Easy now. Nothing drastic like that. PM me, or anyone really, if you need to talk.
Rant VIII: The Reckoning
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i do not really give enough shits to go through with it, maybe, or i'm cowardly, or whatever, but hey, i make a great double triple excessively alcoholised old fashioned
I really, honestly do not think the alcohol is helping. I would claim the opposite, in fact. I do hope you at least think about seeking help, both for your depression and for your alcoholism, which may be one in the same.
I appreciate your saying so. I do. I am currently seeing a psychiatrist twice a month, on medication, and while related I do not believe my depression and alcohol consumption are one and the same. Reasons follow, do not feel obliged to read. It is part of a PM sent to another concerned forumite. I thought sharing might be useful, if not to me, to someone looking to understand depression -their own or that of a loved one.
Following is a wall of text entirely about me and my experiences. It has been assembled in the sober light of day but may not be entirely cogent for reasons related to depression and vulnerability.
I am severely depressed. I was officially diagnosed when I was 14, and while depression in small children is poorly understood, it is the opinion of my mother that I have always been depressed. I won't give you a history here; it is long, suffice to say, and unhappy.
For years I refused treatment. At one point I was a 'ward of the province' and in a psych ward for a suicide attempt. I was released on the condition that for a year I would attend therapy and take antidepressants. I followed through successfully. But it was a few months afterward that I decided, forget this, and I quit going to therapy and taking antidepressants. I was probably 18. Two years later I tried therapy again -but no drugs- and finding it infuriatingly useless, coupled with a therapist I just didn't gel with, I quit again and went untreated.
There are various reasons. Finally, after a particular and peculiar bout with my depression, I returned to therapy. I have been seeing a psychiatrist every other week, and on antidepressants. After some rocky trial-and-error we found a drug that really did boost my energy, mood and ability to live. Despite my high tolerance for most prescription sleeping pills, we even managed to find a drug that helps me get full nights of sleep. That last point is truly revolutionary. It used to be that 4 or 5 hours of waking-sleeping-waking-sleeping was a good night. Now I sleep a full night usually, seven, eight hours. Coupled with my antidepressants, my life is radically better.
I've never been a drinker. My friends in high school would have parties and get crazy drunk, and I'd be sitting outside, usually with their parents, chatting about whatever. The news. Politics. What-do-you-want-to-do-after-school (scariest question for me in high school!). That sort of thing. Or I'd be sitting with the one or two other awkward kids, feeling left out but also a weird childish superiority, "Well, I don't have to get drunk to have fun." We'd watch as our friends started making out with boys and girls they'd liked but never wanted to tell. Then at school the next day we'd deal with the fallout: "s/he doesn't want to talk me now!" Protip: Don't makeout with drunk people if you want to have a relationship.
After high school, when everyone could drink (legal age is 18 here), I happened into a group of friends who were teetotalers: one for religious reasons, one for health reasons, and a few just didn't enjoy alcohol. So I only drank at home, with my dad, who is a wine and scotch connoisseur and would teach me about different things to notice and like about wine. I never, ever got drunk.
I pursued becoming an EMT for a while and for various reasons I am not one now, but it was in that class that I was first invited out to 'go drinking.' I turned them down. And again. And again. And then I realised, that they thought I didn't like them. I found out in a candid conversation with a girl in my class who more or less asked me just that: "Why do you do everything by yourself?" And it's true: I had turned down invitations to parties, to drink, to study together.
So the next invitation to drink came about. What the hell. My siblings, one older, one younger, were big partiers, but I'd always been the quiet one who spent his weekend in a book or a video game. Or, naturally, hanging out with my friends, but our idea of party involved a lot of coke (the pop!) and Rock Band. Man, I kind of miss singing Rock Band.
The point is, the first time I got drunk, it was ridiculous. I had never been one for peer pressure, but that night I 'had' to keep pace with them: all seasoned drinkers. The morning was not pleasant.
I would continue to accept their invitations out but I never got drunk with them again. Hangovers were awful, who would do that.
Anyway. Obviously that's no longer the case. I have some friends who drink, more who don't, but I have zero qualms about enjoying my liquor. But why do I drink to get drunk when I'm not having fun?
I believe I have an answer.
For argument's sake, let's put mood on a scale from 1-10, where 1 is suicidal ideation and 10 is joy. Before my current situation of psychiatric therapy and medication, I would say my days would be 1-3s. A great day was a 5. Numbers beyond this were hidden to me. I would see people experience emotions I didn't know, or understand. It is a surreal thing. I cannot articulate how it feels. At this point in my life, over the last 12+ months, with a shrink and meds, I'm 5-6 every day. A great day is 8. I've felt 10 for brief moments.
