Anthegenia site, Drupal optimization, anxiety/depression thoughts.

I spent another day poking at the Anthegenia site, which I've mostly been doing to familiarize myself with Drupal 6. It's not all that pretty or fancy and I haven't really started organizing all the sections (heh, the usual story, it seems like I have SO many unfinished sites/ideas, after getting burned out on just getting the *layout* right. Stupid CSS!) But it's there.

Right now I am concerning myself over Drupal optimization. I installed the devel module just recently and am boggling at how many DB queries my little site makes. I think I am really going to have to push myself into doing the tag reorganization I want to do, to minimize some of the horrific strain on the database the tagcloud creates. It'll be time consuming but I think I'll thank myself for doing it before Drupal 6 comes around.

Basically, I want to get rid of some tags and consolidate others. At the same time I will be moving some tags into the 'category' status -- things like video games, roleplaying and depression that I write about a lot and have been hovering in that grey area between category (which I consider the static, top-down list of stuff I write about) and tags (which is the more spontaneous, bottom end... the leaves of the tree so to speak.)

Now I can only hope I can move the various labels fairly painlessly between vocabularies ('tags' and 'categories' are considered vocabularies in Drupal jargon.) What's going to happen is that several of those 'grey area' tags I mentioned earlier are going to become sub-sections of the categories listed under "The Siren Sings". So, Hobbies/Roleplaying, Catharsis/Depression, that sort of thing. I may have to sit and think of how to rename some categories, too, or remove others ('To You' was a nice touch but it really ought to be a tag, same with 'Randomness' I think, and even 'Fangirling' which may go back to 'obsessiveness' or some such. :D Throwback to my Fangirls ML days, I guess.)

I'm actually oddly excited about doing this. It's like (really) early spring cleaning for my blog. ^^;; The end result will really only be appreciated by me alone, I think, but... it's still neat. :D Too bad it will take time that I would otherwise use to relax... I never really relax any more. I just plain can't -- I'm already apprehensive because the weekend's coming up and that's when I've been showing up on IRC and such. I hate that I've started to feel like I'm forcing myself to socialize. :/ But that's just how it's become now. I keep telling myself I'll regret it more if I just give up on socializing and end up with hardly anyone to associate with when I come out of this terrible mood.

It comes and goes, really... there are times I'm happier, and I generally think I'm getting better. But there's plenty of times I've got the chest pains and the self-destructive thoughts and the insomnia and the overwhelming feelings of hopelessness. I still amaze myself with how much I am this 'poster child' for depression symptoms and suicide risk. (Wheeeeee morbid!) I still believe that my life will not improve without a significant change -- I'm just progressing towards that change pretty slowly right now.

This year is the last year I want to live this way though. I can say quite honestly that if I do not progress the way I hope to this year, I will very likely be dead. If not because of stress wearing out my body, then because of stress-related accidents I don't necessarily *mean* to do, or flat out killing myself. The first two options actually seem viable to me... I'm serious, I have never felt stress symptoms this serious since I ended up with myathenia gravis in 2001. Just this constant ache I have in my chest, the numbing in my extremities... ugh... I feel like my body's constantly and paranoically preparing itself for a war that's never coming, or a war that's just inside my head. Take your pick.

And suicide? I'm sure no one takes me seriously when I go on about that -- I always say I want to but I never do. The reason why, though, is because I still believe that death is worse than what I'm going through now. That doesn't mean I'm not under a great deal of stress and anguish though. It's just... harder to define, because I internalize a lot of it, and because I have, for some reason, this ungodly powerful will to survive. Why... I don't know. But it's that part of me that wants me to kick start myself into doing all the things I've put off these past few years.

I just have to have the courage to try things that are new and uncertain, and to leave behind some of what IS certain. Sometimes what you're used to is not what's healthy for you. I think that is the case with me. I have thought sometimes that I seek certain situations -- and maybe even certain people -- on some subconscious level because I don't know how to live without the feeling of being demeaned and/or humiliated in some way. Like that sick part of me just doesn't think I can achieve anything unless I put a great amount of effort to prove my worth, to a point I may even ignore my dignity.

And of course there's a part of me that enjoys being used. There are many ways I can allow myself to be taken advantage of, treated as insignificant, etc. -- and I'm not just talking about rape fantasy/RP. I repeatedly talk about how I wish my parents had just enslaved me, for example. I'm not just joking when I say that. I think it would relieve a great deal of my guilt if they'd just been more straightforward about the fact everything has a price, and therefore the fact they paid for me means I have to pay it back -- if not with money, which I cannot and fear I may never be able to produce, then with labor.

When I think about it, it's pretty frightening how much what happened to Ryshy is what I almost wish happened to me... from the childhood slavery to the repeated exposure to rape and downfall into an insanity where guilt no longer exists. At least, that's where Ryshy ended up for a while, until Alexsei brought her away... but it's a part of her still, and me... that potential to fall, and fall even further than before.

Anyway, I'll say straight out that my parents have already said they wouldn't enslave me. (Don't ask how they found out I wanted it, though.) So that leaves me with the hard, hard road of therapy and recovery, or the brutally easy road of suicide.

Eh. For now I've got some tag rearranging to think about, and one more day I can selfishly keep to myself. I suppose that's better than nothing.