#he also suggested library books for my depression boredom which reminds me that I need a new library card

[lemememeringue]

ik it's like, , good for mental health but I rly wish my therapist would suggest something other than going to a park

[a-woman-apart]

Gratitude

The “season of gratitude” is upon us. I understand that the holiday Thanksgiving has terrible roots, and I am not trying to excuse any of that when I participate with it. For most of us- but especially for me- the holiday has another meaning entirely. We aren’t thanking God for the slaughter of our “enemies”, but we’re thankful for things like home, family, and friends. In my strict religious household, Thanksgiving was the only holiday that we really celebrated, and it was something that I could look forward to each year. The 2017 Thanksgiving to Christmas holiday season was the last holiday season that I got to spend with my dad before he died. Some of his siblings were able to visit around that time, as well as one friend of his that he had known since college.

Even though this will be my first Thanksgiving without my dad, it isn’t hard for me to find things to be grateful for. I am close with my immediate family, even if I feel the need to tread carefully with them sometimes regarding religious and political issues. We’ve not only been celebrating Christmas and Thanksgiving together, but we’ve also been sharing food and fun for all our birthdays (thanks to my wonderful sister-in-law). I have an associate degree under my belt, and I’m looking forward to continuing my education next year. My boyfriend is a constant source of emotional support for me. Thanks to my mom helping me financially, I don’t have to be burdened with finding new or additional work until 2019.

Despite all these wonderful things, I would be lying if I said that I haven’t struggled with my motivation and mood. I texted my sister-in-law and told her I wasn’t feeling well. I complained that I had slept for 14 hours last night, but still felt tired, and laid out a laundry list of things that were bothering me. I had overspent a little bit and was worried about money (yes, this is even with my mom having helped me out). I tried so hard to be happy but continued “slipping up”.

She first probed me on what might be wrong and suggested going to a movie or spending time with friends. Then she kindly chided me by saying that I should focus on gratitude, and stop worrying about things that I couldn’t control, things to which God says, “Let it go.”  I don’t necessarily believe in divine intervention, but I could appreciate the spirit and wisdom of her words. She said to just believe that my needs would be met. It’s true that I cannot control the fact that my bank accounts are looking a little light these days, but I can have simple faith that I will be able to cut back and/or find a solution.

Her words reminded me of something said by Chris Boutte, of The Rewired Soul channel on YouTube. He said that the extent of his theology is that he simply “believes that things are going to work out.” He didn’t even say that his belief is grounded in the law of attraction, as it is for many people, but he did seem to imply that he believes in “karma”, or the idea that if you do good, good things will happen, and if you do bad then you can expect bad things.  Either way, just having a simple hope in the future is so vital, whether you feel that it’s accurate scientifically or statistically, or not. There is so much that is out of our control, that it is just as easy to focus the mind on the good outcome as the bad one.

Of course, it is very frustrating to continuously war with the pessimistic side of my nature, so much so that I sometimes want to give up entirely. It’s worth noting that calling my depression merely a side effect of pessimism is inaccurate. This doesn’t change the fact that it feels like my own brain is working against me. I had been doing so well with my new medication (Effexor) but today I found myself dealing with suicidal thoughts again. They weren’t “strong”- if that’s an accurate descriptor- but they were sort of rumbling under the surface. There were thoughts like:

“If it’s this much work to be happy, is it really worth it?”

“You’ve been volunteering, using your coping skills, taking walks in the sunshine, and taking new medication, and you still aren’t ‘over’ this yet. Will you ever be?”

“Just look at yourself- still can’t get over your depression. Is life worth living if it isn’t the life you want?”

“Look how tired you are. You’ll never make it through next week.”

I could keep going. It just feels like I’ve been coming up against a brick wall.

I tried to refer to Johann Hari’s book, “Lost Connections.” In the book, he talks about taking antidepressants for over 13 years. During that time, he would experience relief from his depression, but it wouldn’t last. His symptoms would return, and they would increase his dose, and each time the cycle would repeat. In the meantime, he kept gaining weight, he was sweating more and more, and his heart would race. If his depression was just a result of a chemical imbalance in his brain, then why weren’t the drugs working? He finally decided that he would devote himself to investigating the “real” causes of depression.

