The Ninja

I spend an inordinate amount of time trying not to die. It's fair to say that most people don't make a point of throwing themselves in front of moving vehicles or scanning the sky for incoming meteors and positioning their lawn chairs accordingly for maximum impact, but I'm not most people.

I suffer from major depressive disorder, and in hindsight, it's something that I was likely born with. I was several weeks late in being born, (yes, weeks) and it's probably because I was floating around, thinking to myself that there really wasn't much point in coming out. Not when I can just sleep, eat, not care and comfortably put my legs over my head for the last time in my existence.

Depression is the least fun of all the mental disorders, and certainly low priority when considering what to tell people at parties. Anorexia will at least get you out of bed, and everybody wants to know a nymphomaniac. People with bi-polar disorder can be fun for part of the time, and are slightly more likely to have the energy to clean their kitchens after they stay up baking cupcakes for 48 hours.

Yes, I'm being completely facetious, but I've earned the right to make fun of my fellow crazies. I've dealt with anxiety, panic attacks, OCD behaviours, post-traumatic stress disorder and for my co-workers who have to view my desk every day, possibly hoarding. Each one is crippling on its own merits, but none are quite so dangerous as depression.

I've nicknamed my depression the Ninja, because of how it sneaks up on me so slowly, by the time I realize it's there I'm already fighting for my life. The Ninja walks softly, appearing as a black silhouette, a negative cut-out shape in the fabric of my world.

The Ninja does not fuck around. If depression has a goal and a purpose it's to kill. Up to 60% of people who off themselves have depression or another mood disorder, and it's because when the Ninja starts to talk, it can be very persuasive.

That's how I know the Ninja has arrived and is now sharing my couch, my bed, and hogging the sink when I brush my teeth. There are other signs before the Ninja officially drops luggage in my hallway, but they can be easy to write off until the voice starts. When the Ninja starts talking, I need to start fighting if I think there's the slightest chance I might want to see future seasons of Glee.

Depression feels like grief. It's every sadness you've ever experienced, washing over you in continuing waves, stripping every happy thought, pleasurable moment, and your bathing suit right along with it. When I'm living with the Ninja, everything slows down. I move more slowly. My arms and legs are so heavy. I talk more slowly, and I don't remember things. I grasp for words, the ends of my thoughts and any kind of a life line.

I cry all the time, and so this at least hastens my morning beauty routine. There's no point in mascara and carefully applied eye-liner when I have a 25 minute weeping appointment to keep as part of my drive to work. If you were to ask me why I'm crying I would have no fucking idea. I can't explain why. The grief is all consuming but I don't know what to point to as a cause.

I force myself to do things I normally love to do. Socializing, reading, movies, exercise, firefighters...all of these things become a chore. I want to eat. That's all. I also want to sleep, and the rare night I even manage it. The rest of the time I wake up at the oddest hours, wider awake than I am during any time of the day.

That all starts before the Ninja starts to whisper though, and I guess that's because if the voice started in my ears any earlier, it might not make such poisonous sense.

What the Ninja starts saying is, "Just do it. Just die already. Take yourself out. So much easier for you, and better for everybody in the long run."

Arguing doesn't work. The Ninja is an assassin and there's no reasoning with an assassin. All I can hope to do is be smarter than the voice in my head, and failing that, hide.

At one time or another, I've been prescribed every anti-depressant on the market. I've thrown up, been constipated for days on end, jittered and jived when sitting still, gotten dizzy when turning my head, felt my eyeballs pulsing and shook, wept, sweat and moaned through three solid days and nights of withdrawal when doctors acknowledged the medication wasn't working, but there was no better plan to get me off of them.

Anti-depressants don't work for at least 10% of the population. I'm also a proud member of the 10% of people unable to see Magic Eye pictures, so somebody really should look into a correlation.

What's worked so far in keeping me alive is my family. When the Ninja starts telling me how easy it would be to crank the wheel hard when I'm driving through the mountains, or whispering about how some drug interactions can be surprisingly fatal, I think about what it would do to those I love most. Even when the Ninja tells me my family would be better off and would realize I was a total failure anyways eventually, I'm able to think that's not for me to decide.

My friends for the most part know I'm a fuck-up, so the Ninja has to fight for ground there too. It's not enough to say my friends don't know I'm actually a total failure - most of them probably do, and as long as I bring wine, nobody really cares.

With me though, the Ninja has a lot of pull. It's so hard to keep fighting, and so easy to just stop. I've started trying to outsmart that black shape by making lists.

Lists of books I want to read, trips I'm supposed to take, clothing I want to fit into again and songs I like but haven't danced to. It sounds ridiculous, but it's surprisingly effective. When I say I don't want to kill myself just yet because I haven't finished the trilogy of books featuring the girl with the dragon tattoo, the Ninja let's me have that one. I don't think it knows what to say to that. And hopefully, it lets me have the next one after that and the next one after that until my arms and legs don't feel so heavy and I can rest.

Depressive episodes pass on their own. The trick is surviving. Eventually every book, every trip and every experience on my list will start to feel good again, and the colour will seep back into the black, ninja shaped hole in my life. I have to believe in it.

Magic eye pictures however, remain highly suspect.

Paved with good intentions? What can go wrong?

I made a decision. I made several actually, which is rather astonishing considering it's not beneath me to spend 25 minutes in the frozen foods aisle at Safeway, paralyzed with doubt and confusion over what I should spend the next week eating for lunch.

The revelation that continuing to do stupid shit can actually result in stupid shit happening got me to thinking.

First, I thought it was stupid that I would continue to do nothing at all but miss Alex in my life and that missing him constantly could lead to overlooking something that might be staring me right in the face. Strangely, missing him constantly has never caused me to overlook dessert.

