To be wise is to be sad.

It sucks being the smartest person I know. I'm not trying to sound prideful, well maybe a little. But when my life is screwed up, when the chips are down, I don't have anyone to go to. It's lonely at the top. It's fun to be the one person dispensing advice until your the one who needs it. Shoot, it's not even that fun to dispense it. No one takes my advice even when they ask for it.

The terrible thing about wisdom is that it's a mirror, a true unflinching mirror. There is no hiding from it if you want to keep it. Ignorance is bliss which means that wisdom is sorrow.

This is not a poem.

Do you know what I am protecting you from?
I hold back a darkness that could hurt you.
It hurts me for not letting it hurt you.
It's like magma looking for a weak point to erupt through.
I hold it back and can't help but feel offended that no one respects the dam I have built for their own protection.

Zoloft and Prozac

It has been a long time hasn't it. I didn't write because I felt like I'd be sounding like too much of a broken record.

Depression reared it's ugly head and I have stories to tell.

But for this post let me talk about Zoloft and Prozac.

They don't work. At least not for me. They work fine for the side effects. Nervousness, apprehension, dizziness, jitters, lack of sex drive, slight nausea. I hear over and over again how treatable depression is. I find that hard to believe. I resisted taking medication because I didn't like the idea of having my happiness dependant upon a pill. Then one day my sadness took a turn for the worse. I started writing my suicide letter. Instead of finishing it I broke down and asked my counselor for drugs. I'm not sure if I made the right decision.

I'm willing to give drugs a fair shot. Lets see what other anti-depressant cocktail they might come up with. Cursed hope keeps me going.

Now maybe Zoloft or Prozac will work for others, I encourage people to get whatever treatment they need. Be aware that like me, your path to hopeful recovery may not be a short one.

Where does it come from?

This sadness.

I thought I had it worked out. I went to see a therapist. She gave me a rubber band to put on my wrist and told me to give myself a light snap whenever I think a depressing thought. This exercise is mostly about making one aware of how often they think negatively. Next once your aware I was told to identify the thought itself and evaluate it. The goal being to dismiss the thoughts that groundlessly depressing and self imposed.

So I did. I was skeptical but I tried it. It helped. Or at least it seemed to.

For no reason that I could identify my depression seethed back up. When I first started the rubber band therapy I noticed a decline in it. My brain was able to sort of heal itself with it's own thinking.
"Hey, your thinking sad thoughts," it'd say. "Lets' not do that anymore."

But then it just stopped working and I don't know why.

Happiness is not a choice.

So I was reading a blog of a friend of mine. At the bottom of it there was this quote.


"Happiness is a choice, not an event. Success is a goal, not a gift or a right. Victims have no power, people who act have plenty."


I want to focus on the first sentence. There rest of the quote seems true enough, although the victim part may raise my ire. While I also don't think happiness is an event, or at least I don't think that it is, I don't think it's a choice either. At least not for me.


If happiness is a choice why would anyone choose anything but happiness? The fact that there are people who are sad disproves the "choice" aspect of emotions. You feel what you feel. There are a variety of things that cause you to feel what you feel. To some degree you can decide what your response to stimuli is. But there is so much that is beyond a persons ability to do so.


Case in point, me. My brain, or emotions, or both make me feel sad. It's not a simple matter of saying to my self "My brain is inexplicably trying to make me depressed. But I will be happy instead." It doesn't work that way. At least not for me. Maybe "normal" people can out think their melancholy. In that case happiness really is a choice for them. And I can can kind of see how that can work. I've out thought myself away from happiness. I was taking Prozac and it seemed like they were taking the edge off the sadness. As soon as I realized this any good they did stopped working. So I don't know. Maybe that's not quite the same thing.


So then I thought if happiness is not a choice what is it? That's when it hit me.


Happiness is not a choice it's a medical condition.

I'm not choosing to be depressed it's a medical condition. Depression is recognized as such so wouldn't the inverse of it likewise be a medical condition. Makes sense to me. Although it is kind of sad once you think about it. Happy people are not really happy they're healthy. Depressed people are not really sad their sick.


Do I really think this?


I don't know.

But I will say this. Happiness is not a choice. At least not entirely

Long time no see.

I feel bad for not posting in such a long time. But there isn't too much happening to me that's worth mentioning. I'm feeling bad, but it's a dull kind of feeling. Like when the tv gets left on static and it just kind of drones into your skull. It's more annoying than painful but still I'm tired of feeling this way. Where is the off switch.

Heal?

It was some tv spot trying to raise awareness for Depression. The parting line stated that Depression is curable. They said I could be healed, so why do I not believe them. It is truly odd because I have often said that I believe that there is a way to be relieved of Depression. I don't know what it is or when it will come but somewhere, deep down I believe it. So when I saw this ad it puzzled me that my first instinctual reaction was to doubt it. It's like I have these two very conflicting internal responses. One full of hope, the other full of fear. It is not a pleasant mix.

So what do I make of this?