Sheet therapy

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I just discovered the Mental Illness Happy Hour through a post on MetaFilter about Maria Bamford. This is my first post here. Hey!

So, this is where I'm at. I've suffered depression since I was about six years old. My parents divorced and I ended up in a series of unhealthy environments -- bullied at school and told to ignore it, both my parents were too busy to raise me, etc. A few years ago, I started seeing a shrink for CBT and went on anti-depressants after all but pushing my boyfriend away from me. Seeing him pack his bags was the wake-up call I needed that things had gotten out of control.

Since then, I went back to school and almost got my BA and stayed at a job for two and a half years. After I walked with my class, though, things have started to hit the fan: I've been struggling with finding a job; I wrote a novel for NaNoWriMo but didn't complete it; and I still have to take care of my last three-credit math course before I officially get my degree.

I put off taking the math course for two reasons. First of all, the state school I attended requires that everyone complete a Quantitative Reasoning class to graduate, and in order to take the class, you have to complete an exam. All my classmates in the English department have gotten through the class, which makes me feel inadequate because...I haven't. I was diagnosed with a learning disability in math when I was a kid, and even working on the practice exam gave me a small anxiety attack. I've gone to the department that places students into the QR class and asked if I could be put into a statistics class (which would be more relevant to the career path I've chosen), and even though the school's website says this is an option, the response I've gotten from the higher ups is LA LA LA, NOT LISTENING. Because I graduated high school more than ten years ago, my IEP and other documents that would "prove" my learning disability have been destroyed.

As far as work is concerned, I've been working as an office temp for the past six months. Assignments have been slow in coming, though, and after I got a three-month position in which I thrived, I haven't been able to find temporary or permanent work, which has further made me feel useless. This would be a great time for me to pursue freelance writing or finish my novel, but apart from guest-blogging for a friend's website I haven't been able to move forward on that one, either. I just sent out a pitch letter to a local alt weekly for an article I would love to write, but I fear they're just going to reject it.

I feel like I've had a lot of doors slam in my face lately. I've been sleeping a lot more -- engaging in what my shrink calls "sheet therapy". I'm afraid I'll never finish my degree, that I'll never find a job, and that I'll never get a wider audience for my writing. Leaving the house has become a huge chore for me. I'm still on Celexa and I see my shrink once a week (going in tomorrow, in fact), and I can see that I've come a long way, but I still feel really lonely and depressed lately.

[Herself]

Is it possible that the Celexa is making you too sleepy? I had that problem and had to have Wellbutrin added to keep me from sleeping all the time. Oh, fun with side effects!

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Funny you should say that. Celexa tends to make me tired only if I'm experiencing high stress levels or am feeling depressed. When I'm "in my element" and not feeling those things, it doesn't make me sleepy. So there's that.