out of the bell jar

I walked into therapy the other day with a horrible black cloud over my head. I’d had yet another shitty day at my should-be-great-but-is-really-shitty job, I’d missed the turn on a one-way street getting there, my shoulders were all tight and very sore, blah blah blah. I was just feeling really foul. I wanted this to be my last appointment because I knew I’d get there and she’d say “so, what’s on your agenda today?” and I knew I’d have nothing to say and I knew I’d have wasted an hour of my life, and $170.

The session started out slowly, and I was expecting it to head where I had expected it to head, but gah, you know what? It got better.

She talked me through my gloomy thoughts and I ended up leaving feeling lighter and bouncier and happier about the thing that, 50 minutes earlier, made me want to smash a pot-plant at the wall of her rooms (I didn’t, it’s ok).

I hate that I am dependant on my therapist to talk through the shitness of the things in my life that shit me and cause me to be shitty. Urgh. How horrible is that?

I hate making decisions. I just can’t do it. The though of making a final call on something that will occur in the future, over which I honestly have absolutely no control, scares me frozen.

So thus here I am neurossing again because I can’t sleep.

Gah.

Shit. Despite all the online soul-searching I’ve been doing this year… despite the fact half the comments on this post are from bloggers I’ve been reading in order to figure out what I want to do with my life (eg here and here) and all that jazz… why has it taken so long for me to find this…???

In order to jump-start passionate living again you might have to…

• Stop being an (unnecessarily) “responsible” person
• Quit projects that are no longer relevant
• Be happy with a less than permanently clean home

 In order to come alive, you might have to…

• Pursue an occupation that doesn’t put your insanely expensive degree to use
• Move back in with your parents
• Work a low-status, low-paying job in order to make time for your new endeavor
• Come to terms with your messy home
• Completely and utterly ignore your parent’s and friend’s expectations of you

If you really want to live passionately, you’ll need to consider leaving nearly everything you’re not passionate about.  To live passionately you may have to quit your job, sell your home, rent a small apartment, and live simply for a while.

To get off the treadmill you’ll have to realize that your high IQ does not obligate you to work 80-hour weeks in high-status professional career.  Your high IQ also doesn’t obligate you to get a Ph.D., or to put on any other golden handcuffs.

Fark. I might just not have to go back to fricking “Therapy” anymore.

And maybe I need to sit down for a while sometime soon and start thinking about WHY I need apply for the Rhodes Scholarship before I start filling out the application form that is sitting on my desk right now. (Although, the whole “push the pause button” thing was what I “learned” in “Therapy” last week so maybe I should keep going.)

In a way, I want to go to Oxford to study something that I’m passionate about, that probably definitely won’t lead me into a high-status, high-paying career… but on the other hand, do I really want to go through yet another cattle-show of an interview process and another two years of brain-straining graduate studies? What if the path I’m on right now is my life’s calling?

Gawd it would be nice to be less neurotic, wouldn’t it?

Aw!! I was rather hesitant about writing to Bossy, because she usually gives “no-holds-bared” responses that is “the sort of advice friends and relatives are too polite to give”. I was a bit worried I’d end up on “Fruitcake Friday” so in a way, I was, in a way, glad when her response to my email didn’t show up on those days.

Even her profile photo make her look kinda scary!

But then, when she did respond, she was really nice to me!!!

So were (most) of the commenters.  I had the urge to reply back to every single one, because they took the time to write to me, but there are over 100!! So I might write straight to Bossy with an update and thank everyone in that.

It’s amazing how nice I felt reading about not being the only one who’s gone through periods like this. Intellectually, I know I’m not that special, duh, but sometimes when you’re in the depths of a Doona Day, the intellectual part is so battered by the traumatized emo part that it retreats to higher ground, and it feels like it’s just you on the plain.

(Where did that wanky analogy come from? Shite, I need to get out more.)

I’ve emailed the link to the post to my psychologist so that I can talk about Bossy’s suggestions in more detail at my session tomorrow.

M read the post too, and we chatted about it over the weekend.  I wrote to her a while ago, the day after M and I were both in tears, and the situation has definitely calmed down since then, so that was probably a good thing — we were able to talk about it in a really rational way.

I’m really glad that I wrote to her, and started writing things in this blog.  It’s great to get things off my chest and as well as get feedback from an objective viewpoint.  Thank you Bossy, and Bossy Bloggers, I really appreciate your time.

It’s been a while since I posted.  Work has been busy, life has been busy, and I just generally have been trying to avoid thinking and talking about being depressed (my BFF calls it “cessing”, as in just sitting there in the cess pool of one’s mental crap not achieving anything), which is what I started this blog for.

Therapy’s been happening on and off, although for financial reasons it hasn’t been as regular as it should be. I’ve scribbled some points in my bedside notebook about a few therapy experiences and I’ll get around to posting them eventually.

However, I had an impetus to post today… because Bossy answered my question this morning.

I wrote to news.com.au’s “agony aunt” (essentially) months ago, and she finally got around to answering my quandary about feeling guilty for making my boyfriend deal with all the shit that’s involved with my depression. It’s long winded, so I won’t re-hash it; anyone who cares can read it themselves.

Bossy’s answer was, however, really amazing. She’s usually a bit snarky but she offered some great advice about “Changing my Narrative”.  I’m going to print her post and all the comments from her readers to digest at home tonight, but just wanted to mention that to check in here and do some dusting.