I blog, you read.

I don’t know how to open this entry. I will just let this “open letter” explain it.

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Dear Heather (Dooce) and Chris,

People say things happen for a reason. It’s not chance but a fine-tuned machine that has everything planned out and it’s just waiting for it’s time to strike. Well, I am still not sure which one it is. Chance or Fate? Your choice.

I am an avid reader of Dooce.com and have been for some time. I was turned on to the culture of “blogging” through Heather’s blog and can’t thank her enough. Blogging became a hobby and now it’s turning into more of an obsession. However this letter is not about my blog or your blog. Well, a bit but not entirely.

Being that my daily routine is to immediately plant myself in front of my computer after getting home from work, surf some of news sites, put on some tunes and then focus on my blogging. I have my specific blogs I check (Dooce.com, Cinematic Razor Sharp, Overheardinnewyork.com) and then I blog. Sometimes I switch the two around so I am not trying to use others for inspiration but to actually think and come up with some stimulating myself and then do my reading. Which ever I do it’s one of the highlights of my day. To have an outlet to vent my frustrations, thoughts and rants is a great way of dealing with life. Or so I thought.

I have always looked at depression, anxiety, panic attacks and everything associated with it as something that was there but it wasn’t for me. I would sometimes look at it as a choice and not the illness it was. “You are just sad, snap out of it.” That’s what I would think in my head and try to tell myself about what I saw and heard about. How wrong I was.

The other reason I thought this was I once went to a counselor (if you could call him that) at the university I was attending. I was having a rough month and wanted to talk to someone. Someone who’s analysis and cure for the situation was “Lets go get some 40’s and watch TV.” Yeah, that really isn’t a great alternative. So I made my appointment with the school counselor and showed up for my appointment not knowing what to expect. My 45 minute session turned into that first session that Matt Damon had in “Good Will Hunting” but I was on the other side. I was willing to talk but my counselor wasn’t listening. He was writing and that was it. He never made eye contact with me to show he was interested or something of that nature. I figured he was doing it to fill a couple credits for his Grad Degree in Psych and he really was already ready to be done and have his diploma on a wall and ready to see his first “real patient”. I left not really feeling any better at all but not worse. However it jaded me to the idea of getting help from a professional when I really needed it. Thus furthering my loathing of therapists and all they stood for. It also backed up my idea of depression in my head: no one cares and all I was doing was bitching and complaining.

Up until a year ago I held to those beliefs. Then I met a really close friend who had been through the tunnel and back and was still dealing with it. Added with the constant reading of Heather and her illness I started to see similarities in myself and what they were going through. I thought “Nope, I am so not there. It’s just some rough times I am going through. You can do this on your own.”

Well, that’s what I thought. Until one night at the movies with some friends one phone call sent me over the edge. I had had enough. It was balled up inside of me and wanted out and was sick of being pushed aside and being kept behind closed doors.

That was when it started to get worse. Fetal position in bed: check. Losing it and turning on the waterworks for no apparent reason: check. The zoning out and falling behind in my work: check. I was starting to see a pattern. The thousand foot stare that you spoke of was something I know to well.

I however was good at hiding it from some of those closest to me. My family had no idea and my friends were oblivious. Some caught on and I just waved it off and put on the fake front I would put on when i would go out. I was good at acting but I would crash and burn when returning home for the evening. Straight to the bed, fetal position, a sad drunk dial and then crying myself to sleep.

I guess in someways my blog “Dooced” me emotionally with my illness. My sister started getting into it and then found some of the entries about how I was feeling and then made the call. We spoke but I couldn’t open to her as much as I wanted. I told her what she needed to hear to make it less painful and not stir up concern. Thank God for sisterly love she immediately phoned my mom with the concerned call. Thus turning into a “Dinner on Wednesday” thing. I cracked. I let it all out. Told her everything. Spilled it out on the table at Red Robin. She was there for me. Turned out all my close friends were too. This was something I was dealing with but they were there to be a shoulder to cry on, an ear to listen and just someone to share a moment on the front porch with.

This began my journey to find someone. One of the perks of living in a semi-small town environment is that everyone knows everyone through someone. This is how I found my therapist. But would I be able to trust them with my past history of no one caring?

Well today was my first session with her. I had no idea what to expect but she made it easy on me. Yes it was tough to lay everything on the line and try and trust this person with my inner demons and what I had been dealing with. I have to say it’s the best thing I could have done for myself. Yes, she says I have very deep depression, anxiety and possible mood swings but now I know. Now I can begin the clawing out of this hole I have been in for the last few years. It’s a journey that is going to be epic and tough but if it’s anything better than what I have been feeling lately I will give everything to work for it.

