Hey guys. Thank you again for all your kind words. I just wanted to let you all know that I found the answers to my problems and questions, and I’m doing better than ever.

I hope you’re all having the best possible day. 🙂

Matt, I’m really going to dwell on what you’ve said. Reading your words of obvious, sincere wisdom to others has helped me in the last few days of serious confusion I’ve experienced in trying to figure out my own ‘puzzle.’

I appreciate your taking the time to send some of that my way. I actually tried a metta meditation earlier today (one I believe you recommended to someone else), and I did find it soothing and helpful.

I suppose what I need to really focus on breaking through is always forgetting the goal is not to completely get rid of all my emotions, but to stop being afraid of them, stop judging them as weaknesses, and perhaps to learn to accept and maybe enjoy being human. That’s my perception of your advice, here, and it rings true.

I’ll try focusing my attention in a warmer, less self-demanding direction for a while.

Thank you.

C, I am aware that PMDD is a root cause of many of my problems, as I’ve been suffering from it since I was ten. I’ve made the choice not to take pills, but (with the confidence I gained from quitting smoking cold turkey that such things are possible) to turn it around and, if I can’t stop suffering from it myself, to change my thinking and behavior in such a way that no one outside of myself has to feel its negative effects.

The basis for my suffering is definitely depression, and feelings of hopelessness which continually lead me into ruts in which I can’t accomplish anything or even see how it could be done.

So the reason for my original post was to explore my confusion due to coming out of this, to having more emotions than I had before due to quitting smoking — another reason I don’t want to take drugs, it was the nicotine that so twisted my brain that I’m having to learn how to live with my own consciousness.

I’m trying, now, to be positive and change my thinking, so the root of my problems is no longer my depression (thank whatever deity is appropriate (or not)), but my confusion in the aftermath of that depression (and, yes, my fear of falling into it again).

I have a lot of questions now, about how to become a really positive, stable person (or whether stability in positivity is even possible). I am constantly having to remind myself to go easy on myself, try to love myself and remember that I’m no good to myself or anyone else if I’m wallowing in pointless, subjective self-loathing rather than looking objectively at the present and what I can do to improve it, and, in so doing, improve the future. I imagine (those words are important, here) that I sound very mature and stable already, like I’ve actually already answered all my questions, but the truth is, I’m only doing my best and trying to go with what feels right.

Inside, most of the time, I am still a mess. I wonder if all I can achieve is to not let anyone know that. I wonder if it’s because of physical reasons, the results of nicotine having left my body, or whether emotionalism exists outside chemicals at all (factually, I don’t see how, but does THAT matter?). I’m riddled with questions and confusion, and I know I’m the only one who can decide on the answers, so I’m trying as hard as I can to find ones that satisfy me and will serve my life in a positive, constructive way.

I looked (again) at Buddhism, which did help in ways, but when I got to the parts that feel (to me) more like every other religion, condemning you to a life spent tethered to the things you did in the past, ensuring that one day you’ll be horribly judged, I just felt worse. I had to remind myself that I believe those parts to be fantasy, metaphor, not fact.

What I keep coming back to, trying to center myself on, are these things, cobbled together from systems of belief and thoughts I’ve had and found:

I need to improve my self-esteem until it is real self-esteem, dependent on no external sources. Until I really do love myself, stand up for myself, believe in myself, and can therefore do those things for others effectively and routinely.

Having done this, I can possibly maintain a high level of emotional intelligence that would allow me to control my emotions in a way that would serve my life and the lives of those around me, so that my depression never gets so out of control that it hurts me and others again. So that I might actually be able to live in real happiness for more than a moment.

To find that happiness, I need to always strive for something helpful and productive, so that I have something to feel good about. I also need to remember that there is no ‘end’ at which I will suddenly ‘find’ happiness, the point is to be happy now, just because I’m alive and working towards good things and care about myself and other people.

This all sounds well and good, until my brain starts in again. If I’m relaxed, I’ll make mistakes. I’ll forget things. I won’t perform as well. The stress is necessary, you can’t be happy all the time.

Then I’m afraid to be happy, but at the same time, in seeking to eliminate the negative emotions, I am now marginally afraid of feeling them at all, because it makes sense that they’re pointless.

