Idiopathic Idiopathy

After a weekend of working at the restaurant, I came home with swelling in one of my upper thighs. Similar to the swelling I had in my lower abdomen on the same side a few months ago -- similar feeling during work, pain while bending, etc.

This time I was able to get in to see a doctor while I was still swelled up, and she sent me for a CT scan and an ultrasound, a blood clot being her primary concern given what the swelling looked like. Both were negative.

Which is good because I don't know what the hell I'd do with a blood clot.

And bad because I wanted them to find something they could fix.

And good because the swelling made me feel gross about being a biological thing, like I was rotting or deteriorating or aging grotesquely.

Yet another idiopathic event.

And two more tests -- now we can be SURE sure sure there is nothing detectable going on down there.

Maybe it was part of my body's overall statement that if I don't sit down and stop soon, I am going to gamble everything away.

My body made me sit down. Nothing happened to it; it was kind of like when you eat something and it makes you puke -- you very quietly never eat that thing again.

My body said, plop down and shut up. So I did. I haven't been to my service site in a week. I spoke with the director and my supervisor about taking a medical leave. I saw my psychiatrist today. Neither of us had any brilliant ideas. I told my psychiatrist, "I can't expect medicine to fix everything."

The lucky thing is that my body was so ploppy this time, making me sit down before I lost it. It's hard to surrender and just sit down and not try anymore, but this is so much better than losing it and then sitting down.

I've dropped too much weight being depressed, and I've been sleeping at every turn. I kept thinking, it's my meds, or it's my period, or I have cancer and that's why my leg is swelling and I'm sleeping so much, but I'm pretty sure the sleep has been a form of coping.

Every thought makes me want to sleep.

I said to Catfish, "you make me want to fight for a life that works for me. I don't want to lose you because I'm depressed." Because even if someone loves you despite your depression, that doesn't mean you can't lose them because of things that happen tangential to depression. Like last fall's big blowup fight.

Catfish said to me, "I have mad respect for you." Meaning my dealing with depression -- he had a year of it after his divorce.

He also said, "I love you for who you are."

I needed to hear that, but not about depression. Depression is abstract. Concrete are the things I fail at, the going to work and renewing the car registration year after year before the end of March (and that one time I did but still didn't put the sticker on until mid-April), the clean or not-clean apartment, the sleep and more sleep, the waitressing aspiration, the pain, the idiopathy, and all the things I hate about myself but could never admit to anyone else. My depression doesn't embarrass me; my life does. But Catfish jokes with me, asks me if I just woke up from a nap, as if sleeping at this time of day is perfectly fine, and I think, what planet are you from and thank you for coming here.