Better Get Yourself Together - Nike Ad-vice and a(nother) Depressive Episode

Disclaimer 1: This post details the ravings of someone in the middle of a depressive episode. I spew bitterness and negativity created in my mind. I only wish to show the inner workings of one depressed mind (and there are already some wonderful reads here on Medium about this here and here) to hopefully be another example that chronic depression has nothing to do with sadness.

My mental bile can be called at the very least unfair and mostly just out and out wrong. Whether spawned from any microscopic grain of truth or not, still remains fiction. I have no intention to lash out or hurt anyone. It’s just to illustrate where my mind goes. I dearly love and appreciate my friends and family and everything they do. Please remember that.

I’ve been really doing it right. I’ve been taking my meds. I’ve been exercising. I haven’t been drinking or eating sugar. I’ve lost weight. I’ve meditated.

And I still haven’t done squat for over two weeks.

I stay awake during the night. I sleep for most of the day. I haven’t done enough writing work or any other work.

I took a freelance job where I just had to do 3 hours of work, most of it writing what I already knew. I had a week to do it.

One week to do 3 hours of work.

Can you guess when I got it done? Never’s a good guess and you’re close. Actually it was at the very last minute.

Last week I just had to make a phone call. A phone call! It took me 4 days to do that.

This will be the third time I’ve written in two weeks.

I think a big chunk of this comes from my sleep schedule. I can’t fall asleep at a decent hour. Then I’m left with either staying awake all day (which I’ve done twice now and would be the better decision as bad as that sounds) or trying to just catch some sleep and waking up at a later but reasonable hour.

I keep trying to do the latter.

I keep failing.

Sometimes I just don’t hear the alarm. Sometimes I’m just so sleepy I snooze and don’t realize that hours have gone by.

Mostly I just can’t get out of bed.

For those who’ve suffered the black dog or any form of a hellish mental illness that statement can usually be enough. For all the rest of you it means exactly what those words say. I just can’t get up. I want to. I really do. But I can’t. Anxiety. Tired limbs. Tired mind. The reasons are many and they mix like the worst cocktail you’ve ever had. The end result is this feeling that I have a 1 ton weight on my chest and I

just

can’t

get

up.

I want to get up. I want to get back to the gym. I especially want to get back to writing.

When I was 14 and going through all this I enjoyed the night. I had the house to myself. I would watch movies and be left with all my thoughts.

For the years in Barcelona I went through this I loved the night. I smoked weed and hash and watched cartoons and movies and entire seasons of TV shows (twice in a row in the case of Firefly). I’d smoke cigarettes on my balcony and watch the city I loved. Cabs and stray cars would quietly roll by. I could look east and see where the buildings ended at the horizon. I knew from that point the sea started. I looked west and I could see Diagonal in the distance and up high a lit Tibidabo, like some magical castle, standing out in the sky and covering the small peaks of Collserolla with its luminescence. Later in the early morning hours they’d turn off the lights but you could still see Tibidabo just as perfectly.

That’s not the case here. I want to sleep. I want to get up at a good hour. I want to write. I suffer the night. I don’t watch TV. It’s hard to read books. Comic books and graphic novels save my sanity but they cost much more than just watching TV.

I’m writing this because I’m tired of all the victory stories getting written (which I know are good and important). I’m sick of the rah rah, “just do it” Nike ad-vice bullshit.

https://twitter.com/MsLouiseGlover/status/422459218579705856

Here’s what it’s like being in the middle of it. It fucking sucks.

(On a side note I always thought I had invented the term “Nike ad-vice” but found out just recently that that was not the case at all.)

Disclaimer 2: Nike ad-vice is merely something I, and the other guy who probably invented the term much after I did, use to talk about a certain way of talking to those that suffer mental illness. It has nothing to do with Nike the company or its products in any way. Please don’t sue me. Go Ducks!

So let’s talk about Nike ad-vice and people’s attempts to help. From there we’ll move into the downright nasty shit that one part of my mind pours into the other.

You gotta get out, Howard. You need to get to the gym. Meditate. Do more. Are you taking your meds? Call the doctor. Call a therapist.