I erased his numbers from my phone. That's right - looked him up and deleted contact. Not to brag, but the enormity of this one action has probably made me deserving of some kind of international award. If Al Gore can win an Academy Award for a PowerPoint presentation, I should at least be considered for "Best Something or Other" by some international committee.

Then I joined Weight Watchers. Weight Watchers is by no means paying me to say this, I am in fact paying them, and the organization would likely want to pay me to not proclaim any association because the first thing I did when I got my little booklet containing all the points values of food I may be considering for the next year of my life or however long it takes me to lose the equivalent of an obese kindergartner, was look up the points values for alcohol.

Also, they likely wouldn't pay for my endorsement because I only have six readers, so there's that.

The point is, I've joined, I'm following the plan and I've lost close to ten pounds. This is really a drop in the bucket and it seems to have come off of my boobs which is just a tad bit demoralizing, but I'm sticking with it.

Next, I've been avoiding the married firefighter. Note that I'm physiologically incapable of actually saying "NO" to the married firefighter. I just can't bring myself to deny him outright - I feel that doing so could actually lead all of my internal organs to strike at once, so I just avoid him. I've managed to come up with an astonishing array of excuses, such as:

I think I have my period.
I might be getting my period.
I'm not sure if I'm getting my period.
I might be getting a cold. And my period.
I have a cold. Also, my period.
I'm busy playing Just Dance for the Wii.
With my period.

Now I'm fairly certain he's concerned for my womanly health and shopping for a new gaming system.

In the midst of all this shining behaviour, and by what should be considered jaw-dropping rejections of both a firefighter and Alex, (which feels just as crazy to me as passing on oxygen and water because we're all full up over here)I thought about what could actually be important to me, romantically speaking.

For the last several months, it's been just one guy who makes me laugh. Who I talk to everyday. Who knows great stuff about me and really horrible stuff about me and who still talks to me every day. One guy who cares whether I had a bad day, or at least pretends to care enough to ask.

One guy who's met my sister and never got weird about meeting my family. One guy who's met my friends and never got weird, even when they told him my type was "entirely cro-magnon overly macho asshole."

One guy who still looks at me like he wants me really badly, even though I promised him it would be a long time before I ever jumped into bed with him. One guy who stuck around when I promised that long time to wait.

For all of his issues, and Goddess knows there are a few...the BT has really come through. Yes, he has some emotional/anxiety/trauma issues...but so do I. We'd match! Yes, so far the extent of our physical relationship has consisted of him wanting to jack off for me while I watch and try to look interested, but really, there is no safer sex than that. Even Mormons might agree. It's something to build on at least.

I've been attracted to him all along, interested in some way all along, and didn't some hippies once sing "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with?" I'm pretty sure they did. Normally I don't consider life advice from a group of people known best for preferring patchouli to deodorant, but this same demographic of people likely invented the party bong, so they can't be wrong all of the time.

For more than six months now, the BT has told me at various times that he needs to be more settled in his life to have a real relationship, the kind I told him I want. When I got impatient waiting he told me he hoped I could hold out just a little longer, and since it's not like I have anything else going on, that turned out to be quite easy.

I knew what it meant when he sat across from me in my living room, one lazy Friday night and told me his life was settled. Really settled. He was happy, he was in a good place and I was happy for him. And for me. Patience and friendship were paying off, so when I kissed him good-bye that night I felt pretty content too.

Who knew making smart decisions resulted in good things happening?

The BT is throwing a housewarming party this weekend, and I was actually quite nervous because it's been so long since I've been dating anybody, and even longer since I met the friends. I needed a little social support, so I sent the BT a text message asking if it would be OK if I brought an extra girl or two along.

As expected, he had no problem with that, and then his next message said, "Just so you know, I have a date coming to my party."

Just as an aside, it is completely bizarre how most of my life plays out over text messages and MSN. I think it's weird, and I've vowed that I should really try for more personal interactions, but for this instance, I was so grateful to be on MSN and not the phone that I probably would have kissed Bill Gates' platinum covered ass right then in gratitude.

If I had called instead of texting, all he would have heard on the other line was a series of gasping breaths and hard swallows. And not in a sexy way.

As it was, I texted back, "I'm happy you have a date coming." This was not what I was thinking, but it seemed more civilized than the "HOLY FUCKING SHIT ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??!!??" which was really the closest other option.

He writes back, "I just didn't want things to be awkward."

Dude. Having something stuck in your teeth is awkward. Forgetting somebody's name - also awkward. Dislocated limbs, possible arson and whatever the arresting and first officer on the scene is likely to be yelling through a bullhorn when he comes across that scene is not exactly what I would describe as being, "awkward." Dangerous? Yes. Epic? Quite possibly. Awkward...? Not exactly.

Then the BT asked me if this ruined my plans. I was so confused for a moment -- I couldn't think of what he was talking about, or how he knew about my plans. How did he know I was planning to stop doing stupid shit? How did he know my plan was to try for meaning and quality in my relationships? How did he know this could seriously fuck with my Weight Watchers points for the week? How was he inside my brain??

It turns out, he wanted to know if this ruined my plans to stop by his party with some girlfriends. Did I still want to come? I told him I really wasn't sure, and he said he could appreciate that. I was in fact, completely sure I would not be going to that party. I would go to the lost city of Atlantis before that party, and possibly, outer space.

What to do about this particular friendship is a decision I'm holding off on. I debated cutting all ties, I debated pretending everything is fine and I debated being an adult and having a conversation about why this hurts and why I need to go away for a while if him and I are to ever really be friends. It's a lot to think about.

Right now though, I have other things I need to get to. I need to buy groceries because I'm still on the Weight Watchers plan against all odds, and I need to clean my house.

The married firefighter's stopping by for a visit tonight.

As it turns out, somethings don't require that much thinking about after all.