Depression - Medicated

I never really thought I'd be able to compare being depressed with and without medications... but here we are.  

The end of...

I'm not even sure what to call this.  Anti social?  The end of role playing?  Stopping friendships?  Lemme try to explain inside. 

Ready to be Ready

I had this feeling yesterday.  A feeling that I was waiting for something.  At first I thought it was just the fact that I'd slept for over 24 hours, but the more consideration I gave it, the more I realized it was something way more than sleepiness attention.  I was ready to be ready.  Let me explain.  

Depression

Depression is a technical, psychological, medical diagnosis.  Therefore I as a person and I as a nurse cannot state that I am experiencing Depression.  That being said, having worked as a nurse specifically in several psychological areas and having dealt with the differences of diagnosing someone with depression vs having them be sad or grieving or mourning, I'm fairly comfortable stating:

I am depressed.  Severely depressed.  

Vacation Adventure

I don't normally want to make a full post of vacations unless something special happens.  Vacations are time to relax and forget the world.  That's what I expected on this one, but three big things are worth noting.  1) Tiffany is a fine fine ride!  2) Being stuck on the side of the road for 20 hours sucks SO bad.  3) I told my friends about my queerness.  Let's get into it.  

Who am/was I?

"I don't even have a concept of who I was back then."  That's something I heard in a podcast I like to listen to that's really stuck with me.  It got me thinking... who was I back in 2010?  Let's take a look and see. 

Rise and Shine... at 0430?

I primarily want to write about the vaccination process, but I'm also going to add updates on the computer, on cars, and returning to a normal schedule and what all that means.  

Dungeons & Dragons & More

I know I've mentioned playing Dungeons and Dragons before.  Both in the vague sense that I've played as a kid and enjoyed it thoroughly and in the vague sense that I'm showing my nephews how to play it now.  But as I've been playing the part of Dungeon Master again for several months now and spent last night playing with the group, I figured I could take a deeper dive and talk about it.  If I have time, I'll go further into this post and talk about my 'normal' weekend plans, explaining pain as my dental work is attacking me again, and maybe even about owning a dog or politics.  We'll get all crazy on this post!

Updates all over the place!

Nothing really big has been happening since my last pair of Calvin/Caitlyn updates.  Before I get into the new, let's cover updates from those updates.  First up, Calvin:

Giving Thanks

Just a short Thanksgiving post.  I'm so thankful for this Thanksgiving.  I don't intend to give a long history or even a long explanation for how this holiday was better, but I feel that I have to just at least write this down while I'm still full of the happy and joyous feeling.

Gotta Get Away

I don't think I ever truly realized just how restorative a vacation can be until now.  As a child it was just a time to get away and experience new things.  Those new things might just be seeing the road go by from the backseat of the family station wagon, but it was new road going by.  As a kid, my family always took a vacation.  Similar to the 'tick tock' upgrade cycle of the iPhones, every other year would be a 'big' vacation (think Disney World or California or New York City), and in between it would be smaller vacations like Cedar Point or the Upper Peninsula.  I really can't call it restorative at that age, however, as at that age I had like zero stress.  I'm not saying children can't have stress, but I was in good health, my family was in good health, my family loved each other, and my parents were still married.

Music, Mustang, My Friends, and Me

I wanted to catch up on a few things and ended up focusing on getting music into Nina, Nina herself, a planned trip with some friends to San Fran, me not being at D+X, and a few other small things.  So, basically just a catch up thread with a cool header graphic!

Decisions Decisions

There are so many decisions that sometimes I obsess over them, even though they're not all that important and don't really effect anything.  Sometimes my eyes cross when I look at all the options and realize that no decision is right and waiting is the best answer.  Sometimes I completely gloss over them, even though they're important and impact more than just me.  Sometimes I try to just get it over with and still get sucked down into a soul sucking void full of nothing but wrong turns and hurtful choices.  Yup... cars (colors), friends (romance?),  politics (early front-runners),  and work (screwing over my co-workers).  A normal day of decision making in the strange and wonderful world of my head.

Caitlyn; comfortable in my own skin

This is a continuation of my Spring Renewal post.  I initially wanted it to be the same, as a single read through, but I think this deserves to be pulled out and added on it's own.  I think all of you followed me initially from Caitlyn's Masks, so I figured this would be of particular interest.  If you want to read through the entirety of my thought process, how I'm coming out of my winter funk and the other things that I'm doing to change and evolve, you're welcome to read Spring Renewal.  But you don't have to read it to get what I'm saying here.

Spring Renewal

Spring is in the air.  Change is in the air.  I can feel myself coming out of a funk that winter always gives me.  Don't get me wrong, I adore winter... the beautiful white snow, the crisp cold air, driving on slick roads, having storms where you don't worry about tornadoes or drenching rain... but it's almost always gotten me down.

But this year I have several 'changes' in progress that are different.  I'm not simply coming out of a funky mental/creative slumber.  I'm making changes to my life.  Lemme put these into the two categories of purposeful changes and unconscious changes.  The purposeful changes including ending my toxic friendship, taking on a more 'leader' role at work instead of just a supervisory role, accepting who Caitlyn is in my life.  The unconscious changes include just being more comfortable in my own skin, and listening to my gut and moving on its instincts.

