Author: Tracey

This is a transcript of a conversation I had with my friend the other day. We didn’t speak at all.

This is another of the same.

Some examples of what I tried to get me undepressed and how well they worked

Talking with someone- I went to talk with counselors, friends, and psychologists. They helped to various degrees. I feel like I got the most out of those friends of mine who I talked to. This was all different levels of in-depth-ness. Some were just friends hanging out with me- they didn’t even know I was having such difficulty or their part in helping me. Some were people I went to demanding answers. They were courteous given my level of anger and annoyingness. The ones who managed to tolerate me are still my close friends today. The professionals I talked to were nice, but I don’t think I had long term benefits stemming from the times I met with them. One in particular was more my friend than the others and I think I got the best benefit from him and just the talking about how I felt on different days and what was going on in my life.
I never had what you would call therapy with a psychotherapist. It seems like it would have been very expensive to meet with someone for long periods of time every week and it may have been more intense than what I needed. I did visit a psychiatrist, who perscribed me drugs. Jay (that one nice professional one) told me that psychologists talk to you and psychiatrists prescribe drugs to you but usually don’t talk beyond very breifly. That’s basically why they have different titles.
This page from a women’t health website puts it most succinctly about the two I’ve just mentioned, plus psychoanalyst is described as well. http://www.estronaut.com/a/psychiatrist_differences.htm

Going out and doing things I liked- This was sometimes okay, sometimes awkward. I was always really terrified that my friends would see me being grouchy and think I didn’t like them anymore. It was really hard to have fun doing anything. I still feel like I was such a pain in the butt to be around, but it was better for me to be out of the house once in a while than in it all the time. This was especially important because of the fact that it would have been really easy to stay in the house during the depressed times which were mostly in the winter.

Staying in and doing things I liked- I stockpiled a lot of activities that I loved in my non-depressed times to use in my depression. I have tapes of several solid hours of my favorite shows that I watched to make me feel better. I also tried watching my favorite website (among my links currently) reading favorite books and listening to favorite music. These things were all very worth having. They calmed me down from being quite upset at times. The problem with these things was that they acted as a ‘fix’ that really sort of stopped once the show/music/book ended. Usually the high level of me being upset had also ended by then, but I would still be moderately upset; the show or song couldn’t totally erase my sadness.

Cutting things up with sharp objects- This I did somewhat compulsively in my depression. It started (I DON’T RECOMMEND THIS!) with me cutting my skin in places. Little tiny cuts the size of paper cuts which weren’t meant to kill me, just well, cut me. I think I liked the idea of controlling my pain, controlling the blade that hurt me, and being able to say when the pain stopped and started. These were things which I did not have from the mental pain of the depression. I was in no control over that. Why not be in control for once? Well as a biologist I can think of a few reasons not to do this again. Infection is a big one. If the cuts are big enough scars are also a possible result. Anyways, these people around kept (rightly) telling me to stop, so I found that cutting cardboard with a blade was almost as fulfilling as cutting me. Other things I did were tearing old catalogs apart and cutting up old clothing. I guess these worked as sort of a venting if you will, but they were still on the rather violent side and according to Dan, didn’t dissipate my depressed feelings any.

Medication- I took meds for my depression when it got so I couldn’t do the things I needed to do in my daily life with ease anymore. I was recommended to this course of action after a depression the year before with no medication. This depression/anxiety seemed to hit me harder and came around my last semester of college which was stressing me out. We identified the fact that the it was probably graduation related and would go away once my life got back into a stable routine. My psychiatrist immediately recommended celexa until after this event had come and gone and I felt better. I ended up being on celexa for a year and five months, then I was drug free for seven months and then went back on celexa for another six or seven months. Both times it was agreed that I really needed something to help me and prescription drugs could do that for me. While I was on celexa it helped me relax my feelings some, enough to deal with things going on in my life. I felt it was doing what it needed to. (I’ve got lots more to say on this, but read my next post on meds)

