Progress report, quarter…4 I believe?
My new psychologist, who I haven’t really committed to yet, made some good points tonight. They were probably also super obvious, but I am apparently in remedial therapy after four years of this stuff, so super obvious is still necessary. I was talking about how much I hate my temp job and how I can’t wait until it ends, and he seemed appalled that I didn’t want to find a new one right away. At first I was all, “oh, this guy doesn’t understand meeeee,” but then he made the point that me wanting to stay home/do nothing all day is (obviously) not an impulse I should allow myself to indulge. This is somewhat hilarious to me, this insight, because for the last few weeks and for basically my whole life, my main goal in life has sort of always been to spend as much time as possible watching tv/reading magazines/reading blogs/BEING ALONE. And it’s so obvious that this stuff, the stuff I “like to do,” i.e. ways to withdraw from the world, only makes me more depressed. And in my lunacy, I’m like, “Ohhh, well I’m so depressed, don’t I deserve to get to stay home and do nothing like I want to, at least? As some perverse tradeoff for how badly I feel?” But no, when all you want to do is be alone and watch Hulu and never talk to anyone but maybe have your Dad get you fast food at certain intervals, that’s exactly what you can’t do. Super obvious. I am an idiot for clinging to this idea that I can just do nothing and be alone, and yet, I’m still sort of clinging to it. I said to my doctor (who might hate me) that I resent how much harder I have to work than everyone else to maintain a low-grade happiness, and he made the good point that people with Diabetes have to watch what they eat, so unfortunately I have to put more effort into “putting myself out there” or whatever. It’s true. But it still pisses me off! It would just be so much easier if I could do nothing and speak to no one all day, and I’m depressed dammit, isn’t now the worst possible time to try to force myself out into the world? I interact with the world. It’s minimal, but I do it. And I think it’s minimal and nonbeneficial enough that I would rather just not do it. My doctor also seemed perterbed when I pulled out the standard “I hate my life” line. But I do! Nothing could be truer than me saying that. And yet, his reaction was sort of like, “what is this, you hate your life?!!?” like some kind of grandpa. Exactly what I said, dude, I hate my life. He said he can tell that I’m depressed and I think about things like a depressed person. I’m glad to be diagnosed in this way—good, I’m depressed, here’s a problem, let’s fix it—but I also don’t feel very validated. “That’s just the depression talking” is a maddening thing to say, because me and the depression are one in the same. He also tried to convince me that I should be saving up to move out. It’s true, I guess, but I’m still stuck to the idea that I should get a job first and then move out. That I would be that much worse off in I were all alone in New York. After all, I wouldn’t even have a therapist there.
I wish I had someone to talk about this stuff with.
