i kinda feel like this deserves its own title

song+ Sparks Fly- Taylor Swift- Speak Now
book+ nothing
quest+ assembling my Tomb King army
upper+ i have plenty of art things for the moment
downer+ nothing i can identify (which kinda makes it worse)
attire+ pajamas. word.
drink+ water

i'm trying to fight off a crushing wave of depression, but i can feel it overpowering me. i should be sleeping now, i didn't get to bed until 3am.. i woke up at 7:30.

understand that several years ago i was diagnosed manic-depressive (and several other things too) and this basically means there's a chemical imbalance in my mind that has good moods ebbing and flowing, regardless of external factors. while it's technically the same condition, i'm not considered bi-polar like Kyu is. his mood swings are instant, here and gone in moments and generally triggered by something incidental, mine are more subtle, to the degree that i frequently don't feel myself slipping until i find myself scrambling for purchase to climb back up a mountain. so basically, there's nothing i can do to prevent becoming depressed or melancholy, but i do everything i can to kick-start the climb back to human when i do fall.

now i can feel it, which means i'm already pretty far down, and i'm trying to work my way back to normal, but none of my usual efforts are producing any results. i've tried channeling it into multiple art projects; painting, sewing, design work, sculpting. it's slowly turning out decent work, but my mood isn't improving. i can't talk it out either. the attempts i've made to do so have left me angry (at my helplessness primarily), and they generally trigger a crash in Kyu's mood with matching rage-fit.. so talking it out like this seemed the next logical step.

the thing is, while i understand that there are things wrong with me, as diagnosed by a doctor, i try to use that knowledge to live as close to normal as i can. i loathe those people who use clinical diagnosis as a crutch to do less and be less. sometimes i wonder how close i'm getting to that knowing-and-compensating vs knowing-and-excusing line. the easiest example is ADD or ADHD. i'm ADHD, and i know plenty of others who are and manage to live reasonably productive lives on and off medication. i know it makes parenting harder, but that doesn't mean you just let your kid do whatever and write it off as a byproduct, enforcing discipline is part of parenting. trouble paying attention never drove me to wrecking a whole classroom's learning experience, i just doodled and retreated into my mind. conversely, there are some parents that drug their ADD kids to a near comatose level so they don't have to deal, and that's not the solution either.

i think my biggest issue, worse than the roller coaster moods, is my Social Anxiety Disorder. basically, i'm cripplingly shy, it affects every day of my life. the thought of talking to a stranger, or even someone i know but not closely, has paralyzed me before. even with family, i retreat more often than i offer companionship. it's easier to contact Roro or moose than anyone else, but even then, i sometimes have to push myself. Jenni's been married for nearly a decade now and it wasn't until this year i actually managed to initiate conversation with EITHER of her daughters, and carry it on for more than a few sentences. i clutch when i have to call someone, even Kyu. i can answer a phone, and carry on a (reasonably) intelligent conversation, but there's a 90% chance i'll have a mini-meltdown after hanging up. phones terrify me, most of my coping mechanisms regarding human relationships were developed for face to face contact, and on the phone that's all useless and i worry that someone will see through the falsehoods to my weaknesses. even understanding that my fears are irrational, i can't really seem to overcome them. i manage posts like this every so often, because even though i'm generally aware of who will read it, the internet carries a safety blanket in an illusion of anonymity. plus i have time to go over and rework what i say so i don't inadvertently share more than i'm prepared to.

i'm a proponent of honesty in relationships. i think if you tell the truth, there's a chance of momentary hurt feelings, but overall the lack of wondering about deception keeps things healthier. this includes, in my mind at least, not making promises if you're unsure of a capacity to keep them. "i'll never hurt you" is the easiest lie to tell. most of the time you don't intend to hurt someone, but you can never control how someone else will react to you. with all this said, i don't think keeping a secret is the same as lying, and with my difficulty opening up to people, i have a lot of secrets. they're not even all important, sometimes just things that i don't think need mentioning since doing so would involve psyching myself up to call someone. i've been with Kyu in our dating relationship slightly longer than Jenni's been married, and we were friends before that. even after knowing me pretty closely for a decade, there are things i haven't told him. he knows important things, and trivial things, and if i'm gonna share something it's easiest with him, because i feel like we fit, but there are things he doesn't know. some of the things that shaped me into who i am are things i don't talk about to anyone. some are relatively common knowledge (even if i didn't want anyone to know initially) like the thing that pretty much defined my jr high years and screwed all my relationships up for a few years.

oddly, i've discovered that my reluctance to share my own secrets has made me a lightning rod of a secret keeper for other people. i was the first person Naku came out to, followed years later by the family and Significant Other. i knew about Rory's gender dysphoria and transition probably before anyone else, even before Rory knew there was a term for the feeling of dis-belonging, or not-fitting right in his own body. i was one of the only people initially told when Moose was assaulted, because i knew what it felt like to want to shroud yourself in the pain to heal alone, especially when too much time had passed to do anything legally. and several more from various people that have yet to be shared with anyone else. i know what it's like to confess a closely guarded secret and be judged as a lesser person because of it, it's like being told that you're flawed and imperfect and unworthy of love. worse is to talk about being a victim and be blamed for instigating the situation. because i know those feelings intimately, i'm a pretty safe confessor. i sometimes find myself saddened that listening to other people's secrets is about as intimate as my relationships get, and my role is almost entirely passive. no more interaction than a journal, but with less risk of someone sneaking in to read it.