Sweet Sorrow?

I've been crying a lot lately. I mean, I cry quite a lot ordinarily anyway, but I've just been having a bit more of a down lately. It happens. I've often wondered why it happens, and I've been through the whole gamut. Nothing makes me more angry nowadays than when someone suggests I'm depressed. It makes me feel like yelling "You don't know me! I've always been like this!". And it's true, and goddammit, it's another one of those things that I'm done being apologetic about. Within reason of course. My poor boyfriend gets to put up with it a lot. But on the plus side, I'm often happy, playful and loving. In fact, I think I'm always that with him, even when I am in the midst of being miserable.

The intensity and ferocity of my misery has gotten milder over the years, or perhaps I've become more adept at handling it. There is a little bit of irony in my misery. To understand this, you have to understand why I get to feeling down quite often. Basically my misery is often (if not always?) related to my feeling down about myself due to my perceptions of my failings. It's really easy to do this because I have plenty of failings, and it's easy for me to list them and bang myself over the head with them. In fact, I accumulate more failings on a daily basis. For example, I decided I'd participate in NaBloPoMo on the 1st. It's the 4th and I have already missed one day of it. FAIL. Now, of course, in the grand scheme of things, this does not matter at all, but if you add this to umpteen other perceived failures pretty soon you have a whole load of FAIL. Great. So then I start to feel down about myself, and I convince myself that I am utterly useless and can't do anything right and that I'm basically a drain on everyone around me, and on life in general, and I'm a waste of space taking up valuable resources and so on and so forth. So usually at some point in the midst of this I start beating myself up about the fact that I'm being a pathetic loser and crying about nothing and meanwhile there are all these people in the world with REAL problems and they are taking it "like a man" as they say! This is the hilarious part. I'm crying because I feel like a loser, then I feel more like a loser because I'm crying, and then I am more convinced than ever that I am a loser and I cry some more about that and search out my escapisms, like sleeping, or spending too much time on the internet. Then I hate myself for hating myself and causing myself to do things that make me hate myself more. Dear. Lord.

These patterns of mine are so tiresome. I sometimes think back to when I was a child and how I used to think I could do anything. What I wasn't prepared for was life, and how no matter how many times you learn something, you keep repeating the same backwards behaviors and it's a bloody hard pattern to shake. In fact, it sometimes feels like I would need to be a totally different person in order to behave differently. But, I don't believe that's true. I think if I keep working on these things, and most importantly, keep forgiving myself every time I have a big ol' pathetic cry, then it will not matter so much anymore and I can keep moving on.

I've known many people who have been on anti-depressants for either short or long periods of time. I was on them for a short time as well, to get through a really severe depression that was brought about by a whole bunch of unfortunate circumstances in my life at the time. Those were dark days for me. Maybe it's because I have that comparison that I feel like my usual state of ups and downs it's normal for me and nothing to worry about. Sure, if I wasn't miserable then perhaps I'd be more productive, though I'm not even so sure about that. I procrastinate a lot when I'm feeling down, but usually during those times I am occupying my mind with other things and sometimes good things come of that as well. And anyway, how capitalist is that thought? Take drugs in order to be more productive? No thanks. I'm also very offended by the suggestion that a person should be happy all the time. What bullshit. Quite frankly, you'd have to be an idiot to be happy all the time. If you ever think about how much misery there is in the world, how many people are suffering, how many wrong things happen every day... it's depressing as hell! I can't even think about it most of the time, and I really hate the news, and consume it only with reluctance out of a feeling that I need to know a little about what's going on. Many things make me angry, many thinks break my heart, and many things make me cry. But quite honestly, I don't think I would want to be any other way. Sadness is a part of the human condition, and it's just as worthy an emotion as happiness. Happiness may be more pleasant for everyone involved and that's great, but I think it's only natural that we feel sadness as well. At least, for me it is and I can't afford to blame myself for that, instead I'd rather just embrace it.