northern

Let's try this again....


Yeah, I continued my disappearing act, even after apologizing for it and promising to catch up with everyone.

I know some of you have said that I don't need to apologize, but I still feel like it.

I've had a nasty habit, my whole life, of going through periods where I disappear for so long that I end up losing friends.

I'm really trying to break that habit.

I know it's not possible to be attentive to all of one's friends at all times.

But I seem to have the problem that I cut everyone out for long periods.

I should say that I don't think it's my depression.

It would be a convenient excuse to blame my depression for it.

But I've been going through just my normal medium level of depression the last few months, and I want to honest (not just with you, but myself too) and say that it's not the main reason.

I've been trying to figure out what the reason is.




I think a lot of it, most of it, boils down to avoidance.

I desperately need to clean my house - it's a sty.

Sadly, that's the normal state of things in my house. But I have some stuff around the house that needs to be done by other people, like getting my furnace cleaned, so I need to clean things up so that people can actually enter my house.

Yes, it really is that messy.

So, I need to make my place somewhat presentable. At least clean it up enough that when people come here, they don't end up reporting my place as a fire hazard or something.




But the task is overwhelming. And I have a warped way of looking at tasks.

People give me advice, like just spend 20 minutes cleaning, or just clean one square foot each day.

But my mind sees that one square foot, and then sees everything around it, and everything around that too, so that within a couple seconds, I'm feeling overwhelmed by a three-storey mess of stuff that needs cleaning.

(By the way, I want to clarify - the mess is basically clutter gone wild. There's no rotting food or walls covered with mold. It's mostly paper in fact - I'm a packrat gone nuts).




So I avoid cleaning. Of course, the problem I now face is that I've been avoiding cleaning for years, and things have piled up, quite literally.

A few months ago, I started trying to make my best effort to clean, and I realized that I do things to avoid cleaning.

I read or I go online. Two prime examples.

Let's face it, it's easy to sit down at the computer and spend lots of time in seemingly no time at all.

So I decided I had to stop doing things that were letting me avoid cleaning.

Sadly, this included socializing.




The really bad part of it all, is that I still managed to avoid cleaning, even while avoiding the things that were supposedly keeping me away from cleaning.




I've always tended to view things as being all or nothing.

If I couldn't keep my house spotless, there was no point in trying.

If I couldn't spend hours reading, there was no point in picking up a book in the first place.

And yes, if I couldn't spend time catching up with everyone, then somehow that meant catching up with no one.





I've spent much of my life trying to break myself of these bad habits, with little or no success.

I suppose I could blame my lack of success on my depression and/or my schizophrenia.

Certainly the behaviours are classic symptoms.

But I really hate to do that.

I worry that my illnesses become a crutch. An excuse for getting out of things.

When I was young, I started getting migraines. After awhile, I started to use that as an excuse to get out of things. If I was behind in school, it was because of the migraines.

I feel guilty now. Taking advantage of people. Playing on peoples' sympathies.

So I really hate using my illness as an excuse, even when it's textbook behaviour.




Most of all, I feel like I'm once again sabotaging my friendships.

I know that those of you here who I've become friends with are a pretty understanding bunch of people and will find it easy to forgive my disappearance and hopefully pick up where we left off.

But it still ticks me off that I act like this.

This time, I'm not going to promise to catch up with everyone in a short amount of time. That just makes me feel bad when I don't manage to do it.

I will catch up though.