I mean, 5 is not great. On that scale, it's like, "not sad, not happy" basically. Just... whatever. Yet, relative to obsessively planning my own death, 5 is pretty fucking great.
But I feel another problem. And it may be related to my depression, it may not. I suspect so, but that is because so much of the pain in my life has been related or amplified by depression. It becomes easy to blame everything on it. I say this with some level of guilt: I have certainly been rude to people and justified it as "well, I'm depressed, I don't owe you politeness." I've digressed.
The other problem.
Connection. You know when you feel connected to people? It's been a long time since I have felt that. I feel alone when I am with people. Even old friends, the very people with whom I normally experience connection. This ability to connect has been fading for some time but in the past few months it has escalated. It is also the past few months that my drinking has gone from enjoying wine and seldom getting drunk to -hey this glass is empty, better solve that problem!
I think the two facts are related, though I'm ashamed at how long it took me to connect those dots. It's very easy to lie to yourself: actually, no, I will borrow a phrase and say it is easy to be lied to by yourself. I believe there is a difference. Even now that I believe there is a correlation, I will sometimes insist I'm just drinking because I like it.
But here is the reality as far as I can determine.
This lack of connection leaves such a void, such an emptiness, that I ache from it. As I try to run out of the abyss, toward my friends, my loved ones, the abyss widens, it mocks me, for it is never so wide I cannot see my friends, but forever too wide for me to connect. And this emptiness, it... fills me. My heart feels icy, and my mind races with the pain of non-connection. I feel so alone, so weak, and so hopeless.
It is this realisation, that my life might just always be one of cold, darkness and disconnection, that makes me want to die. No, wrong. Wrong wrong. I don't necessarily want to die, but I cannot bear the thought of living with this pain. It is agony.
Why do I drink. It doesn't fill the void. It doesn't numb the pain. It doesn't make me happy. It tastes good.
And
It lets me be lied to by myself. It lets me believe that maybe I could connect, you know, with that person, there, or some fantasy person my meandering imagination has concocted. This lie lets me go to bed depressed instead of envisioning an extremely violent self-inflicted end to myself.
Ultimately the question I feel regularly faced with is: if my life hurts more than it is enjoyable, why should I keep living?
Sigh.
To put it bluntly, in spite of the pain, my mom was far more functional before the knee surgeries. At present she can barely get up off of the couch. The physical therapy has actually made her condition worse.
But thanks to that, we have a good clue as to why. She tweaked her left knee during inpatient therapy after the second replacement. Examinations could not find out what was wrong at the time, but the pain kept getting worse as she continued the therapy. Then we found it. One morning her kneecap was at the side of her leg. My sister was able to pop it back into place. Now we knew. dislocated kneecap. And the therapy was what was aggravating the situation. As her muscles got stronger, the ligaments kept getting stretched, and would pull the kneecap further and further out of place. This was similar to what my sister had endured as a teenager thanks to a basketball injury.
So she has an appointment tomorrow morning with the orthopedist. Expect to have an MRI and then arthroscopic surgery to correct this issue. If my sister's experience is any indication, we hope for an immediate improvement.
Until then, regular therapy continues, and when I'm the chauffeur, that means hipstering it up at the Starbucks across the street.
To put it bluntly, in spite of the pain, my mom was far more functional before the knee surgeries. At present she can barely get up off of the couch. The physical therapy has actually made her condition worse.
But thanks to that, we have a good clue as to why. She tweaked her left knee during inpatient therapy after the second replacement. Examinations could not find out what was wrong at the time, but the pain kept getting worse as she continued the therapy. Then we found it. One morning her kneecap was at the side of her leg. My sister was able to pop it back into place. Now we knew. dislocated kneecap. And the therapy was what was aggravating the situation. As her muscles got stronger, the ligaments kept getting stretched, and would pull the kneecap further and further out of place. This was similar to what my sister had endured as a teenager thanks to a basketball injury.
So she has an appointment tomorrow morning with the orthopedist. Expect to have an MRI and then arthroscopic surgery to correct this issue. If my sister's experience is any indication, we hope for an immediate improvement.
Until then, regular therapy continues, and when I'm the chauffeur, that means hipstering it up at the Starbucks across the street.
Dave
Staff member
My wife and I are celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary next Wednesday. I took the entire week off from work so we could go to Colorado and visit her parents and shop. She put in for the vacation and it finally came through this morning. She put in for the wrong fucking week. So I'll have all next week off and she'll have the next week all to herself. Hooray.
C'mon, Dave . Think of how much each of you will get done with the other person out of the picture for a week.
If you work it right, you'll only have to deal with each other in the middle for a few minutes--just long enough to exchange keys.
