Oh, yeah, so I said I was going to write about how this year had been for me, and I don't want to make a liar out of myself, and I don't really want to have this hanging over my head in 2008, so I've got to do it now. But I don't really want to do it ('cause I don't think I will ever really want to do it) so I imagine it will be short and rather un-analytical. But the purpose of this is to. . .look, if you ever want me to talk to you about anything relating to cancer, or a parent dying, or depression, or being single for pretty much your whole life, or. . .anything, any of the things that have gone wrong for me, please just ask. I know it helps me to know that I'm not the only one who's managed to live through all that.



I'm pretty sure that I've been "clinically depressed" for about four years, and last year I wouldn't have even allowed that as a possibility. The fact that I am still putting quotes around it should tell you how comfortable I am with that statement. It's because I have this. . .this thing where I am very much into pulling oneself up by one's own bootstraps and not taking any crap off anybody, least of all myself. I.e., if there is a problem--yo, I'll solve it.

But perhaps if I'd been more touchy-feely and less psychotically independent, I might have noticed something amiss earlier, especially since now I can almost pinpoint the moment my sad times started. For about four years, I'd had this job that I loved, and it kept me very busy and pretty much killed any social life I might have had, but I didn't mind since I wasn't very big on a social life and the job was my dream job. Then the job started to go very south very quickly. Then I started to fall apart.

However, because I don't really fall apart in any sort of way that's visible to anyone, even myself, I thought that I was responsible for my own happiness, and when I lost that job and started to look for another, I thought my situation would be fixed. Only no job is as good as your dream job, even if your dream job turned out to suck, and I had a series of jobs over the next four years that I disliked to varying degrees. Because I was used to my job supplying a social life, I didn't really have a social life when I lost the job that took every waking hour, and I was sort of drifting at that point. I was 24 and single. 25 and single. 26. . .and single and on my, like, fourth job. Didn't own a home. Hadn't written the Great American Novel yet.

But I blamed all that on my circumstances, as in "when I get an awesome job, like I used to have, I'll be happy again!" Only the thing was, I was so insanely driven to find a job that would be my social surrogate again, I didn't. . .you know, I wasn't happy. And there's a metaphor that's about that, and it's something like asking a cat to do a calculus proof, but I can't think of it right now. Anyway, it was like that.

So anyway, I made it to 2006 and I was sort of kind of on the rebound, with a job that was better than what I'd had and an awesome set of friends and some forays into writing and (online) dating, and then my dad got diagnosed with incurable-but-treatable cancer.

And you know, I sort of stopped worrying about how I felt and my life at that point. If you're close with your parents, I'm sure you'll understand. Suddenly, my life was all about experimental trials and doctor visits and different doctor visits and AARP and the donut hole and supplemental insurance and discounts and chemotherapy and extended stays in the hospital and trying to help my folks run their house and renting wheelchairs and going to the hospital and going to the hospital and having a desperate moment of terror every single time my phone rang and I thought it would be The Call and getting used to words like necrosis and trying to have conversations with my dad about whether I put out the dog, the dog he had in New York ten years before I was even born and more going to the hospital, this time to the quarantined TB ward and learning how to give injections and going back to the hospital after a botched surgery for a lung biopsy because jesus christ, it just hasn't been fun enough this yearand brushing someone else's teeth and not getting to be daddy's little kid anymore. And all that.

So you'd think that would make me clearly upset, but it didn't, because that entire year I was much more concerned with how my dad felt, how my mom was doing and what the doctors were saying that I was just going, going going. I didn't feel sad, I didn't feel happy, I didn't feel anything but momentary jolts of terror. And that didn't strike me as odd until my dad took a huge turn for the BETTER, defying all expectations, and I didn't feel happy about it.

I should feel happy about this, I thought. I may still have a kind of crap job and no record in the library of congress and no one who wants to kiss me goodnight, but gosh darn it, my dad is going to LIVE and I shouldn't feel ho-hum about that. So then I went to my GP and got tested for hormone/thyroid levels, because I still was thinking, if something was wrong with me, it had to be legitimate--and to me, being mopey is a self-fixing condition, and not legitimate.

