Tag Archives: despair

The Amanda Show, Episode 1

27 Tuesday Oct 2015

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A few months ago, in the middle of what I perceived as a traumatic event (a relationship breaking up, I thought because the other party wanted it to) someone made this statement to me:

“I love you, but you have to remember, it’s not always The Amanda Show.”

The person who said that does *not* love me–she knows me a little, and largely disapproves of my living a life that actually looks a bit similar to hers, but LESS self-centred–but more than that, she doesn’t even know me enough to understand how those words would hit me.

End of 2011, I went through a bad patch. By which I mean, I was past the point of wondering if I should kill myself, and planning it out as carefully as I could. In the end, a few things stopped me (as they always do, for people who genuinely want their pain to stop but don’t manage to do it): 1, I was the primary carer for my very young children, at the time, and although I was *pretty* sure they’d be better off without me anyway, I still held out a little hope that that was just my depression talking; 2, even if I *did* think they’d be better off without me, I didn’t want them to find me (I didn’t think THAT would do their little psyches any good–better for me to just disappear, rather than them finding Mommy unresponsive in a pool of blood); and 3, I wasn’t sure whether I needed to take them with me.

I know how that sounds, obviously. It’s the ugliest thought in the world, but… I mean, they were so little and helpless, and I was clearly their favourite person out of all the other people in their lives, though I couldn’t see why… so yeah, I was struggling with the, “Well it’s wrong to kill them, but they’re SO young to be without their mother, and I’m not sure how much longer I can stick around….?” –and then of course, I started taking some medication (just a basic anti-depressant and an anti-anxiety med) and within a month, less I think, I was looking back at that and thinking, “Oh Jesus CHRIST what was wrong with me, how could I have even…?????”

Fast forward a couple of years, and I’m trying to make up for lost time. On my good days, I take the kids out (sometimes spending more money than I have, further racking up debt I can just about afford to pay off in another 30 years, no I’m not exaggerating there) and we do as much as we can, before I just can’t do any more.

When I’m with my friends, it’s much the same; I will pick up the bar tab, if I can, and cover someone’s meal, if I can, and I will get my partner to give lifts and lend out my sofa and spare room and do whatever is possible, to get as many of us as possible, all in the same place, having a good time.

And for all of it, I am the undisputed *queen* of the camera phone. This year alone, I managed to fill 4 separate folders (kept on my desktop, sloppy I know) all with at least 200 pictures in them, of us all just out having normal friendship days. That’s not counting the folders full of pics of the kids; although there are probably less of those, since I’m happier to push adults to let me take pics, than I am to push my (still semi-non-verbal, autistic) children. In a number of the photos, I am front and centre, grinning a pretty unattractively toothy grin, make-up on, pushed into a good bra and wearing colours that suit me and doing everything I can, to make it look like, on that day, I was happy and I had a good time and there were people around me that love me.

Is that what’s meant by “The Amanda Show”? My admittedly unending need for people to show me signs of affection, and, where possible, to have it documented? “On this day in 2015, from approximately 21:30 to midnight, Amanda was in a pub surrounded by people she knows, who are all smiling and laughing and some are even posing for selfies with her, and even though she’s at the edge of the group and struggles to talk to more than 1-2 people at a time and she’s so drunk she’d have trouble standing if she closed her eyes, hey, she looks happy” (and even though I know that I was probably a little too drunk–I *am* drunk, or I’m not laughing and smiling, in a large group–I still feel a little better, looking at a photo like that)… is that what they mean?

Is it as simple as the fact that if I’m sleeping with someone and they suggest I sleep with someone else, I usually do it? Is that what they mean by “The Amanda Show”? But… I mean… I’m openly polyamorous, so why would that surprise anyone…? And actually, the person who made the comment has had A LOT more dick than I have, and you know what? I think that’s great, more power to them. But unfairness gets to me. I genuinely don’t understand why it’s okay for one person to have multiple lovers but not another–how can someone accuse me of being a narcissist for engaging in behaviour that they themselves engage in?

