Looking through old things

Last night I looked through a few old composition books that were mouldering in the wall-mounted basket by my bed. I used to write down ideas in those things all the time as a kid.

Damn, I was filled with lame ideas when I was little.

Not all of them were bad, of course. But I was dismayed to find that right up through high school a lot of the things I'd written down were unsalvageable crap. Especially attempts at song lyrics...gah! Horrible.

Depression orientation, check

Well, I went to the depression group orientation thing at Kaiser today. Traffic sucked (Why??? It's in the direction opposite the commute!), but I managed to get there on time anyway. It was a fairly large group (only a couple of chairs empty) so the woman running the thing didn't have us introduce ourselves. Thank goodness! I always hate that. Anyway, we sorta brainstormed problems we were all having in categories of "Thoughts", "Feelings", "Behaviors", and "Physical Symptoms". Some of the ones people came up with were familiar, some were pretty alien to me. I wasn't altogether sure I was in the right place at first (maybe I'm still kinda hoping for a diagnosis of ADD instead?). When we cracked open the handout booklet, though, the symptoms there seemed a lot more familiar. I also filled out something called a "D-Arkansas" evaluation. Not sure what's up with that, but I guess I'd be pretty depressed if I had to live in Arkansas. It put me at 11, BTW, which is "mild depression".

Going by the handout, it looks likely that I've got dysthymia (I've been like this for way more than 6 months–more like over a decade), which is one of the ones that is sometimes treated with medications. Somehow, that's kind of comforting. While part of me finds the idea of psychoactive drugs kind of frightening (some Twilight Zone-ish paranoia about mind control and forced psychological conformity), another part just wants a magic pill that'll make me get out of my own goddamn way. I'll wait for the real diagnosis from the shrink, though. Incidentally, I meet him face-to-face for the first time on the 11th, which is...Wednesday of next week.

At the end of the meeting/class/orientation/thing, we did some deep breathing. Didn't really improve my mood, but it did make me sleepy. The class itself kinda made me feel better, but I think that's mainly because I've been dreading it since I was told to go to it, and now it's over.

Oh yeah. Afterwards, I tried to get my ticket validated for the Kaiser parking lot, but it turns out the psychiatry building has its own small lot and doesn't validate for the one across for the hospital. Suck. Oh well, it was only $2.50. I drove home by the scenic route, up Piedmont and down Pleasant Valley to Broadway and then College Ave.–a lot nicer than just going straight up Broadway.