It Pains Me To Say

Hello again.  I feel the gaps between blogging on here are growing and every time I say I will try to blog more often and the opposite happens!  Same with podcasting!

I figured I should blog on a more personal level as things are starting to get on top of me and I need to vent.  The irregularity of my posts does mean I don’t have much of a readership but hey, I just need a place to put my thoughts and feelings.  If folks don’t read it, so what?

Lately I’ve not been feeling the best both physically and, I guess, mentally.  I’m currently on a number of different painkillers as well as antibiotics.  I won’t go into detail at this stage as it’s too early but I fear I may be suffering issues with my prostate – not sure why I’m on antibiotics as my pee came up with no sign of infection…we shall see – gotta go back next week.

On top of that, I generally have just been a moody and, at times, horrible cunt.  My workmates see a different side.  A somewhat silly, vile (in terms of language and sexual innuendo, euphemism and all-out filth).  They see a, for the most part, fun and non-serious guy that knows no bounds.  For me, the line isn’t blurred.  It was just never etched in the ground in the first place.

That side crumbles away when I’m not in the public eye.  Yeah I am still filthy and the thoughts that come to me would trouble anyone but the amount of energy that the façade consumes leaves me feeling run-down and the uglier side of my persona is revealed.  I hate talking about myself and to podcast about this would be pretty tough as I cannot get over that hurdle.  I can open up to strangers to a degree but sometimes it is pretty tough when done so verbally so I figured if I wrote it, perhaps the words would flow and if anyone should read this, maybe I can discover that I am not alone in this bizarre anguish and torment I find myself in.

I’m not sure if I am depressed, although I do show a lot of the “symptoms”.  What troubles me is the stigma and “pigeon-holing” that the word depression carries.  I used to, in my young days of naivete, think that depression was something they made up for feeling down unexpectedly.  Just like I thought cancer was a myth – a bracket used for ailments that doctors couldn’t explain.  But now, just like the various types of cancer, I think that depression comes in many different forms.  Like I said, I don’t know if I am depressed.  If you were to ask me, I would tell you I don’t think so.

What I can tell you is that I feel very…disassociated from life.  I go through phases of interest; things that keep me going.  I have no lust for life, no zest…no energy.  I feel like every day is a chore and I try to hide away from it.  Quite often, the thought of going out instils a feeling of dread – I’m not agoraphobic…well, not full-blown anyway but sometimes I just feel daunted by the concept.  If I have to go out (i.e. to work, school run etc.) I will but I’d much rather not go.  Sometimes, if something has been planned (a night out etc.) I can be fully up for it but as the time draws closer my mind then changes.  It’s not that I have anything better to do, it’s just I suddenly don’t want to but I couldn’t say why as I honestly don’t know.

At 17, I went to the doctor as I was always tired and didn’t feel…well, right.  After filling out a questionnaire (about 100 questions) I was diagnosed as borderline depressed and was stuck on Citalopram.  I took them as instructed for about 3 months.  After experiencing some really bad stomach pains and a variety of other side effects I made the decision to cease the medication and never went back to the doc regarding it.  At the time, I justified this by the fact that a lot of the questions I had answered were along the lines of “Do you think about harming yourself?”, “Do you think about death/suicide?”  To me, the questions that were the deciding factor as to whether I was depressed or not were typical things teenagers think/go through, right?  I mean, I’m sure most of us have thought about dying/suicide.

So anyway, subsequent to that I took an overdose of 30+ paracetamol around 7 years ago.  I spent a few hours up the hospital waiting before insisting that I leave.  As a result of the Citalopram years prior, I think they fucked my stomach up.  The paracetamol didn’t help.  I was working at around 8am the following day so went in feeling rough as hell with a stomach feeling like it had been gouged out from whatever the paracetamol was doing/had done.  You could call it a cry for help.  But to be honest, I woulda thought a few packets of paracetamol would have done something pretty severe.  Only a handful of people know about that night…now it’s public knowledge.

If it had, Seren, Talia and Georgia wouldn’t be here.

Aside from my troubled mind and this potential “man” issue I have a really bad memory and sciatica.  I have unusual feelings in my head when it comes to memory.  I have a mixture of emotion – frustration, anger and confusion when I lose my train of thought or forget something that I know I should know.  I get very agitated and become quite horrible to others when this happens.  Alzheimer’s runs in my family so it seems pretty obvious that it’s going to hit me, if it hasn’t already.  As I’m typing this now, I have the pain in the back of my neck – it’s not a pain as in a strained muscle or headache…it’s hard to describe but it feels like a weight is literally on my mind and the pressure sits right there at the back of my neck.  I wasn’t going to type this last paragraph – what I was going to write has completely escaped me hence this horrid feeling.

I get angry mainly because I can feel my body and mind failing me.  I can see it.  Like a passer-by witnessing a horrible act of violence on the other side of a fenced-off area, I can see it but I can’t do anything about it.  I cannot stop it.  The anger is fuelled by the feeling of hopelessness.  The inability to do something that I know should be easy and that I can/should be able to do yet I can’t.  I often feel like how, in the Sopranos, Tony refers to it as a feeling of ginger ale sloshing around inside his skull.

The sciatica started around the time we were expecting Seren.  It has its really bad spells and it has its quieter, dormant spells.  At its worst, it reduces me to tears through sheer frustration and if I could go back in time to the kid that would mock people and who took things for granted and I’d slap the shit outta him.

At this stage, my train of thought is gone.  I feel I need to add to this or wrap it up somehow and, via this somewhat “blurted out” blog post, you get an insight into my mind – it is messy and out of sorts and that’s what I have to put up with.  A coherent thought can, in an instant, turn to mush and I’m there…bewildered and wondering what did I just decide to do?  What was I going to say?

All of this seems to have been intensified by the loss of my Mum last year and I guess, with Mother’s Day looming as well as the fact that our birthdays are coming up, it just seems to create a much larger burden in my mind that is then manifesting into physical ailments.  I shared a post on Facebook the other day in which someone was saying that depression is not a mental illness.  I disagree.  I think it is both mental and physical but the ratio varies depending on the individual.  Perhaps I am depressed, but to be honest, I think that the diagnosis of such a thing is not for someone else to judge.  And the individual will fail to determine it correctly due to the underlying symptoms and behaviours – denial, anyone?

This is not a post to seek sympathy – yes I know there are folks out there who are far worse-off than I am.  I don’t know how they think or feel, though.  I’m not them.

I know that I’ve lost the point that  initially set out to make.  My cocktail of painkillers, antibiotics and general ill-feeling are getting the better of me – as I’m typing I’m correcting so may typing mistakes that I can feel my heart rate spiking and the rage mounting as I hate poor grammar and typos.

I shall wrap this up now but may come back to add to it or, do a “sequel post” when my mind has uncovered the path that I intended to tread.