icebluenothing

Six months ago:

My health and energy levels almost completely collapse. I had been spending most of my days off in bed because I couldn't make myself care about anything long enough to stay awake for it. The answer finally turns out to be buproprion, an atypical antidepressant. After spending a couple of weeks as a batshit-insane, impatient, hyper-lucid speed freak, my neurochemistry levels off and settles down to a perfectly functional level.

___________
Three months ago, almost to the day:

I quit my job. This is kind of a big deal; I've been working there off and on (but mostly on) for about four years now. (I don't really want to go into my reasons for leaving, but you can ask me privately off-line, if you like.)

I'm sure I'll be able to find another job easily enough, and in I do manage to keep myself focussed and actively looking better than I have in the past, but it's still fairly spotty. Bursts of frenetic activity interspersed with periods of apathy and despair, and occasional stretches of being "almost sure" I'm going to get some particular job, and therefore not really looking for any others.

I keep busy. I go on several interviews, most of them with recruiters rather than directly with companies. I work on a ton of websites. Aware that what I laughably call my "savings" won't last forever, I start building steampunk toy gun mods, with the intention of selling them on eBay. They look great, but I entirely fail to follow through with this.

___________
Two-and-a-half months ago:

Thanks to wendolen (I owe you dinner for this), I land a one-shot paying gig -- building a demo version of a hush-hush new project from the guys who launched Manifesto Games. Knowing that I'm at least doing something that will eventually generate income isn't quite as nice as, you know, actually having money, but it does help to keep my spirits up.

___________
Two months ago:

Months of unpaid electricity bills catch up to me, and the power to SIXBOX gets shut off. Aside from a few scattered nights spent at home in my very dark condo, I practically live with Ahna and Lars from that point on.

___________
Two weeks ago:

I run out of money completely. I survive by selling off some books and some CDs, scrounging together every tiny bit of spare change I have, and eating mostly ramen and peanut butter sandwiches. (In fact, I've been eating a lot less in general for the past couple of months, and it's starting to show -- I've lost something like twenty pounds. Poverty apparently agrees with me.)

Friends start asking me, couldn't you ask your mother for money? Yeah, I'm sure I could. That's not really the point. I'm not going to be able to rely on her to rescue me forever; I have to teach myself that actions have consequences.

I start relying on Ahna using her credit cards -- since I don't have any -- to pay off the bills I can't ignore, like the phone and car insurance, with the promise that I will pay her back as soon as the check from Manifesto Games arrives. Ahna continues to be patient and loving and generally entirely awesome.

___________
Last week:

I have my second interview with a company called CourtTrax. They have a web service that provides real-time searches of court records, which sounds to me like a good match with my experience. Like the first interview, it goes extremely well.

___________
The very next day:

They offer me the job. I accept. Go take a long, last look at their website -- completely redesigning it will be one of my first tasks. I'll be making three-and-a-half times the amount I was making at Blue Utopia. I'll have full coverage -- medical, dental and vision.

___________
Four days ago:

I wrap things up with the Manifesto Games project and send them an invoice.

___________
Tomorrow:

My first day at CourtTrax.

I will have everything I need for my life to begin again.

I'm not sure what day it is.

The last time I wrote in this journal, I wrote about the overabundant amount of caffeine I'd had that day, and then I wandered off to bed at 4:00am.

Then a miracle happened:

I slept through the night.

I don't remember the last time that ever happened. Usually I wake up at least once during the night, to go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, whatever. More often, it's two or three times.

Let's pause for a moment, you and I, and consider what ramifications that little fact must have for my typical energy levels and general state of health.

So. Yeah. I wondered what factor, or combination of factors, had led to this little miracle; had the amount of caffeine I'd had stimulated me enough that the resulting crash dropped me into a deep sleep? Had I simply stayed up late enough to exhaust myself? I'd shut the cat out of the bedroom that night, which was unusual -- I'm not aware of the cat waking me, most nights, but does his wandering presence usually prevent me from reaching a deep state of sleep? And so on. I want to crack this riddle so I can repeat this simple feat reliably.

And then after that single small victory, I've had nothing but failure.

I know I've written here before about the form my depression seems to take these days -- that when I'm depressed or anxious, I just want to lie down and sleep. Well, I was at retcon and treebyleaf's apartment, hanging out with friends, and I was feeling depressed and anxious, and I had a headache, whine whine etc., so I decided I should just go home -- and I barely managed to keep my eyes open on the drive home. I got here and just crawled right into bed, even though it wasn't quite 8:00pm.

My phone rang a little after 9:00pm. It was wendolen, or so caller-ID tells me; I didn't wake up in time to answer it. But it was enough to wake me, which was a mixed blessing.

