Snoskred - Life in the Country

I have a very good friend who likes to wallow in - well, various things. The dark hole of depression, feeling sorry for yourself, mediocrity.. the comfort zone of sabotaging yourself and setting yourself up for failure, receiving all kinds of good advice, nodding and smiling and never taking any of it.

Now I’m a very supportive friend, but there comes a time when between two good friends you have to be honest with each other, and that time came eight months ago. I spoke to this person honestly - and politely - here’s what you need to do to get yourself out of this hole. I know how to get out of these holes, having been in them myself many times.

So, I then shut up and let them get to work - at the end of the conversation I said I wouldn’t bring it up but if they wanted to chat about it they could always raise the topic. Of course, they never did. A couple of months later this person was feeling sorry for themselves again and told me so, and a pattern began to appear. I’d say all the right things - here’s how to get out of this hole. They would nod and smile and promise faithfully that they would try it. A month or two later, it would happen again. The last couple of times, I haven’t been quite so polite about it. In fact I told them they needed to get off their rear end and get to work and I pointed out this pattern which I saw clearly.

Then just a couple of hours ago this person arrived on my Skype and from the moment they said hello I knew the deal - they were down and feeling sorry for themselves, and they were waiting for me to do my usual there there, here’s how to fix it, pump you up with positives, you can do it, ra ra.

There comes a time in any relationship where you have to draw a line. You have to let go. I’ve been propping you up for far too long now. I know you can do it. I can’t do it for you. Nobody can do it for you. I can make positive changes in my own life, and I do it regularly. But I CANNOT WAVE A MAGIC WAND AND FIX YOU - though you know I would if I could. It takes hard work, and you have to do the majority of it yourself.

The major reason for setting a goal is for what it makes of you to accomplish it. What it makes of you will always be the far greater value than what you get. - Jim Rohn

I’m a huge goal setter. I’ve spoken before about my depression and the combat strategies I used, some of them were goals that I set for myself. I set goals all the time - even silly stuff like playing a game on my computer - I’ll want to get to a certain score or achievement before I quit the game.

This past couple of weeks, I have set myself a really unusual goal - to drink more water. I mentioned an article I had read in one of my weekly wrap ups and said I was implementing this change - 9 Great Reasons to Drink Water, and How to Form the Water Habit - but what I did not mention is.. I dislike water. I always have. I would prefer to drink soft drinks, coffee or fruit juice. I used to drink one can of real Coke each day with my main meal but there came a time when I really didn’t feel like it, so I would drink fruit juice instead. Before I read that article, I had begun to substitute water every third day, instead of Coke or fruit juice, mainly because the meal I was having didn’t go with either of those drinks.

So with a goal like this, it helps to break it down. The guy who wrote the article (Leo Babauta) actually did that for me - thanks! - by saying - “Best is to form a routine: drink a glass when you wake up, a glass with each meal, a glass in between meals, and be sure to drink before, during and after exercise.” This is my new religion. I have these plastic cups which hold 250ml (just over 8oz) and a chart where I gleefully tick off each cup I drink. I’m up to 8 a day. A huge change from one every 3 days.

Can you believe that after just two weeks, I would rather reach for water than anything else?

So what I know is, anything I want to achieve, I can set a goal, break that down into smaller chunks, and then set out to achieve it. If I can do it, anyone can. Me who is not very good at self discipline and who isn’t the most organised person in the world.

Sometimes it seems easier to stay in your comfort zone, to keep sabotaging yourself to stay there. The fear of the unknown, the fear of what comes next. It is no different to jumping out of a plane for the first time - except you’re basically jumping out of the plane for the first time over and over, heading towards a bigger unknown than you have ever faced before. Yes, it is scary. It can be terrifying. Who will I be without my depression? At the moment that is what defines you. That’s all you know. You’re gripping on to the doors of that plane so tight your knuckles are white.

You have to let go and jump out of that plane.. or else you will stay in that hole of depression forever, and I can’t be your friend if that’s where you want to be. You see, I dug my way out of that hole with my fingernails. When my nails were all gone, I didn’t stop digging. I used my fingertips. I was so desperate to get out of there my fingers were bloody nubs by the time I managed to climb out of there - but I made it. I’m baffled that you *want* to stay there. I can’t imagine why you would want to. It’s a horrible place to be.

If you’re willing to get out, I’ll help you. I’ll do everything I can. Except keep going round in circles like this, it is pointless and useless. I’m not going to keep enabling you to feel better every now and then - I want to enable you to feel better all the time.

Have you ever heard the Meatloaf song “I’ll do anything for love but I won’t do that”? So many people speculate about what the thing he won’t do is. The thing I won’t do is allow myself to be dragged back to that hole and pushed / pulled into it - not by *anyone* - because I know how hard it was to get out of there, how much it cost me, how much effort it took every day. I said in a previous post about depression -

Normal people who have never been depressed will not understand the effort required to do just simple every day tasks when you’re down. Just to get up out of bed and have a shower seems like something impossible. The effort involved, to me it always seemed like someone had tied weights to my arms and legs, and it was difficult to move them. Probably most people who have been down will understand that.

