Archive for the 'Depression & Therapy' Category

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It’s a Process

Published on January 4, 2011 by Corinna Carlson | 6 Comments

People ask me if the site won’t be Gus Greeper anymore and if I will change everything online to my name now. The answer is no. I knew when I named the site after Gus that she would one day die. And a lot of people call me Gus and she is tattooed on my arm, I think it would feel like I was trying to forget her and I don’t know it seems almost disrespectful too, regardless of her not having been a human. I will get around to updating the about page and blarg who gives a shit about that stuff right now.

The other day I thought it was coming up on the third month anniversary but I quickly realized it’ll be two months since she passed on Thursday. I find grief so strange, the similarities to my depression are such that I’m thankful I have friends who will remind me that it hasn’t been that long since I lost my best furry buddy, the longest relationship I’ve ever had, that it is ok to get upset and cry. I have forever been a person who will easily cry over something as simple as spilled milk, but I detach from trauma and reattach generally at the most inappropriate of times causing myself even more grief.

I have forced myself to deal with this more so than I think I have with other losses, this is not to say I haven’t had situations not even remotely about Gus trigger me into the grieving process. I have tried to force myself to literally stand in my feelings. If I think I hear her paws and feel a small jolt of energy as I anticipate her jumping up on the couch to turn and realize she isn’t there, I try to acknowledge it and give myself permission to simply miss her.

where Gus rests.

I love the urn we got for her; it has dancing lions on it. It’s comforting having her here, not creepy, I was worried it would be strange and creepy but the alternative to not having her cremated individually is what was creepy to me.

It’ll never end, just get easier or something.

Published on October 20, 2010 by Corinna Carlson | 10 Comments

Although I’ve been making a valiant effort at getting out of the house everyday, and making it most days, for the rest of the day and the days that I don’t, I seem to be dealing with a side of my depression that has reared up before but never to this extent.

I sit. In the same place for hours and listen to music and stare off into space; and that is it. According to my psychiatrist there are other depressed people who do this, not like that really makes me feel any better about it. I think about things, like how awesome it would be to read a book or write a post or do any number of things but I don’t do them. I sit. And then, when I do leave the apartment I’m fucking late for everything right now, which is uncommon for me. I did notice this getting worse a couple months ago actually but didn’t think much of it until I was late for my last two therapy sessions now, so something has to give here. I find it interesting how different depression is for me now. I never used to be able to even sit in my feelings; I would go to bed. In that sense I’ve made some odd progress because I can technically stand myself enough not to drug myself out and head back to bed. Not abusing my prescription medication is also good! Little PSA there as well.

The lack of motivation is killing me and no one can snap me out of it I have to snap myself out of it. I don’t want to be forced. Some of this is seasonal some of it is Gus, the end is drawing nearer on that one. Some of it is having issues letting go of a huge betrayal suffered a couple of months back but at the same time, with that betrayal I was also finally forced to learn a lesson, one that I have never wanted to learn and have fought learning for a really long time, that being, I simply can not have resolution to every single situation that goes wrong in my life. Some people are simply dip-shits and will remain that way no matter what I do or don’t say to them or about them. That is a really hard one for me. I believe in forgiveness and honesty even when it hurts and I generally see no reason why some sort of peaceful agreement can’t be reached but some people would rather be miserable or pretend they don’t care but what people forget and this always irritates the shit out of me is that it takes energy to hate, to dislike and to behave in petty ways. I waste the energy too, don’t get me wrong, but I try not to. Do or do not there is no try, I know this, but it is easier said than done. It was also said by a little green creature and written by an ego masturbator extraordinaire but that is beside the point, I will get over this betrayal at my own pace and there are more lessons to be learned here, I’m not quite ready to lift my ship from Dagobah yet so back off and get yer own light sabre.

