(So, apparently a customization I made to my template keeps me from embedding YouTube videos. I’d tried to embed The Blind Boys of Alabama “Way Down in the Hole”. Now you can’t listen to it while you read this.)

Thursday evening, we learned that Mr Brown had died.

Mr Bill and Ms Helen were Grandmom’s neighbors, and the reason she was able to live on her own for as long as she did. Ms Helen took Grandmom to the grocery story. Mr Bill took care of Grandmom’s lawn and took care of her trash cans. Both of them checked on her every day, to make sure she was okay, and got her mail when she was out of town.

Mr Bill had been battling cancer for years now, so this was not an unexpected death; we were told his grandkids had come to visit that day.

It doesn’t seem fair that such kind and generous people should have had to deal with such pain, but, as the saying goes, life is pain.

Last Tuesday (a week ago today), I had my happy doctor appointment.

The short of it is that we doubled my anti-depressant. We’ve left my anxiety meds as they are for now, and he added in a medicine that is supposed to alleviate some of the side effects of the anti-depressant (grinding my teeth and vivid dreams).

The subject of lithium came up as well.

And not for the first time.

This feels like such a damned failure to me; I’ve spent the week ignoring this change, and refusing to talk about it (but I have been taking my meds) but not talking about it doesn’t change the fact that I’m not getting better.

Sometimes I feel like the only thing that keeps me going is guilt: it’s my responsibility not to be a burden on those around me, so I have to get out of bed. I have to go to work. I have to do the things that normal people do, because it’s not fair for me to cause other people difficulty.

But I don’t think that getting up every day because of guilt really qualifies as living. I mean, it’s better than the other options, but it’s not a very joyful of existence.

Not that the depression allows me to believe I’m worthy of joy, but I just tell my brain to shut the fuck up and move on.

I don’t actually have a moral or an ending to this. I wish I had an ending to this. I wish one day I could wake up and be a normal person with a normal brain, but that’s not in the cards.

So for now, telling my brain STFU and moving on is what I’m doing and how I’m doing.