So the other day on the bus home from work, I unintentionally spilled my guts all over a co-worker. I am not talking about barfing here. I am talking about talking too much, and maybe too truthfully.
I talked about the six month period of depressed mood I am currently having, paired with my history of serious anxiety problems. At length. For the whole bus ride. I talked about how hard it sucks to be living in a city I'm still not that comfortable with, and I talked about how I have not really that many friends here, yet, because I am literally afraid to leave my apartment.
After I got off the bus, I felt very foolish. Partly because I was supposed to call The Boy and ask him to walk me home from the bus stop (it was late and dark and I have night myopia so I do not see well in the dark, like a reverse cat), and partly because this poor woman had to sit and listen to me freak out about how I need to talk to a doctor about how fucking broken I am. I have only known her for about three and a half months, and what the Hell is wrong with me?! She did not need to spend a ten minute bus ride listening to me talk about how much I miss my mom (which is a lot, don't hate).
I felt certain that the next time she saw me, she would be totally weirded out and not want to be work friends anymore. But two days later, I signed into Facebook to find that posted on my wall was the name and phone number of a doctor who is accepting new patients. And when we worked together yesterday, she was not weirded out! She still wants to be friends with me, even though I am omg so broken and sometimes I cry and I don't even really know why and there is a good chance that it will be hard to hang out outside of work on account of the whole "too scared to leave the apartment" thing. She told me that my admission of how I was feeling made her feel more normal and not freaky for sometimes also feeling that way.
So that made me decide to write this blog post about how many sads I have and how it makes it really hard to do stuff that is fun and doesn't include crying.
One time, a few months ago, I had to return some library books. I felt funny as I was getting dressed, and not good funny. Sad and anxious funny. As soon as I stepped outside, library books in hand, I burst into tears. I just stood on the steps of my building and cried. I tried to stop, but I couldn't get my shit under control. So I went back inside, sat on the couch in my coat and boots, and cried for awhile.
In my past, I used to love a good cry. After a sad book or movie or dog food commercial, for example. Afterward, I would usually feel lighter, and relieved. I do not have those cries anymore. Books and movies and dog food commercials still make me cry, but a lot more often, and now the crying usually lasts, say, a day. Or a couple of days, on and off. This winter, when I worked at my previous job (which I thought was seriously contributing to my meltdown), I cried so much and was generally sad or angry or irritable so often that I told The Boy that he could break up with me if he wanted. I was basically a new and different person. One who did not have fun or go out with friends. New Lavinia mostly just yelled at him about stupid things, or cried about nothing at all. I didn't think anyone would want to date New Lavinia. Fortunately, Boy knows that New Lavinia is just going through some shit right now, and sometimes she is still a lot like Old And Better Lavinia, so he is willing to stick it out and hug me when I cry even though sometimes that leaves him damp and kinda gross.
In the months since then, I felt like it was getting better, but I think it was the glee of getting a job where I didn't work 14 hour days on a regular basis. I'm pretty back down in the dumps again, now, have been for a few weeks, and thanks to this wonderful lady at work, I will be calling to try and make a doctor's appointment tomorrow afternoon. I think that my depression is largely situational, because of the move and the winter, the combination of which left me pretty much completely isolated. Hopefully I will be able to get into some therapy where I can talk to someone without having to kidnap them on the bus.
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