“I get a lot of email from people who are the husband or the wife or sister or friend of someone who suffers depression, and they want to know what they can do to help. There is no fast answer to that, but the first step is to try and understand what depression is like for those who suffer from it, to stand by and not judge them for the maelstrom of crap going on in their heads.” Heather, I have you to thank a bit. Your will power and pure strength that comes across in your blog was a bit of inspiration to me. To be able to lay it all on the line to all your readers showed true courage.

Chris, reading your story on the day of my first session gave me hope and brought tears to my eyes. However, these were good tears. Tears assuring me that I was not the only one in this dark place and that there is a light at the end of the tunnel for us all and we have to keep pushing and striving to get there.

Is it fate or chance that I read Dooce daily? Is it fate or chance that there was a link to Chris’ article on the day of my first session? I don’t have the answer. All I can say is I am glad that these two things came together for me on a day like today.

I am living with an illness. But as Chris said “I have a disease. Medicine saved me. I am living proof. Emphasis on living.”

Thank you both for your honesty and vitality.

Sincerely,

Jason Steele

Tomorrow is my first session with my therapist. I am really not sure what to expect. It’s gonna be interesting. I feel like a kid on his first day of high school and I have no fuckin’ clue what to expect. My head is actually quite clogged up right now, both sinuses and with shit in my head about tomorrow. So I am going to to just make this entry short.

If ya’ll (yes, I said that) are looking for some good music here is a playlist for ya. And Preston, if you are reading this . . . I dare you to leave me another comment with a Dane Cook quote in it. I triple-dog dare ya you somma of a bitch! I think I will name the playlist too. Enjoy.

Preston Is My Thundercunt Bitch!

VHS or Beta – Night On Fire
Wolfmother – White Unicorn
A.F.I. – Summer Shudder
ELO – Shine A Little Love
Heavy Vegetable – Junior
Snow Patrol – Make This Go On Forever
Benassi Bros. – Love Is Gonna Save Us
Deftones – Beware
Simon & Garfunkel – Cecilia
Aphex Twin – Come To Daddy
Aphex Twin – Windowlicker
Johnny Cash – God’s Gonna Cut You Down
Rise Against – Give It All
Anti-Flag – You’d Do The Same
The Pixies – Where Is My Mind
SEAL – Tinsel Town
Underworld – Banstyle-Sappys Curry
Brand New – Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows
Alkaline Trio – Burn
Team Sleep – King Diamond

So it’s begun.  As I sit here on this chilly Southern Oregon evening I have begun the path to help.  It’s really something amazing, weird and very humbling.

To actually sit and read and fill out a document asking such questions as:

1. Sadness

I do not feel sad

I feel sad much of the time

I am sad all the time

I am so sad or unhappy that I can’t stand it

Yeah it’s really tough to take that journey inwards and actually answer with TRUTHFUL answers to these questions.  We all think about it but not that many of us are positioned with a document infront of us that will signify with the ink from the end of our pen which one of the answers to give.  Yes, it’s very humbling.  Very.

The other thing I keep thinking about is the whole “confidentiality” thing.  Yeah I know my therapist will keep everything I say to himself/herself but am I suppose to follow those rules too?  Am I suppose to not blog about them?  If I can’t tell my blog and my readers what’s going on then why the fuck do I have this thing?  Am I suppose to tell you what I had for lunch today (Jumbo Jack from Jack n’ the Box) or am I suppose to just blog as normal and just be as vague as possible so you all think I REALLY am crazy?

Guess my therapist will be the final say in this.

Music. I keep coming back to this subject a lot in my blog. But alas this entry is not about a playlist but more about how it affects our lives. Or do our lives affect the music we choose?

With as many styles, genres and types of music we have to choose from it’s an amazing thing to look at the choices we do make.

Happy = Pop
Mad = Thrash Metal
Love = Anything by Frank Sinatra or The Beatles
Indifferent = Country

But for some reason there is plethora of music out there that is geared specifically for the depressed, sad and completly lost souls. We have all been there. But the true question is this: Do we choose the music because of the situation or does the music we choose cause us to fall into our situation?

“What came first? The music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns and watching violent videos, we’re scared that some sort of culture of violence is taking them over…

Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?”

I believe it’s the first mainly cause we want to hear someone else that is aching, burning and as lost as we are. The feeling of knowing we are not alone helps a bit. It may not actually help us out all the way but it will give us that push that we need. That little bit could be the difference between a recovery or a trip down that spiral towards “the bottom”.