Someday

I will stop changing my blog template and rearranging my page elements. Someday I will just sit down and write. Or sit down, write, decide what photo I want to show, realize it's still on the camera, connect the USB cord, upload pictures, add a picture. Then I'll probably change the template again anyway.

What I wanted to write about, well, I wanted to write about two things. Maybe they should be two posts. One today, one tomorrow. It's after nine and I know someone will likely be up at 6:30 (ahem, Penny) which means I will be up at 6:30, too.

Last night I wanted to write about depression because I was lying in bed feeling depressed. But, I felt too depressed to get up and write about it. Today, I do not feel so bad, although I remember some of the things I wanted to write. Likely, they would have sounded more eloquent if I could have dictated them from my bed last night. Or maybe they would have sounded more pathetic and self-indulgent. Maybe both.

I don't really have anything to be depressed about, but that's the distinction, in psychological terms between situational and clinical depression. Not that I'm sure I'm clinically depressed. I think I have been, but I'm not sure I am now. I feel low and irritable and most of all, down on myself. Like there's something wrong with me, something unchangeably wrong. This feels self-indulgent, now, at 36. When I was nineteen (looking back at my nineteen-year-old self), it seemed more appropriate, expected, developmental, etc. etc. Although I didn't have anything to be depressed about then, either, not really. A bit lonely, anxious and unsure about the future, a bit envious of the seeming confidence of my peers. But depression in college is almost a cliche, especially for us pallid, bookish lit majors. At 36 it just seems pathetic.

Part of this might be from the voice of my mother which I hear in my head. If you're depressed, do something for someone else! she would admonish. Stop feeling sorry for yourself! And that is what I am afraid I am doing. Just feeling sorry for myself when, as I've mentioned, there's really nothing to feel sorry for myself about.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention I'm soon to complete a Master's degree in Mental Health Counseling. I would never consider saying to a client,* Stop feeling sorry for yourself! I would try to help her/him figure out what's making her/him sad, talk about it, find closure, if possible. Or figure out what makes her/him not so sad and do more of that. But me, well, I've decided I'm just whiny.

So, for at least the last three years, I haven't felt this way. I've had my moments, of course, of feeling overwhelmed (by parenting, etc.) or even panicky. But this kind of weighted sadness, not really. I want to extend myself the same empathy which I am being trained to show to others, but it's difficult. The trouble is that when I start being annoyed or angry with myself for being whiny or self-indulgent, it just makes me feel worse about myself.

What am I going to do now? Write my way out of it? I wrote a lot in college: spiral bound notebooks full of sad sonnets and weepy diary entries. I have looked through them since and have found them amusing, interesting, but distant, like they were written by some other, less contented self. But right now I feel not that much different, even though I have so much more with which to be contented now (not that ugly bathroom, but that's a minor point).

I went to a beginner's yoga class today. My first yoga class. (I know, I know. First yoga class and blog post in 2008! I'm a bit behind the trend curve.) I really liked it, although I am really inflexible (see, first yoga class). I'd like to make it part of my routine. Maybe it's these small things--more exercise, more writing--that can help me out of it. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel better. Who knows?


*That's what we're supposed to call the people to whom we listen nowadays, unless you work at a place where you're required to call them "consumers".