Toxic Friendship

I can't believe it's been almost three and a half months since I last posted here.  Well, no matter.  Life went on and life goes on.  And today I did something I don't believe I've ever done before.  Get rid of a friend.  I'm fairly sure I've mentioned that I don't have many friends... while writing this I looked back at the blog and saw my last post tagged as 'friends' and it's a post worth re-reading.  It's the one titled 'Friends' and it's about a trip to Grand Rapids with my friend An.

I say it's worth re-reading because I just ended my friendship with An.

Friends

I wish I had more friends.

I've shared about my friends before, but just to update how I'll refer to them and to any new readers here, let me tell you about my current cadre of friends.  This won't take long.  .

I have A and E.  I went to photo school with E and then worked with him and A as a photographer.  We became good friends and even though we don't live near each other, I still consider them my best friends.  I actually served as the officiant in both of their weddings. I'm sure if I were to ever get married, they'd both stand up in mine if not actually officiate it.  When I travel down to Dallas, I'm traveling to visit with A.  I'd travel to visit with E, but he lives in San Francisco and that's an expensive flight or a very long drive.  We vacationed together last year in New Orleans.  We text each other fairly often in a group chat and just share stuff.

Hodgepodge

A couple things I want to 'muse' on.  President Trump, New Phone, Lack O Cash, Moving, Mom's Health, Weight V Size.  Really just a grab bag of topics, none really worthy of their own individual post.



President Trump

I don't like him.  I don't like him as a person or a politician.  But I don't think I can say I like or dislike his policies because I don't get the feeling that he has any real policies beyond Making America Great Again.  And no... I don't know what he means by that.  Let's cover all of that piece by piece.

Him as a person.  He's a twit.  He has a five year old's mentality.  If you insult him, he'll insult you back.  What ever he does is 'great' and probably the 'greatest' ever.  He cares about reviews.  Now I didn't like George W Bush as a person either.  I felt that he was honestly against intelligent discourse, but even with all the 'Wanted Dead Or Alive' stuff, he still came across as Presidential most of the time.  I don't remember him striking out against the press, individual press outlets, and certainly not against individual journalists.  I imagined him railing against all of these things in private, but he didn't let that seep into his public persona.  President Trump does and it seems to be getting us into trouble.  A perfect example of that is North Korea.  Can anybody honestly say his bombastic attempt at handling North Korea has caused them to step back their efforts at all?  Has it caused them to ratchet up their nuclear and missile tests? In that way, hasn't it also brought us closer to actual war?  I mean, at this point are we more or less likely for one of their tests to go horribly wrong and land a missile on Japan? Are we more or less likely for one of their jets to attack one of our jets?

A Friend Knows My Secret

There's no hiding the big reveal until the end in this post.  Last weekend I told a friend that a part of me is Caitlyn.

I didn't spill all the beans, but I told him enough of what's going on inside my head so that he knows I am at least partially female, and that part of me has a name and a personality all her own.

This is my friend A.  Not the A that lives down in Texas, but the A that lives closer to me (I really have to get a better way of shortening and obscuring the names of people I know).  Anyway, A and I went out to a local brew pub, shared some beers (very tasty beers) and some pizza, and then ended back at his place.  This is our normal weekend hanging out together. He generally works on Saturdays so I meet up with him after he's gotten out of work, we go eat and drink and chat, we walk around and chat, then end up back at his place and chat some more.  He drinks more than me, so more often than not he ends up quite inebriated and I end up frustrated as our talks break down after that.

A is one of my friends that I've considered telling about Caitlyn before.  He's a good man.  He's open and honest and open minded.  I had it in my head that I'd tell him this weekend, but I just didn't know how.  I mean, this isn't exactly a subject that you bring up out of nowhere, but at the same time it's not something that you just slide into a normal conversation either.  Talking about it at the brew pub wasn't really an option as I wanted it to be less public than that.

Is it time?

So I'm fairly sure I'll be moving out of this home soon.  Soon being within the next year or so.

Before I go into the whys, whens, wheres, and such I should probably give a quick history.  I think I've talked a bit about this before (I mean you know I lived in Chicago right?), but I'm not sure I ever laid it all out straight.

I was born in this house.  Well...okay, not born in this house, but when I was born this is the house that Mom and Dad brought me 'home' to.  Mom and Dad had bought it just before my older brother was born in 1972.  I stayed here through all of my childhood and into young adulthood.  I spent two years at the local community college and never really gave much thought to moving out during those two years.  For a solid year (not just the school year), I moved away for the first time to college.

That was up at Ferris State University in Big Rapids Michigan.  If you've never heard of it, don't even worry... it's the smallest of Michigan's 15 State Universities.  I was there for three semesters starting with the summer semester in the dorm.  Yup, dorm life.  Thankfully I had a room all to myself, but there was a shared bathroom with the guys next door.  The next semester I stayed in the dorm but started to hate it.  Thankfully I had a friend at the school (yeah... just one friend), and she had an apartment with two room mates.   One of her room mates moved out and it put them into a bind.  I came to the rescue and moved in with them.