helen-louise's journal

I have been terrible at writing anything in livejournal recently. In some ways I'm feeling better than I was over the summer, in other ways I'm feeling worse. I think my chronic fatigue and associated low grade depression is being replaced with winter allergies, snot, and seasonal affective depression. (Yes, the tag that seems to say "sad" because livejournal lowercases everything is actually SAD. Although SAD makes you sad, so I suppose it works nonetheless).

I will try to update this thing at least with the various posts that I've been meaning to make (over the past few months). But "try" is the active word, because my energy levels are too low for most meaningful communication. I can manage irc most nights, but anything more is difficult. 10 minute phone calls are okay, but not so much the sprawling 45 minute phone call I had this evening with a friend who just wasn't getting "I need to go now" despite very clear direct communication :/

Anyway, Richard is going away first thing in the morning, and won't be back until next Tuesday, so I'm feeling quite anxious about how I'm going to manage. Quite apart from being my partner, he is also my primary carer, and I rely on him a lot more than he realises. Also, I am not the sort of person who can cope with being alone for more than a few hours at a time even when totally healthy - well, as healthy as I get. My mum will be around, but lovely though she is, she tends to be a bit of an energy vampire - which is the last thing I need! And then just to make things REALLY difficult, my sleep patterns are messed up again. I was doing okay on the being awake in the morning and asleep at night until, as ever, I got ill and had to sleep a lot more. Now I'm back to waking up around 5pm and not being able to fall asleep before 7am. ARGH!

I can't decide whether I should try to do chronotherapy to push my sleep patterns back to "normal" for my timezone, or leave myself on this pattern. The argument for pushing it forward is that it'll be easier to be social with local people if I'm awake at more normal times. The argument for leaving it be is that chronotherapy is DIFFICULT even with someone there who can help you arrange food, etc. Trying to do it on my own would probably be A Bad Thing. Plus, a lot of the people I talk to online are either nocturnal like me, or in timezones that are compatible with 1am-4am chatting. I don't know a lot of people who are around from 8pm-11pm.

Blah.

So if anyone feels capable of providing some company, I'd appreciate it. The house is a really bad tip at the moment, as is typical for people with depression and no spare energy, but if you can cope with that, let me know. I might even be able to drag myself into London some days, it really depends on how my work goes (if it goes).

Really not doing very wonderfully at all. To give you some idea, today involved my alarm going off at 3pm followed by me falling back to sleep multiple times until it was about 5.30pm. Then I sat in bed reading and having bursts of crying until 8ish. Feeling very tired, very sad and very "heavy" - my limbs feel like I'm in some sort of extra-strong gravity field and moving feels like far too much effort.

Not altogether certain whether it's depression or chronic fatigue or both. For the past few weeks, I seem to have been having an okay day followed by an absolutely shitty day, over and over. Probably need to go back to the doctor. And it's fucking frustrating because I spent the summer reducing the dose of my antidepressant and now what? Dire depression. Richard says "You don't remember how bad you were years ago" and he's right, but nor do I want to go back there.

My concentration span is rotten too. I can't concentrate on anything, then I hyperfocus on something. Like ranting about the stupid Daily Mail article. It's all or nothing, and it's never on the right things. Also I feel cold all the time and my hair is falling out worse than usual.

I'd quite like to crawl into a hole and hibernate for a few months until it's spring again.

Not keeping up with livejournal terribly well. If there's something you want to make sure I know, then post the link here.

Yesterday I was supposed to say happy birthday to stellarwind, who was "levelling up". Except I didn't get online all day. So here is an apology along with an actual post in my journal, to make it extra apologetic. (Normally I only post happy birthday in people's own journals, or on forums, or by email.)

In other news I am a little ball of fuzz and stress. Still very, very tired which is now coupled with not sleeping properly. Since Friday night I've been having what I can only term "very loud" dreams, so I wake up having dreamt so much that I don't feel rested. Ugh. They have not been entirely bad dreams, but some of the ones that weren't nightmares were so odd that I've felt disturbed by them nonetheless. Also, why do I keep having nightmares about cake?

