Hibernation ain’t just for bears.

Hibernation or depression. It’s a fine line.

While I can’t discount depression elements, hibernation seems in full force. All I want to do these days is sleep long hours … 12 hours a day s’il vows plaît! … stay in the jammies all day and leave the bedroom only to brew coffee or prepare a simple meal.

Yep, the line between hibernation is a fine one indeed. I suspect the key difference is state of mind. Hibernation: This feels good, wholesome, ultimately restorative and rejuvenating. Depression: I can’t move. I wish I were de-d.

Admittedly I feel some of each.

Anyways, I’m on Day Two of a hibernation I can’t seem to shake. The bed is my home. I’m very good at entertaining myself. Always have been. It’s an outcome of a very abusive mother who wanted nothing to do with me or even raising a child. Neglect has its “positive reward” I guess.

Blast from the (Not Distant) Past

So a strange thing happened on the way outta Walmart the other night.

I bumped into the neighbor (aka the “good neighbor”) at my former digs, site of the living nightmare with the upstairs Click and Clomp Couple. Horribly noisy place it was! She was nice albeit mousy, he was a real dick. No love lost there in that move!

Anyhow, I did know that the two moved out by virtue of the vacancy ad. After ongoing issues with noise that included police visits, I can’t but suspect that their lease was not renewed.

The “good neighbor” informed me that the owner just installed soundproofing! NOW they do it after months of my bringing the noise problems to the landlord’s attention and then moving out! haha

Anyways, I can’t imagine what sort of soundproofing they installed. It’s an old building circa 1958. Thin wood floors upstairs with ZERO insulation.

They wouldn’t gone to the trouble or expense of tearing up the floors and didn’t, the “good neighbor” confirmed that. Which leaves me picturing something like this:

ceiling soundproofing with egg-crate foam

 

hahah. Regardless, whatever “soundproofing” was install, it’s at best a Band-Aid fix to a very real noise issue. The soundest (haha, no pun intended) solution to eliminating the incredible serious noise problem there: Moving!

Voila! Was nice to bump into the “good neighbor” and his friend. And get the update on the old place. I miss the location smack by downtown but not the Thunder from Above. No relation to Zeus.

Speaking of Neighbors …

The neighboring man with mental impairment issues again had his TV on all night. He falls asleep in front of it. As a result, what sounds like a buncha people standing beneath my window having a loud conversation through the night occurred. I’m NOT gonna go knocking on his door at 2 in the morning to ask him to turn it down!

The TV shouldn’t be on all night as it is. He’s not watching it, it’s very annoying and disruptive and the lease states “quiet time after 10 p.m.”

Maybe in the other mobile homes but not his!

This ongoing issue needs to be addressed and resolved. I lay awake ’til 5 a.m. thinking of how to talk to him and what to say. His mental issues make it somewhat challenging.

Back to the Beginning

It is part depression and part hibernation that’s got me holed up. Can’t do much about the lassitude (it’s a longtime issue); the hibernation, on the other hand … I can make better creative use of it.

So on that note and inspired by blogger longeyesamurai’s enjoyable draws of single tarot cards in his posts, gonna pull a card from the beloved (and ever-resonating) Mermaids and Dolphins deck (by Doreen Virtue) … to illuminate this strange and palpable state of hibernation/self-imposed retreat/(unhealthy) isolation in which I find myself:

Contemplation Time. {kid you not!} “Spend time alone, meditating upon what you truly desire.”

“You need some alone time. Make a firm appointment to be by yourself in a quiet place (ideally in nature or near plants) without delay. Make sure that you’ll be uninterrupted for at least one hour. Take a pad of paper and pen with you.

“{Relax, breathe} … then write down this question: ‘What do I want to do next?’ Write whatever comes to you in response, without worrying whether it’s ‘correct’ or not.

“Then ask your subconscious: ‘What’s my heart’s true desire right now?’ Write down the answer.

“Spend time noting your true priorities so that you’ll know how to structure your free time to match what’s important to you.”

Spot-on guidance from a mermaid to a (humanized) bear in hibernation!

Advertisement

Depression: The Autocratic Silencer

Depression.

It’s not a case of the passing blues. It is indescribable. There are no words for it.

And the words that are used to describe it are inadequate. Words:

total blackness
pitch black
anguish
immobilizing
consuming
all-consuming
void
nothingness
oblivion
cold

Independently or collectively, these words cannot express. It’s common knowledge that William Styron suffered horribly from depression. His 84-page memoir “Darkness Visible” both brought to light his intimate experience with it and gave word to an excruciating dis-ease that defies description, nee language. That work in its totality is available online at no cost at many sites, including this one: https://archive.org/stream/DarknessVisiblewilliamStyron/123144___william_styron_-_darkness_visible_–_a_memoir_of_madness#page/n1/mode/2up

I haven’t much to add other than I struggle deeply very deeply with it and appreciate Styron’s remarkable efforts to describe his experience and share it with the world. It is more than I can do in the throes and depths of depression.

