Monday, January 28, 2008

Depression




So Bosque is in Outlands now, happily killing things at level 61. While the speed in which I got there is nice, I have to tell you that I have had a hard time with my guild in the past couple of weeks. That’s not to say that it had ANYTHING to do with raiding and more to do with the overall attitude of the guild itself. Sometimes when working with people for so long you get used to the way other people do things. Then there are times that no matter what happen you let it just slid off your back and it’s not a big deal. Usually that’s who I am.

This past weekend that wasn’t there for me. Instead I was confronted with a part of my personality that I don’t really enjoy. I’ll be honest here and let you know that I’m bi-polar. Not many people will admit to something like that but I will. I’ve know for over five years that I had that imbalance going. It slipped through the cracks of my teenage years because I was living with a high school teacher and didn’t have any insurance at the time. I learned about it because I’m an emotional guy. Ask anybody who runs with me or who knows me well and they’ll tell you that I wear my emotions on my sleeve like most heart sick puppies wear their hearts. There isn’t anything that doesn’t give me SOME kind of emotion and any guy that sits there and says, oh well I don’t have any feelings toward x, y or z and I will tell you that they are lying to you and you should kick them in the shin.

One of the first times that I remember realizing that something wasn’t right in my brain was with an ex-girlfriend. We had been dating for over a year and we were talking about marriage but I wasn’t quite sure of that future. She and I had some kind of silly argument about where to eat and I just went ballistic. I mean just balls to the wall about it and I began speeding through town in the little car that we had. We were in the car when the argument happened and I drove with anger in my mind. I drove like the world was against me and I came to a screeching halt in front of her house and told her to take a hike. Funny thing is that this all happened as we were supposed to go to church. I sat behind the wheel of that car, engine idling and wondered, what the hell was my problem? The issue was that even though I understood something was WRONG I couldn’t get into the mindset to figure out that the something was me. I was just out there but I couldn’t reel myself back in.

A couple of years later I began taking medication to help with this issue. It’s a good medication. I can see clearer, mentally, with this medication on board than I did before. The life around me is crisper and I’m taking things in stride. That’s great but I have to remember to take my medication and sometimes, well that just doesn’t happen. I get up early in the morning but I’m not really awake until I’m in my car headed for work. So between the times I get up and the time I leave for work I’m supposed to be getting my crap in order for the day, medications usually slip my mind.

I forgot like five days straight last week. So by Sunday it was out of my system and the dumbest things started getting on my nerves. The Hooved Missus is starting to feel A LOT better and when she does she likes to be helpful around the house and with various other things. So Sunday I’m sitting in front of my computer suffering through WSG, cause that’s what it is when you’re Alliance suffering, and my wife asked me about something that I had asked HER to do earlier in the week and had never gotten around to doing it. Now she was doing it while I was playing and it IRKED me. I mean it REALLY just bent me out of shape. Coupled with WSG and I was livid. Then my GM made some off the cuff remark that normally I would just retort back to and I’m getting ready to be in a RAGE.

One of the guys I run with normally also made some jab at me in fun and I just stared at the screen for a moment and waited to hear moans of pain and agony as the others there would begin to type about the pain my mental powers put them in and have them apologize to me or they would pay even more dearly for what they had done to me.

I shut down and went to the kitchen, took all my meds and took a shower to give them time to work before I joined the general populace of my house again. Yes I was bent out of shape but as you can tell as you read this, I didn’t even really have a clue about what it was I was bent out of shape about; I just knew that I wasn’t happy. Happiness comes from what you do but when you’re bi-polar and clinically depressed, it doesn’t matter WHAT you do, you’re always depressed.

I think that playing WOW, while time consuming; it has really given me a barometer for when there’s something wrong with me. I enjoy playing a great deal; anyone that knows me will tell you that. When I get to the point where I don’t give a rip and I’m willing to blow up at my family, my medicine isn’t on board.

When I originally started to write this post I was going to bitch about my guild but the more I look at my mindset the last couple of days, the more I realize that the problem isn’t with them and it wasn’t with them, it was within myself and the crap that I was pulling on my own. Man, I’m glad I blog.

2 comments:

Sellia said...

WoW ! Good for you to be able to talk about it. I wish you well on that one. Take care.

Anonymous said...

I love this post. Most people don't have the courage to talk about struggles they have even though it makes us all closer as humans when we do. I am not bi-polar but was clinically depressed for several years. The meds did reboot my brain and I totally grok what you mean when you talk about how they work to make things better. It's weird, but you can really feel that something isn't right, and then when it IS right, you can feel that too. (Our brains are very meta, no?) I have a few of suggestions on something that might help with you forgetting your meds. (1) Not sure what the parameters of your Rx are, but one thing that helped me was switching from taking them at night instead of in the morning. For some reason it was easier to remember to fold them into my going-to-bed routine, which was less harried than my gotta-get-to-work routine. (2) Along those same lines, "hook" your meds to something you NEVER forget to do. For me, it's brushing my teeth. If I want to start a new habit, I "hook" it to tooth brushing; that is, I do it right after or before so I don't forget it. (3) This one's foolproof: put 5 pills in a zip lock bag and leave them in your desk at work. That way if you realize you've forgotten to take them, you can take them immediately. Sending you the light. Hang in there, fellow shammie.

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