Thursday, February 21, 2013
The routines keep you going
When you suffer from depression you have to keep routines. The routines keep you going. Things have to almost take care of themselves. The dishes get washed before you go to bed, you bath daily, you wear clean clothes, you do laundry & put clean sheets on the bed every so often. That way, as the clutter & dust collect around your negligence & indifference,* you never fall so far into chaos & as to feel you can't, with a little bit of effort, pull it all together.
Well, this apartment building is making it very difficult for me to hold it together. Basic repairs not done; the laundry room closed, maybe because one of the desperate tenants took a hammer to the coin boxes, I don't know. Haven't had a visit from the exterminator in two months. & the tenants themselves, increasingly a collection of stupified men hanging around outside with vacant expressions. One of them set fire to debris behind the vestibule radiator, carelessly tossing a lit cigarette it.
Now I'll have to buy a folding wheeled cart & become one of those folks hauling laundry to the laundromat, which I always detested & haven't needed to do in years.
Last night I reminded Gina how desperate I am for a couple of large snap together shelving units, available at the Home Dept we pass every week, never mind my need for a basic computer desk. Should invest in a better vacuum cleaner, too. The one I have is really for small spills & crumbs.
* This apathy is very difficult to explain to non-depressed people, who tend to flippantly dismiss it as laziness. But in fact the depressed person can feel it through 40 hour work weeks, doing your job well enough that the boss has no reason for complaint, but you take no pleasure even from the aspects of the work you like, which is really depressing. Depression ruins the enjoyment lazy people get from being lazy, so don't believe lazy people like being depressed either, or gloat that depression is suitable punishment. A suitable punishment for a lazy person who likes clean clothes is forcing him to use a laundromat.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Well, this apartment building is making it very difficult for me to hold it together. Basic repairs not done; the laundry room closed, maybe because one of the desperate tenants took a hammer to the coin boxes, I don't know. Haven't had a visit from the exterminator in two months. & the tenants themselves, increasingly a collection of stupified men hanging around outside with vacant expressions. One of them set fire to debris behind the vestibule radiator, carelessly tossing a lit cigarette it.
Now I'll have to buy a folding wheeled cart & become one of those folks hauling laundry to the laundromat, which I always detested & haven't needed to do in years.
Last night I reminded Gina how desperate I am for a couple of large snap together shelving units, available at the Home Dept we pass every week, never mind my need for a basic computer desk. Should invest in a better vacuum cleaner, too. The one I have is really for small spills & crumbs.
* This apathy is very difficult to explain to non-depressed people, who tend to flippantly dismiss it as laziness. But in fact the depressed person can feel it through 40 hour work weeks, doing your job well enough that the boss has no reason for complaint, but you take no pleasure even from the aspects of the work you like, which is really depressing. Depression ruins the enjoyment lazy people get from being lazy, so don't believe lazy people like being depressed either, or gloat that depression is suitable punishment. A suitable punishment for a lazy person who likes clean clothes is forcing him to use a laundromat.
Labels: mental health
