Back To Black

It’s difficult to convey how exactly I’m feeling at the moment.  Which is a pretty sure sign depression has taken a big, big hold of me again.  When things are going better, articulation, erudition, all those clever turns of phrases, are so much easier.

Yet now it’s ….. black.  I haven’t been able to face writing about anything.  Every single task seems so, so much harder.  My mind has resumed its self destruction.  This is a real battle to keep myself going.

To the outsider, it would seem that the termination of my therapy, albeit temporarily, has been the reason behind it all.  Yet I’m really not so sure.  I know that in a fortnight, it resumes with a sexual psychotherapist, an area that’s been overlooked until now but is all tied up with the problems in other areas of my life.  It’s with a mixture of relief, fear and happiness that I look forward to it.

No, I really think it’s been a coincidence.  Depression, for me at least, comes and goes in cycles.  I recover, do all the little self-help exercises to keep the positives in day-to-day living foremost in my mind, gradually feel better about myself, more confident.

Then ….. it’s not a sudden descent.  I can feel it slowing enveloping me, like a blanket of gloom.  It feels grey, which gives me time to fight the onset of it, but then too late.  I’m back to black.

My sleeping patterns are out of the window.  The other night, stayed up until 5, way after daylight was seeping through the curtains, feeling worse and worse about myself.  On another occasion, going to bed at a good time, around 10pm, I couldn’t get up until late the next afternoon, and only then to go to the bathroom.  Over and over in my head that voice was telling me how wrong life had gone, how usesless I was, how ugly I was, that I was getting what I deserved.

One event that exacerbated what I was feeling was doing something that Lesley, my now ex-therapist, suggested.  I’d been making use of my time when I couldn’t face going out by signing up with dating websites, with a little success.

Not exactly brimming with confidence after that, but having a boost that people actually liked me, I ventured onto a dating website’s chat room.  All was going well.  I wasn’t hogging the conversation, only chipping in every now and then, and was well received.  I could feel my self-esteem start to rise.  Only slightly, but hey, feeling even minutely attractive was such a positive.

It had to come crumbling down though.  It was quick and shocking to me though.  One of the women in the chat room, after a period of talking nicely with each other generally, suddenly accused me of making lewd comments, and asking if she was bisexual.  She also claimed that, somehow, I’d changed my name online to do it and then back again to avoid detection.  This in a public chat room, which is monitored, with registration a pre-requisite of entry.

The accusation was riddled with expletives, too, and really upset me.  Human nature being what it is, some of the other people in the chat room, despite there being not a shred of truth in it, took what she was saying as gospel and joined in with the general character assassination.

I wasn’t, however, prepared to accept this.  I was prepared, though, to believe I may have been the victim of a hacked account, so amended my security details.  I also contacted the website’s customer service section, by e-mail and via their live chat help service.

Their logs bore out that I had made no indecent remarks to anyone, or anything of a remotely suggestive nature.  They also took the step of banning the woman who made the accusation.  I may, naturally be entitled to feel vindicated by that.

I don’t though.  My faith in people has taken a severe denting, that someone of an age where they long since really ought to know better, feels it perfectly acceptable to make such unfounded accusations and be so abusive to someone, and that so many others were more than happy to join in.

Yet, this is the illogical thing, the voice in my mind asks, almost hints at “well, you must have said something.”  I’m taking ownership of a shame, that rose from the embarrassment of the incident I guess, that belongs to someone else.  So very beyond logic but that’s the way my mind rolls.

I was extremely upset by it for a day, and haven’t been back to the chat room since, though I’m intending to venture back later now the accuser has been banned, and kept in touch elsewhere with someone I met through the website.  That incident, however, only flared up in the past four days.  I’ve been feeling awful about myself again for some time before that.

There’s been no tears, but the rest of my body has been feeling like it was weeping.  Not only has the blog not been updated, but every other little project I’ve started, things with a purpose, to fulfill ambition, I haven’t been able to face.  The only constant has been the paid job searching.  Walking around, feeling awful, hoping against hope for something, both job wise and in myself.

Where do I go from here?  I have no idea.  I’m hoping for the best, fearing the worst, so maybe it’s going to be somewhere in the middle.  My ex’s birthday crops up next week, mind.  That’s going to be a test.  I’ve gone from being destroyed and heartbroken, to just missing her and the closeness anyone has in a loving relationship.  Let’s see if that changes.

What has changed since last week, though, is that, at last, I’m here writing about it.  That, at least, is a sign of no longer being back to black.  It may be in a miniscule way but perhaps, just perhaps, it won’t feel so awful for much longer.

I’m back from black.