I’ve been very depressed and anxious lately…

Sometimes I think I’m on a placebo or something. Every anti-depressant I’ve ever taken works for a few months (if I’m lucky) and, after that, it’s like I may as well be popping Mentos for how much good they do me. Even when they up the dosage, it does nothing.

Oh wait… I’m wrong… Upping my dosage will do one thing for me. It will make me really fat, apparently. I’m not surprised. Take a good look, those of you on any type of medication, no matter what it’s for, at the ingredients of your pills. I bet dollars to doughnuts that one of the ingredients is either sugar or sucrose (which is also sugar). What the fuck do we need sugar in them for?! I still haven’t figured it out…

This, this drawing right here, aptly describes how I feel every day of my life. I can’t escape from my own mind…

I remember once, I believe it was at a party my friend (who only invites me just so I can make deviled eggs) was throwing… A handful of us were chatting and I remember a few bitching about medical issues. Eventually, I grew tired and irritated and told them I would trade places with them any day. At least the conditions they had could be managed with pills or diet and exercise. I told them to imagine your own mind turning on you, making you think or telling you things that aren’t true, and you’re trapped, completely helpless against fighting off the demons of your own mind. Every day is a struggle, an ongoing battle that you know won’t end because your brain doesn’t work like everyone else’s, it has some faulty wiring. Meds don’t fix it. Hell, they rarely even help it. Every day you drag your sorry carcass out of bed, you go through the motions, all while wearing that happy face mask so no one sees that, on the inside, you’re screaming… Like most people, the responses I got made it sound like it would be so easy to just be happy and control those thoughts. Yeah…?! Give it a try sometime, assholes…

I think a lot of the problem is that so many people today are on an anti-depressant and don’t need to be…

Hey, life is hard, okay? No one said being an adult was easy. But you don’t need happy pills just because you feel kind of blah about life. Normal lives are boring! They’re mundane and routine. Get the fuck over it! You don’t need pills that make you happy because life is boring and routine.

Therein lies the problem… Because so many people are on anti-depressants, it makes those of us suffering from real depression look bad. No one takes us seriously… I’ve had some of these things in this drawing said to me, as a matter of fact, especially “you need to get out more” and “you look fine to me”. Yeah… I’ve learned to put up a good front, huh? All of us with a serious mental illness had to learn how to do that. If we didn’t, we knew the stigma we’d face, people thinking we’re faking it, people thinking it was something we could control and didn’t want to. Yeah, I fucking wish…

Now, I knew I was bipolar since I was 16… I’ve often wondered was it because my home was very dysfunctional or was it something I was born with? Or maybe it was because I had to adult at a young age because the actual adults in my home sucked at it. Who knows…

In any case… My mom came to visit the other day and we were discussing the latest disaster in the health of the astronomical woman who had 2, count them 2, ovarian torsions. Seriously, saying the odds of it happening twice in the same person being astronomical makes me feel like a side show freak… Not the point… We were discussing this new issue of my having ischemia (apparently for 2 years, thanks for telling me ER doc) and that it can cause a heart attack, which happens to be one of my biggest anxieties and has been for years, off and on. When I lost a friend to one, I really went off the deep end and it’s been an obsession that has literally consumed me ever since. Can you imagine living with that fear every fucking second of every fucking day…? I’m in a state of constant terror!

Here’s where the lightbulb comes into play…

My mother told me that, when I was young, not school age yet, I used to watch her soaps with her. I only remember watching Days of our Lives (back in the mid seventies) but she said she watched another one that was on (it still is but I forget which one it was) and the now defunct The Doctors. She told me that in one of them, one of the characters had a heart attack and died and, from that moment on, I was literally obsessed with the idea that everyone was going to have a heart attack and die no matter how she tried to allay my fears. She thought I was too little to understand, but I was not a normal child and understood more than I wish I had. It explains my fear, but not how to fix things. And this ischemia shit isn’t helping with that at all…

I know the cardiologist told me it was nothing to get myself anxious over… But telling a person with severe anxiety that is pretty much pissing in the wind… I’m going to worry and be anxious anyway.

This is why I play Animal Crossing New Horizon so much. It helps me to get through some of the more anxiety inducing things, like the COVID-19 quarantine (which has lasted longer where I live than anywhere else) and some of my other anxieties, like my health. Yesterday, I wasn’t feeling well and my heart was racing like a NASCAR car. So the game helped me calm myself a bit. There’s nothing really stressful about it, I can get creative and it’s easy. I grew up with an Atari 2600, people. I couldn’t even play the original NES games when my friends invited me over because I found all those buttons confusing and anxiety inducing. You can imagine how happy I was when they began adding analog sticks to game controllers so I could play video games again without that annoying directional pad… Anyway, you see the happy looking Jackie partying with Coco and Punchy…? I wish I was more like her…

See, that’s the thing…

In the game, you’re given a deserted island and 2 villagers to start with and like next to no resources. I’ve managed to turn my island into the kind of paradise I wish I lived in (though I constantly change the look of it). It’s a bit urban, but a lot of it is rural. I can spend my days how I like. I have a huge house with a lot of acreage I claimed for myself and made it what I want. I have a dream house I made what I want. I can pay off my home loan whenever the fuck I feel like it. I make a shit ton of money catching fish and if I feel like blowing it all on new furniture, flooring, wallpaper or clothes, I fucking do it. My mortgage can wait. It’s a nice change from reality… No wonder she looks so happy…

And you can’t help but laugh at the goofy things they say and do. Poor Sherb… He felt spooky and gassy, hahahaa! He’s cute! I also suspect that Punchy has a crush on me… That’s… kind of odd, actually. I had that in the last game they had for the Nintendo 3DS. It was a white horse with blonde hair named Colton who would send me the most beautifully written letters that sounded a lot like love letters. Creepy, yes. But the sentiment was nice. It’s not like I’ve gotten a ton of love letters in my life…

Or you’ll have something like this… It was another wedding reception party. I always try to get a screen shot as we set off the poppers, but this time, to my surprise, I snapped it too early and got a shot of everyone pulling the string on the poppers. I mean, look at their faces! Except Coco… he face never changes… But everyone else looks like they’re constipated and trying to take a shit! When I first saw that this was the screenshot I took, I laughed so hard, I had tears in my eyes! Seriously, it looks like everyone is trying to shit and can’t!

It’s also a nice escape from the world of fake friends. Out of the few friends I have in real life, only one of them is a real friend and worth my time. The rest are just not worth it… So it’s nice to escape to a place where someone likes you. My villagers don’t know I’m mentally ill and I doubt they’d care. They’re just nice, caring little animals, that’s all. It’s a nice change of pace to have with the world what it is today…