a bit more on the nature of the depression beast.

There are times I wish people who have never felt the soul crunching power of a nasty depression could feel it. The slow constriction of viewpoint. The mocking voice in one's head, critiquing your every move and thought, and bringing up the worst That same awful little voice that discounts every good thing that's happened to you as well as the people who care about you and magnifying what are minor critiques into huge failures. Because, to somebody that's in a depressive phase, the worst case is the only case. It's a peculiar kind of blindness, a blindness of the soul, almost.

I don't get depressed as an attention device. Trust me...there's much, much, MUCH better ways of getting attention. To use depression as an attention getting device would be like using rotting boards to build your house, it's going to collapse that much easier. Because everything gets twisted when the depression beast gets at it.

Yeah, my self-confidence is pretty rotten. Every time I get to a point where I think I can hold myself together, I find one of those rotting boards laid down when I wasn't so sure of myself, and *boom*, here we go again. Which is why I tried talking about the dichotomy between knowing and feeling. I'm slowly winning, I can sorta hold the 'knows' to me against the hurricane of 'feels', but it's still hard and I'm still learning. And occassionally, in the darkest of nights, calling out for a flashlight or a candle in the dark or anything is the only way to keep from losing myself in the dark. And that's what I was trying to do, last night, is find those little points of light that I knew had to be out there, but that because of something that isn't even really *my* fault left me particularly blind.

I mean, I wish I could just bootstrap my way out of this. I really do, it'd mean that everybody who thought depression was just a matter of willpower would be right. Yeah, okay, maybe you can bootstrap your way out of your depressions. There's lots of reasons for that. Maybe yours are milder, it's not my place to say. Maybe you can force a conversation with the depression beast, in which case, good for you. But for some reason, I can't. I pretty much have to ride them out, which is a difficult task at the best of times.

It's not because I'm lazy, or that I don't want to not be depressed, or any of that. And some of the commentary last night was for the people I deal with on a more regular basis, where they'll run up against the moods more easily. And I was also trying to explain periods of pensive silence, which I know show up even here. I'm not doing this because I want the attention. Hell, the depression beast was fighting me every step of the way because asking like that is my attempt to start dragging myself back out of the pit again.

So thanks for sticking by me everybody, I'm slowly piecing things back together again. it'll be better soon. I mean, I am feeling better now.

More later.

I cannot move a mountain now,
I can no longer run
I cannot be who I was then,
In a way, I never was