for the last few weeks I struggle with really bad depression - so bad, in fact, that my psychiatrist decided I should change the antidepressant, because the one I'm on clearly isn't working any more.  so on top of being in pretty bad shape in the first place, I had to be weened off the Lexapro, which I was taking, and only then I could start on a very low doze of Venlaxafine, before the doze can be upped to the level equal to what I was on before, and then gradually raised again...

I know that depression (or bi-polar disorder, which I have - and which is probably the 'residue' of the brain tumour, which I had some 17 years ago) is a very common sister-illness of fibromyalgia (i.e. those afflicted by fibromyalgia very often suffer from depression as well), but it doesn't really help: the lower I am, the more I feel the physical pain of fibromyalgia, which makes me more depressed and unwilling to move or live, which causes me to be more sensitive to physical pain, and so on, and so on... vicious circle...

what keeps me going is the students, and my animals - when I look at them, they still give me a little flicker of joy in this very lonely, otherwise pointless life.

I realised recently that what I miss most is the 'direct' human contact: any time when one of my friends hugs me, even for a brief moment, and does it because they want to and not because it's some sort of ritual or expectation - this moment of being held by another human being is a confirmation that I still mater, that I'm still a valid person despite my disability, that there is somebody who cares about me...  it's whingy, what I'm saying, but fibromyalgia is a very lonely illness, because it's not visible - so people think that everything is 'all right' because one doesn't look 'so bad', and so they expect the person to act at the same level of activity as one always did, and when one doesn't - it's this unspoken presumption of laziness, 'lack of moral fiber', 'taking things easy' instead of 'just pull yourself together' attitude...  sometimes I envy those, whose illness/disability is clearly visible.  at least nobody expects impossible of them...