Light therapy- I bought a light box to try light therapy. It was rather expensive, and I hadn’t tried it out beyond briefly in my college days (three days is NOT enough to see results) so it was a gamble. From what I knew of my depression, I was seasonaly affected by the lack of light in winter compared to summer. My depressions have always been in winter (besides one notable difference I will explain in my next post) and I feel distinctly more sad on darker days. I wish I had time to go into light therapy and background about it and current research and SAD and winter blues, there’s so much I would explain. I’ll limit myself here though to telling you that light therapy #1- is real #2- is NOT the same as having a fluorescent bulb in a lamp or sitting in a tanning bed #3- will not burn your skin or eyes #4- does involve just sitting and looking at a special light for an hour/ half hour. #5- is helpful to people who suffer from SAD (seasonal affective disorder) and winter blues
I got my lightbox from sunbox company which is a very good one, they’ve been in business since 1985 when barely anyone knew about light therapy. Since they are still in business, obviously they are doing a good job. And they know what they are doing too; there is research you can access from their site explaining how light therapy works and why it works and where it came from, as well as new research on where it might be going. I may take some time and put up a post paraphrasing all this, but for now try their website www.sunbox.com for a lot of good information about light therapy and boxes. Since this past winter when I tried light therapy I have not needed to use any other treatment for depression. It made me feel alot better, even than the celexa did. It is in a way more ‘natural’ because hey it’s light! Also it is easy to self-medicate so to speak and I can use it in winter and get off it when spring comes. This one has been the best out of all the treatments I’ve tried and I can say I’m very pleased with it.

Depression for non-depressed people
It may be hard for someone who has never felt depression to understand what it is about and why it is a big deal. I can only speak about what it has been to me, so don’t imagine I am a textbook on the subject. Everyone is different after all. In my experience though, it can present itself as you being sad, or angry, or nervous, or overemotional both ways- too much happy and too much sad. I guess that sounds wierd, too much happy. But it’s really not a joyful filling kind of happiness. More like a giddiness that makes you laugh but in some way is still artificial.

I think I want to stress how NOT in control you are over these feelings. Sure maybe you don’t fight the silly hapiness, but the sadness and anxiety are overwhelming. People get the idea that mental things are in you therefore it is possible to just act and feel different on any given day. Shake it off, think of happier things, and don’t worry- they say it like it’s easy. And to people with normal sadness that doesn’t crush the life out of them maybe it is easy. But someone depressed just can’t get feeling better. Of course there are ways to get past a depression, but they are by no means simple as, ‘ok just start feeling better!’ I’ve known people who thought this way and it scares me. To tell a depressed person, “Get over it.” is like the worst answer you could give. They are going to feel ashamed that they can’t get over it and wonder what is wrong with them as a person, which only drives the depression on.

I think in many ways depression is harder for people to understand than say, a life threatening virus or cancer. Because really, they both threaten your life, and both are worthy of sympathy and care from people around you. But it’s not like you can track the progress and treatment of a depression in the way you would a cancer. If you can’t see a tumor or any incisions or scars on a person, it’s hard to imagine they are sick. Also for me, my depression made me want to hide from everyone. I tried to hide how bad I felt so very few people knew about it. That comes with the culture we have today, in my opinion. Mental problems are seen as a serious stigma. And that needs to change.

I wish there was an easy way for those who know someone depressed to approach it in another person. Can you send get well cards for depression? Some people deal with it their entire lives. Can you visit someone in the hospital with depression? Well no, not unless they’ve tried to kill themselves. But using my cancer example, would you only visit a sick friend if the doctor called to say they are about to die? You would go in well before that, as soon as you heard they were sick. A person who is depressed is sick in the same way. You can’t get in their mind and touch it, you can’t give them radiation for it, you can’t hold their hand as they go in for surgery.
You can try to ‘be there for them’, although I agree that’s vague. You can call to see how they are doing. And you can schedule fun stuff to do with that person. For me, nothing anyone did was of any help at all. I will explain. That’s not to discourage people who have someone that is depressed. Get them out of the house, do stuff, talk to them, find things they like. But they might still act very sad and mopey. Just as I did when people dragged me out to things. You are going to have to let them be that way. And that isn’t easy. You may need a break sometimes, that is ok. For me the idea that people kept asking after me and trying to get me out doing was in itself enough to keep me out of the danger zone that makes depression life-threatening. Of course my words here are just my words. This is how it was for me and I suspect some others too, but maybe not all. I’ll be writing further on this topic, so stay tuned.

