I just slept 15 of the last 18 hours. When I finish writing this I will sleep some more.

I feel guilty. I should be at work. I know what is going on. No mystery here. I am not happy. I am not sad. I am on the floor. My medications prevent me from falling any further. They are the floor beneath me.

I have flat lined. My face has been injected with depression Botox - the muscles are slack. I am so tired. I don’t want to leave the house. I play a game with myself. I make my bed and sleep during the day with a blanket on top of the covers. I keep the curtains open. This is supposed to convince me that I am not seriously depressed, just on the floor.

This has been coming on for awhile. I know it. I didn’t want to see it. My therapist saw it months ago. She kept telling me but I kept on going, plowing through the stress in my life like an ice breaker in the Arctic sea that can go no more and is surrounded - trapped - by the crushing ice around it.

I chose not to see this coming but by body refused to ignore it. The muscles between my shoulder blades are so knotted, so painful, that my insurance company has agreed to pay for massage. My back is bruised where the masseuse tried to loosen them with her thumbs. I stretch, and stretch and stretch every morning. First my hamstrings, then my calves, quads, hip flexors and lower back. My biceps, shoulder, chest , lats, obliques and stomach. I am fine for awhile. But a couple of hours after I walk into the newsroom, my shoulders and neck ache.

I have been a journalist for nearly 30 years. Most of those years I did the old fashioned shoe leather reporting. I went somewhere, witnessed an event or its aftermath, interviewed people, pulled some records and wrote a story. But for the last 10 years I have done a new kind of journalism, called computer assisted reporting or CAR.

I love CAR. It is the new watchdog, investigative journalism. I acquire data -  election results, campaign contributions, regulatory violations, water contamination - and analyze it. I stare at a computer screen for hours. I look for trends, discrepancies, patterns and inconsistencies. Sometimes I map it. I chart it. I assess the impact of variables. I slice and dice the data. I link it to other data. I sort and filter it. I add, subtract, calculate percent changes, averages and medians. I examine outliers. I often do this on deadline. Quick, fast, hurry. Don’t make a mistake. Double, triple check ASAP.

I become so hyper focused that time does not exist. It demands complete, pure isolation. I jump like a startled cat when someone stops by to ask a question. It is the most intense work I have ever done. It is unlike the journalism I did with my pen and reporters’ notebook. I love it but it consumes me. I lie in bed at night trying to figure out how to perform a statistical pirouette. In the shower I think of new questions to ask my data. I wonder why a number is what it is. What would explain it? No one can see the rapid cycling of my thoughts, the furious pace and gridlock concentration. I am a woman, sitting her at cubicle, deep in thought.

It is the perfect job for my bipolar brain. It is the worst kind of work for an obsessive addict/alcoholic - who has no off switch. The isolation and exhaustion feed my depression. I do it, and do it and do it until I bonk, like those crazed, wobbly triathletes who collapse a few yards from the finish line. I sink to the floor with my blanket and sleep…with the curtains open.

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