I hate sleep. Seriously. I painfully and powerfully resent the fact that I'm going to spend a third or more of my entire life unconscious, and I especially resent this strange overpowering exhaustion that depression brings. So since I was awake again, I decided I didn't want to waste another minute in bed. I got up and called treebyleaf and asked if I could come back over -- and if she'd make me some coffee.

I need to come to terms with the fact that I seem to need coffee to survive. No joke. I keep discovering this fact, and then forgetting it. When I'm working, when I'm in an office environment with free coffee constantly available, I'm fine. I'm not depressed, I'm not exhausted, I don't get withdrawal headaches. But when I'm not working, and I have to try to remember to make my own coffee, and I don't, well ....

So I went back and had most of a pot of coffee and my headache went away and I was happy and cheerful and all was well. I hung out with people and enjoyed myself.

And then I came home and I couldn't get to sleep. I gave up trying, got back out of bed, and played around with custom styles on LiveJournal. Until 8:00am.

I went to bed and got three or four hours of sleep; got up, got on the computer, went back to bed and slept for another hour or so. Got up again, got on the computer again, went back to bed and slept for another hour or so again. Trying to get the sleep I need in piecemeal scraps throughout the day. Trying to nest, trying to make the bed into something comfortable and perfect; I have my pillows, my herbal eye-pillow, my body pillow, all my usual blankets and most of the guest blankets piled up soft and warm around me and -- Nothing. Works.

treebyleaf called -- I think I was awake at that point -- and we had a series of weird and fragile conversations that ended up with the three of us going out to dinner. Dinner was nice.

I came home, went to bed. The phone rang at about 11:30pm. I got up, checked voicemail -- wendolen again, of course, no one else calls me that late -- and got a drink of water, resisted the urge to get on the computer, crawled back into bed.

The phone rang again about 12:30am.

This time I managed to get to it to answer it. I don't think I was very coherent. It was wendolen again. She apologized for waking me and then asked, somewhat petulantly, if she needed to just let me go back to sleep.

I got off the phone, and went back to bed, and sleep didn't come, and now I'm here. I logged on mainly to write this, but partly because I was curious to know if I'd have whiny, self-pitying e-mail from wendolen, or if there would just be whiny, self-pitying LiveJournal posts. (Both, it turns out.)

Now here I am at the computer again, and God knows when I'll be able to get back to sleep or for how long. I've had a little alcohol; maybe that will help.

This feels like a nightmare. I wish it was. Then, at least, I'd be getting some sleep.

Spent the past two days alternating states of stumbling zombie functionality with bouts of curling up in a little screaming sobbing ball.

I'm ashamed of the fact that I never imagined that losing her could hurt this much.

Last night I ended up at retcon and treebyleaf's place, watching a movie that took my mind off it all for a little while, but my mood collapsed after that, when I realized -- here I was, movie night with Riff and tree, my life back to normal. Like it all been just a dream. Like none of it had ever happened. None of it mattered; it had all been for nothing.

I left before I could start crying again.

Drove around, aimlessly at first. I like driving. It gives me the illusion of control for a little while.

Found myself downtown, and suddenly had a goal -- I wanted to see if the great big stupid star that Bon Marche puts up every Christmas was up, yet. It was. It was absurdly comforting. That star has returned every year as far back as I can remember, lighting even the dim memories of my childhood. I went looking for a sign, last night, and found it, shining down at me, a sign that my life would continue.

Woke up this morning bathed in sunlight -- tree had opened my curtains when she was here. I found myself feeling strangely happy, almost enthusiastic about getting up, filled with thoughts about what I would do with the day.

I haven't done anything, yet.

Maybe the crippling depression of the past two days is over, at least for now. It looks like I'm back to my usual depression. Gosh, that's great.

I'm going to go out driving again, now, I think. And come home and, gods willing, work on my novel.

Finally received my check from Design Works Interiors for the website I built for them, so I figured I had the financial wherewithal to go out and buy new tires for the Annabel Lee today. Went to deposit the check and found that the bank was already closed. Well, not a problem -- I should have enough money to buy tires with, and I can deposit the check on Monday.

Went and bought the tires. Expensive things, tires. But I can actually feel the road under the truck, now, and I no longer feel like I'm in imminent danger of sudden flaming death each time I go out, so, yeah, money well spent.

Wasted the entire evening downloading and installing half-a-dozen different MP3-ripping programs, none of which work. Feel tired and frustrated. Decide I need to get out of the house for a while before I can do any writing. End up deciding what the hell, I may as well go to the Mercury.

Drive to Capitol Hill. Spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out how to drive to a bank I can easily get to when on foot. Go to pull out a little cash for admission to the Mercury, maybe an XTZ Tea. Insufficient funds. Wha -- ? Hmm, my account balance is negative. Looks like I didn't have quite as much money in my account as I thought I did when I bought the tires. Briefly entertain the fantasy of standing outside the Mercury until someone who loves me enough to pay to get me in happens to come along. Go home.

