Depression progression

I try to keep things mostly upbeat on the blog, but that's hard to do when I feel so blah. My anxiety usually keeps me in constant motion, but my depression paralyzes me. So at the moment, I feel like someone trying to plod through quicksand. HOORAY.

Now, here is my knee-jerk reaction to that hearing my psychiatrist officially say that I'm depressed again: WHAT THE FUCK. I've been "good"! I take all of my medications and I'm currently seeing three freaking therapists. I'm trying here!! What else am I supposed to do?! 

Oh, all of the scary "growth" things that I've been putting off. Oh, THOSE THINGS, THAT'S what I need to be doing.

In terms of doing things that scare me, I might jump a few hurdles and then just lay down in front of the next one. Or turn around and walk away, like "Nah." Take my on again-off again relationship with driving, for instance. My therapist pushing me to do exposure therapy got me behind the wheel after years, and I completed that with flying colors. Annnnd then I resumed doing nothing. I mean, I'm keeping up with the driving, but the next big thing would be to get a car, and for the past six months, I've just been like, "No thanks, I'm good running through 8 billion potential horrible outcomes of that decision and doing zero." It's the same with moving out. And other "grown-up" growth things that I'd much rather not think about. My EMDR therapist speculated that trying these "scary" things would be my antidepressant and get me out of my current malaise. I think she's right. But I also wish her directive was for someone else :)

On the plus side, I'm rolling with this low-energy, sad period better than I have in the past. For someone who previously lost herself in suicidal thoughts, the idea that strong, sad, scary feelings can pass is a breakthrough. I've been trying not to beat myself up about feeling blah. If I want to clean, I clean. If I want to watch 2 Broke Girls for hours, that's ok. If I want to sleep for 12 hours, I do. Stressing about being lazy just makes it worse. And I'm still seeing my three therapists and my psychiatrist, and going to yoga, and taking my new medication. I'm doing the best that I can right now. So if things are quiet on the blog at the moment, you know why. One minute, I think I'll never get off the couch and the next, I'm all in for writing a post. That's how it is right now: minute to minute. And that's OK. <3

Timehop reminded me that I saved this a year ago. How fitting! 

High Five for Friday: January 22

This week: OOF. So remember that doctor's appointment that I almost missed last week? Well, it was with my psychiatric NP, who suspects that my depression is back. HOORAY. So between general "meh"ness and some medication adjustments that left me dizzy and "shocky" (a technical term for SSRI withdrawal syndrome for sure), this week has been rather unsparkly. So a weird week gets a different type of H54F: a few highlights from my week, and a few YouTube videos that I always turn to (including this week!) to boost my mood! :)

• On Saturday, when I felt particularly horrible and could only handle sitting or laying down, B, Pops, and I went to see Creed. Finally! I love a good sports movie, and then throw in the Rocky history and the Philly connection, and I was all in. Michael B. Beautiful sure didn't hurt either! :) I'd wanted to see it in South Philly but "King Prussia" would have to do. 

• On Monday, I felt particularly out of sorts and antsy at work. I had the car, so I came up with the brilliant idea to get a facial! But apparently everyone had the same idea for MLK Day, so I had to "settle" for a massage instead. OMG IT WAS AMAZING. Just being in a room full of aromatherapy diffusers while wrapped up in warm blankets on a frigid day was wonderful and then a massage on top of that?! DAMN. And then, when I thought I was just going to pay and leave, I found that they had made me tea! What a nice treat! And I don't even like tea! During tea time, they had me pick from a deck of Angel cards to see what my message for the day was. As you can see below, it was the perfect one for someone who constantly beats herself up and pushes herself to do more more more. :)

Seriously. So cute.

How novel! :) 

• Ok, now my go-to heartwarming YouTube clip: the meeting the Mother scene on HIMYM. It's so great: the song ("I know that things can really get rough when you go it alone"), the different paths finally overlapping, oh man. And I love the Mother, I think she's just cute as a button (and not only because she's wearing purple here). Did I sit in bed bawling over her fate after the finale? Yes, yes I did. But this scene holds such promise! Ah!

