The weekends are the hardest

I don't know about anyone else, but I find that weekends and holidays are a source of dread when I am depressed.

I live by myself and have a long commute and I like my work so the times when I am not at work are times spent alone at home. When I am not depressed, I cherish my home-time and spend it doing a lot of different things. I live in a town near the sea and love beachcombing. I have a garden and in winter I like to draw and I have a lot of books that always need to be kept company. I also have a lot of friends.

My sleeping patterns have shifted and between night waking (usually three or four am and awake, in considerable mental pain, for more than an hour before getting back to sleep) and just wanting not to deal with the world, I have been getting up later and later. On weekday mornings, I can usually get myself going at a fairly reasonable time, say 9 am or so. An indication that the depression is still in the "moderate" range. This gets me to the office in the early afternoon and I can work comfortably through into the evening. This suits my editors well because they are six hours behind me. I like my work and I find it helps me to not listen to my Evil Brain, so it is a useful distraction, at least.

But weekends are a horror. In the Twilight World, the first moments of wakefulness are very hard to take. There seems no reason at all to get up and the day ahead looks like a bleak empty road up hill under a grey sky. When I am up, I want only to go back to bed and being alone for many hours at a stretch means that the pain can gather and the negative thoughts can really spiral.

On Saturday shortly after I got up, the crying just started suddenly. I found myself doing those horrible loud gasping sobs that sometimes simply burst out from nowhere. A single thought can intrude and the emotion that rides with it is so horrifying that I am incapacitated instantly. At that moment, I knew there was no way I was going to get through the weekend unless I got out of the house. I dressed and went into the city and to the office. Even sitting in the office in front of the computer is better than being alone at home. Or I should say, better than being left at the mercy of my evil brain that seems bent on my destruction. I had intended to go for a walk through the city and then to a late Mass, but found that I was unable to bring myself to move from my desk. I stayed much later in the city than I had intended, and ended up on the last train home. I ate nothing on Saturday, having had a plate of pasta on Friday. My Evil Brain was telling me that having eaten pasta the night before, anything more than an orange and a few walnuts was too much. Besides, I was in too much pain to want to eat.

Sunday started out not too much better, and I slept until 11 after glaring at the window a few times. But for some reason, or no reason, the depression just lifted shortly after I got up and I felt better. I put some music on and bustled about doing housework. I called K and invited him over for a movie and dinner. We ended up having a nice time. (More on K later). I ate a whole meal, chicken, rice, asparagus.

That's the funny thing about depression. One day it can make you feel as if someone has handed you a piano and has instructed you to carry it around on your back; the next day, you wake up and the piano has just disappeared and you wonder if you imagined it.

I worry (of course, a huge part of depression for me is anxiety and worrying is one of the big warning-signs) that it will get worse. I have taken about four of those online diagnostic tests and each time have come up about half-way between "moderate" and "severe". I remember depression that was called "severe" and I remember that in the middle of it, I could do nothing at all. I couldn't possibly have held down a job that required concentration and the ability to organise my thoughts into sentences. What if it gets worse and I can't work? I have no savings and in this country cannot really expect to receive any sort of government help.

But today, at least, things seem to have lifted. The same searing pain does not seem to be laced through all my muscles and bones; the same ideas ('getting older') do not induce the same sense of panic. For some reason I can't understand, sometimes it is just like that. One day the volume is turned way up, the next day I can hardly hear it.

Had a nice lunch just now with a friend. Appetite just fine. But I can feel the worry simmering away under the surface.