Buddy call

It was supposed to be such a nice thing, a long weekend. Didn't entirely work out that way, though I suppose it wasn't bad per se.

Saturday: Learned tweakage of the Sims variety (skins etc) and did the whole "Interior Design in Simville" deal while cholten99 slept. He was obviously extremely tired and conked out until half-six. In the evening. Kind of dull, but a necessary wind-down.

Sunday: My God, I was such a girl! First of all, cholten99 found this Hamtaro toy for £2, which he thought he'd buy to freak Toos out. Toos was not freaked; in a rare moment of girliedom, she actually thought it was cute. So did everyone apart from cholten99, so he was the only one distressed by the big eye/small mouth cutesiness.

Then there was the game itself. Masqueraded as a courtesan (which I'm going to do for as long as we're in Vodacce -- no one's going to ask too many questions about the courtesan of Prince Villanova's cousin), got questioned by Vodacce bounty hunters at knifepoint in the middle of the night. Best way of sending questioners away without getting hurt or giving anything away? Particularly when they're Vodacce? Act stupid and girlie. A few days later, we get shipped off to this island to retrieve a few Syrneth artefacts before the Caligari get their hands on them. We split up, I find journals, notes and a glowing globe-thing, then get fumigated by a destroyed chemical store, pass out and wake up tied to a chair with Caligari men throwing water at me and threatening to cut off my fingers if I don't talk. Missed all the combat rounds, and was only alerted to the presence of my compatriots near the room in which I was held by the sound of Pietro pulling a Legolas. (Oh, and that was stupid -- Pietro slides down the stairs on his shield, notices someone as he passes a corridor, fires off a shot ... and just before the shield comes to a crashing halt, throwing him in the midst of five Caligari bruisers, he realises the person he just shot at -- and dealt a dramatic wound to -- was Viola. This should teach us to split up ... but won't.) Basically, I was the damsel in distress for most of it. Arse.

Monday: Three-hour walk through London, ceiling-staring, appetite loss and mild to moderate anhedonia. Was not helped by the accusation, "See, this is what you get for reading books about depressed people" (referring to my copy of "Prozac Nation", which was a leftover book from last week).

Today, there isn't much going on. I should do some writing, presuming I remembered to bring that floppy with me (which I doubt). I was trying not to be annoyed about something, but I can't be arsed -- I'll be annoyed if I damn well please.

Okay; cholten99's hard disc died the other day. Since the Frankenbox is the only working computer in the house, he's using mine to check e-mail and so forth. Which isn't a problem -- it's annoying having to reset and relogin every time I come back to the Frankenbox, but I can live with it. What really, really hacks me off is the editing of my buddylist on Trillian. Why do I want Shaun and Amy on my buddylist? Why the bloody fuck do I want his father or sister on there? Half of these people I'm not even sure I know! And it's a simple operation to log me off Trillian and log himself on, so why? Why add all manner of people who I don't necessarily want to talk to onto my buddy list? If you're going to use someone else's computer, at least have the common courtesy not to monkey around too much with other people's settings without asking them first. And if you lack the manners to do that, then at least tell the person what you've done.

I was very, very tempted to just delete all the names that were added to my buddylist this morning. I didn't. I'm not sure if I'm doing the right thing, but I'm going to let okay, not let it go, precisely, but I'm going to at least fume in the privacy of my own head after this. I wouldn't be this mad if he hadn't done this without asking, but maybe he was going to tell me. He was on the Frankenbox incredibly late last night, and I was asleep. I just don't understand why he didn't log on as himself instead of doing it this way. Can anyone think of any reason why adding names onto the buddylist of another person is in any way easier than just logging them off and logging yourself on?

Not Right

Turns out cholten99 thought he'd removed all the names from my buddylist last night. Well, he hadn't. I now have. I still don't get why he didn't just sign me off Trillian and sign himself on. This strikes me as not right and kind of stupid, as he would have had all his contacts with far fewer keystrokes. But frankly, I'm not in the mood to argue, be pissed off or in fact much care.

If all I'm going to get when I'm in this kind of state is "serves you right for reading books about depressed people", why am I even bothering? Should I not have moods? That seems to make things easier. I know how I sound; it's a valid question. A couple of friends of mine have established in their own lives that it pays to not have moods of any description. I've been the advocate of "let yourself feel; no one's going to hold it against you" for several years now. So you have to act in a certain way -- watch or read certain things, be in certain moodlets without crossing the boundaries into an actual mood, know exactly what someone means by a certain statement or at least have the bullheadedness to ask but not expect the same courtesy in return -- in order to maintain a certain relationship status quo. This strikes me as very much not right.

I know it's just the mood. I know this mood; it's a very old one. I don't know why it's back, but I don't think I care. I just want it to stop. This is supposed to be over. Depression cannot just come back; it can't. Well, I don't know, maybe it can. Every time it's got bad for me -- really bad -- it's been just after trying to break away from my mother. Every time I make the break, this feeling of being not right just swamps me. It's like I'm not allowed to do anything she doesn't approve of, and if I do, I'm just wrong, or there's no point to me. I never really thought about it like that before, never looked for a pattern to the bad times, but there's a certain logic to it. First comes the fear; then the feeling of freedom; then this.

Did my mother actually condition me to be this way -- to see myself as so worthless without her that I'd go the way I did three years ago? Am I really that screwed up? I can't really be that screwed up, can I?

You only need therapy if you can't see the problem yourself. I keep telling myself that, because I can't afford therapy. If that is the problem, then it needs to be worked on. And if cholten99 makes one more crack about 'Prozac Nation' being the one true source of all my depression at the moment, he is getting a smack in the mouth. It isn't fair. ethangilchrist suggested that book to me while I was in the darkest times of my life and when I was finally able to read it, it actually helped me. I wasn't alone. Someone else knew what it was like and I wasn't just some worthless freak who'd been in a mental hospital. Roger E Moore's writing a serial Dariafic on the PPMB that covers, at this stage of it, depression and how it affects the sufferers. There's nothing in the world like knowing you're not alone.

The problem is, I feel alone at the moment. He doesn't know how to relate to me. He avoids his own emotions, so how can he be expected to deal with mine? I can't blame him per se, but that doesn't make me feel any better. I can't tell him what's wrong -- up until five minutes ago, I didn't know. All I knew was that I was off my food, indulging in long, punishing walks and staring at the ceiling. And the response I got to that was ... well, let's not beat it into the ground. He'll never press and never push, and that's okay. I don't think I'd want him to. With a little luck and a lot of toughness on my part, he'll never have cause to regret not pushing.

I think it'll happen. I'm told I'm tough.

QotN

Role reversal. He's sitting around reading (rereading an old favourite, at that) and I'm doing the computer faffing.

cholten99: "What does 'stentorian' mean?"
thessalian: "To be like unto the stentor, which was a creature with a voice like a brass gong."
cholten99: "Oooooh. Where's that from, then?"
thessalian: "The stentor, I believe, was Greek mythology."
cholten99: "Well, I am very impressed."
thessalian: "I only know this because it was mentioned in 'Gone With the Wind'."
cholten99: *chuckle* "Well, I'm still very impressed."