Ashmatica does Mental Health

I hate Christmas. Aside from any issues of consumption, obligation, and religion, there’s all the fucking Christmas music. If I don’t make it to 2022, I want everybody to know that Christmas music finished me off.

Christmas is also hard because I get Additionally Depressed at this time of year.
If depression is like a boring, grey, tasteless but bitter, critical, cynical, despairing, despondant, demotivated, doomy, gloomy, pathetic, apathetic, pessimitic, masochistic, self-absorbed, -loathing and -ish, envious, obstinate, tired, doc-bothering, grumpy, unhappy and sleepy cake, then Additional Depression is like the cherry on top. A cherry made of dejection that plays Christmas fucking jingles at you.

But when the so-called festive season is over, New Year arrives.
Woo!
I quite like New Year’s celebrations. Mainly because I like hanging out with friends and consuming alcohol, and because everybody stops playing Christmas music. I also make resolutions I can never keep – like the time in 2016 when I resolved that 2017 would be a better year for me. The Additional Depression dissipates between Christmas and New Year, and for some reason I used to end up somewhat hopeful for the year ahead.

The past few New Years haven’t been quite the same though.
I’ve had a bad run of depression. And although I’ve lived with this sort of thing since my teenage years, the past four years have been among the worst of my life.

The Current Wave began in summer or autumn of 2017, IIRC. It crept up on me, as sneaky waves do, pretending to be a mere swell of low mood, before rearing up, looming, towering, then breaking and crashing down on me just before 2018 arrived. It had all the usual boring deatures of depression, was unspectacular, boring, and made me a boring person too.

That year I made a repeat New Year’s resolution. It was simple and vague: to have a better year.

But, to my great amazement, I wasn’t able able to keep that resolution. 2018 was worse than 2017.
I got more depressed. I had to take time off work. I started using Twitter. I made some new friends, but also started to withdraw socially. I went back on antidepressants, for the first time since 2012. It wasn’t a good year.

Additional Depression hit hard that year, but by the time it was clearing up it was time to make a new New Year’s resolution. It would be simple and vague, and totally not plagiarised from previous years.

For 2019 I resolved to have a better year.

But, amazingly, I wasn’t able able to keep that resolution. 2019 was worse than 2018.
I got even more depressed, had to take more time off work, used Twitter even more. I withdrew more socially. I had 8 weeks of counselling, courtesy of the NHS, which kind-of, sort-of, maybe helped for about 3 months, but then everything fell apart again. Medication made me gain weight, which fucked up my self-image (more). Yes, I got my two babies, my guinea pigs, Beebop and Blackbean, but it was not a good year.

And the Additional Depression hit even harder. But eventually Christmas fucked off, and that affliction cleared up just in time to make a new-new New Year’s resolution. This time it would be simple, and vague, and totally not plagiarised from previous paragraphs.

For 2020 I resolved, ‘Fuck this, I’ve resolved to have a better year three years in a row, and each year has actually been worse than the previous year. Fuck New Year’s resolutions; I’m not playing that game.’

In this cunning manner I planned to trick whichever gods oversee how nice a year you have. They couldn’t make 2020 any worse than 2017, 2018 or 2019, because I’d made no resolution to have a better year for them to thwart. Ha!

Astonishingly, this plan did not work. 2020 was worse than 2019.

I got even more even-more-depressed. I had to take yet more time off work, and ultimately give up that job – which was regretable because it was among the least least-favourite jobs I’ve had, and I quite liked my coworkers too. I used Twitter a bit less, but for some reason that didn’t help. I withdrew even more socially, which was a challenge, considering it was the year of COVID-19, but I managed it. I started to develop anxiety to keep my depression company. I got to spend a lot of quality time with Beebop and Blackbean, but overall, it was not a good year.

And then the Additional Depression came, and it was actually a little less awful than usual, because I didn’t leave the flat enough to hear any Christmas music.

And then came time for New Year’s resolutions. Resolving to have a better year hadn’t worked, and not resolving to have a better year hadn’t worked either, so I was all out of ideas.
Maybe my thinking was too binary, I thought. What if I left my resolution for 2021 in an indeterminate state? I might have resolved to have a better year, or I might not have, and the reality of my resolution would lie in the superposition of the two states?

This idea appealed to me – rather like the idea of being trapped in a box with a vial of poison by that point. Surely Schrödinger’s New Year’s resolution would thwart the deities of yearly outcomes?

Incredibly, this plan did not work. 2021 has been worse than 2020.

I got even more even-more even-more depressed. I remained out of work. I used Twitter even less, and deactivated my account for a while, but for some reason that didn’t help. I started browsing Tik Tok. I withdrew even more socially, to the point where I’m fairly sure I’ve now alienated or lost from my life double-digits of people I happily called friends. Anxiety hit harder, more frequently and more intense. If it wasn’t for the regular fresh-vegetable requirements of Beebop and Blackbean, I wouldn’t often have had food in the flat, and my eating would be even more disordered than usual, as hard as that is to believe.

Overall, this has not been a good year.

And now the Additional Depression is kicking in. Yes, I don’t leave the flat to hear Christmas music much, but also I like to stave off despair by looking at funny birds on TikTok – and that cursed app, while not quite as cursed as Twitter, does like to sneak things it incorrectly thinks you will like into your feed, and which sometimes include Christmas music. FML.

So this is going to be a challenging month. I can see it whittling my friend-count still lower, because I won’t go out, won’t reach out, and often don’t respond to messages – because I can’t really cope with those sorts of interaction. I don’t know how I can get better. I don’t know how I can help myself. I don’t know how I can force myself to experience any kind of desire to help myself. I don’t have the energy or enthusiasm for even thinking about it, let alone implementing anything more comprehensive than three times a day taking medication that, like the last 4 prescriptions, doesn’t seem to do anything to help, looking at funny birds on Tik Tok, or hugging a guinea pig when the sadness hits.

And with the time for New Year’s resolutions on the horizon, I don’t know what more I can do.