I find it very hard to take sick leave; even to admit that one is electively staying at home seems to be to take the attitude of Mr. Charles, above. However, the head cold that has this week felled me saw me spend Friday in a condition largely similar to the pictured layabout, only sicker.
Physical illness usually plays havoc with my mental health, too, but aside from some wandering anxiety I have been feeling okay. Indeed, the sorrowful torpor that I expected to take me down for a fortnight or more lasted almost exactly a week, then ceased, giving me a couple of healthful days before this virus made its home in my head. So swift was the former’s duration that I felt somewhat embarrassed that I wrote about it. What might have changed, then, to make my mental take-down that much shorter?
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My mood got better after Christmas, just before New Year. Right through the first part of the holidays, however, I was like a spider in water. The discharge of my responsibilities over the festival was not the catharsis for which I was hoping, but I coped externally. My mother-in-law-to-be, sensing perhaps some of my disquiet, called out to me as I left her home on Boxing Day, “Everything you do is socially acceptable to us.” It was a kind thought.
This was of course the first Christmas I spent with the señor’s family as well as my own. As the day approached I knew I was worrying unnecessarily–had I not had any number of happy evenings with them this year already (including that staple of extended families worldwide, drinking in the kitchen)?–and yet I still worried. I wanted the gifts I’d had a hand in choosing to be appropriate. “Of course they will be,” said the señor, “they’re from you”, and yet I couldn’t quite accept the idea that whatever I did would be fine. I need not have worried–the prediction was correct–but I didn’t enjoy the feeling in the days before that I was worrying far too much about everything (when not worrying at all would have been the best way to approach things) and not quite being able to stop it.
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As regular readers will know, December and June are typically the times when I, not to put too fine a point on it, go a bit mental. This explains in large part my quietness here. It’s harder to detect the start of a downward journey in an environment of general cheer and contentment, but it has exerted its pull for a week or two and I must feign patience until it recedes. I am good at weathering this, though I hate it.
Depression, however, is apparently no barrier to pottering away on Facebook, so should you miss me too acutely, that is where I may be found. I will willingly play you at Scrabble, Wordscraper, Scramble or Word Twist. It is likely you can beat me with relative ease in any of these forums, so for what are you waiting?
Regular readers will also know of my fondness for Chris Christmas Rodriguez. Vote him to replace Santa, this and every year.
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High Tide
9 May, 2009
in commentatrix
Followers of my twitter feed will have noticed already what writer’s duty compels me to admit: my seasonal depression has come early this winter (but then, so has the winter). Despite a happy, productive autumn and my recent adventures in 日本, I lack the powers magical or cognitive to stave off that slow slide underwater. It’s been a week; I’ll probably experience another two or so before my equilibrium rights itself.
Coincidentally, this week a copy of the local student journal appeared in my office, as it sometimes does. In such sites recreational columnists cut their teeth, and this week the pseudonymous incumbent turned a sharpened pen on mental illness. (An idea of the tone can be inferred from a previous column in which she suggested that “if you see some fat fuck ordering chips at the UCSA it is your moral duty to stop them”.) I’ve turned these words over in my mind in the last few days, their mixture of acerbica and disdain. I wonder what it would be like to read something like this as, say, a first-year student with depression, which, of course, I once was.
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