Depression

 I've been coming to grips the last couple of days that I've been experiencing depression since about halfway through last year. I'm not sure why I didn't realise it until now, but I can see all the signs looking back. I've been unable to motivate myself to do anything, I've lost my ability to care about the things that matter to me, I've stopped taking care of myself (hygiene, exercise). I stopped seeing problems as something to be fixed and started seeing them as something to be ashamed of.

That being said, today I made a commitment to try and do things, and it went relatively well.

I really struggled to get myself to go to my new life group this evening, but I'm glad I did. I was finally able to convince myself to go when I thought about the possibility of good fellowship and opportunities to build others up. It troubled me that I didn't at all feel a desire to read the Bible with others.

In it, we discussed what we wanted to get out of the life group, and it was a good opportunity to think about how my previous life group was failing in that regard. I could see that the previous life groups were functioning on a technicality. We were reading the Bible and studying it, but we weren't really living out our faith or discussing how to do that. What I want is to feel excited to go and encourage and comfort and be encouraged and comforted towards works of the faith, and as it stood previously, I didn't feel that that was happening, and I didn't feel excited at the prospect.

I also started to see a little bit how that depression expressed itself in my spiritual life. Old doubts and worries from last year haven't been considered and addressed, they've mostly been covered over, and when I start to uncover them, the pain and confusion starts to show itself. While my earlier coping mechanism was to cover them up and distract myself, uncovering them now encouraged me. It made me see that the hazy peace that I've been living in is false; there is pain hiding beneath the surface, and the depression was there to protect me from it. Now I feel encouraged to sort through it and work it out, difficult though it may be, because I know that the depressive calm I feel is a lie I tell myself.

This has affected me in other ways too. When I'm in a mental health crisis, I use distractions as a coping mechanism (usually copious amounts of Youtube videos), but often I allow those distractions to become habits and outlive their usefulness.

For a little levity, I played Return of the Obra Dinn, a game in which you have to determine the name and cause of grisly death for sixty (give or take a few) passengers of an old sailing boat.

It's a great game. I shouldn't be surprised, given it's made by the Papers, Please guy, Lucas Pope. His use of unconventional game mechanics and goals is amazing. He's not dethroning Daniel Mullins as my favourite indie dev, but he's definitely getting a high spot in the rankings.

Importantly, It's finally a mystery game that has a challenging and satisfying process of inference that you are actually game-mechanically required to go through. Of course, I'd still like to play some of the games from my previous post.

Feeling terrible.

I'm feeling terrible today. 

I don't feel like doing anything. It feels like everything's pointless.

I sit at my computer and gradually waste the day away. Scrolling through twitter, watching Youtube.

Now and again, I catch a glimmer of desire to do something, to achieve something, but that fairly quickly dims, as though my mind is covered by a fog that not only obscures, but extinguishes any desires.

I did manage to cook some pasta today, and there's enough leftover for a couple more meals. It wasn't very good, but I can at least recognise that objectively, today wasn't a complete waste.

I know I'll feel better, and soon. I just wish I didn't have to slog through this marsh first.

I've never wanted to die. I doubt I ever will. But sometimes I feel so apathetic toward my life that I wish I could just go to sleep, and wake up a long time later, when I feel better.

I can remember the first time I felt this way. I was eleven years old. When I told my mum, her advice was that I should do something that makes me feel happy. Back then, that was simple enough. What I wanted to do was make games with Scratch. Nowadays, when I feel like this, every idea to cheer me up feels flat, as though I can see through it, and immediately judge it as meaningless.

I know I'll feel better, and soon. And when I do, all the things that I love to do will be exciting again. I'll want to read books and program games and build worlds again. But until then, I don't really know what to do with myself.