I’m not going back there. It’s not until you get out of there that you realize how bad it was. Please, my friend, *please* let go of thinking your dark damp hole of depression is where you should stay. It’s either that, or let go of me, because you’re dragging me to a place I WILL NOT go.

So first let’s remember that I’m not a doctor or a shrink or anything like that. But this is what I have learnt during my fight with the dark side. Because I’m in Australia, I know about stuff that is available here. If you are in another country and you can point people to the right places to get help, please leave info in the comments.

1. Diabetics need insulin - and depressed people need anti-depressants. You need to see a doctor, that’s the very first step. You can fight this without the drugs, but it will be a lot harder. And nobody would tell a diabetic - oh don’t worry, you don’t really need insulin, just push yourself a bit harder, you’ll survive. The chemicals in your brain are out of whack, and no amount of pushing, hoping, or begging is going to fix that. It is ok to take the drugs your doctor prescribes.

2. There’s a lot of help out there, but you don’t know where to look. That’s ok. If you’re in Australia, Lifeline does know where to look. It’s ok to call them and ask for help. In fact it is ok to call them and talk, that is what they are there for. I volunteered there, I used to man the phones myself. Believe me, the people on the other end would much rather get you on the line, with your depression, than the drunk men looking for sexual gratification. And they have a book, it’s huge, with every community service or other kind of help that is free that you can access, and they seem to have put a lot of it online, so check this out.. There’s help here too. Also check out beyondblue. If you are overseas, I don’t know where to send you but shoot me an email with your location and I’ll see what I can find. Or if you know of helpful places in your country, please leave a comment for others who may read this.

2a. What kind of help do you need? Well there’s plenty of options. I found it helpful to talk to someone. There’s free telephone counselling 24/7 with Lifeline, but they can also refer you to go and see someone face to face, either free or low cost. It is really useful to do that.

So now we’ve covered seeing a doctor, which is going to get you on the way out of that dark hole, and we’ve covered the possiblities as far as talking to someone, which is useful to admit you are in the dark hole and talk about what it is like in there, and strategies to get yourself out of there. But now what? Now, you have to put in a little effort towards your own recovery. The two things above won’t magically fix it on their own. So what can you do? Lots of things, but here’s the stuff that worked for me.

Get out of the house.

Walk for 20 minutes a day. If you can’t do this daily, then walk for at least an hour a week but get yourself to a beautiful location to do it.

We used to go to the Botanic Gardens, which were right next to the zoo. One day when we were driving past we noticed that members get into the zoo for free. So when I found out membership was so cheap it was less than a can of coke a week, we became members, and we would go to the zoo for our walks, often spending an afternoon or a morning just wandering about. Those of you in Melbourne have no excuse - membership to the zoo is a mere $77 a year with free entry to the zoo anytime you like, and you have one of the largest zoos in the country, plenty of walking to do there, and the gardens are stunning.

Volunteer.

One of the biggest problems with depression is that you want to curl up into a little ball and not look outward at all. This means you have plenty of time to focus on the negative thoughts and how you’re feeling. So instead of doing that, sign yourself up, make a commitment to some kind of volunteer activity. Make it something you want to do. If you want to work with animals, why not look at wires or nana or the RSPCA? If you want to work with people, there’s a million options, check out this site.

I did many different types of volunteering. I painted houses, which was a lot of fun. I went through the Lifeline course and worked on the phones there, which really taught me a lot and it was something I had always wanted to do. I volunteered at the zoo, tour guiding and doing watches on the animals. I’m choosing between three different options right now but I have to find some kind of volunteer work to do here soon.

Make lists.

Lists of things you need to do, lists of things you want to do, lists of things as simple as daily chores. There is nothing more satisfying than crossing things OFF the list when you have done them.

There was a time when I could not get out of bed, so the one thing on my list was to manage that, every day. There were some days I just could not do it, and I had to give myself permission to be ok with that, too. So I worked out that it was a good idea to pick one day a week where I did not have to do it, where I allowed myself to stay in bed if I really wanted to. And I found, once I gave myself permission to do that, it was not really something I wanted to do - I found I wanted to get up and do things.

Paint. Write. Knit. Sew. Create.

Reward yourself for doing the stuff you don’t want to do by doing stuff you do want to do. I painted things. I did ceramics (not cheap but I loved it). I learnt to play the keyboard. I scam-baited. I still do these things now.

Listen to music.

I think this one is really important, and I know myself well enough now to note when I stop listening to music, it’s one warning sign that I’m headed for that black hole. It’s also a good idea to replace the negative thoughts in your head with song lyrics, I found.

So that’s just a few of the things I did to drag myself out of that hole. They could work for you, if you’re down. Give them a try.. and feel free to leave comments with stuff that worked for you, or anything you want to say..

I’m writing this using Internet Explorer as blogger seems to work fine with it, and the issue they are having at the moment happens only in Firefox. Apparently. Well let’s hope they get it fixed soon because using IE makes me want to mutilate squirrels. And I like squirrels a lot. So I guess it’s lucky I’m in Australia where we don’t have any.

