When It Rains

Image courtesy of Stockvault.

Having good mental health is a lot like juggling – I do both poorly.

Whenever I think I’ve got a handle on things, something comes around to remind me that a little thing can just knock everything out of whack. For those keeping score at home, that’s a lot of moving things that have sharp edges which can put an eye (or something else) out. Some of them are less metaphorical than others. At any rate, it’s tough having an occasional reminder that one’s head can spin out of control. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Writing about mental illness also is a bit embarrassing. Despite the weird looks one might get from people when talking about it (I wish I was kidding), it’s important for people who have these illnesses to express it in some way. I’ve neglected that here because too often I can’t discuss things in a way that people most likely will take poorly. So, the net effect is that I’ve generally stopped doing it. That’s kind of been a mistake.

My recovery – despite its lasting over two years now – is not going as well as I want it to. On good days, I get many different tasks completed. On neutral and bad days, I get hardly anything for my own personal betterment done. Some of it is medication getting in the way, and other bits of it are due to the many other tasks I perform in addition to writing. While I don’t necessarily mind doing these other tasks, they are occasionally getting in the way of my convalescence.

Of course, I’m also adjusting to actually going somewhere on Sundays now, and last Sunday I got home quite late. I couldn’t tell my family that I was at a meeting of godless heathens of which I share many opinions and views both religious and philosophical. To do so would cause a stir at the least and a ruckus at worst. Naturally, I’m putting this lightly. The reality is likely to be much worse. Suffice it to say that some of my family has a problem with Penn and Teller being on TV; I cannot imagine that sentiment translating nicely to finding out a family member agrees with those magicians about the existence of deities.

The anxiety caused from such a small thing cascaded into a much larger depressive episode. To paint an accurate picture, imagine anxiety being the boombox-toting, jack-hammering bulldozer driver along the crest of a precipitous Alpine slope. The ensuing avalanche is depression undergoing its natural effects to silence the offending noisemaker. In this case, I basically went into a major episode and acted without being able to curb my melancholic enthusiasm.

Some other things helped too.
I’ve come out of last weekend realizing that I’m kind of sick of seeing memorial services and prayer-fests for the victims of whatever tragedy that’s getting headlines that day. I’m also put out by people who decide that doing nothing or the hardest thing possible is the RIGHT ANSWER(TM) to said tragedies. At some point, I want to address that, but I haven’t come up with a fair way of doing it on my blog. Right now, I’m of the opinion that I need to stay away from clicking on tragic headlines. I’m also of the opinion that I need to stop writing about them, as I’m not helping anyone by typing things on my keyboard.

Some other ancillary issues contributed, most of them reminding me of problems I had when I was a Christian. I think I’ll write about some of them, because they’re important things to mention about faith. Most notably, they’re worthwhile concerns regarding the alleged benign nature of religion. Certainly, I think they need to be considered by anyone critiquing the Christian faith.

At least I did some other stuff.
I got some more improvements to my actual author blog, and I’m trying to ramp that up a bit. That’s where I’m going to be doing my publicity for my novel. Since I’m not using a pseudonym with it, it has no possible links to this blog here. People who are interested in my fiction writing can email me. If I know you well enough, I might send you the link to it. Please do not get offended if I don’t send it out; I blog about mental health here, and I can’t afford to have my autonomy here compromised.

That, and I live in a part of the world where people pray for rain. They tend to frown upon those that don’t send mental thoughts to an alleged deity in support of clearing up a drought.