a wolf angel is not a good angel

I read books about depression — but past tense, now. The last one I read was The Noonday Demon, on Dr. B’s recommendation. And it was very good, I’ve no argument with the book.

My argument is with me — when I read these books, I say, oh, oh I’m not really depressed, not like the people who cannot get out of bed for weeks on end. I’m just stupid or lazy or whatever it is, but no, it cannot be actual depression, it’s so much less serious than what anyone else describes. I mean, I’m always functional. (And who could ever aspire to more than functional, right?) And part of me knows this is just another symptom, and a much larger part of me thinks that I am being realistic here, that it is just me pretending something for reasons I can’t quite explain, that I’m crazy, but not in the actual problem way, in the “I’m a bad person” sense.

Sometimes I’m really not sure. It’s normal, of course: I’m not a doctor, how could I really know what diagnosis it is, it’s not a perfect science. So I don’t know, and then things come and go, I feel better for a while or worse for a while when everything is slow, inching through a river of mud against the current. And then I feel better again, and I can’t exactly remember what it’s like in the other state. But I know I am never quite at the level of unable to get off the floor (this is part because if I were then I would be found out, and where would my obsessive secrecy be then?). And those are the stories that are Real Depression.

Are there histories of depression written by women, about women? Other than Prozac Nation and Girl, Interrupted.

I don’t know what I want to know here. Do I want to be told it’s all in my head? (It is, obviously, in either sense.) I sometimes even wonder if this isn’t secretly what I want, because if I didn’t, then — well, then I don’t know. Which is the problem all over again: I don’t know what is true and what isn’t.

Over at Whatever, John Scalzi posted about how Krissy, his wife, attacked a guy who was hitting on her after he tried to touch her. (This could also lead to interesting discussions of sexism which I won’t get involved in.) This apparently led to comments and posts elsewhere about How Dare She Why Did She Start With The Violence? Then there was an update saying that drunk dude’d actually touched Krissy first, and that John was in fact not posting the whole story. Fair enough, and I have no reason to disbelieve this story. I have no opinion about whether it was justified, really — I’m inclined to think so, but mostly I don’t care very much.

What I find interesting is how — and this happens all the time on blogs, just usually not so obviously — the initial post was without context (well, inasmuch as the blog itself isn’t context), and incomplete, people responded as if the story were in fact complete, and then the author got annoyed that they did it, like how could anyone ever assume that was the whole story right there? In part of course it’s always true: don’t ever assume that the blog post (or anything, but specifically blogs right now) is all and everything. On the other hand, people do assume they’ve been given the relevant information, that bloggers are reliable narrators, or reliable *enough*. Especially if there’s a history of someone not leaving out stuff.

I mean, I complain about being depressed and antisocial, but what I don’t say is that actually I’ve been fairly social lately (seeing people a few times a week, not including family).

Not that anyone is wrong. Not that everyone isn’t wrong. You can’t assume you get the whole story, or that the story you get is exactly right. You also have to assume you have the parts that matter. Except when the writer and the reader are trying to get to different points.

Sometimes I wonder if I had a better background in literary theory I’d understand blogging — and by extension, my life — better.

I am thinking about truth on the net, and elsewhere, yes. I have absolutely no conclusions, except maybe, we’re all skilled liars and we don’t know much, mostly make it up, and we might as well ignore and pretend otherwise it because otherwise we’ll all go mad.

from Postsecret

I’m feeling sad again, or tired. Tired just normal tired, maybe, or tired something else tired. I don’t know and I don’t know if I want to know. I had a nice summer, but summer is clearly over and now it is fall and it’s getting darker and colder and I miss summer already, we missed May and August to rain and wind and chill, and now it’s September.

I’ve been in a funk, recently. End of summer unhappiness? PMS misery? I don’t know. I can’t really figure it out. Is it a funk? I’m sleeping badly, having trouble falling asleep, waking up during the night, tossing and turning in the morning. I’m sure there are associations and reasons which I am assiduously ignoring.

Pi and Shelly both seemed to think this would be an interesting meme, so: based on this blog, what kind of person do you think I am? If you’ve met me, what has surprised you about me?

This would be a very silly entry to get no comments, so please do. I promise to answer if anyone else picks up on this meme.

Self taught Kate has an interesting post up about owning up to truths about yourself on your blog, and making things look or seem other than as they are. (Her example is better, but there are also people who make their lives seem worse. Over time, I have done both, either intentionally or not.)

If you are like me, you read other people’s websites, the websites of people who are so creative and talented, and when they talk about sadness or anger or–if they are actually honest enough to admit to it–being bitchy or rude or annoying, you don’t really “believe” it. It does not seem possible that people who are so far away could possibly get angry or experience negative emotions. Back in the days when I first started this whole weblogging thing (shockingly, this is now seven years ago, if you count the free homepage sites I used to use before I bought a domain name!), I used to read the websites of creative women and I thought that their lives were perfect. I thought they were perfect. I put them on pedestals, as models for what I wanted.

