February 17, 2000
What Dreams May Come
From Lisa's email files:So what's up with all the serious angsty type stuff in yer journal. Spill it girl. That's an order soldier!Hee. So... for Jason, and for anyone else who's been wondering, a brief explanation. I think about things too much. Period. I dwell, I obsess, I fantasize about horrible possible outcomes to every situation. Now, this isn't to say that I don't fantasize about positive outcomes to situations too, but... last week, the negative was winning out.
One of the things I learned during the course of my therapy is that depressives fall into certain patterns of thinking. 'All or nothing' thinking is common. Things are either all wonderful, or everything is shit. There is no middle ground. Another common one is the 'how things are right now is how things are always going to be' train of thought. I fell prey to both of them. Still do, from time to time. The latter is what happened to me last week.
(Insert standard 'I'm not depressed' disclaimer here.)
What I'm learning, to my chagrin, is that it's possible to still experience those thought patterns from time to time, even after being -- dare I use the word 'cured'? nah -- treated. I'm struggling. With a lot of different issues. Nothing new, nothing potentially earthshattering. Just variations on old themes. That's ironic, because a lot of the old themes have been resolved.
I dunno. Maybe I should change the standard disclaimer. 'Mildly depressed, but functioning okay'. I'm sleeping a little more -- which is undoubtedly not a bad thing. My eating patterns are about the same. I'm moodswinging like mad, but I wonder how much of that is hormonal. In short, I haven't been the easiest person to be around at times. If I've yelled at you or generally been unpleasant, consider this a public apology, in case I haven't already given you a private one. (I think I have, to everyone I've been bitchy to.)
If you're worrying right now (hi Mom), try to stop. I'm not happy all the time, but I'm not unhappy all the time either. In fact, this weekend kicked much ass. I finally finished my first Changeling story with my gaming group, and it was far more successful than I had dreamed. Happy me. :-) (And yeah, I'm still working on posting the rest of the story that I started back on January 26th.) I'm full of all these amazing ideas for my next story with this group. I'm excited about it.
So that's me for the past week, I guess. Up and down and all around. Today's been a little morbid, in a lot of ways. I had some bad nightmares last night, all of which left me awake and scared at 7:30 this morning, convinced that something horrible had happened to someone I love. I've checked with most everybody so far, and nothing's turned up, but... yikes. I hate dreams like that. One of the things I dreamed was that my mother died. It was an odd dream. Someone else in the family had died, and my mom and I were going to meet at my grandmother's to start working on the arrangements. Which is pretty much what happened when my aunt Eula died on Thanksgiving. When I got there, my grandma was there, and told me that my mom had died too. It was so odd, because my grandma is 91 years old, and isn't the most coherent of souls, and yet, she was in my dream. She kept trying to explain to me that my mother's body was being taken to Lexington, Kentucky, and I couldn't figure out why. None of our family is in that part of Kentucky. It was all terribly upsetting, and then I woke up. For several moments, I was convinced that someone had died.
I don't know. I'm in an odd mood today, filled with feelings of impending disaster.
Posted by Lisa at February 17, 2000 02:38 PM