It'll be like Summer camp, only with less singing.
(...says the guy who will be coming up in a month on the one-year anniversary of being amicably yet necessarily separated from his wife. No conflict, just stuff that has to do with her family and her needing to be over there instead.)
--Patrick
If you work it right, you'll only have to deal with each other in the middle for a few minutes--just long enough to exchange keys.
It'll be like Summer camp, only with less singing.
(...says the guy who will be coming up in a month on the one-year anniversary of being amicably yet necessarily separated from his wife. No conflict, just stuff that has to do with her family and her needing to be over there instead.)
--Patrick
To be fair, scheduling a whole week of "you are home alone and can do all the chores or housework you want, without any pressure, or just relax, do what you please, and you'll only see me in the evening when I come home from work, just in time to eat together and a pleasant evening together
" would be somewhere in the top-3 list of best gifts my girlfriend could give me, alongside "trip to outer space" and "winning lottery tickets" 
*sigh*
So, last night I had plans to go out to a movie with a bunch of people from work. Eventually a bunch of them cancelled down to just me and our manager of HR. Single woman, 49, recently divorced, very attractive for her age and very nice, but not my type. We were chatting back and forth and once it came out that it was just going to be her and I, she became very concerned about gossip and indicated that she was uncomfortable with going because of that. News might get back to her bf who lives a couple hours away that she was out gallivanting with a young stud.
Are you fucking serious? It's not like I'm going to bang you right then and there in the theatre. We're going as friends, Jesus. She asked if I was upset, and I wasn't going to admit that I was annoyed by the whole thing, but I did comment that I was obviously very naive and unaccustomed (Or didn't actually give a fuck) to caring about what other people said or thought. In the end, we ended up just going to the bar with another friend, so a threesome was okay, but just two of us was verboten.
Annoyed.
Then I was visiting my sister this afternoon and she commented that I had a hot date at lunch yesterday. Ok, more gossip. I had taken my contractor lady friend who I've talked about at length out to lunch and apparently one of my sister's coworkers had been in the same place and let her know that I had had lunch with an incredibly hot girl.
I don't know if I should be letting my friend know to expect gossip and apologize for it, or whatever. Feeling very naive that people have nothing better to do than whisper about shit that doesn't really concern them.[DOUBLEPOST=1373510102][/DOUBLEPOST]Edit: all of that said, if word gets back to my ex-wife, I'm totally cool with that, hahaha.
So, last night I had plans to go out to a movie with a bunch of people from work. Eventually a bunch of them cancelled down to just me and our manager of HR. Single woman, 49, recently divorced, very attractive for her age and very nice, but not my type. We were chatting back and forth and once it came out that it was just going to be her and I, she became very concerned about gossip and indicated that she was uncomfortable with going because of that. News might get back to her bf who lives a couple hours away that she was out gallivanting with a young stud.
Are you fucking serious? It's not like I'm going to bang you right then and there in the theatre. We're going as friends, Jesus. She asked if I was upset, and I wasn't going to admit that I was annoyed by the whole thing, but I did comment that I was obviously very naive and unaccustomed (Or didn't actually give a fuck) to caring about what other people said or thought. In the end, we ended up just going to the bar with another friend, so a threesome was okay, but just two of us was verboten.
Annoyed.
Then I was visiting my sister this afternoon and she commented that I had a hot date at lunch yesterday. Ok, more gossip. I had taken my contractor lady friend who I've talked about at length out to lunch and apparently one of my sister's coworkers had been in the same place and let her know that I had had lunch with an incredibly hot girl.
I don't know if I should be letting my friend know to expect gossip and apologize for it, or whatever. Feeling very naive that people have nothing better to do than whisper about shit that doesn't really concern them.[DOUBLEPOST=1373510102][/DOUBLEPOST]Edit: all of that said, if word gets back to my ex-wife, I'm totally cool with that, hahaha.
Look on the plus side, you are now officially seen as a young stud. A virile specimen of masculinity that people must hide their girlfriends, wives and daughters from, lest they get pregnant simply from your stare.
I guess I just don't consider stuff like that. I mean, for her especially being 49, it seems pretty high schoolish?
When it comes to social gossip, most people never leave high school.
I was going to say almost the exact same thing. This is one of those things we think people should grow out of, but many never do.
But should one let their actions be dictated to by that? It's one thing to be the gossiper, but to be controlled by the 'inevitability' of whispers seems, frankly, retarded to me. I do feel bad for her (And contractor girl). Of course, part of it is my own lack of self-esteem - thinking that she's not going to want to hang out with me because people think we're dating.
