Reply To: Eric's Progress Diary

#17833
Eric
Participant

[slowly pokes head in through the creaking door]

…I suppose I shouldn’t dive right back in without some sort of explanation for my behavior a little while back:

  • Was undergoing THE WORST “depression storm” of my life. To avoid drama, I’ll spare the specifics, but I’m sure anyone can guess the kinds of things I was thinking and doing.
  • Tried different antidepressants and mood-stabilizers, am now off one and on another, and a few weeks after that now I’m feeling– well, I guess the best way I can describe it is this: most the time, just barely over the line of a “neutral baseline mood” to either bad or good. Little more often bad but nowhere near as horrible as I was. I’m still quick to anger, self-hatred, etc. but it’s not as all-encompassingly intense and only “sticks” for hours rather than days or weeks.

  • Despite feeling mostly better, I’ve had many messes to clean up after my depression storm, internal and external. After about 2-3 weeks to be lazy and calm down by sitting quietly, doing nothing, I’m now beginning to VERY SLOWLY get back into the swing of things.

  • External examples: I’m getting in the habit of keeping up with the dishes now that even looking at a dirty dish no longer makes me want to throw it across the room, I’ve vacuumed a few times, I don’t leave a pile of full garbage bags by my front door thinking “I’ll do it later” until they stink up the place, and so on with housework. Another thing I’m trying (but still mostly failing) is to get back on track with a healthier diet (I gained more than 50lb in less than two months, and am now suffering many health issues due to it; I’ve also probably spent somewhere in between $500-$1000 on junk food alone during that time and due to other flippant big purchases [like ~$120 on music CD’s] so now I’m about two grand in credit card debt), and doing other miscellaneous tasks instead of endlessly putting them off like oiling my bike’s chain.

  • Internal examples: I’m trying to be more mindful of the words coming out of my mouth, little things (gotta start somewhere) like not to flippantly say “everybody says/does/etc” so as to not lie, trying to be more kind and thoughtful of others in many little ways. I’m still terrible with idle speech online, though, but that’s a big hole to patch so I think I’d better deal with the little ones first!

  • This morning I came up with an acronym and I’m gonna slowly but surely incorporate it in my life:

WTCCMM?

Will This Calm (and/or) Cleanse My Mind?

Maybe if I can really get into the swing of things I’ll have finally earned the right to sport over $250 in 14k-gold Buddha “bling”. :)