I know, whatever. I'm of hard stock.

So then my GP visit was TERRIBLE, and I was looking up my symptoms on WebMD (I know), and WebMD was like, "you may be depressed!" And I was like, "oh, geez. But maybe!" And it was only because I had hit this insane extreme of numbness that I found this diagnosis acceptable.

What I'm saying is, don't get to my point. You may be depressed! Just. . .look into it. It won't be the worst thing to happen. I am a worst-case scenario.

So then I saw a therapist, and I saw a psychiatrist, and they were like, "you seem clinically depressed." And I was like, "Awesome, whatever, just give me a pill to make it better" because while I wasn't a huge proponent of brain drugs prior to this, I WAS a huge proponent of the Miracles of Modern Medicine and I love shots and pills and doing what doctors tell me to do.

Then a week after I started the pills, my dad died. Yeah, it was somewhat unexpected, because of the miraculous turn for the better, but in a way, that was better than everyone doing what they had been doing earlier in the year: just sitting around, moping, waiting for the inevitable. Coming as a surprise allowed us all to really enjoy his last month.

And then I sort of . . .checked out. I didn't realize it at the time so much, partly because I am ADAMANT in this whole "no one will see the cracks in my armor, not even me" thing, and partly because it turned out my first psychiatrist was a CRAPDOODLE and put me on a drug that turned out to zap my energy even more. Anyway, I went back to work after a week and . . .you know, I just honestly don't remember much about this summer or fall. I know that when I felt anything, I mostly hated my job (oh, and my birthday was less than a month after my dad died, and that day was TERRIBLE and I saw Harry Potter that day, I think, and I was just mean to everyone and cried all day. YAY), but also mostly didn't care about anything, much of the time.

I didn't want to talk to my friends, I didn't want to go out, I didn't want to do anything too stimulating, because it all just seemed unmanageable. And maybe it was. Like I said, I just. . .cant remember a lot of the last sixth months. The first week after my dad died I was on the floor a lot, crying, not sleeping and having panic attacks. It sucked so much I can't even remember how I felt, but I know what happened, and it . . .seems like I must have felt terrible. In a way, I don't really want to do too much delving back to remember what that felt like.

So then. . .I went to work and came home and slept, pretty much. And on the weekends I slept almost 24 hours straight. This was partially because of the bad brain drugs, I think, and maybe also because of the grief and the . . .just the stress of the last four years, sort of shorting out all my circuits.

Oh, right. That was a point I was making. So I'd had these four years where I had ignored how unhappy I was, and then the dam burst and it all hit at once and I really had no defenses. Seriously. Do NOT follow my example. It sucks.

So then. . .I don't know. My mom didn't fall apart like I did, which I was praying she wouldn't, because I knew I wouldn't have the mental resources to support her. I quit my job and moved out of my apartment. I got a new psychiatrist with new brain drugs. They're really helping. This is the . . .like, fifth week of them and I finally feel--good about life again, like I don't wake up and feel like the day is already challenging me. The way I felt back. . .waaaay back when. In my salad days, you know?

Ah. So. I wanted to talk more about how I felt about my dad's death, but it all seems so tied up in everything--and then a lot of it I can't recall immediately and don't want to. I was supposed to start going to this grief counseling group starting this month but I totally chickened out because for the first time in so long I finally feel sort of okay and I am truly just terrified of . . .thinking about all that again. Putting myself in a place where those emotions are immediate. And then I worry that I'm bottling them up and they'll explode later, but I hope I'm not, because I feel like they all ALREADY exploded, and going to the grief group might be like, you had this bottle, and it exploded, and then you swept it all up and put it in the trash, and now you're going back out to the trash and you're going to dig all the bottle junk out of it and pour it all over the floor again.

I don't know. I mean, I know I should go. I think. I should try it, at least. Just not now.

And that. . .is that. I mean, clearly it's not. . .at all coherent and if you made it this far I hope it was. . .cathartic or helpful or whatever it was, but that's what I have, tonight, to throw up on the page about this. I miss my dad a lot every day, because he was so awesome, but I have no regrets and thousands of wonderful memories, and sometimes that helps.