She's the HR manager. A big part of her job is controlling the damage from those inevitable whispers, regardless of merit. It's really not you, and I'm sure she won't hesitate to hang out with you... so long as there's one other person there to make sure it doesn't look like a date. Nothing personal.
GasBandit
Staff member
Reason not to use cloud computing #592:
Your scheduling software company (Marketron) decides, after a year and a half of you using it, to revoke your ability to send invoices electronically, claiming you never were licensed for it in the first place, even though you were. Oh, but they didn't TELL you what they were doing, no e-mail, no call, no nothing, just flipped the switch to "doesn't work when you do that." Oh, but it doesn't GIVE YOU AN ERROR either when you do your billing, it just lets you think all your electronic invoices went. You have to find out 2 weeks after you did June's billing that none of your clients are receiving their invoices, and have to call Marketron tech support, for them to figure this out.
THIS IS THE SECOND TIME THIS HAS HAPPENED.
I swear to god, there may be some companies as shitty and deserving of annihilation as Marketron, but aside from EA, none really spring to mind very quickly.
Your scheduling software company (Marketron) decides, after a year and a half of you using it, to revoke your ability to send invoices electronically, claiming you never were licensed for it in the first place, even though you were. Oh, but they didn't TELL you what they were doing, no e-mail, no call, no nothing, just flipped the switch to "doesn't work when you do that." Oh, but it doesn't GIVE YOU AN ERROR either when you do your billing, it just lets you think all your electronic invoices went. You have to find out 2 weeks after you did June's billing that none of your clients are receiving their invoices, and have to call Marketron tech support, for them to figure this out.
THIS IS THE SECOND TIME THIS HAS HAPPENED.
I swear to god, there may be some companies as shitty and deserving of annihilation as Marketron, but aside from EA, none really spring to mind very quickly.
GasBandit
Staff member
Clear channel's already done themselves in. It'd just be shooting a chicken after the head was already cut off.Clear Channel?
--Patrick
Sometimes they need that extra encouragement, since a chicken can run around an awfully long time without its head.
--Patrick
A
Anonymous
Anonymous
Just told my father that his best friend for seven decades has passed.
A
Anonymous
Anonymous
"We appreciate what you're doing, we really do."
Give me a fucking break.
If you really appreciated what I was doing you wouldn't be cutting my hours and then justifying it by blaming me for earning OT, when you and I both know it's because the next shift doesn't bother to show on time.
If you really appreciated what I was doing, you'd ask for help getting the bills paid on time instead of rationalizing the multiple termination notices that keep arriving due to inattention (not lack of funds) on your current physical condition. You wouldn't try to make me out to be the bad guy when I get upset about it. I've paid my bills and then some.
Give me a fucking break.
If you really appreciated what I was doing you wouldn't be cutting my hours and then justifying it by blaming me for earning OT, when you and I both know it's because the next shift doesn't bother to show on time.
If you really appreciated what I was doing, you'd ask for help getting the bills paid on time instead of rationalizing the multiple termination notices that keep arriving due to inattention (not lack of funds) on your current physical condition. You wouldn't try to make me out to be the bad guy when I get upset about it. I've paid my bills and then some.
My back is in a phenomenal amount of agony
Wow, I read that as "What's wrong with that?" and thought "heartless, you are". Then I saw I misread it, so, sorry for thinking you were heartless, Queen
Dammit, Bubble181, do you know how difficult it is to recall a doomweasel strike force?Wow, I read that as "What's wrong with that?" and thought "heartless, you are". Then I saw I misread it, so, sorry for thinking you were heartless, Queen
Well, if they show up there, give them a snack and send them on their way.
Not sure. Today I woke up with a fever and every muscle in my body crying out in pain. I could literally not stand... putting pressure made my back ache more, and my leg muscles felt... bruised. It was awful.
My mother came over with soup, meds and... ice cream (because, moms
) and so the pain is in check, but my fever definitely feels worse. Sounds like my mom had the same thing on Sunday and it onlylasted a day so hopefully I'm out of the woods by tomorrowI hope you feel better soon, sweetie.Not sure. Today I woke up with a fever and every muscle in my body crying out in pain. I could literally not stand... putting pressure made my back ache more, and my leg muscles felt... bruised. It was awful.
My mother came over with soup, meds and... ice cream (because, moms
Working on it
It's not often they get a chance to taste a real casserole of Belgian vole and good Belgian beer, they seem to enjoy it
...I thought those laws concerned drunken minors. Ooohhh, they make so much more sense now! Well, drat.
They did enjoy it. Now they want me to import it so they can have it every weekend.It's not often they get a chance to taste a real casserole of Belgian vole and good Belgian beer, they seem to enjoy it
Prepare for more doomweasel visits in the future.