Red Rot

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on what David Foster Wallace would call the "terrible master"

Today was a good lesson. I woke up feeling so low with a head full of existential questions surrounding what existence means (what meaning there is in existence) and why I bother living. All the rhetoric I've used to still my head before wasn't assuaging. If I'm being honest, I didn't get that far. It's not that I couldn't convince myself to feel value in existence, it was that I couldn't convince myself to feel value in the effort it would take to convince myself. Sometimes you get so tired all you can think about as relief is a cessation of awareness.

The lesson was that I made it. From feeling utterly shit-faced I fought and fought and fought and fought and read about other people who have fought and through sheer grit or force of will I ended today feeling better than I started. This is small. This is one day, but I am disproportionally proud of myself. I can't explain how hard it was to get "up" from being down.

The take-away from this might be that it shouldn't be this hard. I cried on a lawn during a potluck talking to a close friend who is brilliantly intuitive (and wonderfully open) and I made some connections that I haven't made before: that it shouldn't be this hard. She said that whatever I'm going through makes sense, that situational depression is understandable after the years I've had, that there are more things I can do to help myself.

And I believe her. I think I'm going to try taking anti-depressants.

12:14 a.m. - 2013-05-11

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