Johann came up with 9 causes of depression, and all the causes except 8 and 9 had to do with the environment, not solely with the brain or biology. He cited things like lack of meaningful work, lack of meaningful values, poor expectations for the future, unresolved childhood trauma, and lack of connection with other people and nature as some of the causes. It is true that when we experience these things, our brains react in response, but the source is outside, not inside. Even when we do have a genetic predisposition to addiction, depression, or anxiety, those genes are often not activated unless something in the environment triggers them.

These reasons explain why so many- though not all- people respond to antidepressants like Johann Hari did if they are treated only with antidepressants and nothing in their lives changes. They either must continuously increase their dose like he did, or like me, must change medications periodically because the original meds stop working. Note, he did not explore the efficacy of antipsychotics or mood stabilizers, so as far as I know those drugs may have better benefits. I know that I have not had mania or major depression since being on lithium, but my anxiety and dysthymia have persisted for years. Chronic low energy and mood have been an unending struggle.

So, if my problem isn’t just chemicals in my brain being too low or out of sync, then what is the problem? As I went through the list, “Lack of meaningful work” and “Disconnection from a Hopeful Future” kept jumping out at me. I love my job, and it is the most convenient job for me to have while trying to go to school, but I have been there almost 4 years and am dying to do something different. I even wouldn’t mind working at another library. I just want a change of scenery or pace. I am thinking of applying for a new job within the same library that pays a little bit more, but honestly, I would rather just go somewhere new.

It isn’t even that the work isn’t challenging enough or that mere boredom is stopping me. I have plenty of tasks to do most of the time. I just designed new brochures, I do some of the displays every month, and I’m still learning new things. Somehow, though, it’s gotten monotonous, and maybe I should stop trying to apologize for feeling that way about it.

The “Disconnection from a Hopeful Future” thing is also rolled into it, but it also doesn’t make sense to me. I have a hopeful future. I am going back to school in the spring, and that will set me on my way to start getting my bachelor’s degree. Ideally, once I have that I’ll be able to get a better job, start making more money, and finally move in with my boyfriend (if we’re still together then). We could even get a nice place together.

Somehow though, my current situation drains me of hope. I feel stuck when I think of 2+ years of working at this same library and commuting to and from classes every day. Even when I zoom in a little bit closer to now, I think of still having to depend on my mom for the next 2.5 months until I can go back to school and get my financial aid refund, and it fills me with dread. I don’t know why I feel so bad about leaning on her, but I do. Even with her help- and the raise I got from my job- I still won’t have a whole lot of money for extra expenditures. That means I can’t get gifts for everyone like I got them last year. My sister-in-law did point out that it’s not about the gifts, and my family never really celebrated Christmas, so I don’t think they’ll really miss them. It just felt nice to do that for them, so not being able to now feels sad.

Even as I write this, I find myself being drawn to the negative. I want to instead pull the post back in the positive direction. Sure, I don’t have a lot of money for gifts, but my older brother and my sister-in-law have invited me to come over to their house for Christmas. It is our tradition to stay up into the early morning putting together toys for the children. It started with my nephew but now that my niece is 1 year old, I believe that toys for her will be included. That already is something to look forward to. Sooner than that still, my mom’s sister is coming in to town and we will all be spending Thanksgiving together. My own sisters cook various tasty dishes, including a delicious mushroom stuffing that my youngest sister makes. The last thing I want to do is take what should be a beautiful family holiday and turn it into a crisis, and that is exactly what I would be doing if I let these dark thoughts take over my life.

Maybe it feels like I am trapped in a routine, but I’m not. Maybe when I need to take days off work because of my health, it seems like a failure, but it isn’t. I can only control how I am today. I can’t guarantee that I will feel good tomorrow. I can’t guarantee that I will even have a tomorrow. All I can do is be mindful and focus on the present.

Because of The Rewired Soul, and a chapter in Johann Hari’s book, I do want to practice mindfulness and meditation a little bit more. Mindfulness is about just learning to bring your mind back to the present, to really be aware of your surroundings and to exist in the moment. Meditation has been proven to genuinely change your brain chemistry and the way that you think, shifting your focus from negative emotions like jealousy, anger and self-pity and putting you into a more open, compassionate, and joyful state of mind. As everything else that he listed, this is only part of a bigger practice of health and wellness.

