renaissance poisson

in the wake of aaron swartz's suicide there is, as usual, a lot of noise about depression. some of it is best ignored, because people who claim suicide is "the coward's way out" lack understanding and empathy -- seriously, who would want to continue living with fuckwits like that? not i -- if you talk like that, you might as well hand the noose over yourself (as if being a coward were the worst thing in the world; i can think of many worse. lacking empathy, for one). some of it is well-meaning -- "talk to somebody; you are not alone", "hang in there, it does get better" -- and while that may be good advice for people with occasional depressive episodes, for many others, frankly, that too lacks understanding.

because depression for many people is a debilitating, chronic pain-of-the-soul. and it doesn't get better, not permanently -- these days i only work on it not getting worse. talking about it can ameliorate it a little, for a time, because not feeling all alone with an illness helps in bucking it. talking about strategies for coping, that's useful to a point. talking about it might help those the most who have some proximate primary cause lurking in the background, like childhood abuse. but for many talking about it doesn't make it better in the long run, and after a while talking about it makes it worse, because it merely goes in circles underlining the futility. there is no cure for many. we can throw drugs at it, and some stick and many don't; and even those which do can stop working at any time. some of the drugs take away as much as they give -- no sudden suicidal impulses, yay -- but also no more creativity. we don't really know exactly why some work in some people some of the time, and it's altogether a crap shoot.

and seriously, "hang in there" gets on my every last nerve by now. like we don't know! we DO hang in there! every damn day is a battle to hang in there. every. single. day from dawn to dusk and into the night when insomnia strikes (because depression doesn't come alone; it brings allies, and they all work together to break you down bit by bit). we hang in there and try to do our jobs, and try to support our loved ones, and try to make the world a better place. all of it in the face of horrible daily reminders about humans abusing other humans, and other animals, and the environment. and life keeps piling it on: other illnesses take a disproportionate toll, disappointments wear more heavily; the personal impact of the economy, the failure of a relationship, the death of a loved one -- anything emotionally stressful can add the last straw. being hounded by the power of the US government can certainly dump a whole truckload of straw on an already bent back. the prospect of prison is more scary than most other things, because it takes what little choice we have of ending it away from us as well.

we're already locked up inside this defective body/mind. we desperately self-medicate by screwing with our neurotransmitters; trying to get our endorphins cooking so we can ride the high and feel NORMAL just for a little while. we don't usually know that's what we're doing when we crave some form of drama, chase adrenaline highs, or engage in sometimes stupid stunts, but honestly; those highs help more than talking. they make us feel alive. it shows us we still have some choices, even if the depression deadens all our experiences. and the alternative is staying in bed with the blankets over one's head, forever.

might as well be dead. i find having the choice of death empowering.

i promised the paramour i'll clean my room before i kill myself, and so far my room is a total mess, so no, i won't kill myself today.

if i end up killing myself, which is likely at some point (i hate to say this because it will grieve my loved ones and friends, but i don't want it to come as a surprise) it won't be anything they failed to do for me. it won't be that they didn't listen enough, didn't show me that they love me enough, weren't there for me, didn't drag me to another doctor. they all have already given me more than i ever expected. they are standing strong against the users and abusers, the ones without empathy, the cruel ones, the ones who put profit before anything else, the ones who cost us all precious time and energy, squandering it. my friends and loved ones are what's good about humankind. i am still alive only because of those who care(d) for me.

i'll kill myself when i run out of spoons altogether, when my reservoir of energy to cope with life runs dry. when somebody or something, probably just my decaying body, dumps the last straw on my back, and i can't take one more day of battle, when i just want to drift away into peace, finally, finally. i probably won't write a note because i'll be too tired to find the right words. maybe i'll write it ahead of time. maybe not, because that makes it too easy.

don't feel guilty then. you did all you could. be good to one another.

