I don't know their names, what they eat, how they reproduce or what eats them. But God knows. And He likes them. It is so comforting for me to look at the tiny shape moving across my page and remember how much God knows about me, and how much He likes me. A lot of people look at little moving creatures and either ignore them or squash them. But God sees them. And He sees me. It's wonderful.
I'm going to try to free up my Saturdays and see if I can't get more introvert time for myself. Most of my Saturdays this year have been spent playing DnD, which I will sorely miss, but it requires extroversion. Logan makes a wonderful DM, and the other players are hilarious role players. I'll miss the stories, as well. There's just something special about writing a fantasy story with friends who are so different from one's self....
Currently, all my personal projects are on hold. I reckon that if they were important enough, I'll remember them when my brain starts thinking about things other than work, and if they aren't important enough to remember than I've not wasted resources.
I have a fish! I had to get rid of the nine fish that I had late last year due to my inability to keep their water at a level pH. It made me sad. But now I have a beautiful blue rose fin beta. I may post pictures at some point, but he basically looks like this.
Logan and I are currently sleeping on a pile of blankets. We had to get rid of our mattress because it got so uncomfortable (it was, like, twenty years old when we inherited it after the wedding), and haven't had the money to get a new one. Don't tell Logan, but I really, really like sleeping on a pile of blankets and am avoiding getting a mattress for as long as possible. I've always been enamored with the gypsy/hippie lifestyle and I love having this little bit of it every day. If I could live in a covered wagon drawn by two little Welsh cobs, or a cabin strewn with embroidered pillows and hung all about with brightly colored tapestries, I totally would. Maybe at Some Point I'll live two hundred feet off the ground in a little tree house full of owls.
My studies of the OT law have dropped to a casual level, partly due to the fact that I'm trying to read through the Bible in one year and can't accomplish that if I never read anything outside of the books of law, and partly due to the fact that I rarely read anything serious anymore. My brain is so shot from the overwhelming under-stimulation of my current work level (they say it will get busier, but that doesn't change the bland color of my cubical walls), that it takes me an hour after I get home to get back to a place where I can be curious about anything, but then I only have an hour to eat food and it's time to get ready for bed. (Honestly, the 40 hour work week is murder to the human soul.) Those few hours between getting home from work and going to bed are the reason that most of my projects have dropped to the wayside.....
I think that's enough for now. Love y'all!