I am completely disorganised with regard to Christmas (which, in turn, means that the "me + Richard" entity is completely disorganised, because it's my job to do holidays). Apart from the presents that I've bought through the year as I've seen something that would be perfect for someone, I have absolutely nothing. While college was happening I was too busy, and now it's so dark all the time... Christmas shopping & organisation does not combine well with SAD. Whose stupid idea was it to put Christmas in the middle of winter? Those Southern Hemisphere types have it the right way round. At least in the summer I'd have enough energy to deal with it. But then my birthday would be in midwinter instead, meaning it would be dark and cold and I wouldn't enjoy it. Bah. And yes, I suppose I could spend half the year in the Northern and half in the Southern Hemispheres (including at least a month in Iceland when it DOESN'T GET DARK), so I'd never have to deal with winter, but I don't have enough money to maintain multiple homes. Nor do I fancy moving to the Equator, which is the only actual "cure" for SAD - unless someone is planning on moving a civilised place like London, New York or Seattle to the Equator.

I have about 30 hours of coursework to do over the holiday (if I get it all done right first time - otherwise it'll take longer). Half of this is from one lecturer, the rest is from another four lecturers combined. I think lecturer #1 needs to learn what levels of work are appropriate. If everyone else is giving us one problem sheet, I don't see why she gets to give us three huge lab writeups (which she wants bound into a folder!) AND another two problem sheets. I am actually worried about getting it all done, because of aforementioned darkness and lack of energy. It's discrimination to make me do work at the time of year when my brain doesn't function - isn't it?

So, this morning it was sunny and bright as I walked to the bus stop. Then the bus didn't come for ages, so I had 25 minutes of sitting in the blazing sunshine making all sorts of plans for Things I Wanted To Do This Evening. I was slightly late for my first student due to the lack of transport, but it didn't matter because I was full of energy and taught the 2 hour lesson in an hour and a half.

This evening, it started getting dark at 4.30pm and it was absolutely pitch black when I left my last student's house at 5.45pm. I walked to the bus stop, contemplating how I wanted to get home so I could collapse in a heap and do absolutely nothing for the rest of the night. And wondering if I'll ever be able to find the energy to finish my Japanese version of Pokemon Diamond, because I can't see me being able to come home from work and cope with difficult text that still looks like little pictures rather than words any time for the next few months.

Oh yeah. The clocks changed yesterday. And it's winter, and I have SAD. Cue lots of energy around noon when sun exists, and none at all in the evenings. Blah. *crawls into a hole and waits for the stupid winter to pass*

Today it was sunny when I woke up. Thus it only took half an hour of lying in front of the bright light + window for me to get myself out of bed, in comparison to yesterday when it was violently grey and drizzly, when it took me an hour and a half to get up. This doesn't seem like coincidence. Also, today my brain was fully booted by the time I got up, allowing me to get useful work done before my first student; whereas yesterday I continued to feel sleepy and brain-dead for several hours and wandered around like a zombie, until I went into the ridiculously brightly-lit shopping centre and achieved sufficient radiation from incandescent supermarket strip lighting. Hrm.

The red cover/reflector of my back tricycle light has fallen off somewhere in Kingston. I suspect it's going to be a Right Arse to get another one, as it's a weird proprietary light not a standard shape or size. Also hrm.

Am finally attempting to get organised for Christmas. Here follows a poll:
[Poll #887574]

You'll notice that there's no "I don't care" option. That's because I want to know whether you want a card or not, which is a binary choice. I figure that anyone who ticks "Yes, but only if it's not too much bother." knows that I'll send them a card if I have sufficient energy & motivation, and won't if I don't.

Comments are screened so you can type in your address or link to a post that has it in. Also tell me to whom the envelope should be addressed and the names of any partners, children, housemates or pets who should be included, unless you know that I know about them already :D

Oh yeah - I've almost certainly missed the last posting date for anyone outside the UK, but I'll send you a card anyway if you'd like one. There's 12 days of Christmas, after all.