"I CAN'T!"

This blog entry has been a week in the making. I have sat on the sofa with the laptop perched on my lap trying to eke out something - anything - to write.

The past month or so has been eventful, in good and bad ways. The bad stuff is easier to deal with now, but I'm still acutely aware of it and it's still quite painful. The good stuff serves as a distraction from the bad stuff, but it's only a temporary fix. For example, I went to my first weekend festival the other week and got over my fear of camping. I had a great time and met up with a couple of old friends. However, I drank enough cider to give me heartburn and was still suffering the after-effects three days after getting back. If I were to make an equation it would go:
a = 1.5b
where a = 1 drinking day and b = recovery day.
Think I've been watching too much Big Bang Theory.

I know it's the nature of life to have good and bad things happen, but the bad things are much more difficult to cope with when you're suffering from depression. And far from giving me a new lease of life, recovering from the fun stuff knocks the stuffing out of me - I barely have enough energy to rise above normality, let alone the bad things.

All this has exacerbated my depression over the last few weeks. It affects my relationships and my ability to do normal things that most people take for granted. It affects my social life. It affects my confidence. It affects my motivation. It affects my concentration.

My depression gives rise to overwhelmingly negative feelings. Just today, I paused to think about what I had to do today, only to have the thoughts drowned out by a screaming in my head: "I CAN'T! I CAN'T! I CAN'T!". Other negative thoughts flow in quick succession - I'm a burden; I can't understand why or how anyone could love me; I'm crap at everything I do so what's the point?

Even things I normally have enthusiasm for, like writing, either don't seem as pleasurable or I get a crisis of confidence, thinking that the outcome is going to be rubbish. For me, writing takes focus, which is something I sorely lack when I'm at a low ebb. Needless to say, this frame of mind, along with the aforementioned negativity, does little to increase productivity.

What's frustrating is that I have a few writing assignments to do, which I would cheerily throw myself into if I was my normal self. Now, on top struggling with the need to motivate myself to do the work, I feel guilty that I've promised things to people that I'm finding very hard to deliver.

It's made me question whether I still want to do this for a living, but I'm pretty sure that's a voice coming from the negative part of my brain. All I know is that I need to do more to aid my recovery. I'm sure then everything won't seem so bleak.