And also resistant to treatment. My psychiatrist admitted that she pretty much didn’t know what to do with me, the last time I was there. I was there, like, six months ago, I think. Before I went on our family vacation. I don’t think I went again after school started. I’m making my psychiatrist sound like kind of a not very useful psychiatrist. It probably isn’t fair to put it in those words, that she didn’t know what to do with me. I’m sort of reading between the lines, in retrospect. Actually, I may have read between the lines at the time. Who knows? It was ages ago. I thought that maybe I needed to do weekly chit-chat therapy, like my daughter does. I mean, it seems to help her, more or less. Well, that’s what I thought at the time. I did it for a few weeks, and then I went on vacation, and then school started and I never made any more appointments. Because I think I convinced myself that I was just wasting the insurance company’s money. I shouldn’t need to chit-chat with a trained professional once a week. Isn’t this what I have a blog for?

The Effexor that I’ve been taking for the last few years doesn’t seem to be hurting me. I’m afraid to stop taking it–although I do manage to stop taking it for days at a time, sometimes, and that can’t be helpful. That is how I’ve ended up with a six-month backlog supply of Effexor that I’m probably not going to get through before it expires. Don’t worry, I’ve turned off “worry-free refills” with the pharmacy. I’m not completely irresponsible. I think I will continue to take it until it runs out, which at the rate I’m going may be next year. I still have about a month’s worth of Valium, if I took a Valium every day, but I don’t (believe it or not!), so it’s probably a three-month supply of Valium. I’ll have to go to the psychiatrist again if I want more of that. Maybe I should just take a whole bunch and go to the psychiatrist tomorrow. Wait, that’s not safe, I don’t think. Well, it might be, actually, considering what a low dose it is. I could probably take the whole bottle and be okay. Not that I’m going to do that because that would be wrong! I’m just saying.

I have lost interest in all of my usual activities, except for reading. Reading is probably what’s keeping me from taking the whole bottle of Valium. That and duty. I have not lost my sense of duty. Everyone’s still getting fed and crap. Although I wonder with increasing frequency why I bother feeding the children, given their responses to my cooking. There’s probably some legal reason. Anyway. Where was I? Oh, yes, reading. I’m reading a lot. It’s to keep my mind active, like I would do if I were in prison. I should probably take daily walks, too, now that I have hit upon my metaphor. I am less interested in eating than I usually am. That is to say, I have entered the not-eating stage of depression, which I usually take as a bad sign. That and crying for no reason. Or any reason. I was crying for no reason the other day. The other day before that I was crying because I was reading a romance novel and the heroine thought her husband was dead and she had just realized that she loved him but never actually told him in so many words. I mean, he didn’t know. He was supposedly dead without ever knowing that she really loved him. I’m tearing up now just thinking about it, and I already know how the story ends. Of course he wasn’t really dead. I knew as I was reading about her thinking he was dead that he wasn’t dead because it was not that sort of book, and yet I still cried. Well, in my defense there was a small possibility that it may have been that kind of book. It didn’t have the usual cover with the shirtless guy and the lady with her dress falling off–the cover art was actually very tasteful, so it was possible that maybe he really was dead. It could have turned out to be that kind of book. It would have been a little weird, but possible. But it wasn’t. He was alive, which I already knew, but like I said, I was still really sad about it. That is not normal. I knew at the time it was not normal. Don’t you think I know these things?

I don’t even want to tell you what the Downton Abbey 3 finale did to me last night. Not only because I’m ashamed but because it’s still too upsetting for me to talk about. No! Don’t say anything! I know that Downton Abbey isn’t real. It’s just television. It’s not even American television. So what am I on about? I don’t know. I’m just reporting the facts.

I don’t want you to think that I’m only reading romance novels to escape. I mean, I am reading to escape, but not only romance novels. I’m reading real books too. Like right now I’m reading a book about these guys who were held hostage by the FARC in the Colombian jungle. Has it made me cry? No, but it hasn’t made me happy. How could it? And yet I would rather read this book than engage my own life. Don’t tell me I’m not self-aware.

Incidentally, I’m also aware that it’s not funny to joke about taking a whole bottle of Valium. I wasn’t joking or trying to be funny. I was just saying that the Valium is a very low dose, so if I did take a whole bottle of it, it would not be a very serious suicide attempt. I mean, it might kill me, what would I know? But I’m not sure it would qualify as a cry for help. I wouldn’t try to kill myself anyway. I’m the sort of religious person who could never kill herself. Sometimes I wish I were. That is how depressed I am. I don’t even find the afterlife appealing.

Everyone who reads this is going to think, “Girlfriend, you really need to go back to the psychiatrist.” I should probably tell you that I’m at that stage of my menstrual cycle where I shouldn’t make any kind of decision. That can’t be helping matters. I’m sorry if that’s TMI, but if you’re that sensitive, you probably shouldn’t be here in the first place. It’s not like I’m sharing this on Facebook or something. Lighten up. Listen to me, the clinically depressed person telling you to lighten up. I know what I’m talking about. I’ve just lost the thread of this particular paragraph.

What I’d really like to do is get all these children in bed so I can stop thinking about my duty and legal obligations and start catching up on the sleep I couldn’t get last night because I was too depressed by the not-real-and-actually-kind-of-lame Downton Abbey. Sometimes I can sleep when I’m depressed, other times not. It depends on whether or not I take a Valium at the right time. If it’s late enough in the evening, i.e. technically early morning, there is no difference, in the end, between taking the Valium and going without the sleep. I’m a zombie either way. There’s probably some health difference, actually, but feeling-wise, it is all the same. But I digress. I think I am tired enough now that I can probably sleep, maybe. Maybe I won’t sleep. Maybe I will stay up and do some other mind-numbing thing like Free Cell. I switched from Spider Solitaire to Free Cell so that I could pretend I was making meaningful changes in my life. Now that I have publicly admitted to playing Free Cell to numb my mind, I realize I can never play it again without making my loved ones worry about me. So maybe I won’t play Free Cell. Maybe I will just go to sleep or read another book.