RIP aaron, and all those many others lost too soon.

the *poing* pointed me at this LJ entry about helping people, and i think more people might benefit from reading it.

i've always been a person who needed help in a very different way from everyone i grew up with, so part of this dawned on me very early. like the original poster, i need to be left alone to process, and anyone trying to "help" in other ways ends up adding to my stress. i decided back then that the much-vaunted "golden rule" was completely useless, and for a while i operated under the "reverse golden rule" -- don't do to others what you'd hate having done to yourself. that worked a lot better. but some years later i realized that it, too, didn't actually work well enough -- fortunately i am big on consent, and that meant i'd better ask somebody what kind of help they wanted instead of just leaving them alone when they didn't explicitly ask for help. so yeah, no rule whatsoever; individual consideration instead. it still doesn't work for people who require mind-reading to feel good about offered help, since i don't always succeed at that, but it's made a huge difference.

the original poster's last line is short and pithy, and for once pithy doesn't stand in the way, since it can be applied to either side: don't help me, help me.

i've been uninspired for a while now, which is why there are few photos lately. partly that's because i am not going out much; it's been too damn hot. i get more sensitive to heat each year, it seems. i've been sitting behind my computer and watching tv shows: leverage, 30 seconds, NCIS los angeles,better off ted, regenesis, dexter, and now i am in the 3rd season of six feet under.

the only one of those that was fairly unmitigated crap is NCIS los angeles, which has nothing good in common with NCIS. dexter is fabulous, and i'm looking forward to the 5th season. i've grabbed the first book on which the show is based, darkly dreaming dexter by jeff lindsay.

six feet under is also quite good, though right now it depresses me just how very bad everyone is at relationships. it's kinda impressive how many shows there are right now about odd, quirky, and outright weird people and circumstances. weird is the new black, i guess. i am all in favour.

i'm also doing a lot of knitting/crochet -- watching tv is good for that. i'm not feeling particularly creative in the sense of creating original things, but more in the "just making stuff" realm. i've finished a tee with indigo rope-dyed yarn (just needs washing), and a do-rag in crochet lace (needs dyeing).

[there might be spoilers for "the dark knight" and "hot fuzz".)

i tried to relax tonight by watching a movie because i just couldn't concentrate on anything i have to do.

first was the dark knight. such a visual feast. but at some point i just could not stand the joker; it made me physically sick to watch him. undoubtedly that means the actor (so that was heath ledger, huh. damn shame.) gave an excellent performance -- but i turned the movie off.

ok, a comedy was probably a better idea. hot fuzz came highly recommended by the paramour. and it started out well; i do enjoy british humour. the first blast of gore was a bit of a surprise, but also seemed cartoonish. but as the movie goes on, more and more people die in particularly gory ways, and everybody makes fun of the earnest cop who doesn't think these are accidents -- and suddenly it wasn't funny to me anymore. and i turned it off as well.

i've never much been for blood and gore, but in cartoon contexts i can usually watch it without being affected. i'm not sure what it's getting to me so badly tonight

... *ponders* ...

you know, i don't think it was the gore. it was the callous cruelty in both cases. the joker is insane and derives pleasure from torturing his victims. and the people of standford village, at the point at which i turned it off, killed for the most banal reasons, which is probably also an indication of insanity. killing for pleasure. killing just because one can.

that's not relaxing. that's as bad as real life, where people in power make up no more believable reasons for why we have to wage wars. killing because they can.

i should maybe stick to anime. that's so unrealistic that there is no connection with what i see on the news.

jo's poem gets closest to how i feel about it.

too much politics. not good for my mental health. if only i could easily sort the stuff that will energize me from the stuff that will suck it out. i can do that on dkos for the most part because i know the participants. but links to various other places are apt to set me off frothing at the unsubstantiated rumour mill that gets het up over total bullshit.

