A Scarfie in the Wrong City
It’s always a delight to get mail that’s not from the uni, the bank or something else to do with me not having any money, so there was a big smile when my package from my friend Kirsti finally arrived.
As you can see, the present was a lovely made-by-Kirsti scarf and since it is too warm here for me to use it right now, it is instead being modelled by the lovely Cheer Bear. It also came with a note, part of which read:
Anyway, I thought I’d send you this as a Scarfie at a new uni, I figured you’d need a new scarf! I hope you like the colours - but then again, you did help me pick them out!
I do love the scarf, Kirsti, and I love the colours - although at the time I wasn’t picking them for me! Thank you! It’ll help me colour up my winter wardrobe.
In other news, I am all finished registering with the university, and I start on Monday. I’m already registered with Disability Support Services, too. The anti-depressants have started set in and my concentration has started to come back, and I am sleeping better than I have in years. There is, however, a new diagnosis of PTSD, which is a bummer. But better I know, I guess.
So a whole new adventure starts on Monday. The final years of my degree, hopefully!
Wish me luck!
It’s Official: I’m Depressed
According to the doctor I saw this morning, this is a diagnosis that has come at least six years too late. Knowing what I know, I have probably been suffering from it for almost (maybe more) half my life.
Scary.
The diagnosis of clinical depression is not a surprising one as such - I have been through periods where I could not even bring myself to get out of bed in the morning. It was a good day if I actually managed to get to class in clothes that I did not wear the day before, and had slept in. It was a great day if I wore clean clothes. An excellent day if I wore clean clothes and had had a shower. Pity the psychiatrist did not agree with everyone else - she refused to even say whether or not I had depression (leaving me in a state of limbo, essentially), saying that I would let a diagnosis take over my personality.
So it was a bit of a surprise when I was finally diagnosed, as apart from recent episodes I’d been rather fine. A bit dozy, a little bit weepy (especially over the news regarding Heath) but I was functional. Well, semi-functional. My brain sort of stopped working beyond a certain point. It’s taken me half an hour of knuckling down to get to this point and even now I am nodding off at my desk. Not quite at the point where face + keyboard = OTP, but soon. Soon.
It’s only 3.30pm.
Although it is a relief that I finally have a solid answer (which I always have needed before I fix anything) and there is finally a solution in sight, I have to admit that I am more than a little worried.
It’s now 3.50pm and all I wrote in the past 20 minutes was that paragraph. Oh, wait. That’s a sentence. That’s basically my level of functioning. Sometimes I have good moments where I can read a chapter of a book. Other times I can barely finish one page of a three-page short story. In the past few weeks I have suffered from mental blocks - I will be in the middle of a sentence, and when I reach for a word… nothing. Just a big white wall in my brain, preventing me from even finding a somewhat similar word no matter how wrong it may be. My tongue stops working, too, so I just sit there waving my hands why mentally ramming myself against the White Wall of DoomTM.
Tomorrow is when I can start my round of pills, although the sleeping pills start tonight. Until then I am merely one of many people who have suffered from, or are suffering from, depression.
And as everyone tells me, I am not alone. Not alone.