I want to start something and I need to write about it. I want to share my experience with depression in my life. Or like it wants to be shared from in me. I imagine maybe none of the four people reading my blog will want to hear about something that is sad, and over with, and so overdone in dramatic fashion through TV and movies. But this blog is also about me and what I like to write. Therefore I will write and get this out of me, and perhaps even find out why this wants so badly to be written.

These are some of the words I would have written at the time if I could have written at all while I was in the throes of it:

So you see nothing, always, you feel nothing. It hurts so hard, but you can’t feel it at all. You just feel dead.

Every day waking up. Why though…why wake at all?
What is in the world for me?
There is nothing anywhere for me. No one understands this. No one knows this.
I am alone. I am cold. No, I want to feel cold. So I can feel something. I feel nothing.

I HATE MY LIFE I HATE EVERYTHING I JUST HATE TO LIVE IN THIS PLACE I HATE I HATE

I get up. I have to go to work so I do. Once I am there I don’t want to do anything. I want to not do anything. I try to do something. I stop. I can’t. I stop walking. Stop. I am stuck. I try to move my legs. I try to move my arms. I am panicking. No one can see me! No one look! They will see me and think- I’m crazed. I have to run! What would happen if I did? I will, I am about to run- bolt- leave- fly until I expire from exhaustion. They will never see me again, I never have to worry. But I can’t. I stand frozen. I am in terror that they see the look in my eyes. I move slowly to sit down. I do not look around. Perhaps they haven’t seen it in me. I breath in and out carefully. No one says anything to me. Maybe they don’t know. They don’t notice. Notice! Help ME! HELP ME! HELP ME PLEASE!!

Later I am alone and by myself I am alone.
I’m going to die- I’m going to I am- I just can’t do anything at all at all at all at all at all oh at all!

You look at your hand. You pick it up and just look at it. There it is. It is. IT IS. Dead? Are you dead. Stick a pin in it. Do you feel anything? You are what- alive? Why give all your friends and family the pleasure of looking at you anymore. If you are dead. You might as well be dead to everyone. Then they will know for sure. You aren’t doing them any good anyway. You’ll never do anyone any good. You are no good to anyone at all. SO DIE already.

Making that list of Rob Paulsen stuff makes me want to talk about so many other related things. For instance, I just began to wonder who came up with the premise for the ninja turtles. No for real. Someone was sitting around at home when suddenly they thought, hey! What if turtles could become ninja fighters? They’d have to be taller. And faster. Oh, I know, what if a random radioactive event causes them to mutate and they grow? Yes perfect. And they need to learn ninja stuff from someone. A rat who was also mutated could teach them. Obviously they’d have to live in a sewer. And have a news reporter friend to hang around with. All good superheros are friends with a news reporter, unless they are a news reporter themselves. And a train engineer.

I mean how did they pick that scenario? It just sounds so ridiculous when you say it out loud. These are things I wonder about some movies I’ve seen. Go back and try to imagine how they pitched it to the studio. Then tell me most of the movies we watch aren’t totally ridiculous.
I pointed this out to Dan as we were watching O Brother, Where Art Thou? and then forgot about it for a couple weeks. But if you think about that one it’s a fairly ridiculous movie. There’s the lead character who is a guy obsessed with his hair, the manic depressive bank robber who gets carted off to his own hanging with a smile, the crazy swindler with one eye, a kid who learned to play mean guitar from the devil himself, the old polititians who wear pants riding well above the waistline. And I’ve been told the pretense behind the storyline is actually a retelling of the Odyssey. Talk about wierd. I’d love to have seen how they pitched that one to the studio.

I wrote out some stuff and it will now replace the story beginning I had up on my main page.

Ok I like Rob Paulsen. I don’t know him or know what he looks like, but he does voices for about a dozen characters I am familiar with from Saturday morning type cartoons. I will now list those characters in some semblance of order. The ones at the top are my favorites and those I know well. The bottom ones will be those I either don’t like, or caught randomly maybe once on actual TV.

