A Super Awesome User's Guide To Living With Inescapable Mental Illness

Current Song: "My Body Is A Cage" -- Arcade Fire

I've kind of fallen into a gross depressed pit tonight, so skip this if you're sick of my whining.

First, don't ever say the following things to me:

"Smile!" (or, alternatively, "I bet you're a lot prettier when you smile.") Both of these and the variant, "Smile, it can't be that bad" are said with some regularity to me by complete and total strangers. I'm sure they're trying to be friendly, but OMG no.

"Are you stable?" When I got out of the hospital the first time, when I was 19, I moved back in with my parents for a while. They made a daily habit of asking me this question whenever I showed the slightest symptom of depression (i.e. not wanting to get out of bed until the afternoon.) I have a hard time imagining a question that is more condescending or antagonistic than this one. How the fuck do you even answer that? Especially when you're trying to AVOID other people's bullshit?

"Oh yeah, I've got depression too" or "I was depressed once" or "I know how you feel." Any person at all with the capacity for rational thought should realize where the problem is in these statements.

"How's the job hunt going?" Well, I stopped looking for work when I could no longer function outside my home. How do you think it's going, asshat?

"What did you do"/"Why were you in the hospital?" Believe me, you don't want to know these stories any more than I want to talk about them.

"You need to get out of bed" or "You need to get out of the house more" or "You can't afford to miss any doses of your meds" or basically any other advice, unless you are part of my care team. Recognizing what I need or don't need to do does not result in its accomplishment, it just results in making me feel bad for being so useless.

"You're scaring me" or "Now I'm worried about you" or "I worry about you all the time" or "I can't sleep because I'm worrying about you" or "I feel like a bad (mother/sister/friend/cartoon rabbit, etc) for not helping you sooner and/or taking care of you 24/7." Telling me this might make you feel better, and might in your eyes be an acceptable way to express your support, but a lot of my whole thing is that I feel like everyone would be better off without me and this kind of reinforces that. Then I have guilt to deal with, too. If you're genuinely worried about me, do something constructive. Call me up and invite me out, or come over and cook me dinner or do my laundry or do something else I'm incapable of taking care of. Email me and tell me off-color jokes or make inside-joke references. Buy me cartoons on DVD. Text me random things during the day. These kinds of things make me feel like you're glad I'm alive, not that your life would be easier without me in it.

And finally: "What are you going to do now?" I don't know. And that scares the hell out of me, so I'd rather not think about it at this time, thanks.

*****
Part II: Revenge of the Wallabies

Let's all try a fun experiment. One day next week (pick one, it doesn't matter) you're going to try out being me for a day.

Preparation: Don't do your laundry or throw any trash away for at least one week. Leave things where they fall. At least three days before you begin the experiment, stop showering and brushing your teeth or combing your hair. Bonus points for staying in the same clothes for at least four days leading up to step I.

Step I: Don't get out of bed until at least noon. Bonus points if you make it to 2:00 PM or later. Even if you're not sleeping, lay there with your eyes closed, ignoring all biological or environmental stimulation (ringing phone, knock on the door, need to empty your bladder.) The only reason you should get up at all is if you are very thirsty, very hungry, or very seriously need to go to the bathroom.

Step II: Drink some water, eat some food*, use the restroom. Go back to bed immediately afterwards.
*Note: the only acceptable food is that which can be eaten out of the package or, if necessary, microwaved. If you have to use more than two dishes (including individual utensils), that food is unacceptable.

Step III: Lay in bed for a minimum of one more hour. If necessary, you can read a book or watch DVDs during this time, but don't concentrate too hard. Try to drift off into a nap.

Step IV: If you're doing it right, it should be late afternoon to early evening by now. Get up and eat again, if you're hungry. Same rules apply as before. If you don't have acceptable food, don't eat.

{Note that you should still be ignoring the phone and/or the door. Your explicit goal here is to avoid interacting with anyone else for the entire day. Feel free to talk to yourself, your pets, or inanimate objects. If you really need to communicate with someone, text them. Don't answer if they call back.}

Step V: Take a survey of all the things that need to be done around the house. Laundry buildup, sweeping/mopping, trash taken out, random objects/trash picked up off the floor and put away, unsorted mail on every available surface, overflowing kitty litter, etc.

Step V(a): Meditate on how much you suck. Fail to do anything, even bending over to pick up a paper towel that has fallen on the floor.

Step VI: You can do one of two things: Go back to bed, where you can think about how disappointing you are to everyone you know, take an inventory of your personal failures, and stare vacantly at the ceiling; OR sit in front of your computer, half-assed paying attention to your email and/or blog, taking an inventory of your personal failures, staring vacantly at the screen without awareness of what it says. Minimum time requirements for either of these tasks is four hours; in the case of the former choice, you may be there for the rest of the night.

Step VII: Realize that it's at least 1:30 in the morning and once again you've not bothered to get dressed, complete any hygiene tasks, do any housework, accomplish any goals, pay any outstanding bills, or leave the inside of your house for any reason, including to get the mail. Briefly make a note of how many days in a row this has been happening. Super champions at the game of My Life can rack up 12 or more.

Step VIII: Fuck it. Go back to bed. Leave the DVDs on while you're trying to sleep because you don't like silence. Restart the entire sequence tomorrow afternoon.

There, see, isn't that fun? It's a fucking blast to be me.

Anyway, sorry to drop that shit on you, but that's why I have a blog.