• Another go-to video for me is Sadie and Mark's Super Mario freestyle on DWTS fall 2014. They were already my favorite pair that cycle, and then they pulled THIS out. I mean, come on now, it's just amazing (says this SNES video game junkie!). Honorable mention to their super cheery and cute "Birthday" dance and their epic nod to Duck Dynasty!

• There are many Glee routines that make me smile, but this one is a go-to for sure. Meatloaf! Frenzied dancing! Finn as a leading man (RIP Cory)! Looks of begrudging acceptance from Whoopi Goldberg! It truly has it all.

• And of course, no such list is complete without my favorite ridiculous Castle moment of all time. Thank god this episode is OnDemand at the moment because it definitely brightened my Tuesday (as you know if you follow me on IG: @jessie_face4!) :D

Cheers to the freakin' weekend, am I right?! And hopefully not too much snow... :-/ xoxo

High Five for Friday: January 15

It has been a strange week around here. I started out feeling super sad and blah, but my mood did pick up as the week went on! Here's what put the sparkle into it:

• Not Saturday afternoon, that's for sure! The el stopped running as I was trying to get to a doctor's appointment. Like, it pulled up and said it was out of service. UGH. Thankfully, I still got to see my doc, despite being very late (and crying in an Uber en route to her #stayclassy). To shake off that stressful turn of events, I walked around Nordstrom Rack, where "Good Feeling" came on. I hadn't heard that song in AGES, and it totally brightened my mood! I used a few gift cards to get boots and this cute Alex + Ani blush bracelet. I love how wearing one bracelet (the Lokai) has turned into an arm party over the months! :)

• In other non-sparkly news, David Bowie :( RIP. I was crushed to hear of his passing. He was my first concert ever and someone I was constantly rediscovering, thanks to his seemingly never-ending supply of songs for me to love: "Fashion," "A New Career in a New Town," and "Soul Love" in high school, "Star," "Kooks," and "Be My Wife" in college... and so many more. On the bright side, his passing got me to listen to all of his jams on my iPod (which is named "Lady Stardust" no joke!) and remember how much I love them!

Junior year of college. I found this shirt at the Gap and wore it all the time! This was also my first Blogger profile picture HAHA!

• On Tuesday night, I had the house to myself and actually attempted to relax with Grey's and a Korean sheet mask! (And some oatmeal raisin cookies!) Confetti horn emoji!!

What up, Callie and McSteamy.

• I think I've found the tinted moisturizer OF MY DREAMS. Mainly because I will actually use on the weekends and days off--that's how I know something's good: when it fits into my lazy girl makeup lifestyle, haha! The Bobbi Brown Tinted Moisturizer in Alabaster TOTALLY works with my super pale skin and takes down my redness like instantaneously with no need for brushes or anything! It goes on like a dream and evens everything out so.nicely. I might have to pick up the full size once my sample runs out!

• So my room got a cheery little makeover this week, thanks to the addition of this pretty 2016 calendar (which was like $8 on Amazon!) and a few cute Target finds!

• And finally, what is better than Drake's dad dancing? Drake's dad dancing (from SNL) set to "Hotline Bling," that's what! #blessed

Happy Friday erreybody! TGIF!! :)

Comfortably numb

Remember when I mentioned in last week's H54F post that staying at my friend's apartment with her cat was rough... Well, it certainly wasn't because of the cat! :) It was because my glass case of emotion runneth over.

You see, I love a routine. It's kind of what gets me out of bed in the morning: the familiarity, the comfort, the lack of surprise. It's all so wonderful! Familiar 4 lyfe. But while I was staying at my friend's, I had to leave at a different time in the morning. I had to go to a different el stop and rely on different buses. I had to feed the cat. These are not part of my beloved routine. 

Plus, with no one else around, I could cry, hyperventilate, FEEL. It was terrifying. I didn't realize quite how numb I was. It was also a wake-up call as to how much I use busyness just to get through the day. (Hello, four hour commute!) If I stop moving, if I get out of the familiar routine, then I start feeling. BLEH. Who wants that?!

