I went to the new therapist today. Things have mostly been better for the last week. I don’t think I’ve thought about killing myself more than once or twice in that time. Part of it is that I am back at work and am excited for the new school year. I’ll be working with Juniors—kids old enough to have real ideas and capable of reasonable amounts of reason. I’m also making sure I get some excercise in every day. I’ve also been cooking.

With my time so well structured, I’m feeling better. I feel like I’m doing things, accomplishing—which is probably the most important thing in the world to me. I do deride the American cult of busy and relentless self-improvement, but secretly, I need it. It is an integral part of my mental well being.

I do wish I could spend time, like I used to, thinking about deep and meaningful things. Writing poetry or short stories. These days too much time in my head, too much time with my thoughts is dangerous. If I was going to create a goal for myself and my recovery it would be, “Make my head a safe place where I can spend hours comfortably.” It would be wonderful to have that kind of freedom again.

The depression is starting to catch up with my body. I couldn’t run three minutes this morning. My legs and feet ached so badly. This is a welcome migration of the pain, actually. It had been locked in my back. The pain was so excruciating that I winced when MG tried to massage the area. I wound up taking half a painkiller just to numb the area enough that he and MAS could work my back. It went well enough and my back has been fair to middling since.

So, anyway, the new therapist seems pretty fantastic and she said something to me that no one—not even a therapist—has said to me before. She asked if I thought I would ever act on my suicidal thoughts, I told her no, I don’t think I would. I said I have a real desire to stay alive and that I think that is why the suicidal thoughts are so awful, they are not at all what I want. She said “you know how you live with depression and it is part of you but it doesn’t define you?” “Yeah,” I said. “Well I think we will do that with the suicidal thoughts as well.”

It was like a load was taken off me. I don’t have to run around with an exterminator tank spraying every corner of my brain. We are going to let them live, they just have to stay in their cage. I think that is doable.