I decided to write about my depression and anxiety as much as I can, just in case it helps someone else. My friend Sara and I were once going to write a self-help book, but our depressed selves never got around to finishing it. (It was awesome, though.) So yesterday, after I calmed down a little, I made an appointment for today with my old therapist. I don't know if it will be helpful, but it certainly could not hurt. After I had cried myself out, I took a nap, and when I woke up, A. was home and cheerful as per usual. He made me dinner and I was able to eat half a package of Korean noodles and some vegetable dumplings. I watched Seinfeld and Jeopardy! and I didn't feel that bad, just exhausted with a splitting caffeine-withdrawl headache. I remembered that when I used to get really down my senior year of college, my roommate and I made a point to go out to movies on Sunday nights. We were often the only people in the theater and we always came home late enough to not really worry about what would happen on Monday. Since I had yesterday and today off, I thought yesterday would be a good day to see a movie. I also remembered that during another depressing time in my life, I was really big on seeing movies by myself. At one point, I went to see the extremely sad Moonlight Mile on a lonely Friday night and I spent the rest of the weekend feeling terribly unhappy. So I decided that this time, I would see a silly happy movie. We saw Strangers with Candy, which was predictably stupid, but I really can't see Amy Sedaris making that face where she sticks her top teeth out without cracking up. During the movie, I cured my lack-of-caffeine headache with a few swigs of Dr. Pepper and some chocolate. I felt a lot better when I came home.

This morning, the first thing I did was shake out my old bottle of Celexa, which has worked very well for me in the past. I counted how many pills I have left until my doctor's appointment in two weeks, and I can almost make it, if I take half my recommended dosage. I hate taking medication of any sort, especially this sort. I am no Tom Cruise, but I agree that we are generally over-medicated and that medication does not solve problems. But the thing is, medication was the only thing that helped me when I could not get out of bed, so there you go. I thought that I would use today to catch up on errands, but it's 102 degrees with the heat index today, and right now I am comfortable watching horrible television.

I have often had the discussion about which is worse: anxiety or depression. I don't know if it's the same for everyone, but for me, anxiety is much worse. Anxiety is is like being caught in an endless windmill of fear and worry, while depression is like falling down a hole. I just feel it's easier to crawl out of a hole than to stop the cycle of panic. The thing that is almost refreshing about being depressed is that normally I care so much about things I have no control over. I click on every news story about people getting killed tragically; I worry about missles in the Middle East and gunshots on the streets of Philly and snipers in Indiana and Phoenix and car accidents and plane crashes and tsunamis and earthquakes. Although I hate feeling so sluggish, it is almost nice to not have the energy to care about things beyond my control. For example, when I ride the train, usually I think at least a few times that the train might derail or that someone might have a bomb or go on a shooting spree. Yesterday, I started to think one of those thoughts and then I just thought, Oh well, I don't really care if that happens. How liberating to not have to spend the whole day worrying about dying! Except, of course, the flipside is not really caring about anything.