Also. I am a person who has to be drunk (are you seeing a theme here…) to get up and sing karaoke with a friend (I have literally never sung on my own, in front of people, since reaching adulthood) and this is a person who made their living on stage, for a while (not on a proper stage, I mean they did a sort of entertainer-at-Butlins style job, but even so). I mean. That’s an ACTUAL show. This person left their child with grandparents to travel around singing onstage when the kid was 14 or so–I’m currently suffering the tortures of the damned being away from my kids 3 days a week, to try to get a university degree, to eventually make my kids’ lives better–and I’m the one who’s obsessed with my own personal show?

I just don’t get it, I don’t understand. I mean, I get that the person who said it is unwell (seriously unwell, think of a bunch of life-threatening illnesses and it’s one of those) and may well have been high when making the statement (morphine is not the friend of cognition) and maybe it just sounded glib and amusing in the moment, because I *was* fairly upset over a romance gone wrong (and I have a long-term partner, and it was not that relationship that was going wrong, and polyamory is not widely accepted, evidently, even by people who practice it themselves….).

But for me. For someone who spends every day feeling useless, ill-equipped to deal with life, for someone who’s grabbing onto as many lifelines as she can (because *I* have a life-threatening illness too, it’s just that no one believes depressed people are in any real danger until they actually kill themselves) to be told that, actually, she’s taking up too much space and other people’s time and energy… I mean…

Is it *not* always the Amanda Show–in the same way that your show is the Whatever-Your-Name-Is Show, and everyone is the star of their own show, etc etc–just, how am I supposed to take that? “You have to remember, it’s not always The Amanda Show.”

What does that even mean? It means… stop talking about myself? Stop asking for help with my problems? Stop taking multiple lovers? (I was with 2 men at the time, not a hundred, not that it even matters; but if you’re stuck off uni for a year due to a registration cock-up and both the guys work full-time and your kids go to school full-time and EVERYONE is getting on with their lives except you, for the moment, it’s not inconceivable that you can give a reasonable amount of love and attention to 2 other people.)

I don’t know how it was meant, but I know how I took it. I took it as someone telling me that my entire life (aka The Amanda Show) had run for too long, and should just be taken off the air.

Really Not Quick Description of Depression–Part 1

28 Wednesday May 2014

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I’m going to try to describe depression, now. ‘Depressed’ is a word that gets bandied around a lot, and although it’s a valid title for a lot of things, there’s a huge difference between what some shrinks call “reactive depression” and “clinical depression”. I used to have the one (and it was treatable, even curable, with more social contact and eating better and getting more rest and exercising and developing coping mechanisms). Now I have the other (and it’s treatable with medication, but never curable, and eventually the medication goes too far and puts me right back into the place I started out). Hence the need for an explanation… so here goes.

Life, with all its activities and places to go and things to do, is like a sunny backyard patio. There are some flowers around, in pots, with maybe the odd honeybee pollinating them, and a few butterflies fluttering about, and the day is mild and bright and although nothing’s particularly right or wrong, everything’s pretty peaceful. And even if the sky gets a little dark, or some rain falls, or the butterflies go away for a bit, or you maybe get stung by a bee, it’s okay, because, well, it just is. Into each life a little rain must fall, and all that jazz. And you’re a reasonably mature individual, you take some time looking after your own mental health, and so you understand that just because you’re not happy in the moment, that’s alright, that’s normal, that’s the way life is, and after all, how could you appreciate the good without the bad? (You obviously speak to yourself in clichés, just like me.) And everything is more or less fine.

One day, though. One day, you wake up and walk outside to your patio, and there’s just… a feeling that you can’t place. A feeling like someone’s watching you; here, in your safe, private backyard, where no one should be able to get in, there’s an intruder. And you don’t know how you know, but you know they mean you harm. You try to ignore them, maybe back slowly into your house, out of the light and into deeper, lockable safety, behind closed doors and bolted windows, but your back door slams shut before you can reach it, and then it just disappears. Your house is still there, but there’s no way in, it’s just 4 walls and 1 tiny window that’s big enough to show you all the things that used to be yours, but it’s nowhere near big enough for you to crawl through, and get back inside to safety. For just a moment, amidst the rising tide of panic, you are so, so profoundly sad for the loss of your things, yourself, that you forget to be frightened.