I apologize to all my friends who give me Nike ad-vice. I apologize for turning myself off and then ignoring you for a while. That’s wrong. I know you mean well.

But you think I don’t fucking know what to do? You think I don’t know all the things I could and should be doing?

Sure there’s more I can do. Sure there’s always that point when it’s just about doing what you have to.

But sometimes it’s just hard. So fucking hard.

Stop with the Freudian shit people. I don’t need my origins discussed. It’s bullshit and you’re more wrong than right.

I found a box of macaroni and cheese for my one meal. I have one meal a day and at most a snack or two. I’d hook myself up intravenously to Vernor’s if I could.

The mac and cheese reminds me of my daughter. She’s my daughter because for six years I raised her as much as any person on the planet and she called me Dad. Now I’m separated and I have no legal claim to her whatsoever.

I remember the last time I traded a few texts with one of the most important people in my life. He wrote the last text in that conversation. We were arguing about how I felt about my wife texting me these days (that happy rant just a few paragraphs away). He threw at me that if I hadn’t wanted to talk to her I would never have sent my daughter and her any gifts this past X-mas.

His tone proclaimed his victory. “Ah ha! I ween! I ween! I have zee rabbeet!”

My only thoughts were, “Pompous ass!”

I probably should have written that. Friends express themselves to their friends. I’ve just ignored him since.

Not too long ago when I really missed my kid another incredibly close friend argued with me that I really wasn’t her father. That blood did matter and it was wrong to feel she was as much mine in those six years as anyone’s. I argued nicely thank God when all I could think was, “Are you fucking kidding me?” I guess she could see how I was getting and admitted that maybe she didn’t understand (her not having nor have raised kids).

I agreed and played the you-don’t-get-it card as much as I may hate it.

What I really had been thinking was “Ya fucking think?”

One very close friend once bitched me out a year ago and told me one day I’d be alone in this world if I didn’t change. That’s great. Thanks. Sure at that time my shit affected him. But how about the times his shit affected me? Should I have told him the same thing? Does he remember that one time that his shit hit the fan and I was there for him? Does he remember that his shit not just splashed on me, his wife, also a very close friend, blamed me and stopped talking to me? Maybe I should have fucking bitched him out too.

My separated wife will every once in a while text me about something she’s eating that we used to share or want to talk about what’s her favorite song at the moment. Recently she sent me a pic of a painting she made the night before at a painting party. (Am I wrong to cringe every time I write, say or even think about the words “painting party”?) I of course was left to comment on the thing, which really was a nice painting.

I just kept thinking, “So you send me this fucking thing you’ve done at a ‘painting party’. Hey, did you know that I’ve done some creative stuff too? You know, the over 200 pages I’ve written over the last nine months? Some of those while we were still living together? Did you ever read anything I’ve written? Did you ever ask to read what I wrote? Ever at least fucking ask what any of it was about?”

The last time she started to talk about and send me pictures about the changes she made to the den now that I’m gone. That den without a doubt constitutes the only space I have considered my own in the six years I’ve been back in the US.

Why the fuck would I want to see her changes to that? Sure, send me the pictures about how you’ve erased any trace of me in the only space of my own. When I simply asked her to not send the pics she had already sent one. Her next text was an, “Oops, I won’t send more.”

She hasn’t sent me any messages since.

Why should I care? This is someone who honestly believes that she supported me over the last few years. I’ve yet to figure out that one. Did the two years she spent not saying I love you to me constitute support? Was it her lying and hiding that invaded my mind and, like Prince Humperdink, turned my ruminative-thinking torture machine all the way to fifty? Was it the cutting me down behind my back to her friends? How about all the times she undercut me with my daughter?

Yeah, I’m airing out my dirty laundry here. I’m giving you all my shit. Tell me to mediate now motherfuckers!

Deep breath.

I don’t enjoy all the negative thoughts. They’re hell. They can be torture. And I’ve only given you at best an overview. The mental arguments I have. The evil invective I spew to everyone in my mind. It hurts me as much as those words might hurt them.

“Just make a decision and do something you idiot,” you say.

I know. I tell myself that every day too.