I do not know where you’re at this holiday season. Maybe the holidays are a source of pain for you, and I can understand why that might be. Maybe you feel like a hopeful future feels far-off and impossible to get to. Maybe you feel discouraged and alone. I can’t really offer a whole lot of assurance for you, because I’m often in the same boat. All I know is that you must keep breathing, and you must treat every day like it is a new day filled with opportunity. This is hard to do when you’re living paycheck to paycheck, or if you or someone you love is sick, you are struggling to make it through school, and/or you’re working at a job that has little meaning for you. Saying to “hang in there” seems like an empty platitude, but if you think about the alternative, it isn’t great. I say this as much for me as for anybody else- giving up will get you nowhere. There’s always something to be thankful for, however small, and it is the small joys in life- not this big impossible feeling of “having arrived”- that are dependable and can help to pull us through.

[themikithornburg]

Magic Portals

If you're a member of Goodreads, you know that the site encourages readers and fans to submit questions for authors. The other day I got a question from someone (probably Goodreads itself; my readers and fans are remarkably mum): "If you could travel to any fictional book world, where would you go and what would you do there?" The more I've thought about this, the more I'm stunned. Goodreads' question, with its "if you could," takes for granted that I can't "travel to any fictional book world." When in fact I can. I do it all the time. And so do you, if you're someone who reads fiction. Goodreads should know this! When you're a good reader and have good books to read, you can open a magic portal into other worlds. People have been saying this for centuries. "There is no frigate like a book," wrote Emily Dickinson, "to take us lands away." Your high school English teacher (after telling the class what a frigate was and scowling at the kid who laughed nastily at the word) explained that these lines were a metaphor, a figure of speech meaning that a book was like a ship. But your teacher was wrong. What Dickinson means is absolutely literal. No ship, or for that matter no plane, train, or automobile, can do what a book can. No vehicle can take you very far over your lunch break and bring you back in an hour. Fuel and tickets are expensive. Until space travel gets cheaper and time travel is invented, there are some places you can't go at all. Books, on the other hand, are quick, always available, and free if you have a library card. They can take you to the past, to the future, across the country or across the universe. And this part of the poem is a metaphor only in the sense that you won't be traveling physically. If you're a good reader, and are reading a good book, emotionally and consciously you will be where the book takes you. And most of the time, emotionally and consciously is what counts. I've read books that took me to their world so completely that when I finished them, or stopped reading for the night, I could hardly get back to my own world. Stephen King's books do that to me, and while his world isn't always a comfortable place, it's a fascinating one. I've read books that rescued me, temporarily, from my own uncomfortable places; once, during a hot muggy summer when I was dead broke and working a job I hated, I read all of Jane Austen's novels back to back and lived, for hours at a time, in cool nineteenth-century England among people whose worries were entirely different from mine. I've lived in fictional worlds that were so real to me, emotionally and consciously, that they entered my dreams. The first time I read Frank Herbert's Dune I actually hesitated to go outdoors without wearing a stillsuit to preserve my body's moisture; in my mind, the world of the book and my everyday world were momentarily confused. I've had discussions, sometimes arguments, with the characters in some good books. I've fallen in love with a few of them. What do I mean by "a good book"? In this regard, it's not a moral, nor a literary, nor even an aesthetic judgment; it's purely a practical one. A good book is enticing enough to persuade me to enter its world and then strong enough to keep me there. Also, and importantly, it has to be well enough written on every level of writing, from spelling to plot, to avoid kicking me out of its world with every grammatical error or non-sequitur or sudden, unintended change in point of view. Some readers can ignore a few of these distractions, but some can't, and no one can willingly stay in the world of a book that keeps reminding them every few paragraphs that it's just a collection of words on a page. Of course, not every good book can help every reader work its magic. When I was eleven I tried to read David Copperfield and simply could not get into Dickens' world – the ironies were lost on me, and the unfamiliar vocabulary was too great a distraction. At eleven I was a good reader for some books, but not good enough for that one. I was easily bored, and boredom zapped me back through that magic portal the wrong way. On the other hand, a couple of years ago when I attempted to reread Gone with the Wind, which I'd loved at thirteen or so, I couldn't stay on the other side of the portal. I'm sure for some young or naïve readers