Yakko Warner from the Animaniacs
Pinky from Pinky and the Brain
Gusto from the Gummi Bears
Raphael from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Carl from Jimmy Neutron
PJ from Goof Troop
Antoine from Sonic the Hedgehog
Steelbeak from Darkwing Duck
Fowlmouth from Tiny Toons
Hathi from Jungle Cubs (baby Jungle Book characters)
Stanly from The Mask cartoon
Hadji from the New Jonny Quest
Coconut Fred from Fruit Salad Island

I guess they also ended up in date order a little bit. This guy is awesome because he does the witty sarcastic voice so well, and he has a bunch of other types he can do too. Be on the lookout for him as additional character voices. He seems to be involved in a host of cartoons in one way or another.

I saw my name on a car. I forget exactly why. Some kind of business like Tracey Enterprises or Tracey Incorporated. Printed right across the hood. Looked nice too. On the same day I kept seeing license plates that looked like chemistry test codes.

We ate out and had to wait around an hour to get in. We were wasting time talking about whatever then finally got seated. A few minutes afterwards these two guys with funny hair got a seat as well. Dan’s comment- Heat miser and snow miser finally got in.

I saw the best movie commecial. It opens like a horror picture. Announcers voice- “There is a house. That has been empty for thirty years. And was witness to a death.” Pictures flash of the house empty, a man walking in saying ‘Yeah I got it real cheap. Some professor used to live here then he died.’, there’s a picture of a man choking someone, a gun, someone yelling. The announcer continues, “This house has the ability to turn whoever owns it- into a total idiot” Funny music and cut to Will Ferrell yelling, “We’re goin streaking!” The commercial is for the movie Old School which is so totally not a horror movie, but the opening is so convincing. I thought it was a very effective prank.

Ben Folds did a bunch of music for that movie Over the Hedge. He reworked Rockin the Suburbs beautifully for this occasion. I was really curious to hear his new rendition which is completely curse free. Nice, nice job, Ben! Woody says the movie is good even though the previews suck. Maybe I’ll try to catch it while it is in theaters.

I was counting all morning in my sleep the number of guests at my house for Thanksgiving. So I don’t have to think of this all day, I will count them once and for all right now.
1 Me
2 Dan
3 Lita
4 Suzanne
5 My mom
6 My dad
7 Dan’s mom
8 Dan’s dad
9 My grandma
10 My grandpa
11 Dan’s grandma
12 Dan’s grandpa
13 My other grandmother

ok so that’s 13 people. I have 4 glass bowls, 4 decorated glass bowls, making 8 bowls total. I need five more bowls so they can all have dessert. Two cookie monster bowls, two plastic colorful bowls and one pink knobby bowl should do the trick. That completes my dream and I won’t have to worry all day about fictional events. Whew!

This is a collection of humorous things that happened while I had my very short-lived job with a local day care/preschool.

Bradon running around playing a pretend game and yelling, “AMBLEANCE! AMBLEANCE!”

Right after this, Stace, who was treated by the ambleance and revived pretends to be dead. From Greg- “She’s DEAD AGAIN!”

One of my favorite handfuls was Bradon. One particular day she was in time out twice within the same 10 minutes. After telling her to come back to the group, she somehow wound up on the time out bench again. I asked the other teachers which one put her there but they all told me it wasn’t them. As it turned out she put herself in time out because she felt she was mean to one of the other kids!

Kiana has a very cute speech problem in which most of her consonants sound alike. The cutest phrase I have heard her say was to Bradon’s mom- “Bradon had a dood day today!”

In this same vein, many of them call me “Teetsa (teacher)” rather than use my name.

Christian is always talking. He constantly interrupts the teachers to explain whatever is on his mind, no matter how busy we are when he sees us. Here’s an exchange he had with D’arcy:
Chris- EXCUSE ME! EXCUSE ME!
D’arcy- Chris, you are going to drive me crazy.
Chris- Dawcy, you say that evwy day.
D’arcy (looking shocked)- Oh my gosh! Do I really?
me- Yup you do.

