Words Of Comfort From A Good Neighbor

Some days I just really need to hear this. I'm sure a few of you do too.

Quickie

This article further reinforces what I was saying earlier about sharing my bad days on here. I think it was incredibly brave of Stephen Fry to tell this story to the world. He's a person I admire greatly for his prodigious wit and way with words (let's face it: the man's a freaking genius), and knowing that he's had troubled times in spite of his success makes me feel a little bit less alone and thus makes me a little bit stronger.

So thank you, Stephen Fry, for being courageous enough to share your "dark night of the soul" moment with us. And most importantly, thank you for still being with us!

Birthday!

It's my birthday today, so I just wanted to post this to myself 'cause I love it so. It'll be stuck in my head all day, and that's not a bad thing!

This time last year was a mess. My first serious relationship had just ended (at the time suddenly but in hindsight not so much), and I was battling undiagnosed depression. I'm amazed and quite proud of myself for how much progress I've made in a year, and I'm determined that this birthday is going to be a great one! And the Simon Pegg birthday song is, of course, the essential first step.

Off to celebrate!

Bad Day

Well, I'm back in Atlanta, and things are generally going great. I'll try to keep up with this more in the future, but today has reinforced to me one of the things I want to accomplish with this blog, one of the reasons I started it in the first place.

To keep it short and sweet (and because my writing prowess/energy/EVERYTHING is at its lowest ebb): I have depression. I'm on antidepressants, and most of the time they keep me on an even keel, but today was what I refer to as one of my Bad Days. They don't happen very often (thank GOD), but when they do, it's killer. It's like the depression has come back all over again full force and there's not a damn thing I can do to stop it. I can't even distract myself or try to make myself feel better because all interest in everything has completely evaporated. I have no joy, no happiness, no hope. Luckily this feeling doesn't seem to last any longer than a day or two and it's generally tied to my period (thanks, hormones!) so I can sort of predict it and prepare. But that still doesn't make it any easier.

I'm on the tail end of one of those days now. Earlier I thought reading about someone else's battle with depression might help, so for that reason I picked up my library copy of Tracy Thompson's memoir The Beast: A Reckoning with Depression. Recognizing myself in bits of it helped me feel less alone and thus a little better (a minor miracle on days like today). This reminded me that I had also read an article on CNN ages ago about how people with depression should go public about it to help end the stigma and help others feel less isolated in their struggles.

So that's part of what I'd like to do with this blog over time. Chronicle my good days and my bad days so that others (and myself!) can see it's not all bad days all the time. And maybe someone in the throes of one of their own Bad Days will come across this blog and feel what Thompson described:

...In that moment, as simplistic as it sounded, he had offered me a fragment of that thing I craved: connection. I had only wanted it from people on the other side of the glass. Now it was as if out of dozens of people trapped with me inside that glass cage, one had stopped, turned to me, and said, "I am caught too...."

Resolutions

Have been going through boxes of old papers recently and stumbled across the following gem (dated 1/8, hence why I'm starting this blog today):

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS 2003

• Get more stuff done on time!
• Make short film
• Get driver's license
• Read all my film books
• Become more self-confident
• Clean out closet
• Make more time for writing/write down those "profound thoughts"!
• Develop healthier eating habits
• Take more risks (not stupid ones)
• Quit worrying about what other people think
• LIVE

Am not sure if I managed to accomplish all of this in 2003, but at least I can pretty much check off everything ten years later!

The last three seem to be those ones you work at your entire life, and they definitely apply in my current situation. I'm in the process of preparing to move from Los Angeles back to my old hometown of Atlanta, GA, and at least once a week I'm hit by a realization of the enormity of the situation (mostly in the form of a sudden random thought of "Oh my God, what the hell am I doing!?"). I've been in Los Angeles for five years, and they haven't been bad years...but they haven't been that great either. And I went home for an extended visit this summer and felt the best I had in I don't know how long, so the decision kind of made itself.

More later, I'm sure. But for now back to packing....