it's still a good book, but I stopped being a good reader for it, probably sometime in the late 1950s when I started to know too much about the real world to believe in Margaret Mitchell's fictional one. Her major characters all thought (as Mitchell apparently did) that slavery was a fine institution, and while I could well believe that of selfish, single-minded Scarlett and cynical Rhett (and while it was obvious that "Mammy's" act had everyone fooled, including the author), Ashley Wilkes was the deal-breaker. He was neither stupid nor a hypocrite, but he had to be either or both; he didn't have the luxury of living in the 1930s and lying to himself. Every time he appeared on the scene, then, he pushed me right out of that book's world. The line is blurry between a good book and a not-so-good one, even when you take "good" in this narrow sense. Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin novels are so good, for me as a reader, that I've read them – all thousands of pages combined – three times, and I have no trouble getting past the sea-going vocabulary that might stop another reader. But they'd be even better books if the complete Norton edition weren't so badly edited (not edited, in fact, but just scanned and printed) that there's a typo or two on almost every page. It's the author's job, with the help of the editor, to make his or her fictional world as real and distraction-free as possible, and since O'Brien was dead when this edition came out, the publisher has a lot to answer for. For some otherwise good readers, the combination of technical vocabulary and stupid errors will make it a world they can't inhabit. Of course there's also a blurred line between good readers and bad ones, and the line moves, depending not only on the book but on other things, including the reader's time of life or even on the reader's mood. Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn't. There's a novel called Dear Enemy, by Jean Webster, published in 1915, that I've read approximately 200 times (if I lived in the world of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 I could walk around reciting it), and if I need cheering up I'll reread it again. I can't stay long in Thomas Hardy's novelistic world; I get way too depressed there. And I don't even understand the concept of "a great beach read." If I'm on a beach, I want to be on the beach, not in some other fictional place. (I wonder if anyone ever read Nevil Shute's On the Beach while they were on a beach?) The sad thing, though, is that some bad readers are always bad readers. Technically, they can read – they know the words, they can pronounce and define them, and they know what most of them mean. But the words are only words; they open no portals. When I was a teacher, I sometimes had students like this. They'd graduated from high school and were able to advance through required college courses in their major and minor fields without ever reading a fictional book or story willingly. "I don't like fiction," they'd say, and no wonder. From their reactions, in things they said or wrote, I think reading fiction must have been, to them, the way a mathematics text is to me – something I can mostly understand, if I put my mind to it, but something that doesn't touch me or move me in any way. Black marks on a white page, forgotten as soon as the page is turned. I don't know why this is so, for those people; I don't think it's a lack of imagination, because they seem able to watch movies and television with some pleasure, and you have to have at least a little imagination to do that, although the actors and directors and crews do most of that imagining for you. I suspect it's because they never found that first magic portal, the one that took them "lands away," and so they never knew it was possible, never got the knack of it. Maybe it's too late for them, as young adults or old adults, to learn the trick. I hope not. But why do I hope not? It's just a game, isn't it, this trick of opening a magic door into a fictional world? It's not something we need to do in order to live, and it's not like there aren't millions of people in this world who aren't able to read at all and who get along just as well without it. Yes, some believe that reading certain texts – say, the Bible or the Quran – can make one a better person (a questionable belief, I will venture, having met some of the folks who hold it). But fiction? Isn't reading fiction just a frivolous entertainment, no worse but certainly no better than watching a movie or playing solitaire? Am I a better person for having read Dune or David Copperfield? Will you be any wiser or any more virtuous after you've read that new novel you just brought home from the library? Possibly not. But you'll have travelled, and travel is broadening, as they say. You'll have met new people, including the book's author, and had a glimpse into their minds. You'll have seen, if the book is a good one, how strangers live, or how they once lived, and seeing this will suggest that how people live in your own world isn't the only possible way. You'll encounter problems and ways of addressing them that haven't occurred to you – yet – in this world. Also, when you've spent a little time in another world, you'll notice that the other world is a mirror, whether perfect or flawed, of this one. In that mirror you may get a glimpse of yourself. Priceless, always.