On the way home, keep thinking of ways to cheer myself up that would cost money. I could stop and get ice cream -- oh, wait, no, I can't. I could stop and get some cloves -- oh, wait, no, I can't.

Arrive at home in black mood. Caller ID tells me wendolen called minutes before I arrive. I'm frustrated that I missed her.

Listen to voice mail.

She'd calling to remind me that tonight is the Leonid meteor storm, and that despite my pessimistic predictions, the sky is clear.

Tonight, the earth passes through the dust ring of Tempel-Tuttle, a comet that orbits the earth every 33 years. The Leonids are usually no big deal, but tonight we're supposed to be passing through debris left by the comet during close approaches in 1733 and 1866, so there's the chance of seeing hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of meteors per hour.

Around 1:00 is the best time to see them, wendolen tells me. I should look to the east.

I may not see anything. No way of telling. But I'm going to try, and it won't cost me anything. And she was thinking of me.

Tonight might not be so bad after all.

Spent today sick and strange and estranged, conversation with wendolen not working, kissing her goodbye and getting out of her car and taking a bus home when I needed to go home and rest and there was no time, her errands needing to take her away and get things done. Felt way too strange and final to go separate ways like that. Don't know, right now, if she'll ever want to talk to me again. Maybe that's an overreaction and maybe it isn't. I know I can live without her and I don't want to find out.

Home, then, on a bus I don't ride any more and have grown to hate. Home and staring at the screen and doing nothing and she calls, asks if she can come over when she's done with her errands and I tell her No. I don't feel like being company to her or anyone. I'm afraid as I say it that telling her no this once will be the end of all of it, card house tumbling down. But I don't have any room to compromise any more and I compromise myself too much anyway all the time, give away too much of my time and energy and light.

I go to bed. It's about 6:30 in the evening. Set my alarm for 9:30 so there will still be some day left, so I can get up and write.

Wake up in disorientdarkness, groggy and looking around at the room I can't see. Feel like I've slept for hours, like maybe it's morning, early in the morning before the sun and the day is gone and why didn't the alarm go off? God, how did I waste another day? and I manage to sit up, swimming up through all the fog and night sweat heat and look at the clock at it's 9:24, something inside me has kept track of the time and slapped me awake.

Up.

Stare at the computer and do more nothing.

Grab myself a bottle from the refrigerator that I think is ginger ale and sit back down with it at the computer. First swallow is acid and wrong, something rotted -- I look at the bottle and I've grabbed the wrong thing, this is hard apple cider. It's the wrong thing for me to drink and I drink it all the same, not wanting it to go to waste.

Finally do a little writing. A little. I'm tired and sick and the cider has affected me more than I thought, I keep hitting the wrong keys. I watch the letters appear on the screen, staring in disbelief at their ragged order, this mutiny, among these twenty-six soldiers I thought were mine by right of blood. Not being able to type feels like not being able to breathe.

I send wendolen mail, literally begging her to call me. She hasn't. Either I've missed her and she's gone to bed, or -- I don't want to think about Or.

I write something else. This goes a little better, my soldiers straggling into a reluctant line for my review. Maybe when I get back to The Work it will go a little better, flow a little more smoothly. Maybe.

I feel so desperately alone right now. I'm slowly alienating wendolen and treebyleaf is still so unthinkably far away. I want to go out to the club but there's no way I'd make it there and back alive. I want a cigarette, I want coffee, I want -- something. I just Want. Some kind of icecream sex communion Hollywood sangreal I can just take inside me and finally finally finally fill myself up.

I'm alone right now. But I'm not. Because it isn't now, as I'm writing this, and you know that -- because it's now, as you're reading it, and these words, this telepathy, it can get me outside of my head right now and into yours and I don't have the slightest idea who you are and I never know who you are when I do this like making love in the dark and I don't care, I never care when I reach out and do this, because you're always here, my reader, my reason, I have to believe in you like some men have to believe in God and as these last few words touch you like kisses at your neck I want you to know (I love you I have always always loved you)

Got confirmation from Paige last night -- I'm on for the 31st. So I print up some flyers this morning.

Computer was not cooperating. I thought retcon had fixed this problem for me, but it's back. The printer's memory gets full and it will only print part of the page. So I print out my flyers a little bit at a time and assemble it all with scissors and tape. Phear my mad old-skool manual layout skillz. The subsequent trip to Kinko's took, of course, more effort, more time, and more money than I anticipated.

Headed to Capitol Hill. Realized too late that maybe there was a reason why the impulse to grab my good walking shoes instead of my pretty, useless boots flittered briefly through my mind before being crushed underfoot.