It gets to around 7:30 and the sun’s pretty much up. I’m tired but I know that sleeping would be horrible. Maybe I could go to the gym. Exercise should wake me. And if not, well, at least it’s healthy. Should I eat something before I go and fill up on water? Or I could just stay out all day and feel free to load up on coffee. That has worked often enough in the past. But what do I do? Will I be able to write? Can I stay awake? Where do I go? How do I get out and not spend too much money? Is it healthy to work out in this state I’m in?

Sometimes I get to fall asleep during that cycle of stupid thoughts. Often they just sink me into a cauldron of depression, anxiety and sadness. They freeze me and take what little desire I had to even get up. I can’t move.

That’s pretty much my decision making process for everything.

I’m fortunate enough to have someone paying for me to go back to Spain. I’m even more fortunate to have friends who will let me crash at their place or who want to be with me while I’m in Barcelona (unless they read the above paragraphs of course).

Two weeks ago I only had to decide on the dates.

Do I go from March through June? But in March I might be doing that workshop for Detroit Soup and I really want to do that. Is this the year I finally do my over 20 year dream of walking the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela? No, I don’t have the money for that. Oh it will be awesome to be back in Barcelona, la ciutat del meu cor. But I’ve got to keep writing, I can’t let anything affect that. I know it’s so much easier to smoke there. And drink. And get weed/hash. And do all that at once. And worse. But it’s been years since I’ve had that life and I’d be with the friends who don’t pull me into that. Except maybe for the one who’ll come to Barcelona to visit. And the one at whose apartment I’d be crashing does smoke. Maybe I should just go for a limited time. And the money I’d save I could get a room or a place in Corktown. I love Corktown. Wait, I wouldn’t have money for that no matter what. But I can worry about that another time. How often will I get to crash for a while in Barcelona again? Maybe even if I don’t do anything productive it’s still worth it. Unless I get too derailed. Wait, aren’t I derailed now? There’s so many great places to go walking and running and it’ll be great to just walk to places and not need a fucking car. But will I take advantage of that? Who cares, I’m not doing shit now.

Two weeks have gone by since I said I would give my dates.

I can do more. I should do more. I have to do more.

I know this.

But sometimes it’s just nice to not hear about my shit. Can that be support?

Years ago, when I felt like shit and called my brother we’d talk about movies. Now we talk about my crap.

The other day I missed a chance to hang out with a friend. No that’s not right. I bailed on him like an asshole and like a bigger asshole didn’t get to him because of all the stuff you can imagine. Finally, hours after I should have, I texted him and apologized. I’m lucky; he’s had his own fights with depression and especially anxiety. I just got a “no problem, been there” text. And then he texted me about something entirely different that led to a one hour texting conversation. That washed away my guilt and even made me forget a lot of other stupid crap for a while.

One of my best friends asks me how I’m doing and asks if he can do anything. Right after that we talk about movies, novels and comics. I’ve been having these philosophical chats about life over Facebook with someone I hadn’t seen or talked to in over twenty years. I wait eagerly for every response.

In fact messages are the only reason I ever get excited about Facebook these days. I hate Facebook and all the people with their happy fucking lives and their kids and good food and traveling to places when all I want to do is travel the world. I skim through all their awesome shit to find the stuff I know I should be liking for them and then I move on to sports pages or Twitter where I can # search stuff on depression and mental illness.

NOTE: He seems to be gone now thank God, but if I ever find the motherfucker online psychologist guy who created ten new Twitter accounts a day to invade my # searches and hawk his online sessions, I will kick that bastard in the balls so fucking hard it will double over all his future generations throughout the multiverse.

Damn. Another deep breath.

I read Dick Cavett’s NY Times posts a lot. Probably too much. For the three people who’ve actually gotten down this far and are interested, Google will guide you. I’m too tired to do that at this time.

Sometimes just saying you’re there is nice. Sometimes talking about anything other than the demons in my head and the sickness that too often controls my life refreshes like a glass of water in the desert.

Nike ad-vice may not be wrong in what it says I should do.

But I promise you, “I care” or even “I love you” creates instant karma in my heart.