13 Days Not Leaving the House

Today is the 13th day I have not left the house. I have not been outside since last Saturday when I went to check my mail and then went back to the mail box to see if my glasses were there. Maybe I'll check my mail again later today. Earlier this week I wrote about what it means when I start announcing how long it has been. “Sometimes when I post that I haven't left the house in such and such days, I don't really want to share that with anyone. But it needs to come out. What I really wanted to post was that I'm about to go freaking crazy being alone all the damn time.” I'm not trying to keep score of how long I've been alone. I'm not marking on the wall with lines that I then cross though. Although it might be kinda cool if I did.

I talked about having an internal debate on whether to kill myself or not. I said I was not thinking about suicide yet. Then I caught myself and said I was not thinking about how to kill myself yet. “That's never how it starts,” I wrote. “It starts with a debate in my mind about whether suicide is the way to go. I have to convince myself one way or the other. Sometimes I am convinced it is not the way to go. That will normally get me through a few weeks or months or no self-harm.”

I didn't realize there was a term to describe me in those conditions until I came across a blog on The Mighty last night. I was being passively suicidal. Being passively suicidal means just when it sounds like. You're suicidal, but you have no plan on doing it. In my reading, I found out that being passively suicidal might mean you take risks. One person said it could be as simple as not wearing a set belt in a car. Another person in this blog said for them it was going home with random people in bars.

For me it seems more simple. I eat anything I'm not supposed to. Sometimes I drink. I recently discovered apple juice and vodka as a mixed drink tastes incredible. Truth be known, the apple juice by itself more than just a small glass a day is bad for diabetics. So are soft drinks. It's not like I don't know this. It's me being passively suicidal. I've thought about this before. I just didn't know there was an actual term for it.

You know I have stopped seeing my therapist and doctor at the mental health facility here in town. The last time I went, I paid $30 for a cab to get there only to be told they couldn't see me. They were always understaffed and overworked. One time I went there, we scheduled two appointments on the same day since getting there was always hard for me. My first appointment canceled on me, so I had to wait on the second appointment. I've talked to other people who have to deal with this same place and apparently it is par for the course fr them to cancel appointments and not tell you until you get there.

I have a medical doctor who is going to soon start paying me quarterly visits to my house. Who knew doctors still made house calls in 2018? But this doctor's office doesn't actually have an office where they see patients. It's all home visits. A nurse practitioner is coming next Friday to start getting me into the system. I hope she has a minute to spend here because the list of things I need to talk to her about it kinda long. I also hope they can refill my anti-depressants and refer me to someone who won't keep canceling on me.

And now for something different. I had already started another entry when I decided the above needed to be typed out, too.

I keep mentioning the forum I frequent in some of my recent entries without mentioning the name. It's called City Data (city-data.com) I found it in 2006 when I did a Google search and ran across some of my photographs being used by someone there. I joined to throw some shade at the poster, but have stuck around since then. The person using my photos were comparing the Columbia skyline to those of other southern cities.

There are all kinds of forums on that site – photography, mental health music and politics. I should know better, but the political forum is where I spend most of my time. Most of the posters there are right wingers who watch Fox religiously. I make that distinction because I think there is a big difference between most right-leaning folks and those that watch Fox News religiously. (By the way, those on City Data can't stand Shep Smith now which I find really funny.)

One of them started a thread yesterday titled “Multiple polls over decades show Republicans much happier than Democrats.” My bull**** radar immediately went off. It sounded ridiculous. Folks used the opportunity to be snarky. Five different people posted “Ignorance is bliss.” Others went full out political and said that “*******s” were also angry at the world. Others stated that Republicans were better looking which made me think of Hope Hicks and even that Russian gun nut spy who was just arrested, both lovely people on the outside. I did not think of Ann Coulter though.

I did think of myself though because I'm selfish like that. I was first diagnosed with major depression in the spring or summer of 1993. Anyone remember what had just happened then? Hillary's husband had just won an election and taken office. So politics didn't have anything to do with my own depression then. It does remind me of a joke told by Bob Dole. I forget what year it was since I was a kid at the time, but when he ran for and lost on the ticket as the Vice-Presidential nominee, he was asked how he slept on Election Night. “I slept like a baby,” he said. “Every two hours I woke up and cried.”

So I was convinced that the thread was, to quote the current president, “fake news.” I was already planning my reply. “Oh, really? Let's ask President Hillary what she thinks of that poll.” You know, since polls are reliable and everything. Imagine my surprise when I did a Google search and found many polls over many decades proclaiming that more Democrats are, in fact, depressed than are Republicans.

I tend to think of my 30s in good terms. I went back to school and worked in the media. I moved to Columbia to work at a three-lettered TV station down there and felt happy in my personal life, too. George W. Bush was president during most of my 30s so my lack of depression didn't have anything to do with politics either. We won't even talk about my 40s to this date.

I don't actually think of myself as a Democrat. I have voted for Republicans in the past and will again in the future I am sure. Maybe not the immediate future though since they all seem to fear to stand up to the current president. I was all into the Libertarian Party when Harry Browne ran for president. Don't know who Harry Browne was? That's why the Libertarian Party rarely wins elections. I voted for Mark Sanford in his reelection bid because the Democrat running against him ran on the shortsighted platform of “I'm not Mark Sanford.” Not being the person you're running against has always been a dumb reason to run.

I have said that depression does not discriminate for skin color or gender or religious beliefs. I still believe that, but apparently it does discriminate on political ideology. Well, not really. It just happens that there are more depressed people who are Democrat than are Republican. I'm not smart enough to know why. I do believe that creative folks suffer more from depression than non-creative folks. But then I should probably research that and then I might want to consider the definition of “creative people.”

I've found a few online sources for these polls trying to find out why Republicans are happier than Democrats. One reason was age, even though the column I read didn't specifically state that as a reason. But it said that church goers are typically happier than non church-goers. More Republicans go to church according to what I read. Also, being in a marriage makes more people happy. (Again, that's according to this one column I read.) Older people are, I guess, more apt to be married. Most older people are also more well off than younger folks. They have settled into a good job and likely have their own house while the younger you are, the more likely it is you are still finding your own way.

The odd thing is that with me, I'm at the age where I should be more settled down, but I'm not due to life circumstances. I should be happy. Then I read something that made me consider the entire premise of the poll as well as my own circumstances. Polls are dependent on people answering honestly. Maybe the Republicans just think they're happy. They mentioned a poll in the 1980s where people were asked to rate their own driving skills. Something like 9 out of ten people said they were above average drivers which, of course, is impossible.

By this point, I was bored with the topic and stopped searching. I stand by my reasoning that there is not a political answer to this anomaly.