Depression

Holden Caufield was depressed.

Even thinking back upon the book, I read it twice. Its dark. The cover maroon, the pages musty even though the book was new. It conjures up, for me, these ancient rooms in an ancient school, skinny boy with his head hanging low. Eternally bleak outlook upon life, nothing to look forward to. New York, still, alive and alone. The city there, the boy absent. Hollow.

There was a time once where I could purely intellectualize depression. When dealing with a depressed person I wanted to scream at them. Shut, the fuck up. Stop thinking about only yourself. All you fucking do is moan and groan and you cant see beyond your own fucking existence. I remember avoiding D, because every phone call was centered upon this. I had more patience with other friends of mine. Ones that didn't depend on me as much. Like Simone.

And now I can only see how far gone I actually was because I'm slowly emerging from this sea. The salt still clings to my body. Eroding, slowly. But my head is above water and I am looking back. It makes me want to cry, really. Just to know, to understand how clouded I was. How I knew, in my head, life was worth living. Technically. Suicide was never an option. However, I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel anything positive. I felt things, so deeply, so intensely. But these things were rarely good. Sometimes, they just were. Ache, wind, air, the dog's fur underneath my hand.

To think if a climactic event, I can't. Its my life, I suppose. Nearly impossible to summarize like a book. I remember being unable to cry, which I blame on the Wellbutrin. One fact that pleases me is that I am not taking that right now. As evidenced by my grand mood swings today. Tears springing to my eyes. Its strange to me that during that time I couldn't cry. I physically couldn't. Was it an effect of the drugs? Or, was it my previous MO, it really just hurts too much for crying. Its not frustration - frustration brings tears to my eyes more easily than anything else. It reminds me of Dana, I wonder if she's the same way.

Its intriguing for me to read Sylvia Plath's journals. She seems so just, rather normal. Castigates herself for daily sloth, feeling sad, having her writing rejected. She is continually ambivalent. Many days completely lacking confidence in her own writing and other days knowing that she has created something different and good. She's crying, she can be angry, she can take joy in things like cooking a good meal. Feeling best when productive.

One thing she seemed to do which amused me, which is what I do too - is to make these weird lists of what she needs to do in life in order to perfect it. In order to attain, or achieve. What is to be attained, achieved I think sometimes alluded her. Or perhaps, I am projecting and it just alludes me.

So, the list of "I must do in order to achieve stuff and things and happiness". Spend as much time as I like writing in my blog. Focus at school. Finish writing this manuscript so I can pursue other scientific projects at the bench, meanwhile being creative with words (or anything else I deem artistically worthy) in my spare time. Spent less time playing FFXI, however, do not ignore it altogether because it can be a way to relax the brain and make small achievements. Treat myself to a lot of reading. Mrs. Dalloway and The Grapes of Wrath for heady books. Anything chewable (Virgin Suicides) for quicker studies. Reread or remind myself of The Catche In The Rye. Do a lot of yoga. Hopefully, yoga can help me deal with my frustrations. Learn NOT to take frustration out on others, this is a useless practice that accomplishes nothing. Question is, how do I harness this frustration? Is it simply control, or is there an outlet?

What about going abroad? Will that ever materialize? What do I truly want? A nice house, with stainless steal appliances and granite in the kitchen and a baby? Money made that can pay the mortgage and buy nice shoes? Or, a less conventional lifestyle. Waiting on children, renting, trying something unusual for a job, travel if it could work...if B would want it too.

Yoga, has to be a temporary solution for me. I know how I am. I know how I was when depressed, which was just sort of an extreme form of myself. If, I am not accomplishing anything I grow discouraged. Small achievements are a must for me in order to make larger achievements. To retain a little positivity about myself. And yoga was so perfect. If you do it, you will progress. Its that simple. Now, one way in which I always felt I was "failing" in yoga, even when I was in the thick of it was because I was not a daily practicioner. I need discipline. I've never had it. I've always kind of wanted it. Not in everything, just in some things. I'm old enough to know that I am, by nature a very undisciplined and unroutined person. I've stopped fighting it, for the most part. However, with yoga I want things to be different. So its important I garner this habit. I feel like, if I could just do that, then everything else would fall into place behind it. I would be at school earlier, with more energy and thus more productive. Maybe I could concentrate in a way I haven't been able to.

And what about this manuscript. Why do I abhor thinking about things that need to be revised, over and over again? Is that why writing poetry to me seems so be so much more digestable than a whole book? If indeed, I am so fearful (or bored, I don't know which) of large, grandiose projects then why did I choose to do a PhD? I say that a tad tongue in cheek. Because its really a series of discrete events. Although, when I look back upon it as a whole I realize how truly mediocre what I have produced is. Its a blessing I have the good name of Berkeley behind this PhD. Its another blessing that I will be leaving science. Because anyone inside the field would know exactly how mediocre my work is.