09-14-04 @ 9:12 am EDT

Typed offline.

Well...I'm not even sure how to start this one. o_o You see it's been pretty silent in here lately, and that's the ONE thing I'm thankful for. Because I've been feeling horribly depressed this past week or so, and I know that if I had posted in here, you would have been subjected to...ugh. I don't even want to think about it.

Let me try to explain. This is for the benefit of the people I've snapped or lashed out at or turned away the past week or so, and I feel thoroughly like an idiot because of it. You see, around the time of the last entry, I had not heard from some people I'd been in contact with for a while, and I was getting worried. I'm not blaming them as from what I've heard so far, at least most of them seemed to have good reason (I'm still not sure with one but it's too soon to tell). But you've seen how I get when I'm not sure about a situation; I start to get worried, and then all those other nice emotions kick in. Well, this time they all happened to kick in right the week before I started. Yes, that kind of "start." Women know what I'm talking about; men, if you don't, then I'm hardly going to say the word. I think it's icky. I've always just referred to it as "that time of the month," so that time of the month it shall be--sorry, guys, but it's a girl thing. And almost every month, two different things happen.

This is only more recently that I've noticed this but it seems to fit the cycle--the week BEFORE the week before I start, I get really...um...well, horny. o_o;;;;;;;;;;;;; Jeez do I wish I had a better word. You've seen the entries from those times...when I feel like writing a hundred different things to stick in the Shywriter folder? Notice how that happens like once a month? Well, that's around the time it happens. So I'm guessing it's related to the cycle too. Ugh. Now that that's out of the way. Then the week BEFORE I start comes...and it's like everything just...crashes. The bottom falls out...my emotions just dump all over me. My head snaps. Nothing makes sense anymore, and suddenly, I hate everybody. Everything goes wrong and nothing can ever go right. It literally feels like my life should be ending. This sounds melodramatic, but if you are one of the people I lashed out at or even wrote to in the least in the past couple of weeks, you might have caught just a peek of it. I won't let you see the rest; I'm too embarrassed.

It happens just about every month. Once in a while I just get really irritated instead. I think it was last month that this happened. I awoke with the most HORRENDOUS backache (I don't get cramps...just backache) and could not find the Pamprin. I looked and looked! And I got so pissy! And everything else went wrong that day. I cried but I was just more pissed off than anything. I got over it. I took some aspirin and bitched that of course the Pamprin would disappear RIGHT when I needed it most. And that was about it, that I can recall. Life went on, the month went by, the end. I was lucky last month.

But this month...this has been absolutely horrible. I was already feeling anxious about everyone's perceived silence, or maybe I was starting to slip even before I noticed it. It did seem to last longer this month. My first "sad" entry is from Sept. 3rd. I was still bawling my eyes out just yesterday morning, Sept. 13th. That's eleven days. WAY longer than it usually is. I'm still not sure why it lasted so long. I think, like I said, outside factors influenced it, but I still overreacted far too much.

I do not remember it ever being so bad except once, back in August 2000, I think it was. Back then I was a member of a Q&A community nicknamed KP (defunct now) and I remember sobbing my eyes out to several of the members as they tried to comfort me. I felt so AWFUL. I had no idea what was wrong with me! Everything hurt! (Emotionally speaking, that is.) I would put on a normal face during the day when my parents were around, so they would not ask me what was wrong (trust me, it's better that they NOT know), but as soon as I logged online when I was alone, along would come the tears. They seemed to never end. I felt like I should die. I just did not want to live, I felt so miserable. And I had no idea why.

The people online managed to put up with me...one of them, H., was someone who I got very upset with a couple of years back, as she turned on me when we disagreed concerning the "war." She grew very spiteful then. :/ But at least back then, in 2000, she did just about everything she could to try to pull me through whatever the hell I was going through. But it hurt so much not knowing what it was. I ALWAYS hate not knowing the cause behind things! If I'm going to feel upset, I at least want to know WHY! It's horrible not even knowing why your emotions are doing what they're doing.

Well...the depression at last began to lift...I think it had only been a few days, but it had seemed like an ETERNITY. And then I started. I was even more confused. Was that what it had all been about, after all...? Stupid hormones?

I guess I didn't take note of that, or else didn't buy into it, because it happened again and again. I never kept track. I do remember posting at least one entry in here influenced by this, when the hormone-cloud lifted and I was again left feeling like a total moron for my emotional outbursts when "under the influence." I can't remember the date of the entry. I think it was called "What The H**l Is Wrong With Me??" or something. I seem to remember I had posted in a depression forum onsite, this big long whiny bitchy post, and somebody replied to me with something like, "That was a wonderfully emotional post about your mother." And I just wanted to BITE HER HEAD OFF!! She commented on my post (I guess I had been complaining about Ma, no idea!) like I had submitted it for literary critique, while here I am, crying and wanting to bash the keyboard! Then the haze passed and I felt so incredibly stupid. I wrote that entry, wherever it is, and I'm betting there are lots of other monthly entries much like it. Not EVERY big whiny bitchy violet entry is from around that time of the month, but I know at least some of them must be.

