Thursday, December 11, 2008
reappearing
Ardent apologies for having dropped off the map of the blogosphere for a moment.I have been immersed in a few things, mainly, the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Gaming takes up most of our evenings now, although now that we are max-level and pretty decently-geared with items from end-game content, we are slowing down just a little bit.
I am currently reading the beautifully-written "The Years With Laura Diaz" by Carlos Fuentes. Its language is musical, beautiful, evocative; the story captivates. Before this I was reading Orhan Pamuk's Snow, which while cleverly written, is darkly lit with shootings and an ongoing battle between secularism and fundamentalist religion. A bit heavy, a bit too academic. Both books are in the strain of my style of reading, that is of stories of different cultures in different times.
My depression symptoms have become worse lately. Hard to believe it is so because I am here writing, talking about gaming and books. But in little pockets of time I become once again gripped by the pain and physical grief almost close to what I felt the beginning of this year. I have lost my appetite. It takes me excessive amounts of energy to do anything. My sleep had deteriorated. All these are possibly for a number of reasons: Firstly, I am no longer on mood-stabilisers - they started to give me rashes. Secondly, I am no longer employed by PLM in Batam for the moment because they are having financial difficulties: yet another career movement failure for me. Also, talk-therapy has reached a dead-end with me, because I am so unable to feel, so overly academic about my emotions, that talking is not working. I am starting a new type of therapy next month, and am now on an additional antidepressant at night to treat my sleeplessness and the works. In the meantime I am distant, unenergetic, hardly hungry, sleeping away my pain.
As I write this I feel a physical pain in my chest again, like that of my recurring panic attacks. Lately these pains in the chest come alone with shivering and unstoppable tears, and an intense, heartbreaking sadness. The moment I start to feel at all, as I now write this, the pain that I push away daily with sleep and recreation resurges. Some say, don't brood, don't think of depressing things. I do precisely that, and it becomes my downfall. My indifference like a breaking dam to a river overflooding in the rain, I unknowingly take the advice of ignorant people of the 'Don't think sad things' breed, ignoring the water that is pushing against me, until I have no choice but to flood in pain every so often.
Now I need to do something about this pain in my chest that writing these words have caused me. But I will write, still write. To quote Fuentes in Laura: "Look, Laura, you write alone, but you use something that belongs to everyone, language. The world lends you language, and you return it to the world."