But all too soon, you realize you can hear the intruder again. You KNOW he is out there, creeping around in the woods, maybe climbing up the side of the house to pounce on you from the roof. You try to think of some way to fend him off, but you know you are ill-equipped, and any fight you get into, he’ll win. With no warning, the sky grows dark, and it’s so cold, the 1 lone bee and his butterfly friends have all flown away; and then hours pass, and eventually, from sheer exhaustion, you fall asleep, right there on the concrete floor of your patio, and you pray that the sun will come up as normal the next day. You’re not asking for much–you’re not even trying to get back into your house yet, because you know that’s impossible–but you’ll settle, and gladly, for a few hours in the sun, where you’re not being stalked by a stealthy, murderous trespasser. You fall asleep shaking, and even you can’t tell if it’s from terror or cold or maybe it’s God punishing you.

(TBC)

More About Depression–A Less-Quick Intro

21 Wednesday May 2014

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I’m depressed.  Now, before you go reading ANYTHING into that, let me clarify.

Every day, I am so grateful for so many things in my life, I don’t have enough toes and fingers to count them on.  By contrast, I can count all the things that are *really* disappointing in my life on one hand, probably with a spare digit or two left over.  I’m not saying I have a bad life, or that if something changed, I would feel good; I’m saying that no matter how great my life is–and it is, overall–I struggle to be happy.

It’s not about circumstances.  Anyone who occasionally cries themselves to sleep when something bad happens to them, or they get their period, or they have a really bad headache, is not experiencing depression as I understand the term. Even someone who is, technically, depressed, but is depressed in a way that new friends or a better job or losing some weight etc etc etc can fix, is not depressed in the way I’m using the term.

It’s not that something is so wrong, it’s making me miserable.  It’s that NOTHING is wrong, and I’m still miserable.

Try to get your head around that, if you can.  Imagine having almost everything you’ve ever wanted, and being on-track to get even more of it, and it just… doesn’t matter.  You take the pills, you try to do the best you can to be healthy and happy, and yet, every day, you spend hours fantasizing about killing yourself, or just not waking up tomorrow; or maybe you just sleep 14 hours straight, dreaming dreams about being abducted by a sexual predator (one of my actual, recurrent dreams) and you’re so sad you start to cry when you wake up, because you *want* so desperately to be back in the dream.

Where you felt happy.  Where you felt something.

Imagine that *any* day when you feel happy, you talk too much and laugh too loudly and hit on anything that moves, because for a few hours or maybe, at most, for a couple of days, it just feels so GOOD to be alive.  Or you just feel alive, and that’s good.  Something like that.  But by the third day, you can feel yourself slowly spiralling back down, into a feeling that’s so grey and dank and leaves you feeling so helpless, you wonder what’s even the point?  Why be miserable for two, three, four weeks at a time, to then spend maybe one weekend feeling good about yourself, about life in general, before you go back to feeling like getting out of bed every morning is too much trouble?

And you try to motivate yourself.  You try to cajole yourself out of bed with promises of treats and rewards, you try to interest yourself in something, anything, to get yourself up, but…. *sigh*  Really, what is the point?  You’re so tired you can barely roll over or pull the blanket up to your chin, and you’re supposed to get up and dress your kids and pack their schoolbags and take a shower?  You just don’t have the energy.  If you did, you’d probably only walk outside into the nearest road, and wait for the inevitable… so maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.

Some days you try a different tactic.  Lying in bed, wishing your heart would just stop beating, you try to rouse some anger in yourself. They say that depression is just anger turned inwards, right (somebody said it once) so you try to focus some of that anger AT yourself, try to use it to force you up and into doing whatever it is you need to do.  You call yourself every name you can think of–I don’t mean obsolete, meaningless ones, like bastard or slut or bitch, I mean the really awful ones–I mean the ones like useless human being, embarrassment to your family, or even the worst one of all, bad mother… and nothing works.  You just lie there, and ignore the alarm, and pray for sleep to a God you usually believe in, but not today.  Today, you know that if He existed, He would end your suffering…

I’m pretty sure that one day, I’m going to pull a Virginia Woolf.  I sincerely hope I’ll manage to write a few novels first, maybe leave something behind for my family, but I’m beginning to doubt even that will happen.  Maybe it’s for the best; maybe they’ll find it easier to hate me, and move on with their own lives, if I leave them nothing at all.

And that, boys and girls, is depression as I know it.  More coming soon–the next one will be a 2-or-3-parter.