Now that I have learned that I can not have resolution to everything that doesn’t work out in my life because I’m not seeking it out anymore, I have to learn how to let it go because this is a baby step process, fuck it is huge for me that I am even willing to accept this much, because having disagreements with people who mean something to me is generally very hard on me, I never take it well, my fears of abandonment kick in and I start saying stupid shit and Sabotage by the Beastie Boys starts playing on the soundtrack of my life running on repeat in the back ground.

I know that I MUST I MUST I MUST INCREASE MY BUST, but seriously I know I MUST keep getting the fuck out of the apartment and maybe I should even start posting the photos I have been taking. Tell some stories and shit, it is motivation I need. I wish I could buy some or that David Sedaris would ring my buzzer and finish reading this book to me. It is draining feeling this depressed every day. I want to pick up the book I want to sign into WordPress and write stuff but, but but but.. that is the problem!

SO I don’t know, I’m here and there and everywhere. Impressed, unimpressed, friend, foe, lover, hater, high, low. I’m going through something big. I think it has a lot to do with Gus being so close to the end. If being able to at least sit IN my feelings continues I may just get to the bottom of this here bout yet.

This is What I Know

Published on September 29, 2010 by Corinna Carlson | 11 Comments

I know I haven’t been able to post. I have been letting things get to me and everything is starting to pile up and I feel like I may explode.

I have had a really shitty few months. I was hoping that after I quit my job that things would level off but as it turns out that is not to be as Gus is in her last couple / few weeks here. It sort of puts into perspective how ridiculous everything has been but it is also just a distraction. I can blame being depressed on the fact that Gus is dying for reals now. But I’m still depressed, I was before we got the news that she was taking her final turn on Monday.

I’ve been thinking so much concentrating on any one thing for more than a minute is futile. There are things I’m accepting about myself. And I say accepting because I’m attempting not to feel guilty about them which would mean that instead of feeling guilty all the time, I’m basically saying take it or leave it.

I’m accepting that I am never going to be easy to be friends with, or become friends with. I over share, I open up to fast, I wear my heart on my sleeve and in my twenties when I was dating and building friendships I never hid who I was, how messed up, self centered and selfish I was, I just was. I’ve always talked a lot, I’ve always been a story teller and if people didn’t like it I was in most cases able to have it roll right off me. I was young what did I really care if so and so didn’t like me. When a guy would dump me I remember I would try and help myself get over it by picturing their age if they were older and thinking how at their age I’d just be a notch on a board and they’d be a fleeting memory. But over the last few months I don’t think it is that wearing my heart on my sleeve isn’t working for me anymore it’s that my asshole meter and I keep trying to become friends with these already fucked up narcissists who just end up stomping my heart into a million little pieces. It is my fault as well, why not open up to friends I already have why do I need new ones, granted I figured that was healthy given I’m trying to work on getting out more and being more social. But I also feel like I’m getting older and that if people don’t like me, for who I am, then who am I? It feels lonelier than normal and I don’t want to change.

I wish I believed I deserved good things and good people in my life, I do have many but question why with how much and how badly I fuck up and I’m starting to feel too old to fuck up with the regularity that I do. It isn’t like I don’t know that people love me I just need resolution and when I can’t have it I go a bit insane or it is one of the things that sends me reeling.

Sometimes I think I’m a really shitty friend but then I also know that whenever someone really needs me I’m fucking there. I have always been a pretty recluse person and as I get older it only gets worse. I know that I’m hard, my walls are steep even with the extensive prologue I provide, but I know that I’m worth the extra effort. Life in general just doesn’t make it easy to remember that at times.

de monster me

Published on August 8, 2010 by Corinna Carlson | 7 Comments

Normally when I use the word demonstrative on my blog I use it very loosely, it is a word I happen to love and on the level that I have written about myself up until now the context in which I have I used it is always simply to mean that I am not an affectionate person. Having exposed some of the things I have about myself in the last couple of posts l’m feeling more comfortable writing of things that make me who I am, but they’re things that I haven’t spoken about on here in detail before.

