Troebia's Diary

[oak]

Troebia, this tinnitus sounds like it is troubling your soul.

May I ask what the shirt-term plan is?

[troebia]

Oak, there is no immediate plan except getting through each day to the next without losing control. I don't know why the last couple of weeks have been so terrible since there has been no acoustic trauma lately. It's probably due to my general heightened anxiety... With more Xanax I'd sleep all day, and I'm trying to cut down on the alcohol and caffeine.

I'm drawing and painting obsessively now since it takes my mind to another place, not going outside much because we're in the middle of another heatwave. I can't stand being in silence right now, and listen to radio and podcasts all day, when on earbuds at a very low volume that masks the tinnitus. I'm reading up on CBT in Spanish, so I'll be better prepared for the therapy whenever the sessions can begin.

I miss playing with the dog we had before. The one we have now is a very shy rescue we got seven months ago that won't get near me even to get treats. Everything feels broken and out of place. My wife has family over almost every weekend for lunch or dinner and I'm struggling to keep my composure. She has every right to invite them and if I complained about it it would hurt our relationship.

Thank you for being able to vent here, it means a lot.

[Mental Fairy]

Oh Troebia I’m sorry you can’t open up to your partner. Holding it only only makes this far harder to face. I went for a couple of years slowly and quite embarrassing deteriorating bit by bit not telling Joe.
Distracted myself with being on the mountain, climbing a lot, hiding a lot. I found myself leaving the room when he walked in, I could not look at him in the eye. The feeling of being a failed person, not the person he married and also not the person he needed. I remember the evening when it all come crashing down, laying in a hospital bed in ED, completely alone with no one there as my heart broke into bits being told of the damage being done to my body through pure exhaustion and ignoring its screams for help. I’ve never felt so alone in my life.

Eventually after changing therapists and slowly opening up to Joe things became a little lighter, the feeling of being broken stayed but there was a bit more support. No day is the same. I think I even wrote him a letter at one stage as I was unable to say the words, raped, child, suicidal, unbearable sadness, hate food, hate life, hate myself.
To this day I feel like a wasted his time while I was not well. Heck I’m still not well and he knows I’m struggling but that’s what a partnership is.

We are here to support you and my heart goes out to you. Lighten the weight on your shoulders and talk to your new therapist about how to move forward, even if it is a shuffle.

Thinking of you.

[troebia]

The feeling of being a failed person, not the person he married and also not the person he needed.

Mental Fairy, your story is full of pain but also of immense love of your partner. I've repeated those same words in your quote to my wife, in moments of despair. What is our mission in life, really, because it's fairly evident to me now that it is not to be "happy"?

[troebia]

Searching on the happiness topic, Bing AI led me to an excellent article:
https://theconversation.com/humans-arent-designed-to-be-happy-so-stop-trying-119262

"...experts in this field argue that nature’s failure to weed out depression in the evolutionary process (despite the obvious disadvantages in terms of survival and reproduction) is due precisely to the fact that depression as an adaptation plays a useful role in times of adversity, by helping the depressed individual disengage from risky and hopeless situations in which he or she cannot win. Depressive ruminations can also have a problem solving function during difficult times."

I don't know if this comforts me. One interpretation of that argument could be that if people with severe depression either live by themselves in a dark hole or kill themselves, they won't affect others negatively, will not reproduce and will in fact liberate valuable resources to other members of the species. They try to end on a positive note:

"...the consolation is the knowledge that dissatisfaction is not a personal failure. If you are unhappy at times, this is not a shortcoming that demands urgent repair, as the happiness gurus would have it. Far from it. This fluctuation is, in fact, what makes you human."

So how much is "at times" then? It seems they forgot about us, the chronic ruminators

[troebia]

Oak suggested I should listen for a muse and I have been trying to leave my senses more open. I sleep, I do not feel loneliness anymore and in my dreams I have separated from my body to float over strange imaginary landscapes. I cannot interact with anything in these dreams and I don't feel any physical need or affliction without the flesh. I wish I could visit artists I admire or do something noteworthy in this state, but there are no senses to see, to hear or to feel with. I don't feel as a "person" there, instead like some copy of a copy of a copy of something and it's all good. Maybe it's like this to take heroin? I wake up to my body again. All my the senses return, hang-ups and anxiety come crashing down again. My snoring wife's arm beside me is hot and sticky with sweat, just as myself after this humid night with 28C minimum, no AC, and I shower.

[manuel_moe_g]

Please take care, Troebia

Will wait for your next upload of your evocative art

[troebia]

Here are two fresh ones, Manuel Moe. I have a little obsession about Sierra Leone on YouTube lately because of the crazy energy there, it's like an explosion of color.

The first is a regular urban sketch, while the second is more emotional, with strange superpositions and deformations, trying to capture the street mood and how I'd feel if I was teleported there.

SierraLeone_09s.jpg (116.01 KiB) Viewed 105175 times

SierraLeone_10s.jpg (102.98 KiB) Viewed 105175 times

[oak]

Troebia, thank you for sharing the art. You have real talent.

Also, don’t forget that you’ve demonstrated lots of courage in your journey: it is difficult to admit to oneself, much less others, regarding physical and mental troubles (I’m specifically thinking of your tinnitus) and dependencies (Xanax and alcohol).

Lots of people never have the courage and honesty to do what you have done here; many people choose death rather than admit faults.

Which is a long way of saying that while I can’t take away your problems, I can suggest that I admire the courage you’ve demonstrated in being honest.

[troebia]

In part thanks to you, Oak, have I begun this deep dive. Though for me it doesn't feel like courage, it's more like something inevitable. I could take a rope to my neck or, as I'm doing lately, blurt it all out and hope to find some threads to hang on to, to pull on to progress. There's no point in holding back anymore or sanitizing my thoughts.

My wife knows more or less what I'm going through and she is understanding to a degree. She likes that I'm painting a lot, but I can't really float all what's going on inside me with her. We're a well-oiled household team and couple. I can't confide in any of my friends either and this makes me think of them more as acquaintances.