But here's the problem with the routine I love so much: it makes no sense! Like, comically so. I should be making like six figures if I'm commuting four hours a day. (Spoiler: I'm no Scrooge McDuck.) AND such a long commute encourages me to do bad things, like miss meals, and be in a constant state of sleep deprivation, and never unwind. It's a constant cycle: my unhealthy commute causes me to keep up my unhealthy habits which numb me out so that my unhealthy commute is nbd. The routine makes me feel like everything is neat and predictable--less scary. But it's not good for me!

The problem with numbing out on routine is that I'm not actually LIVING. Instead, I'm just going through the motions, rather than changing or growing. In therapy last week, we talked about how I love to retreat into my mind--and its irrationalities--rather than live life. I'd prefer to contemplate something endlessly than make an actual decision. I'd rather watch TV than interact with real people. As a kid, I went inward to avoid pain, and I never really stopped. So my challenge now is to question behaviors and beliefs that just don't make sense anymore. (Luckily, I just embarked on a six-month healing course with my favorite yoga teacher, which will address a lot of these fears and unhealthy behaviors!) I have to find some balance (how novel!) between routine and real living.

So, how do you, wise reader, find balance? (Or do you...) How do you cope with feelings of depression and apathy? When do you catch yourself numbing out? And do you also now have "Comfortably Numb" stuck in your head? ;)

High Five for Friday: January 8

Although I spent the week at my friend Deena's apartment watching her darling cat, it was kind of a rough week emotionally. But there were a lot of GOOD things that happened too, so let's talk about them, shall we? :)

• First of all, SASHA. She's srsly the cutest. It was really nice to have an adorable loaf waiting for me outside the bathroom and sleeping with me and purring. I could have done without her going full kitten and pulling my hair/trying to bite me, however. :) 

I CAN'T EVEN. 

• Since I usually work from home on Wednesdays because of EMDR, I got to do so at Deena's apartment, which has tons of natural light in the living room. YAY!!! (I'm constantly opening shades at Pops' and complaining that it's like a funeral parlor lol.)

Let the sunshine in!

• And now a Target/Ulta haul of sorts! The candle, bin, and notepad all came from the Target $1 Spot, aka my favorite place. And we found Sadness discarded in the body wash aisle, so B insisted that I take her :) Also, I'm seriously loving my Ulta buys! The Palladio 4-D Boost Herbal Volumizing Mascara is very light and not sticky/crunchy; plus, it comes in brown, my mascara color of choice! I bought it on a whim and am quite impressed thus far. And then the Physician's Formula Shimmer Strips Face and Eye Palette is great because they're a bunch of colors that can be used as eyeshadow or a highlighter or an eye highlighter AND they come with their own brush! It was like $14 which is pricey for drugstore makeup, but it seems worth it based on portability and all the ways it can be used. I'M SO RESPONSIBLE. *holla hands* 

My helper lol

• You know how you'll sometimes wake up with random rap lyrics stuck in your head for no reason at all? (No? Just me?) Well, Tuesday I woke up singing, "From where they make gumbo at." What the what?? That's not even a whole line! And even WITH the preceding line, it doesn't make much sense! But Weezy's flow is just so.good. On a related note, I used the amazingly poetic Drake line "Swimming in my money, come and find me, Nemo" to illustrate this classic gif recently! (It never fails to crack me up.)

• Finally, in this week's edition of Gushing over Grey's, I loved the episode "Put Me in Coach," partially because I could so relate to Mer and Cristina's complete apathy over playing sports (minus sneaking booze onto the field since my softball days ended in eighth grade!). Cristina's "Hi honey!!" to Owen as he stares and her and Mer laying in the outfield is so great. As is this exchange, which just killed me (because I too was like, "No she wouldn't!"). Poor Mer.

Ellis Grey, mother of the year.

I also watched the alternate reality episode "If/Then" this week and DIED at the different personalities and looks of our beloved docs. But my favorite moment of all was when pink-clad, not at all dark and twisty Mer calls APRIL her person!!!! (I actually like April a lot because she is basically me haha.)

What a whirlwind week! Now I need to unpack and get back into my normal routine... Hope you all have a great weekend! xoxo