Trying so hard to get Jared to sit on the toilet and then seeing him make a mess is very frustrating. He usually claims, “No no thank you. I’ll go at home.” One day he was crying after being told to ‘go sit down and try’. He ends up making it in time with no mess. He immediately stops crying and stands up to look at it. He smiles and says, “It’s a word!” I’m still not sure what he was talking about or why it was suddenly no big deal.

We had green juice on St Patrick’s day. D’arcy told everyone it might turn them into Leprechauns. After nap suddenly D’arcy tells Bradon, “Go look in the mirror quick. Your face has turned green.” Instead of smiling or going to a mirror, Bradon puts her head down and almost starts crying. We had to hurry up and tell her we were only joking.

Nicholas always asks why we have to lie down for nap. After trying answers like, “So you’re not tired” and “Because kids need sleep” without getting him to stop asking, I now answer with “because nap starts with an N” or “because sleep has two E’s”.
At these answers he always responds, “OH!” and lies down without further complaint.

Chris has some funny adult mannerisms such as acting like he’s in charge of the day care. He often tells others when it’s time to do things, e.g. “Everyone sit down with your slippers on!” We always try to tell him he’s not a teacher, but I don’t think it sinks in. Once during this behavior, Bradon was fooling around not sitting still and this mom-type classic came out of Chris’ mouth, “Bradon, don’t make me angry!”

Another dream I just felt like recording:
I am walking down the street when I see a daycare child of mine, Kiara. She is with two friends but no adults are around. She sees me and yells ‘Tracey!’ then asks if I want to meet her mother. We walk to her house to discover that her mother is really someone else’s mother and she is not Kiara at all. So I’ve met a new friend and her mother. She asks me if I want to rock the baby and I do, only the baby keeps changing into a 14 year old kid on my lap. It is fairly distracting. The mom says he’s just doing that to get me to rock him to sleep. He wants a bottle too. We hang around the house for a while and I eventually lose the baby but no one notices. Then it is dinner time- oh didn’t you know you are invited to dinner? And your parents too. We all sit down and talk about burgers and hotdogs and outdoor grills when a bunch of other people walk in. They are teachers like the mom is and they were invited to dinner first. We are eating their food. Actually everyone is almost done except me who hasn’t really touched the food. We all get up guiltily and leave. I’m the only one who didn’t eat.

I don’t know what happens next but eventually I’m dreaming again about snow this time. I am a car shaped like a person running along in snow. I am lost and climbing a very big hill to turn around at the top. I see something white hidden in the snow and believe it to be drugs, so I hightail it back down the hill and over a little side road. I am totally freaked out that two cars following me will hit me, then suddenly I realize they are my chaperones and are there to protect me. They join me and suddenly become a guy who is my chaperone, but not in a romantic way. I get the feeling he is hired to accompany me and help me stay out of trouble, or not get lost. (I do get lost a good deal in real life) We enter a building and I say, “Take my hand. Now look in my eyes.” He says, “No I couldn’t. I don’t want to cause any trouble at home.” I think I wanted to see his eyes to get an idea if he was true to protecting me and if he could be trusted. But I am touched that he is concerned not to lead me on and I instantly trust him based on this. We enter a room full of dancing people in evening-wear. He and I are also now in evening-wear. The hostess comes up to me and says, “How did you get in here?” I say, “Um I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to.” I take her by the waist and say, “Lets dance!” She seems surprised but does not protest and dances with me as the gent- that is I’m leading but the arms are wrong so she should be leading. She looks lovely in a clean white gown. I believe I am wearing white too but do not stop to look down and find out. She professes to be tired and goes away. I dance on my own for a minute and another lady in white comes up to me. “Lost your partner?” She says and we dance together. This time I get the arms right. We go around the floor once total and I say, “I was dancing with the hostess but she left I guess.” My partner says, “Don’t let her fool you. She never wanted to dance with you. See there she is.” Indeed my hostess is talking with snobby looking friends and ignoring me as we twirl by. I also catch sight of my chaperone who is at the punch bowl watching me carefully, but trying to look nonchalant. I realize how much I appreciate having him there. Then I wake up.