My LJ for the Moment

I’m depressed. I’ve been fighting with it on-and-off since I was a teenager. It’s cyclical, so I can go for weeks or sometimes months without any problem, and then it will knock me on my ass for a few days. Sometimes I just don’t want to do anything, and can’t focus. Sometimes I can barely move my body and just stare until my vision goes weird. Sometimes I just cry about all the ways I think I’m hurting people.

I’m on medication, and I think the medication is helping. I don’t have a great memory for my own experiences so I’m not sure. But I think I’m better than before I was on it. I wish I had taken notes.

It took me some time to find a medication that was right. I went through 3 SSRIs as well as Celexa. The SSRIs made me really anxious. The Celexa put up a wall between me and other people. I felt numb and unable to connect to people I’ve loved for years.

Now I’m on Welbutrin. If it’s not helping, at least it doesn’t have noticeable side-effects.

I’m also on HRT. That might not be helping with the depression. I can’t take much spiro as an androgen blocker because my blood pressure gets too low. So I’m only on a little. We tried adding finasteride and dutasteride as alternate androgen blockers but they made me more depressed. I cut myself for the first (and so far last) time.

I worry that my T levels and my depression are linked. Like, if my T goes down, I’ll just get more depressed. That’s apparently a thing. I just got more estradiol patches that may be encouraging more conversion of testosterone to estrogen (which is also a thing; bodies are weird). Of course, if I don’t get my T down and keep on with HRT that will hurt my mental health in other ways. It’s a nice transition catch-22.

This is just a stream-of-consciousness post. I don’t know if there’s any real point. I guess depression is a part of me, and I wanted that reflected in this blog.

It’s also a writing exercise. Can I just talk about my experiences without needing to be authoritative or have supporting evidence or any of the things I feel like my technical or gaming posts need.

This is now my LJ, at least for a moment. I haven’t been listening to music, but if I were it would be The Mountain Goats. You know the song.

Maybe this will get me to post again soon. How long do I want this to be the first thing you see on the blog? Does it matter, given that I have no traffic? Can’t we all blog again?

Depression is real, depression is hard, depression lies. I’m lucky. I feel like a burden to my family when I’m like this but they don’t feel like I am. How much depressed can I be until I really am one, though? I worry about that, when I’m depressed.

I have therapy on Friday. I’m counting the days.