I Recognise That Tree

Back in November I posted about going into a mild depressive episode. As many folks may have surmised from the Friday post a few weeks back, it turned out to be not-so-goddamn mild. I lost the first half of December to an incredibly irritating funk, which only really clicked as a more-than-mild depressive episode when a friend messaged me last week and asked how I was doing.

At the time I’d just come home from a book launch, after what had already been a pretty kick-ass day at work, and I’d settled into my couch to cry for the third evening that week. I had not written anything creative for the better part of a month. I’d been cancelling or avoiding social events for two straight weeks. I was not sleeping properly. I avoided going to bed until very late in the AM, then woke up a few hours later. And since the friend who asked how I was doing is one of the handful of people where I don’t automatically try to answer with yeah, okay out of misguided defensive instincts and crushing self-stigma, there was a minute or so where I looked at everything that was happening and went oh, right, instead.

I forget, sometimes, that this is still relatively new. That just being on antidepressants is not automatically going to fix every goddamn thing, and that just having a name for what’s happening is not automatically going to stop it from happening. It also doesn’t stop me from using this idealised vision of what I should be capable of as a tool for the kind of self-flagellation that can make things considerably worse.

The diagnosis may be new, but this thing with not writing? It’s agonisingly familiar. I’ve spent years getting incredibly frustrated with myself, again and again, because every time I found a process that was productive and consistent, it would eventually fall apart for no real apparent reason. The Other Peter would come out, and his process was not terribly efficient. It starts with doing less new writing and more rewriting, pulling apart the beginnings of things because nothing was right. When that didn’t fix things, he started writing new projects. When that didn’t fix things, he retreated into the most mindless distractions he could find.

When that didn’t work, he loathed himself. He assumed the failing was his, and as he emerged from the endless meh he’d start rebuilding his process from scratch to try and prevent that failure from happening again.

As they say in Waiting for Godot: We’ve been here before. I recognise that tree.

I did not write this week, not really. I tinkered with blog posts or did a page or two of scribble in a notebook, but I wasn’t really pushing to finish things or make them good. I was just keeping the muscle memory alive, or revisiting old projects to make sure they were still viable. I spent what would have been my writing time cleaning the house, or clearing email programs, or clearing out systems that had been clogged up when I started retreating from writing, social media, and the vast bulk of the world.

I worked on improving my sleep hygiene and went to bed on time. I finished my Christmas shopping. I drafted some blog content for my personal blog. I patched together all the little things, minor drags on productivity that I never truly get around to doing, and waited calmly for things to pass and the desire to work returned. I started looking at all the things that need to be done, like exercise and eating right and getting enough sleep, that will keep me relative even and productive instead of disappearing into the mire.

And if I’m looking for silver linings right now – and I am – there are two. The first is that I’m going back to the things that have worked for me, for the bulk of the year, and resisting the urge to rebuild anything. Because it’s possible that it was never anything wrong with the system, aside from the shit bouncing around inside my head.

The other is that it’s finally occurred to me that managing this shit isn’t easy, and I should probably stop expecting it to be. There will always be options that are far more seductive than practising self-care – options that are more fun and seem like a better short-term solution for propping up my mood – but the math never quite works out.