But this September has been the absolute WORST I have felt in AGES.

It started with me beginning to think I should not bother posting my writing anymore. It sucks. Everything of mine sucks. I didn't even take any joy in writing for MYSELF anymore. It's still true--my writing suffers, when there is nobody around to read it. I admit, at least partially I write for others. As I tried to explain in another forum, entertaining others with my writing is the only skill I have. If I can't even do that, what use am I? Well, at least in the past, when I was useless, I could still write to make myself happy. But I was feeling so worthless that even writing for myself had no more meaning. I did not want to write. I did not care to write. I just wanted to make it all private, log off, and never post any more of it. Since I already knew the stories in my head, there seemed no point to typing anything up anymore. Any of the few comments I still got during this period meant nothing to me. I WANTED more comments, but I could not appreciate any that I got. They all rang empty. I KNEW my work sucked so nothing anybody else said would change my mind. Every comment I got made me think, "Yeah, right, whatever."

Then that extended to friendly offsite e-mails. I wanted them but couldn't appreciate them. I grew irritated. Nothing seemed worthwhile anymore. During the day I'd pretend to be okay but as soon as both parents were asleep, I'd log online, cry, log off, go to my room, and cry some more. Then when they were both gone for work, I'd log on again and cry until it was time to go to bed. That's about all I did. I hardly wrote because it felt useless and stupid. Going outside to look at the trees didn't feel worth it. I could certainly not concentrate to read. I didn't even enjoy my music or jigsaw puzzles. When working on a puzzle, your mind is free to think about other things, and of course I always thought about how useless I was, how nobody liked me. I could think of nothing else. I hated myself more than I ever had. I wished I would just die rather than keep waking up to this, over and over and over.

I KNEW by now the hormones were having an effect, because early this year I at last started keeping track of my cycles. They're not regular 28-day cycles, BTW...it started out something like 28, 28, 28, 29, 27, 31, 29, etc....very weird. But like I said, I already knew. So I knew that I would be more sensitive to EVERYTHING, and might end up bursting into tears at the slightest snide remark from a parent, or the slightest perceived insult online. I really thought that, by simply KNOWING this, I could somehow control my emotional outbursts--just try not to take everything so seriously or personally as I usually do, now that I KNOW I'm going to be more emotional than usual. I really, really believed I could have some control.

Well...it didn't work out that way. Even knowing my hormones were going all out of whack didn't help. Because I guess, when you're depressed, even the most illogical things are logical, and every reaction makes perfect sense and seems most appropriate at that time. I did not say anything I did not mean or really feel in the past eleven days...but I really, really wish I just hadn't said most of it. I have the same emotions at this time, it's just that they're like amplified ten times more than usual, and I don't have any volume control to keep them to myself. So I blare them out at everyone else who happens to be around me. Of course that was the people who were e-mailing me. -_-

I just kept thinking about the people who hadn't contacted me yet--and then all the people in the PAST who never got back to me. That just made it worse. I thought of all the people who were still e-mailing me, and figured they would end up the same. Part of me? Really does believe this. But for God's sake, I could have just kept that thought to myself and been as courteous as I try to be anyway. I mean, the worst that can happen, I reply, they don't reply, I bitch about them in my journal and that's it. I don't need to go and TELL them all this.

But I just felt hateful. I wanted to bite everyone's head off for showing interest in me, for not showing interest in me. I couldn't win and nobody else could. If somebody did not e-mail me, I hated them; if they did e-mail me, I did not trust them. (I still do not understand why anyone would ever WANT to e-mail with me...but like I said...did they really need to be told that?) Everything was an insult. I sobbed even more every time after logging on. I would check my e-mail, my sites, others' journals, and then have absolutely nothing to do. That seemed to be the only point to coming online anymore--seeing who else was ignoring me, or writing false encouragement to me. (I'm not saying people were doing that, but that's what it felt like at the time!) Since I reasoned I'd be able to control my emotions, knowing that hormones were in effect, I did not view any of this as irrational. I really did see it as normal. I thought this was rational behavior, for me to not trust anybody anymore. Keep in mind these are ALWAYS my feelings... >_< ...but I hardly go screaming them out at people like I'm proud of them. And for the most part, I try to be friendly with people, even if I can't trust them, until they prove to be jerks.

