January 27, 2011

• Strange changes

  So, now that I've been running around and telling the few people in my life that it's over, I may as well say it here too:  The anxiety and depression are both very clearly, very much a part of the past.  It's like waiting around all this time were actually a plan dictated by a professional.  Everything that was wrong in my head has evaporated, and my perspective is back to a somewhat neutral balance.  When I look back on the times I was either really depressed or noticably manic, it's almost frightening how skewed things were from reality.  The depression tells you that everything is ultimately doomed, thus meaningless, and therefore any effort at change is futile and deluded.  The mania, just as convincingly, paints every imaginable thing as patently possible; everything is good, and so every idea is a good idea.  Either way, go too far with things and unpleasantness is unavoidable.  For the rest of my life, every time I feel inspired, a small voice in the back of my head will be muttering that it could be mania.  And for the other part of the rest of my life, I'll have to be somewhat consciously on guard against allowing myself to wallow in negative thinking.  But it's managable and it's going to be fine.  My circumstances haven't changed to match yet, but they're about to.  Life will be continuing shortly.

  For this last depression, every rare time I stepped out of the house to meet with a friend or do some random thing in the world, I carried around my trusty little point-and-shoot digital camera.  It was always there, cozy in its little case, snug in a corner of my backpack, but it acted more as a talisman than a camera.  And I kept my guitar close by my bed here, but it was also always in its case.  I can be sure the darkness has receded whenever these things come out and resume their intended functions.

  I had a meal last week with a good friend.  The experience was a revelation.  It wasn't anything fancy, but it was so well executed and served, down to the wine and dessert, that I was flooded with appreciation and gratitude the entire time.  It didn't give me back these wasted years and it didn't erase any hard memories, but it was such a great meal that it seriously would have made things easier if somehow, someone had been able to convince me that it was eventually coming.  Yeah, it was really that good.  And the other little enjoyable moments in life with family and friends and books, they've seemed more pronounced and more frequent.  The future as a concept seems kinder and also worth preparing for.

  I'm going to be doing any future writing on a blogspot account from here on out.  I don't know how many people even read me here anymore, and the place just feels like I'm some old guy hanging out at the mall, like haunting the food court and lurking in the arcade.  Do they even have arcades anymore?  So, to save a bunch of people getting some impersonal mass-mailing, if you want to read what I write on blogspot, just message me here on xanga. 

  But this isn't exactly goodbye, at least, not yet.  I'll still be checking in to read a few people I still want to read.  Maybe I'll be dropping comments here and there.  And it's not like there's some rule that says I can only post at one place at a time.  But it'll probably be mostly over there.  I don't even know that I'll be writing that regularly over there either.  We'll see.

  • 1:04 am
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