TMI RTMS: I am Feeling ALL the Feelings

So...tomorrow is the big day: Day One of RTMS. Possibly also Day One of How I Got Lost On The Grounds Of A Massive Epic Hospital, because I am going to an unfamiliar building I didn't quite catch the name of over the phone.

Anyway.

First thing in the morning, I will remove all of my earrings so my ears don't start to resemble an extreme body-modification project. Project "Swiss Cheese," or "Magnets, Dummy." I will carefully place the earrings in a baggie so I can reassemble my personality once the second treatment is completed. Why yes, my self-identity is hinging on having multiple piercings in quite-conventional locations, thank you for asking :)

I am going to try and put on makeup and wear different, decent clothes every day, so I don't succumb to my depressive tendency to wear the same pair of pants and scuzzy sweater every day, for weeks, and to give up washing my face entirely and abandoning my makeup efforts at looking slightly less hideous. The theologian / psychologist William James believed that how you behave is how you feel. Smile: you'll feel happy. Put on makeup: you'll feel better. Brush your teeth: you'll feel like a normal human being. While I don't believe it's that simple, I think that self-care is certainly an element in successfully battling both major depression and dysthymia. Anyway, my goal is not to backslide on that, since I've been doing moderately well at it since my progressive return to work began.

I am feeling...hopeful. I tell myself that this is going to work. The research has shown encouraging results. I am due for some good luck, and this will be it. I have that good feeling, that this is my break, my chance, my turn to be well. So, I am feeling hopeful, and kind of excited.

I am feeling...nervous. I don't really know what the experience will be like. It isn't like anything I've ever done before. I am going into this alone, not knowing anyone who's ever done it. It always makes me uneasy to try something new, something unfamiliar, something I haven't researched the shit out of and tried my best to understand. It is unlike me not to have read the scientific literature on the subject, but I just haven't been interested. I have no idea how the procedure works. There's no maintenance protocol, so I have no idea what will come next. So, I am feeling trepidation.

I am feeling...desperate. I keep thinking that I'm coming to the end of the road in terms of what can be done. Of course, strictly speaking that's not true. I haven't tried acupuncture, ayurvedic medicine, ECT, MAOI-class medications, or pet therapy. And of course, I could just wait a few months and probably recover most of my pre-acute-episode functionality again, albeit with a long intervening period of debilitating depression. But it still somehow feels like I'm coming to the end. So I am feeling desperate.

I am feeling...relief. Finally, something is happening. Finally, I can stop worrying that I am not doing anything, not doing enough, to try and propel myself in an upward direction. I feel like I can stop harassing myself to do something, anything, and take a moment to simply stand still.

I am also feeling like I might get lost, since I can get lost going in a straight line to a place I've been dozens of times before. I will equip myself for my journey with phone numbers.

In other news, the not-eating-sugar project has not been going well. Had lots of sugar, had a headache. But just because I made bad choices in the (really recent) past doesn't mean that tomorrow isn't a new day, or that today isn't a new minute. I can choose a better path.