I didn't even want to give anyone that chance this time. I was rather snippy with one person who e-mailed me. I stated something rather personal to me and remarkably callous about another person to a second party who e-mailed me. And a third person, I just plain told off, because I didn't want to deal with them doing the same to me. They'd been nothing but nice so far but I felt so awful I just wanted to shut the world out, push everybody as far away as possible. Have you ever had this feeling? That you WANT everybody near, comforting you, but at the same time you hate everybody and just want to thrash them out so they'll never come back again, and you'll be vindicated in your distrust of them? It's like you can never win. I read something by somebody who suffered from Reactive Attachment Disorder. I don't think I have that but that sounds exactly like what I was doing. I wanted people around me and caring for me more than anything, but pushing them away was much easier than dealing with the strong possibility of them forgetting about me again...and that thought bothered me more than anything. To roughly quote something Det. Benson said once on Special Victims Unit, "It's easier to not have friends, but it doesn't make it any less lonely." That's never felt any truer than it did in the past eleven days.

So I wrote short snippy e-mails to one person, and said something very callous to another, and told off a third...I am glad I did not contact yet more people...who knows what I would have said or done to them. I feel so stupid now. I thought that knowing what was behind my oversensitivity would help, but it didn't. If anything I think it made this worse because I thought I WAS in control, that I WAS making sense. I can't take back anything I said, because I did mean those things, but I said them when I was feeling so way out of it that most of the rest of the time I wouldn't have said them at all. Do you know the feeling of thinking or feeling something, and it's bothering you, and it's a real, legitimate feeling you have, but since you think things might change for the better, you keep your mouth shut and at least wait to see? And then things clear up and even though that feeling was legitimate and had bothered you, it doesn't bother you anymore, at least not as much, and you can just go on with your life with no one being the wiser that you were even troubled. In short, you know how to keep your mouth shut when things are going wrong, so that when they finally go right you don't look like a total idiot. Well...I should have just kept my mouth shut this whole time. Everything WAS bothering me, and probably would have still bothered me even if it weren't that time of the month, but at almost any other time I think I would have just kept silent about it and waited at least a little longer to see how it played out. This time I just snarled and hissed all over. The mute button was broken. I should have just shut up and waited it out a week or so to see how I felt then, but I couldn't. I was just so tired of crying every day by myself, so much that my nose dried out and I sneezed like I had allergies, and my eyes burned all day, and I hit my foot over and over so hard that it's all purple now. I did wait, at least a little bit, but the feeling STILL didn't go away, and I still had no idea where everybody was, and I felt too embarrassed and angry to post in Skew, so I cut loose on everyone else instead. I wish I knew how to just shut up.

Based on what happened THIS time, I'm seriously thinking that the next time this time of the month rolls around, I should just not interact with anyone else PERIOD. Solitary confinement. Don't post in my journals, don't write e-mails, don't respond to e-mails, don't read other people's entries; just LOG OFF and tune everyone else out. I know that's only a partial solution and I'd still be sobbing my eyes out (if next month is as bad as this month, which I am PRAYING TO GOD it is not), and wanting more than anything to dump it all on somebody, but I've seen how dumping it out makes things worse, so I really just should not interact with people at all during these times. There's too much potential for me to open my mouth and say and do things I'll regret. I had honestly thought that just knowing about this would help me not do it, but it doesn't. I knew full well heading into September that I would be feeling overemotional and reacting to things poorly but that still didn't keep me from sobbing like the world was ending every damn day. And bitching out the people who really needed it least. And just all-around making myself look like a total idiot.

So...I'm not sure what to say. Or do, really. o_o I thought I should at least try to explain what's been going on in my head the past eleven days, though it makes little sense. Other women get mildly irritated or bloated or get cramps. Why do I get these frigging EMOTIONAL MELTDOWNS? Seriously, I think about wanting to die almost every day as it is, but I had not WISHED for it to happen so greatly as I wished for it to happen in the past couple of weeks, in quite a while now. I do not understand why some months I am just irritated and whiny and then something like THIS hits me. For eleven days, no less.

And I can't even guarantee that when I log on and off today I won't start sobbing yet again. God, I hope not. -_-

Though by now I'm not feeling quite so depressed as very ASHAMED. Just like every other emotional outburst I have, if I had only kept my mouth shut until my feelings blew over, I would not have to stick around and pick up the pieces I left behind. I don't even know how to start picking these up. >_<

And knowing that this is bound to happen AGAIN in the future, and that I will probably do the exact same thing no matter HOW much I know it's probably only hormones, doesn't help either! How can you actually KNOW the cause behind an irrational emotion and still not control it?? I really thought that I could. :/

Well, I guess that's all I can say. The finale of the Mackinac Island tour should be in the next entry for anyone who's been wondering what became of that. And I suppose that's it for now...and I really really hope I don't go through something like this again for a very long time. -_-

Not proofed. Tar...