(A note- Please don’t worry, I am not psychotic, not really hearing voices.  I am just referring to the automatic thoughts and inward conversation we all have, even when we are unaware that we are doing it.)

I am starting to feel it now.  I am tired.

I am tired of politics.  I am tired of people talking at other people.  I am tired of trying to reach the unreachable.  I am tired of doing things I usually enjoy.  This is the world of depression and I fear it is creeping back. I am tired of blog shouting matches.  I am tired of others condemning others who condemn them back.  I am tired of man’s inhumanity to man.  I am tired of writing.  I even sucked the joy out of the Olympics in my last post.  I am tired of fear and its ugly effect on people.  I am tired of writing.  I am tired of trying to wrestle out the beautiful, praiseworthy, and good report out of what I find, what I read, and what I write. 

   The voice is getting loud.  The voice is a pessimist.  It finds fault with anything I do.  I can’t write anything because it will not be good enough.  There is nothing worth writing.  There is just weariness.   A while back John D. at storied mind wrote about how creativity has at times burst him out of depression.  All I feel right now is depression stamping out creativity. 

   The voice in my head that berates me for all my shortcomings is gaining strength.  This is the voice that tells me I cannot do justice to my subject.  This voice is the perfectionist.  The voice is mean.  This is the voice that ridicules my every idea with the weight of a hammer on my soul.  This is the voice that sucks joy out of every waking moment causing me to walk in a kind of slumber.  The voice is the embodiment of every grade school bully, every cutting word I have ever had aimed at me.  The voice is cause of the heaviness in my chest, the fog in my mind, and the weight in my limbs.  The voice is my enemy.  The voice is me.   A certain sick part of me wants the pain, revels in the melancholy, knowing that if it keeps up all will go numb and feeling will be no more.

    The voice is a liar.  The voice is a magnifying glass and amplifier.  Like a funhouse mirror it takes little blemishes and creates gigantic character distortions.   The voice would take that of which I am most proud and tell me it will never happen again.  The voice has no subtlety, no room for nuance.  It takes mistakes and makes them world changing.  It takes pain and makes it never ending doom.  It takes the fact that there is nothing going on to trigger such feelings and makes me a pitiful whiner.  It takes grief and makes life unredeemable, not worth the effort of breathing. The voice is a monster.

I need to quiet the monster.  I need to remember that in the past, I have quieted the monster.  I need to remember that I feed the monster, I control his health.  I can cut off his oxygen.  I need to move, to write, to do, and to find my inertia again.  So I am writing this post, in stream of consciousness, simply because I need to write something.

     Is it the voice telling me I need to write?  I honestly don’t know.  It is just a blog.  It is not earth changing.  The need is in my head.  I could shut it down tomorrow and only a hundred or so people (and that’s being generous) would even notice.  It is a hobby.  It is fun, enlightening and enjoyable.  Well, most of the time it is fun.  Right now, all that is enjoyable is no more.  Now all things fun are a burden.  Yet I know that even feeling as I do, I need to go through the motions.  I cling to a faith that this too, shall pass.  I need to take comfort that through sheer force of will I have done it, I wrote something.  This is my victory for today.  Tune in for the rest of the week to see if it lasts.

Moral of the story-  Even when you are feeling fine and hate seeing the doctor, don’t let your prescription run out.  Don’t stop SSRIs cold turkey, even if the side effects are driving you crazy.  You may do quite well for a week, two weeks, maybe more, but somewhere down the road the voice will grow louder, and that is never good.