I have an interesting life, although I claim I do not. These are fragments of e-mails from me sent in the past week or so:
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I went fishing again and caught a black drum … the marshes are beautiful this time of year … we bought shrimp at a roadside stand for $3/pound … just caught that morning. These animals are all really beautiful as they come out of the water. I want to throw them back. … I am going to New Orleans for two days. When I return the films will have arrived.
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The party was beautiful and one of my guests wanted to attend Baptist services the next day. I did not know where to go and asked at the party, and was directed to an excellent church, reminiscent of Martin Luther King’s church.
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Actually I would have returned to that church today for their MLK celebration, but I am only barely ambulatory. I have had a mysterious cold and stomach ache intermittently for five weeks, in different forms, and I am depressed. It is hard to tell how seriously because the apparently endless, shape shifting flu makes it worse.
I want it to go away. I tend not to go to doctors but I have actually made an appointment with one about depression. I am seriously considering seeing one about the mysterious cold.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I want your flu to go away too. I often think of you when we go out and end up doing more than one thing. You can handle it, we cannot. I say we, meaning me and the little one, the Mister can, but we cannot, my oldest can, but we cannot. The use of we makes it sound as if I have made her into me but I periodically test her to see if it is really her and not me, we both always want to come home. How you do it, I will never know. Guy could do it too, when he was well. More than one thing is too much stimulation. I think handling different stimulations simultaneously says something, but I don’t know what yet. For instance, I finally figured out my Ipod and as I used it on the beach yesterday, I became overwhelmed. The dog running, the wind blowing, the waves crashing, people walking by, the sun setting and the music playing. I had to retire it to my pocket, but that is when I think of you, and Guy, and think how you two could handle all the senses at once.
I do wish your flu away. As I have gotten older, the flu knocks me out of commission more than ever. I think of Virginia Woolf and how the flu had her down for a year. When I first read that many years ago, I thought wow, back then must really be different than now, but now I don’t think so so much, because the last time I had the flu, I suffered signs of it for at least a month or two. And I learned that all the times I thought I had the flu, I really just had a bad cold, because the flu is awful, tiring, draining, lingering……
When I am depressed, too depressed to recover from how I am feeling, I use my mind to compartmentalise my mind. You have to switch off the part of you that is malfunctioning, and isolate that part.
Ah, yes, I can be a good machine!
But, seriously, I think a lot of the reason that we can become depressed is through a quest for human wholeness when no resources for this might actually be available, for anyone.
So, you switch off the part that is whining, niggling.
Anyway, you’re doing really well performing as y0u are, and with the insights that you have — which most other people are too weak not to repress!!!
So, be joyous!!
(I mean, don’t give up!)
–I couldn’t do what you do, and you know……..I’m tough!
Thanks guys!
Bummer! I’m glad you’re going to see someone. Sometimes depression can be a symptom of an underlying health problem; when I was anemic, the fact that my blood wasn’t carrying enough oxygen made me really depressed, although I assumed it was a relationship issue.
Anemia is one of the things I’ve thought of, although how I could be with all the iron rich foods I eat, I don’t know. But I feel anemic!
Anyway I’m on the upswing now, at least for this episode. I was forced to give into it entirely yesterday and today, like the tubercular people in Mann’s The Magic Mountain. I wrapped myself up in all my excellent blankets and slept out on the deck all day … it is in the 30s but it was sunny, and I have so many Chilean blankets I couldn’t feel a thing!
w….ell, just covering all bases and not intending to scare you …but I have learned (from Mike’s situation) that if you have a internal growth or polyp it can cause internal bleeding and weakness………
Anyway, probably ain’t that.
I tell you, I get very tired, too. Last Friday’s training session was so hard that I hadn’t recovered even by this morning (yesterday I was without the slightest bit of surplus energy, and cantankerous). So, I overslept to 9.30 am this morning, and ate breakfast late, and went to training at 11 with a stone in my stomach, so to speak.
Yes but that is why I think I should see a decent MD – rule out stuff like that.
Depression, I must keep remembering, comes from extreme self-criticism / yelling at self without realizing this, and letting negative atmospheres get to one. Both of these habits came from Reeducation which said one should be very self-critical and one should allow negativity to come in, not shield from it. Then add: for a job that takes as much energy as this one does, mine is not interesting enough / does not give enough back. All of these things, I must shift somehow.
Mostly I just want to sleep and rest and I don’t think that’s escapism, I think I need it. But in reality I am going to class.
And after class – go see a doctor!
Well I think you are doing really well. I really couldn’t do so well. I need a lot of downtime — lots of self nurturing, or else I start to feel numb. Alternatively, I could probably function in an African environment, where the modes of behaviour and response to the environment was more like I was brought up with. Otherwise, I’m overprocessing certain things all the time. I can’t rest.
Gracias again, Jennifer, Kitty, everyone. Encouragement helps and I am overly critical. RG I am working on finding an MD!!!
Kitty, on the iPod at the beach – it would overwhelm me, too!
OK I am working on finding an MD and I have remembered why I don’t usually: it is too defeating and depressing! No, they do not take my insurance, no they do not take new patients, no this is not the right phone number, no this is the hospital. Hearing all of this from mean and in some cases somewhat illiterate receptionists is not good for the health!
……and read Nietzsche, so you do not remain overcritical.
Ah, there’s a point. And do remain empowered.
Well self-criticism is a form of Christian indoctrination. It makes sense if there is a parent-God looking over you, or father Christmas or something. But it does not make nearly as much sense if there isn’t. You are not going to avert fate by being harsh on yourself. You do not have that kind of control. You cannot supplicate fate by being masochistic.
Very good points and I do not remember them well or often enough, although I have learned them before.
Christian indoctrination is such a Bane and I am not even baptized.
We all want the magic pill that will enable us to stabilise our situations in the world. Sometimes this kind of Christianity works, because the masochistic retreat atrophies one’s being into a form which more or less stabilises it. But, stay still for too long and one is turned to stone.
That’s definitely what 12 step groups and CBT do. Christian to the core! Horrible.
“But, stay still for too long and one is turned to stone.”
Yes.
P.S. Eureka! The neighbors were sick, too! It is a stomach virus, apparently this is well known! It is not a sign of my general run-down-ness! Well, I am still run down, but at least this has an end! And I am sort of over it – and I can drink tea now, which alleviates the caffeine withdrawal I was having.
Still I will find an MD!
Ah, that is good.