Depression, for me, silences everything save its own voice that feeds on self-destruction and an underlying urge for oblivion that’s rooted in my relationship with my mother who wanted more than anything to cast me into oblivion. She would have if she could have.

I’ve nothing more to say.

migraines, depression and the wonder of Bigfoot

Which came first, the chicken or the egg, these migraines or the depression?

Something happens in my brain that switches off everything but the autonomic system during my migraines and severe headaches, which after a decent period of absence have recently returned — with a vengence.

There’s no discernable trigger or cause. These severe headaches and migraines just descend, sometimes with warning, i.e., auras in the case of migraines.

Other times, I can feel fine and dandy one day and then the next day, WHAAAAAM! As if 200 vises were strapped around my head during the night.

Then there’s the depression.

The process is similar, not identical. My brain activity comes to a sudden halt. As if it has emptied itself but it hasn’t. That would be too Zen and peaceful.

It’s as if you’re driving along a country road on a sunny afternoon. Then suddenly out of nowhere, you hit a dead end and the sky turns pitch black. Your car loses its headlights and all electrical power.

You cannot see and even if you hazard to turn the wheel this way and that to find the way out, everything’s turned wonky.

Turning the wheel to the right may lead you to the left … or turning it to the left leads you to the left … or the right … straight ahead or even backward. There’s no rhyme or reason or way out. You’re trapped, perpetually and irrevocably trapped at the dead end in total darkness.

And oh the pain and the pressure inside your skull … like a million rubber bands tightly binding every inch … like the heat of a burning forest … like every door and window of your house slammed shut, blocking out all life and all light and confining you inside an intense pressure cooker …

And by the way, there’s no cell phone reception at that aforementioned dark dead end — as if that needed to be said. (And it did for our cell phones-addicted culture.)

= = =

I don’t know what brings on the depression that shuts everything, in particular language, verbal and written aptitudes and healthy reasoning processes, out and down and entraps me in that inescapable dead end. Neither do I know what brings on these horrible headaches and migraines.

Whether it be a chemical transformation, altered functions of synapses or unconscious deep-seated stresses, worries and fears that render me a soulless and joyless fairly brain-dead shell (that’s how it feels anyhow), there may be a thread linking two separate phenomenon. If that’s the case, hell if I know what it is.

Not much more to add save that these headaches and migraines hurt like hell.

And when the depression hits, it flatlines me. Depression slams me so very very hard to the ground holds me in such a suffocatingly tight lock of mind & body that it’s all I can do to keep breathing. Just keep breathing, even when it’s painful.

Just breathe.
No air inside this water.
Just breathe.
No air holes through this dirt.
Just breathe.
Until the raptor of depression eases and releases my head from its nail-sharp talons.

as for the migraines, the headaches … i just don’t know why they come or what makes them go away and thus their healing solution remains the elusive wonder of the monstrous Bigfoot. While he may or may not exist, I assure these headaches do and for their elusive explanation and devastation are more frightening than that Big Beast.

Raptor of depression snatches my feel-good. Again.

It’s happened before. It happened yesterday. I don’t know why it happens.

I’m cruising along, feeling great. Or good. Or anyway OK. Then like the dust cloud perpetually trailing Linus in the Peanuts strip, a dark cloud appears over me and takes away the sunshine.

Or another image: A huge black raptor sweeps in and snatches my positivity, my good mood, by bright day in its giant sharp talons and takes off, leaving me suddenly depressed and depleted for no apparent reason.

Once that state of mind takes hold, it’s very, very hard to shake.

I truly don’t know why it happens or what the trigger is that in some strange way seems to signal the raptor of depression to sweep in, grab and take off with my feel-good mood. It happens in a matter of moments. Like the alleged sneak attack by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.

Yesterday I felt terrific, journaling at a newly-discovered cafe! Everything was grand! The springy sunny weather … the blue sky … the cool and funky cafe … my seat … the relaxation … down to the coffee!

With my journaling done and anticipated reading of the newspaper and second cup of coffee next, I found my mood suddenly turn south. Nothing in my immediate environment had shifted! In fact, I was happy and content to be where I was!

So what happened to bring in the swooshing raptor of depression? If I knew the answer and could bottle it, I’d be a billionaire.

Or at the very least wiser and more at peace than I am presently.

Depression is a loaded topic to be certain. Millions grapple with it. I won’t venture probing a complex and complicated subject; it’s not the purpose of this post.

I only wanted to get it out there … how this raptor of depression, with wings opened wide like inky black bed sheets spread across the sky, descends unannounced, uninvited and out of nowhere … and with great pointed talons snags my well-being … then like a powerful missile ascends and disappears from view …

and just like that, I’m no longer the person savoring writing and reading in a cafe with yummy coffee! I’m down … depressed … numb … directionless … flat-lined.

Like I said, it’s far from the first time it’s happened; I’ve been contemplating the how and the why. My answer is I don’t know.