But it seems as if some of them tether me to earth and keep me connected to other people, but maybe that’s just because the only people I know have always BEEN negative.

And then I realize that my quest for self-improvement may just be a whole new way for me to be too hard on myself.

I saw some interesting Eckhardt Tolle quotes here, so I looked him up, and I wish I hadn’t, to be honest.

Both of us twenty-nine at the time of a search for a solution that would eliminate emotional suffering, but I feel (please don’t take this as a judgment on your own personal beliefs, I could always be wrong) as if what he’s found is a kind of… nihilistic enlightenment that could be the source of a lot of power for anyone with less than decent intentions. Reading about it, working overnight and accidentally experiencing it for myself, I realized: his ‘stillness’ is a more intense version of my old coping mechanism for dealing with my inability to be happy. I would tell myself nothing matters. Nothing is really real. I don’t have to care about anything at all.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding his methods (I don’t think so, but I could be), but I see no joy in that.

The silver lining, there, is that it makes me feel a little better about my confusion in my own journey to be a better person.

Well, I went to the doctor on Wednesday. I didn’t really get any answers. He listened to my heart and lungs and said there’s no fluid in the lungs themselves. A few months ago I had an EKG, and he believes that was recent enough that there could be nothing wrong with my heart … I am, of course, not sure whether he knows what he’s doing. At the end of the day, when my legs and feet are swollen and everything hurts, I want to go to the ER and have them run actual tests, do some imaging, find someone who really knows what they’re talking about.

But he says I should just expect my body to be ‘haywire’ for a while. He has no idea what’s causing the edema. He did draw blood to do a comprehensive metabolic, to see if it could be an imbalance of electrolytes or something of that nature — but then again, he said they could all come back perfectly normal on paper, but still not be “my normal,” meaning they could be the cause and even after the test, we won’t know.

So I’m going to give it about a month, and if the swelling hasn’t stopped, I guess I’ll go back.

I wonder about the use of going to the doctor at all. I never seem to find one who can tell me anything that makes sense.

There is so much on my mind recently that I’m having trouble figuring out what’s worth writing about here. For two days, I did a pretty good job staying positive and being happy. Then there was a meeting at work in which more work was piled on me, work that will potentially cause conflict between me and a coworker. Conflict I’ve been avoiding by doing both our jobs and allowing her to spend the whole shift sitting and reading a novel, because she’s one of those people… if I ask her to do something, she’ll do it wrong so I won’t ask her to do it again.

I tell myself the work stuff doesn’t matter. That’s how I’m trying to cope with that. Work as hard as I can, do my best, and then whatever happens, I can tell myself it’s okay, it’s fine, what do they expect of me anyway? But the thing is, that works until I’m sitting around thinking about the physical and emotional wear on me, the ways this is contributing to poor health I can’t remedy fast enough to counteract it, and then that doesn’t help as much.

So anyway, today I’m not doing very well at staying positive. I don’t know whether it’s the PMDD I suffer from making areas of my brain not function correctly, making it impossible to feel happy, or just the objective issues in my life, work among others, such as my younger sister’s $1300 dentist bill I’m not sure how to pay and my family’s unhappiness at the situation we’re in and my inability to make enough money to get us out of it (small trailer, inadequate food, inadequate everything).

Today, my thoughts are between:

I’m ashamed of how hard it is for me to handle work in a happy way/This job is so hard and unreasonable that no one there can, everyone’s miserable and looking for something else.

I need to have a more Can Do attitude and try my best/I can’t possibly complete everything they expect of me in the time I have with no help, and they don’t take I’m Doing The Best I Can as an acceptable answer.

So many dual thoughts like this, I think today’s goal should just be to forget the physical pain, which I can’t help and will worry about until it makes me even sicker, and try to focus on getting my mind quiet and organized, try my best, even if it is PMDD, to be as positive, or at least as calm and borderline pleasant, as possible (the anger, just boiling, is really terrible).

I don’t know. I suppose it’s obvious I’m still very, very confused and conflicted.

Thank you for your kind replies, C and Madonnika.

C, I hope what you’re going through eases up on you.