Regardless of how bad it is, and it’s really fucking bad, it is refreshing to be able to finally say, yes, Adam and I have problems, we’re normal. Of course people know we do, but I get sick of the online facade. Sure we have a fantastic relationship but we are, hands down, going through a tough time right now. Why hide it, when it is affecting so many areas of my life?

A week or two ago I tweeted a line from one of my old poems “how can I feel so alone when you’re sitting right next to me”. This facet of my personality leaves me an excruciatingly lonely person at times. Wanting to reach out so incredibly badly, feeling frozen and not being able to do it.

It is no one’s fault. Neither of my parents grew up in demonstrative families and that wasn’t their fault either. My parents always told me they loved me but until I left home three months after turning nineteen I had never said it back.

In small ways as a teenager I was able to open up physically but back then the problems I had with affection I deemed for the most part normal adolescence stuff. And because of general teenage angst and insecurity I was able to fake being more affectionate than I really was. How I don’t know or remember, because I can’t fake it anymore as an adult, even craving every single person I meet to like me it is still more common for me to use snail mail [you should see my stationary collection] or my fingers on a key board to express affection, to reassure people I care.

I know it is difficult for people first getting to know me to understand how I can open my heart so freely in writing and then presumably close it off in person. I’m not a particularly closed off person, but if you don’t know me, let’s just say I [can] take a while to grow on people. I have friends who ask if it is okay before they hug me and some who just do it. I’ve had friends convinced they could break whatever it was holding me back and would try to force affection on me, mind you, in a caring way; but still not for me.

This runs a lot deeper for me than simply tensing up when someone hugs me. For years I couldn’t look people in the eye when I spoke to them, I know that to most it comes off as being rude, for me it was from feeling insecurity and fear.

Although it was something that always bothered me about myself, when it would come to my girlfriends, I always wanted to be able to be affectionate with them when we’d have sleep overs and give hugs without a back pat or loose arms but for the most part I couldn’t. I’d send them an affectionate note saying how much the weekend meant to me instead.

I think the best of example of just how bad it is would be how I used to treat my cat. In 1999, there was an incident that made me realize that I had an actual problem, I wasn’t just a cold bitch on the outside. Gus has always been a needy cat, she was the runt of the litter and she is spoiled rotten. But she never used to be. When Gus would jump in bed with me and try to snuggle with me I’d push her away, I’ve always been a non cuddle sleeper period, and mostly a non cuddle person in general, so having a cat putting her paws in my eyes and mouth was all fun and games during the day but when I was trying to sleep or read and she’d sit down right in the middle of whatever book I’d be reading, I never really thought anything of it; just pushing her off. I thought she’s a cat they’re supposed be independent why does she even want so much attention.

I was living with someone who also had a cat, this cat hated Gus, this cat wasn’t so much mean as she was just a total fucking terror on four legs. We never got along, myself and that cat, but she had a close relationship with her owner. It wasn’t until I saw how affectionate he was with his cat and how affectionate he was with Gus that I realized that I was depriving my cat of affection. I ignored it at first, it wasn’t as if, except for pushing her off the bed, that I was mean to her. It was years ago so I don’t remember exactly how it happened but Gus must have been trying to get some affection out of me and I wasn’t having it and this person basically yelled at me “Corinna, pet your fucking cat!”.

It didn’t happen overnight but just opening up to my bloody cat changed me, actually letting her jump up on me when I’m upset and comfort me, letting her sleep with me and not tossing her off the bed when she was ready for me to be up and walking all over me. How did I live without that before? With it being eleven years later, I’m glad I changed this behaviour towards her when I did. But then again how do I live with so little human to human contact? I have found being a good three years into my thirties now that it’s something that bothers me, a lot. And it is something that I have for a few months now been working on because I want to learn how to get over this before it’s too late, before people are gone from my life forever and I never got to give them one of those hugs that I’m starting to get better at giving, the ones where I will actually pull you in tight to me. And so far it has felt good every time I have been able to do it.