Wait…what?
3/7/09
It’s been 5 months since my last post. I passed all my Level 2 classes, and have gotten a 4.0 GPA both terms (woohoo!). Tuesday was my last day of Management clinicals, which were awesome except that they started at 5:30 in the morning. There are 7 weeks left of Level 3, meaning the end is in sight! I’m doing quite well so far—passed Management clinicals, got an A in both OB and Peds lecture, and will take the Mental Health final on Monday. I feel like I know enough to get by now. Not enough to start work tomorrow, but enough that, with several weeks of orientation and precepting, I could probably do a decent job as a floor nurse. Nursing home charge nurse, not so much…but I probably won’t apply for that sort of job anyway. Rehearsals for this year’s Gilbert and Sullivan show (Patience, May 14-17 at the Wealthy Theatre) are going as well as can be expected, and Bells of River City Morris Dancers are preparing for a show on St. Patrick’s Day.
So why do I feel so bad? For the last week or so, I’ve wanted to curl up in a corner. Yesterday I took the day off school (don’t worry, only 4 hours, and it was exam review) to help see a friend off at the airport and work on some things at home. I ended up sitting on the couch, wrapped in my dino blankie with pillows piled around me, trying hard not to freak out until Mike got home. When he got home, I told him I’m not okay, but I couldn’t give him any reason why. I DID say, “I went outside and puttered around for a while, since it was so nice out, but I couldn’t enjoy it,” and that gave him some idea of what’s going on. For those of you who’ve never been there, here’s a post from January about what depression feels like for me:
— In cheezfrenz@yahoogroups.com, (someone) wrote:
>when you’re really down deep, it’s hard to take any initiative for
yourself. You have to start feeling better in order to do the things
that will make you feel better.
>
(The rest is me…)
Wow. That’s just how my depression feels. Watch a funny movie? No;
I’ll just look at it and think, ‘I should be laughing at that.’ Go
visit a friend? No; I don’t have the energy to pick up the phone and
arrange it. All my thoughts and efforts are directed toward keeping
my $#!* together while I’m around other people, the rest of the time I
just sleep and breathe and take up space.
When I have the right medications, I still feel crappy a lot of the
time, but I have the energy to do something about it. Today I was
incredibly bored, so I took down the Christmas lights and thought
about how, next year, we’ll be able to put up a tree and invite people
over because I won’t be in school. Without the meds, I probably would
have stayed on the couch and thought, ‘This sucks. It’s the middle of
January and my Christmas lights are still up. What kind of *$^&$*(
loser leaves their lights up so long? #$^% this, it’s not worth it.
G%$ d#@& it Melissa, what the ^&$* is wrong with you?’ Notice how
many dimes I owe the dog, and how many quarters I owe the swear jar?
That’s what depression is like.
–teenie
Aside: ‘dime in the dog’ is a variation on the swear jar…a friend’s family had a bank shaped like a dachshund. The slot in its back was so small only dimes would fit through, so the dog sat in the living room and any time someone put themselves down they had to put a dime in the dog.
Apparently, even with the proper meds and self care, I can get into that horrible downward spiral described above. I think what’s going on is, things are going well, and that scares me. There, I said it. I’m scared. I’m scared out of my wits that I’m going to screw up, or that since things are going well for me, something terrible is about to happen. So here I sit, wrapped in my blankie, wondering what it’s going to be, and berating myself for not doing something…but I have neither the energy nor the motivation to do anything, and I don’t know what to do anyhow. If I can get past the next week or so, I think I’ll feel better…there are a lot of major assignments coming due, and some of my anxiety is probably about them. Whatever.
