Mental illness is tidal.

I’m depressed again. I didn’t notice until yesterday. I often don’t notice right away. It can take a bit to tease out the motivations behind my behaviours, especially when there are other challenges in my life. The grief I’m feeling since my mother’s death, and coming to terms with the new relationship with my aging father take a toll.

People who don’t suffer from depressive disorders often express surprise that they can sneak up on you, but I think that’s because they still picture depression as someone weeping in a dark corner. I’m not particularly sad right now. Despite my grief – or perhaps because of it – I’m quite numb to emotion.

It’s the name problem again, and it’s frustrated me since I came to accept the diagnosis. Depression as a medical diagnosis is a lot of things, and only a small piece of that is sadness. Anhedonia – numbness – is more the order of the day.

I like to complicate things by presenting with smiling depression. I’m always fine. I worry too much about being a burden.

Depression is a mood disorder. It’s about feelings, and if persistent feelings of sadness are one of the hallmarks, a complete loss of interest in almost everything is another. The most basic of tasks become a struggle when I’m depressed. Everything gets put off.

And still, you don’t notice. Everything becomes devoid of meaning, and you don’t notice. You get bypass anger and leap to DEFCON 1 at the tiniest slight, but you don’t notice. It was the butter that tipped me off. Comorbidities can be a useful thing. I often notice my depression because of misbehaving parallel problems.

You think I’d be better at this by now.

An eating disorder is a persistent beast.

I’m normally very good at making rice. It’s a source of pride, and I brag about it regularly, especially since I don’t use a rice cooker. Honestly, I get quite smug. It’s very annoying.

Lately, however, the rice I’ve been preparing has been sub-par. It’s been too dry. It sticks to the bottom of the pot. And it gets tough overnight. This is a real problem for me – I eat at least one rice-based meal every day in an effort to limit my exposure to wheat.

I’m a smidge intolerant.

I also like rice. And I was irked and puzzled by the loss of my one cooking skill. Okay, I also have chocolate chip cookies.

What was going wrong? I blamed the water – it’s been harder than usual. I blamed the rice and the grocery store that sold it to me. I thought maybe the gas stove was acting up, or that maybe it was time for new pots and pans.

But also I noticed this past week that food is getting quite revolting to me. This is a danger sign. This is a “pay attention to your eating disorder recovery” sign. Despite what your eating disorder tells you, it’s neither normal nor good to be put off by food.

To prioritize my eating and recovery, I decided to make stroganoff for dinner. It’s a favourite meal of mine. I like it with rice as opposed to noodles. But as I was preparing things yesterday, I checked the cooking instructions for the rice. I’d changed the amount I planned to cook from my usual and wanted to verify the amount of water needed.

It was then that I noticed I’d stopped adding butter to the water when cooking the rice. I don’t even remember doing it. I would’ve been in the last six weeks. I wonder what I was thinking?

Eating disorders hate fats. You get rid of them very early on – it’s why most people suffering with eating disorders become ostensible vegetarians. There are lots of fat and calories in meat. You slash the daily total significantly when you drop it. This is the mindset, not advice.

One tablespoon of butter later, and suddenly the rice was great again. Eating dinner was less successful. I was quite put off by my favourite meal. “Revulsion” isn’t too strong a word. That was when the light turned on in the back of the head. That was the, “wait, I know something” moment.

The eating disorder is running more than it should. I’d best pay attention. We’re not supposed to be revolted by food.

We’re also not supposed to be drifting into the third person. Where is Will Robinson when you need him?

And then there was depression.

My mother died in January, and this has been devastating. We had a close and complicated relationship, and I feel her absence deeply. I miss her every day. I’m not enjoying learning to live with the space inside that her death has created.

I expected to be off my game. There is weight that comes with death that is beyond grief. Death is also work and bureaucracy, and that takes its own toll. I worked hard to grieve while maintaining my mental health and eating disorder recovery. But that takes a lot of juggling, and I appear to have decided at some point to put some of the balls down.

It’s strange how these things are easy to identify in hindsight. I misdiagnosed some of the warning signs of a pending depressive episode as grief. I didn’t pay attention when I stopped journalling, and when I started to get more and more obsessed with organizing.

That, for me, is a real tell. Trying to perfect some aspect of my outside life means the inside isn’t going well. An obsessive focus with organizing my possessions is an attempt to find calm.

I’m not blaming myself for slipping, and that’s a nice change. I give myself a pass because my mom’s dead. Still, acceptance doesn’t change my location. I’m back in the pit.

Back in the pit.

The good thing about figuring it out is that once you know, you can begin the climb back up. And I’m not so low this time. Depression sub-basement three or four, tops. I’ve definitely been worse.

I’m incredibly apathetic, however, and that makes positive action hard. I’m also pretty negative in my outlook; things seem bleak and a little pointless. I’m dissociating more as well, and my sleep is fractured and broken despite the drugs.

Seriously, how could I have missed it? This is not my first rodeo. The qualifiers alone should’ve twigged me.

I have a lot of negative self-talk going on these days. This is another important sign I regularly overlook. An increase in personal trash-talking means I’m struggling mentally. But it’s hard to remember that we don’t like the negative inside voice anymore.

It’s hard to reject the thoughts you embraced for decades. It’s especially easy to slip back into familiar patterns when you find yourself in distress. The temptation to embrace avoidance is strong when reality is painful.

I all knew that, and I still slipped.

Knowledge without action again. I need to cut that out.

I miss my mom. She was very good at getting things done.

And as she would say, the status quo is not an option here. Get up and get busy. I come from a long line of people who fight. My competitive nature demands I give as good a showing.

Besides, you can’t live in the pit – there’s no furniture. And I like much that’s in the world once stability and clear thinking kick back in.

Still, it’d be nice if someone would install an escalator. You’d think it’d be a priority considering the frequency of my travels. And no flier miles either.

Depression is a rude and selfish creature.

References:

Depression (Major Depressive Disorder)

National Eating Disorder Information Centre (Canada)

How To Deal With the Death of a Mother

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