And So

Darn, darn, darn.

I honestly cannot be funny.

I think that I am being darkly funny at times. On the internet, this doesn't work because there is no intonation on the internet. Also, I'm not that good at it. Also, what I say may be (a) too dark and (b) too true.

I can still laugh.I cannot produce the funny though.

The thing that gets me right now: There is no way in hell that things are as bad as they seem. No way. Also, I'm anticipating other people's deaths and similar tragedies and utterly failing to enjoy life at this moment, when the tragedies are not that bad yet.

I've always hated that. It used to annoy me so much that my life, which could have been reveled in, drunk to the dregs and all that--there were points where everything might have been just wonderful--was absurdly unappreciated. It was as if life was a chef, serving up this amazing delicious food and I was a person with no sense of smell and no tastebuds. I had to eat it. I mean, I could not pass it on to someone else. If I could have passed on my good health, my youth, my relative wealth, my great education, my assorted collection of people who love me (often crazy people) I would have. Not that I got nothing whatsoever from being so lucky. I do think someone else could have made more out of all that.

I even had good hair--thick, long, shiny hair.

Back then, my stomach was flat as a pancake, my boobs perky as hell. I had this period where I heard that bike riding would cure depression and I used to ride my crummy bike for miles and miles. I think my body fat was about 9%.  I remember one day--I'm not a crier, really--crying as I rode the bike. I don't know what it was. Just hopelessness.

The only thing I knew about at the time to help myself was bike riding and medicine. Medicine does not work, it eventually dawned on me. I used to take it because I was desperate and then my hope that it would work was a bit of a balm. It would slightly change my internal state in some way that gave me hope until the health issues it also causes made me take a step back and think about how little I'd gained, besides 50 pounds in 8 weeks. So that left exercise. Exercise also did not work that well. 

The thing that scares me: Now yoga isn't working. After the attempts at using aerobic exercise to manage my existence, I discovered yoga. Sometimes, yoga did do amazing things. I comforted myself thinking yoga was going to be IT. My cure.

I'm trying not to panic since I did fall off the yoga wagon for a bit. It might work later, when I get more consistent. But what else is there?  I tried vitamins, eating lots of spinach, an almost all fruit and vegetable diet. During normal seasons, when the sun shines and I can sometimes sleep 8 hours, the yoga and the all-vegetable diet is amazing. Now, it is not doing so much, and it is harder to 

I know that things are not as terrible as I think--as I am constantly ruminating and obsessing, that is.  How does one get that to sink into the brain? Isn't there some way to make the reality of what is really pretty phenomenal luck sink in?

So here is my question: What are the rest of you people doing that I'm not doing? It is quite amazing to look into other people's lives. I admit: I am drawn to the more melancholic sorts of people. There are these people who buy shiny things and make peach cobbler and I don't get it. What is it I do not know?

Comments

[A White Bear]

Hm. I laugh aloud at your Twitter all the time. But then, I'm sort of melancholic. I do make cobbler though.

[ozma]

Really? This is the thing: I can't tweet. Of course, that makes me think of an OK tweet.

Someone once told me that being funny is really about making jokes all the time. Only 1/3 of these might be funny but to be funny, you have to make jokes all the time.

Also, I've heard this about getting laid: You have to hit on people all the time.

What is your apple cobbler recipe? My favorite is just brown sugar, oatmeal and butter kind of crumbled over the top. But maybe that's crumble and not cobbler. See, I could probably turn that into a tweet.

I have a bad reaction to Fall so the the tweets aren't coming like they do in the summer.

[tuckova]

I sometimes have to make lists of all the things in the day that I accomplish and all the things in the day that are good in order to get out of bed. Sometimes this turns into being really down on myself for forgetting that I actually have it good. Sometimes it turns into a successful maneuver for getting myself out of bed. That's about the best tip I have.

Ooh, that and going to exercise class with someone that I don't want to disappoint, because it makes me go.

[DoctorMama]

If you think about it from an evolutionary perspective, never being quite happy is a good thing: it's motivating. But sometimes it tips over too far. I have a hard time experiencing happiness as anything more than relief from pain or worry. So in a perverted sense it feels good to worry. (I'm not a cutter, though. But I kind of understand the impulse.) My husband doesn't understand this at all.

One thing I figured out is that it's a real drag being around morose people who say Eeyore-like things all the time, and I don't want to drag other people down. So I PRETEND to be the kind of person who buys shiny things. And if I'm doing that, I can't help but make it at least a little bit real. For instance, I'm known now for my wildly colorful glasses and bags and tights, when I used to wear black, black, black. And I'm really digging my colorful stuff now.

The getting laid thing is true, at least according to my husband. The being funny thing -- I'm not so sure. FINDING things to be funny instead of awful seems to work. I love laughing about patients, which sounds terrible but is really a good thing for my attitude toward them.

[ozma]

Tuckova: Do you write down your list? Or is it a mental list.

Dr. Mama: I both hate and love evolutionary explanations. People use them in all kinds of suspect ways (e.g., to explain sexism) but then on the other hand, what a great explanation!

I've been happy though. It's like I finally got happy at various points after my daughter was born. MAN I LIKE IT. Maybe I like it too much.

The pretending! You do that! I'm SO good at it. While I am pretending, I think I feel less horrible. But do you find that it takes something out of you? At some points, does it ever feel very strange? Sometimes it is also extremely tiring. Like the time I was lecturing while simultaneously having a miscarriage (that I expected). (As a doctor, you know that a natural miscarriage can go on for a long period.) One part of my brain was going: Oh my GOD I am so sad. I wanted this baby. Another part was utterly, utterly focused on my lecture. To get good teaching evaluations, you really should not miss any classes or have any personal problems so that was what I had to do and I did it. I think I was traumatized by how intense the pretense was at certain points. Pretending so intensely did this weird thing to my head.

[kerewin]

The sun change always gets me and I somehow always expect each year to be different. Two things I do: I take extra vitamin D (5,000 units of whatever the D measurement is) and I cook a lot more than I do in the Summer. Oh yeah, I also tend to do sinus washes because I am always stuffed up (this very likely doesn't apply to you) and sleep a lot. A LOT.

I am sure the cooking thing doesn't necessarily help you but it does force me to be there and present when I just don't want to.

[Lou Lou]

Have you--or anyone who reads you--ever tried one of them SAD lights? I have a problem with February. Every February, till the one I lived in a sunny Southern state.

[magpie]

I agree - your tweets are funny. Dark and curious, but often funny.

What you described is an apple crisp/crunch - cobbler has a biscuit on top.

I like to bake. And I'm depressed. But I don't buy shiny things because I'm cheap and poor and self-depriving.

I take my 50 mg of Zoloft every morning - I think it's a placebo, because it's a low dose, a teensy pill - how can it work? - but when I don't take it, I weep all the time.

Making lists is good - especially when you include idiotic things just so you can have the pleasure of crossing them off.

[magpie]

No guarantees: http://www.countryhome.com/recipes/entertaining/dinnerathome_11.html

[YK]

Staying busy and traveling seem to work for me. Especially traveling -- I'm always happier away from home, because it temporarily suspends my expectation that I ought to be leading a more sensible, better-functioning life. Also, everything seems less serious when I know that, at some designated time in the future, I'm going to pack up and leave.