I’m really glad to see Meva is back to blogging, she vanished for a short time. This means I am finally going to post something I’ve been thinking about posting for a while now. I’m hoping that people aren’t just going to run away and stop reading this blog if I admit this. It’s not exactly cheerful reading, and this is not a trip down memory lane that I am looking forward to, but I think it has to be done.

Some years ago, I was very depressed. So much so that I could not get out of bed, most of the time. It all started when my car got broken into. I had worked for a company that sold car sound, and I had installed $7,000 worth of car audio into my car - myself. It had a great alarm, and the people who broke into it laid under the car for over an hour with a rag stuffed into the siren while the backup battery ran down. I was furious. I wanted to kill the people who did it, but I didn’t know who they were. I was so angry, I can’t even describe it.

They were helped by the fact that my husband (yes I was married) had chosen for us to live in a house with a driveway from hell that I could not drive my car up or down, it had brick walls on both side, and it was at approximately a 45 degree angle. Some months before he had decided to buy it - without consulting me. He told me we were buying it. I wanted to look at other houses, he refused to consider it. The house belonged to his Dad, and his Dad wanted to get rid of it. I suppose that was when I realised that I’d made a huge mistake, and this marriage thing was not the best of ideas.

So then one night soon after the car break in I went to fill up the ice cube tray, and the tap fell off the wall into my hand. Water was gushing out of the wall, I was absolutely saturated. Husband ran in and was screaming at me to go and turn off the water, I had no idea how to do that, so I said he would have to do it. He goes out, turns it off, returns, and by this time I am laughing - well, you have to, right? I was completely soaking wet, and he was furious - that I was laughing, that the tap fell off the wall, and he starts yelling at me. I said “I’m not the one who decided to buy this house” and out of nowhere he just slapped me. I grabbed my car keys and left, not even stopping to get shoes. I did not go back.

That was my first run in with the black hole of depression, it certainly was not my last. There was a time in the early 2000’s when I spent over a year in there.. Everyone who has been there has a different way of describing it. To me it was like a big black hole I’d fallen into and I had no idea how to get out.

I might sometimes seem like I’m functioning well and everything is fine, but I know I am always close to the edge of that dark hole, and if I don’t work hard to keep myself out of it, I can end up back there. Seeing as it’s so hard to get out, I’ve worked out strategies over time which help me keep out of there. I’m going to share some of those with you guys over the next few weeks because I recognise they may be helpful to other people, too.

Normal people who have never been depressed will not understand the effort required to do just simple every day tasks when you’re down. Just to get up out of bed and have a shower seems like something impossible. The effort involved, to me it always seemed like someone had tied weights to my arms and legs, and it was difficult to move them. Probably most people who have been down will understand that.

So don’t think this post is looking for sympathy or anything like that, I’m not. Right now I feel like I’m flying. Things are going pretty well, except for the fact I have no job and no desire to get one, but it’s ok, we’re coping, I don’t really need to get one until I feel like it. I just want people to know that I’ve been there, too. I think most people end up there sometime. It’s ok to admit it, and it’s ok to ask for help - and get help. There’s plenty of it out there, if you look in the right places.

Everyone gets depressed from time to time, I think. I have struggled with it myself. I’ll be honest, it looked to me when I was at the bottom of that hole that I would never be able to climb my way out of it, but I did, mostly by my fingernails.

I have a really good friend who is struggling with depression at the moment. And yes, for any of you fucknut moderator and admins from scambaiting sites out there, he is *only* a friend. There is no dodgy internet relationship going on. Not that it is ANY of your business, but you know, how about you shove it up your ass, mmkay? It being the nearest large object. Preferably about the size of an automobile. Without lube. Yes, that’s a mental image I can live with thanks.

You should be ashamed of yourselves for how you treated this very good friend of mine. Someone who has always been there - not just for me, but for *anyone* who needed help and asked for it. Someone who now does not do a lot of the stuff he could do simply because you have shown him time and time and TIME again that you do not appreciate it. That you just treat him like my “lapdog”.

Sephy, I know this is not going to be easy but I am here for you and you will come out the other side of this. I am so proud of you for standing up and admitting when something is wrong, and now moving forward to working on a solution. It might not happen overnight, but it will happen.

Guys, you don’t know this, but Sephy is the person I turn to when I need help. It might be something as simple as searching for something on the internet (which I am terrible at but thanks to his help am improving) or something as complicated as helping me organise a spreadsheet to keep track of which lad I am baiting with which address from which country. He is also an incredibly talented baiter, and is currently baiting a couple of lads as my character tyr@ and I am just doing the voices on the phone calls.

When you and I work together Sephy, lads suffer. That’s what it is all about, working together. The fucknuts seem to have forgotten that. They would not know how to work together if they found themselves all tied together in a bag at the bottom of a swimming pool, and they would all drown. You and I wouldn’t mate. We’d work to find a way out, together. Just like we will find a way to dig you out of this depression. Thank you so much for always being there to help me. You don’t know how much I appreciate it. And I believe you really are an Aussie on the inside - being there for your mates is something this country is based on.