Ran into Roger, wendolen's ex-husband, outside of Aurafice. We seem to actually be on slightly friendly speaking terms, now, which seems like a little miracle to me. I'm happy about this; I never had any reason to dislike Roger, and never saw that he had any cause to dislike me (other than the fact that I was dating wendolen). He sounded enthusiastic about the reading, and sounded like he might come. That'd be neat.

Paige wasn't at Aurafice when I was there, but I dropped off some flyers anyway, and headed off to canvass the rest of Capitol Hill. Did the usual routine of stopping in at record and book stores, anywhere that might have a flyer rack.

Stopped in at Blood and Bone Studios and left some flyers with deuce_4_life, who seemed quite concerned about me. (I guess my recent LiveJournal entries have been kind of downbeat.) I reassured him that all was relatively well. Deuce is, despite all evidence to the contrary, one of the Good People. When I finally call my dark ancient masters down from between the stars to raze this planet and rebuild it to my infernal designs, I'm gonna have to have them build a few temples to Deuce.

I left Capitol Hill feeling accomplished, but also tired, sore, old, worried about money, and generally melancholy. I wanted to go to the U District and leave more flyers there, but I just wasn't up to it. Besides, I wasn't sure what time it was, and I was concerned about missing Enterprise at Riff and treebyleaf's place.

Enterprise cheered me up quite a bit. The show continues to exceed my hopes and expectations. I taped it for wendolen, who had to work.

I decided to drop by her work afterward with the tape. They were closed, of course, but the building was open, and I stood waiting by the -- metal screen that drops down, over the entrance, when they close. (What do you call those things?) I waited until I saw her go by inside, got her attention, and called her over.

It turns out that the gaps between the bars in the screen are just big enough to pass a videotape through. It's little things like that, simple little ways that life works out, that keep me smiling.

I met Courtney once, briefly. She was wendolen's cousin, and I met her when we went to visit wendolen's grandfather when he was sick and dying. I don't believe we exchanged any words beyond "hello" and now we never will. I attended her funeral on Saturday, the 6th of October. She was twenty years old.

I'm not clear on just what killed her. I believe there were complications with her pregnancy. I know she needed a heart transplant. I know she spent months in therapy, months hooked to machines, months slowly giving up.

Oh, that's right -- I'm not supposed to talk about that part, am I?

( Read more... )

It can do that -- turn on a dime.

I've been lying in bed, finally taking the time to start reading American Gods. I'm only on page 21 so far and it's already made me weep out loud twice. Maybe I'm easy, but still, I think that's a sign of good writing.

So I'm enjoying a good book and listening to the radio and U2's Beautiful Day comes on, and I put the book down and close my eyes and listen and smile.

U2 is and always will be "wendolen's band," to me. She's the one who made me listen to them and appreciate them and she took me to their last concert in Seattle, so hearing U2 always makes me think of her.

I'll see her tonight. She's coming here after work, so we can watch the second of the two movies we rented last night. We rented Snatch and Shaft and giggled like schoolchildren over that particular pairing.

I've got a good book to read, and I found things in the kitchen to make an excellent dinner of for her, and despite all the petty annoyances of the afternoon, maybe it is a beautiful day after all.

What a lovely evening. wendolen took me to Charlie's on Broadway and bought me a steak. Afterward, she took me to Tubs so we could soak out some of the tensions of the past week. She told me about the financial juggling she was doing to feel like she could afford all this, and it seemed pretty fiscally irresponsible to me, but, I had to admit, no worse than the kind of monetary decisions I tend to make. I also had to admit that she deserved to have a nice, relaxing evening after the awful night she'd had the night before at work. So I tried not to feel too horribly guilty about it.

Oddly, I didn't enjoy being in the water this time as much as I have when I've been there before; and I enjoyed being in the sauna a lot more than I have when I've been there before. My tastes seem to change when I'm not looking.

Well, I didn't go to bed at 7:30 last night. Damn near, though. Instead, wendolen took me out for dinner, again, and I was bright enough to order coffee. It didn't make my headache go away, but it lifted my Weltschmerz.

Then we came back to my place and I finally showed her The Frighteners, one of my favorite movies and one I knew she'd love. She did. We didn't get to bed until 1:30 AM. Strangely, it feels like a victory. Continuing to fuck up my sleep schedule seems preferable to giving in to the desire to just sleep my way through sadness.

That does seem to be the form my depression takes, lately -- whenever I get really depressed about something, I immediately want to go lie down and sleep, no matter what time of day it is. It's kind of frightening, really.

Anyway. On another note -- I think I want to see if Third Place Books is hiring. I'm sick to death of the tech industry, and I've wanted to work in a bookstore since I was little. I'd be making a hell of a lot less money than I'm used to, but that would be okay, I think. I really like Third Place Books, and it's very, very close to the fabric store where both wendolen and treebyleaf work. It's something to think about.