Now, so many years later, after meeting so many and emailing so many and seeing that their lives are just as f*cked up in all the right ways as my life is, I see the layers. I also see how dangerous it can be to believe in the image some portray–I am thinking of one website in particular, someone I was once friends with and am no longer associated with, someone who puts a very pretty picture of their life on the web when the reality is anything but. The experience of that online/IRL relationship did a lot to change my view that the life described on the website is necessarily the real thing.

Sometimes I think I’d like more history up, and consider putting all my usenet and opendiary writings on here, in the archives. (I do not intend to do this, but I have considered it more than once.) This would be for me, because I can’t imagine a whole lot of people suddenly delving into the 4+ year old writings I wrote. I guess it would also be for random googlers.

That’s not the point.

The thing is, I tend to think of people’s blogs as describing the whole of their lives, when I know this isn’t true. But I never know what’s left out, obviously, and because I can’t fill it in, I assume it’s not there, and often I don’t even know what I’m assuming isn’t there. When Jo(e) did her answers to regularly asked questions, I realised that I had thought, in the back of my mind, that she and Mr. Jo(e) had not much of a relationship (other than the sex she talks about all the time) because she doesn’t talk about him. I have decided that most bloggers have no friends, because most bloggers never talk about their friends on their blogs, so it surprises me when people talk about friends. I don’t really think I’m right — I leave my friends off my blog, too — and yet, here I am, making these assumptions.

They are a lot of them boring assumptions. The assumptions I make about people’s personalities (better-founded, but still, inaccurate) are not so boring. And not so innocuous, either. I forget sometimes that this is text, not reality, it’s the story of your reality, the story of your life. I use it as a way to complain about things, mostly, recently, and also a way to make sense of my life, to be able to see things and patterns that I can only recognise through narrative.

But this narrative, of course, turns it into a fiction, or a fictionish: truthy, not truth.

I make decisions about how to portray myself and my actions: show up better, show up worse, try both at once. Not talk about them at all (which makes my understanding problematic, and also reorganises my own story, blogging being, in a way, a way of making things real). I wonder often how I come across. Would I read my blog? Would I like me?

This is an issue I have blogged about and thought about before. I come across happier or sadder than I am. Friendlier or more anti-social. Saner or — well, hard to be less sane than I am and still function in society. (See? I am taking on a persona. Is this persona me? Some days.) I don’t try to lie; I do try to misdirect, sometimes. But I lie anyhow, and my misdirections sometimes are good pointers to the truth.

Ok, so I *woke up* exhausted today. And it wasn’t after 4 hours of sleep or anything. Why is my brain or body or whatever it is so mean to me? Am I sleeping less well than I think? I feel like I’m sleeping fine. But I wake up and ugh, I feel half-dead *still*. I can’t figure out why. I haven’t changed anything. Just my wakefulness, which is hovering around zero most of the time. Is it just because it suddenly cooled down? Am I eating too much, or too little, or the wrong things?

Well, whatever. Off to take a nap now.

One of the things I never have been able to do is describe people. How can you, in a half dozen adjectives, give the gist of someone? Is it even possible? (Note: it is possible to do this for negatives, at least for me. Super easy for me to describe the negative aspects of people I know.)

But people ask for it, all the time. What’s so and so like? There’s no point in saying funny, everyone is or claims to be funny. What does funny mean? Do you like puns? Black humour? Sarcasm? No, you can’t say funny. What about smart, perhaps as distinct from clever? This doesn’t tell me anything useful about someone. (Plus, no one’s ever going to call their friends sort of stupid, really.) I often run out of adjectives, here, anyhow.

This is problematic, of course. I don’t want to tell seven long stories that I think are a good way to know what someone is like, in a sense. I cannot really write brief descriptions of myself for any of the many places online that ask you to. (Check it out: even my about page was written by someone else. It’s somewhat out of date, so should someone care to update it, or write me a new one, I would be much appreciative.)

I could, I suppose, tell anyone who wants to know about me to read this blog. I have three years of posts — nearly two thousand entries. That is a lot of information about me. But since I think most of the readers here haven’t read through all my archives (nor is there any reason they should, unless they are very curious, in which case, hey, have fun!), I couldn’t expect anyone else to. And that doesn’t help anyhow, the fact that thousands of words could add up to a description, of a sort. Of course they could, they can, but it’s not a useful one, I cannot respond to “tell me something about yourself” with “why don’t you read my blog instead?”

Nor would I want to. I like the separations I have between what I say and what I blog and what I do. It’s the separation between the story of this blog, a story which is trueish , and the story of me. As if there’s just one me, easily describable by a few adjectives.

It is 6:30 in the morning. I have been up for TWO HOURS. I want to fall back asleep so very much but lo! here I am, awake. Not wide awake — please, I got to bed past midnight — but awake. I am trying to consider what I could do to fall back asleep, but my brain is somewhat fuzzy.