*GAAAAAAH*!

more 538, less huffpo, and fewer random leftie journals. more matt taibbi. why is there not more matt taibbi? *sigh*.

and i need to learn to hit back on my browser as soon as i see something that's bound to piss me off the longer i contemplate it.

wow, i was sloppy with the daily postings in may; i missed 11 days. mostly because i waited too late in the day, trying to actually post pictures from _that_ day. that's really a silly constraint which snuck up on me, and i am dropping it.

i'm also gonna post those missing pictures, and later move them to the correct dates.

i had signed up for sofobomo before the starting date, but then got completely distracted by dreamwidth, and now i have no theme. i think i'm still going to try and do it, and see whether a theme comes to me -- i am taking photos every day anyway, and who knows what might crystallize. it'd be cool if something did -- i am sorta vaguely thinking of the photos i took that expressed in some way how i felt that day. too narcissistic, eh? yeah. anything concentrating on somebody/something not-me seems like it'll slip away from me because i just don't have the spoons. i could do "a month in the life of my garden". hm. ... *ponder* ...

speaking of the garden, it's too hot to build my garden boxes, though i have cut all the lumber to size already. maybe if i just went outside to build _one_, without thinking ahead to building three and then mixing the soil for them all? i could build it behind the missile silo in the shade. i think i am letting myself be discouraged too easily, and fluctuate between doing too much on one day and crashing the next, and it becomes harder to pick things up again.

i wasn't going to get sucked into racefail II, the thirteenth child, but it happened anyway, so i might as well write about it.

i don't like to call what always happens in such discussion summarily "derailment", because hey, i cut my teeth on usenet, where thread drift was both an inherent bug and a feature, and i know from my own intentions at the time that i didn't mean to derail anything, i was just focussed on a subset of the issue, and especially when facts were in dispute, OMG SOMEBODY IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET, and i must set them straight. *rolls eyes at self*.

but it is of course derailment, intent or not. it distracts people from the main point of the thread, and quite often takes over completely. i know this too, because many a thread i would have liked to continue died under a load of fluff, or some side issue that was unimportant to the main points. and i think this is much more destructive in "flat" discussion (sites that don't offer threaded discussion irk me something fierce).

this has been something important for me to learn, and it so happens to be closely associated with GAS (geek answer syndrome): if i am ever so eager to make a small side point in a discussion about something vastly more important -- such as race -- i might want to restrain myself and not post it right then and there. if i think it's semi-important to the main argument (because bad facts undercut it), i must at the very least also contribute something to the main point.

i'm also thinking about how to narrow down the possibility for derailment from the start (my previous post got totally derailed immediately, and i know why). i think i might try and only talk about one subject at a time instead of letting loose half brain salad that's being tossed together as i speak.

only not so... fresh and green. :) just wet and frazzled. while this looks sorta zen. ok, it completely does not represent my mental state at all.

japanese cutleaf maple

went soil and manure shopping and picked up a few tomato plants and blue-purple petunias and some funky-looking succulents. and took pictures of plants in the rain, and sort of lost myself in that.

i don't know why i am so exhausted. i am kinda sleeping, though not very long. ah well. maybe i need a tag that says "fuck depression". i am not sad depressed, just low-on-spoons depressed. i want to do so much! it's spring! it's planting time! there is much coding and support on DW to be done. but i can't concentrate for long.

guess i go to bed and read smut.

my first patched bug on dreamwidth! i am way too excited about this, *snicker*, but oh, i don't care. it was the teensiest bug ever, but i did it, i set up a dreamhack, i figured out enough of mercurial (the version control software DW uses), and i found my way through the code.

this is excellent, because i got over the initial hump i have with every large project, where the project screams at me "i am HUGE and you will NEVER understand me, you'll screw things up, and crash the repo/site, and you'll prove yourself to be incompetent!". and i have no idea where to even start because it's all so complex and fits together in arcane ways, and i don't even know the programming language well, and... yeah. every large project does this to me, and has done so for 30+ years. until i start to pick at a corner, and unravel it a little, and peek carefully at the exposed guts, and start to see little tendrils of sense-making reveal themselves.

i am not allowed to put myself down because it was the teensiest bug ever.