marble's jarble

song of the month

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KZ0Wlwsgjs

One thing I can't stand is people who think someone experiencing a deep depression is just making it up,

being lazy, or looking for attention. When you feel an emptiness so deep that you are just a part of the scenery-

There is a chair in the room, a clothes drawer, a desk, a bed, a body on the bed, just another object in the room,

but detached, hopeless and paralyzed with misery. And if you have to get up and move to go to the bathroom or something

it is like walking through a swamp. That's not needy or a made up, it's a genuine disease of the brain.




So if someone was so callous and shallow as to say 'get over it' it would make things much more

difficult. When a person is very sick the empathy and caring from others is one thing that

helps. A bout of depression is more than

just a bad day. I've had bad days too. There is stress, your tired, maybe a little

cranky- but deep depression is more than just a bad day.




If someone near to you is suffering from a mental illness
and is symptomatic- try to do some research on the matter and then you could be more empathetic knowing what the person

is going through. At least be caring as if the person is physically sick and needs some help accomplishing daily

tasks. People with mental-illness tend to isolate from society as it is. Even when they are not symptomatic. It means

a lot to have people there for them when the darkness has set in and they are forced to isolate further.

And this is just when someone is going through depression (and has a professional diagnosis).

It becomes harder for people to relate to someone who is hallucinating and hearing voices in their head.

I challenge anyone to say this person is just having a bad day. Or that this should not be considered

a real disease.



In my case, being schitzoaffective, I have experienced long and deep depressions, delusions (thought for sure i was being poisoned

through my air-conditioner, and the tap water in my apartment)

It was the middle of the summer, but for a couple weeks I could not turn the AC on. I was buying bottled water

from the grocery store or I would go to the park and fill up a jug at the water fountain (cheaper that way). Couldn't bathe et. cetra.

I thought it was The Kremlin behind this. No longer functioning normally I stopped

taking my medication and that was the last straw. The paranoia turned to panic with all sorts of crazy nightmarish shit going through

my head. Eventually I had to be hospitalized as has

happened before too many times. I think the worst delusional episode I had though was that I was dead and was a ghost. I was eternally

roaming the earth from here on through and the only way to escape was a second death by unnatural means (a bullet through the heart for

instance). This could have very easily lead to a suicide if I had not disclosed my revelation to my therapist who immediately had me

committed to a ward. The delusion slowly wore off, and when returning to my right mind I wondered, wow how could my mind trick me like

that? How fucked am I? And why do I always get tricked into thinking these delusions are true when I normally function perfectly

normally? I was horribly depressed during that time as well. I felt a sense of panic too that this why my hell-to roam the earth

forever and be horribly depressed. When in a clinically depressed state, the word that sparks the most fear is eternal. My mental

illness has caused a viscous cycle that has made me lose promising jobs, drop out of college twice, and generally putting up roadblocks
in my life.



I mentioned in my first entry i was put in a criminally insane ward. This sounds worse than it was. These

were just people who committed semi-violent crimes like robbing a store, or minor assault who had a history of

mental illness or whatever and they were put here to wait for trial. There were no murderers. I myself

was in there for vandalism. This was about 5 years ago and I thought I was in a modernized superimposition of Rome

and started smashing some car windshields with a billy club -to spark a revolt against roman rule- then took out a large pane of glass

at a bar.
This was like an entire wall of glass. I have always found the worst thing about my illness though

is the depression. When I succumb to the depression, when it sets in it is the worst state of mind ever. It's hard to explain what I

go through during a depression. it has always been semi-impossible for depression suffers to translate their experience into words.


You may think I am totally off my rocker having read this, but I am a perfectly sane

person most of the time. Mild depression comes and goes like passing clouds and the mental illness will not go away. But the majority

of the time
I am not experiencing any of the psychotic symptoms and I function perfectly well in society.



But the illness is always there in the background waiting to swallow me up and that's disconcerting. But I have

found a good mix of medication that is helping prevent depression and psychosis. Have a good therapist too,


and a supportive, but somewhat distant family to fall back on. The fact that the medication helps me so much has convinced me that

this is
all just chemicals in my head being deficient in some parts and overactive in others. My psychiatrist and therapist

have always said this and now I too believe it is true. It is nature, not nurture.



Hope I didn't depress you. just introducing myself and my situation.

currently I'm on SSDI. I get $600/month. I can't make anymore than $800/month on top of this.

People say, great deal free money form the government. But it's not a good deal, it sucks.

Sure it's a steady, reliable $600/month, but I can't make more than $17K a year. So it's

something I want to get off of eventually.



I played semi-professional poker for a while which cover my bills and living expenses. My rent was paid in half by an investment I

had cashed out of (a private restaurant) and the other half of my rent was paid my dad. I ended up cashing put my poker balance,

which was like 15K to procure a half years rent. I then put in like $2 and have moved my bankroll up to about $700. I can make as

much money playing poker as possible, but can't cash out more than when I am able to by SSDI rules. So basically I have been using my

pokerstras account as a kind of CD. It's better investment than any type of stock b/c it is within my control and a sure bet to make money over time.