Today, tonight, rather, is Friday - and on Saturday past, I had a seizure.
The first seizure that I know of having. I say that because, as an ex-addict, it's more than likely that I've had at least one seizure before. Especially given which drug I was addicted to.
This was the first time I was at all aware of having had the seizure, though. I went to bed last Friday night feeling very... off. I don't know how else to put it. I woke up feeling just as strange, if not worse.I woke up Saturday and as the day wore on, quickly might I add, I started feeling notably not good. I was having a hard time staying awake sat on my couch, I felt nauseous, my head felt unbelievably cloudly... I just wasn't right. Eventually, I completely blacked out - which my boyfriend tells me was the seizure. Apparently, my eyes rolled back into my head, I was foaming at the mouth, I was convulsing, and I started off incredibly warm and by the end was shivering. When I came out of it, I couldn't find words and was speaking gibberish, and was incredibly nauseous. I actually puked twice, the last time being late Saturday night, closer to Sunday morning.
The next day, my boyfriend had me call my therapist, and when I ran into her on Tuesday, she told me to see my family doctor. So I did that, which resulted in another repeat of what happened followed by my being taken off of the Wellbutrin I'd come to love, having blood taken, and having to pee in a cup.
Yesterday - Thursday - I saw my psychiatrist, and he offered me two options: A) Stay off the Wellbutrin and just... see how things go, or B) get on something new right away.
Well, I wasn't happy about being off the only antidepressant to ever do much of anything for me, so I chose the latter option. My psychiatrist put me on Prozac, promising the possibility of weight gain was slim. I picked it up today, and I start it tomorrow morning.
I know there are going to be side effects, probably nausea. I just hope I'm able to go to temple - class and ritual - tomorrow, I missed last week because of the seizure, and it's something I look forward to every week.
I still don't know why I had a seizure. I haven't been purging - I think the last time would've been January at the earliest; and June marked my sixth year clean.
I'm still feeling residually tired and worn out.
Hopefully Prozac works out well for me.
Saturday, 25 July 2015
Sunday, 5 July 2015
I Hate to Bring This Up
I really do hate to bring up the awful combination of mental illness - illnesses, in my case - and a serious romantic relationship.
For the most part, my partner is understanding, supportive, helpful, just wonderful.
... But then, days like today happen.
Days where we end up in a fight because I can't do my share of things like household chores; my schoolwork suffers; my social life goes down the drain; my financial contributions are at an all time low... and that's just scratching the surface. Days where threats are thrown verbally because I can't function like a regular person. I can't function like a normal girlfriend. I can't be that.
I'm a little caught up with suicidal thoughts that bombard me, making it a feat to get out of bed, brush my teeth, take my meds, and look presentable. Let alone think about the groceries, or what needs to be cleaned, or the fact that the laundry is starting to pile up - again.
Usually my lovely partner can understand the 'whys' of all these things, but lately things haven't been easy on him, either. He has an injury that makes it very painful for him to walk, so going to work has become that much more stressful for him.. and more stress equals less patience. Which makes absolute sense... it just makes my life a little messier, because his tolerance for my limitations and affectations goes way down.
This is something I'm sure we (those of us 'blessed' with mental illness) all have to face at times, that is, if we're able to find a partner and hold down a relationship long enough to have those 'living together' disputes. I don't envy those of you going it alone - having someone to lean on is by far the superior option in my opinion, if possible - but I feel like.. it must be nice, sometimes.. to not have to worry about what that other person expects of you.
I wouldn't trade my partner for anything, but I know how hard it is to try to be a Good and Normal Girlfriend when you're also Mentally Ill.
For the most part, my partner is understanding, supportive, helpful, just wonderful.
... But then, days like today happen.
Days where we end up in a fight because I can't do my share of things like household chores; my schoolwork suffers; my social life goes down the drain; my financial contributions are at an all time low... and that's just scratching the surface. Days where threats are thrown verbally because I can't function like a regular person. I can't function like a normal girlfriend. I can't be that.
I'm a little caught up with suicidal thoughts that bombard me, making it a feat to get out of bed, brush my teeth, take my meds, and look presentable. Let alone think about the groceries, or what needs to be cleaned, or the fact that the laundry is starting to pile up - again.
Usually my lovely partner can understand the 'whys' of all these things, but lately things haven't been easy on him, either. He has an injury that makes it very painful for him to walk, so going to work has become that much more stressful for him.. and more stress equals less patience. Which makes absolute sense... it just makes my life a little messier, because his tolerance for my limitations and affectations goes way down.
This is something I'm sure we (those of us 'blessed' with mental illness) all have to face at times, that is, if we're able to find a partner and hold down a relationship long enough to have those 'living together' disputes. I don't envy those of you going it alone - having someone to lean on is by far the superior option in my opinion, if possible - but I feel like.. it must be nice, sometimes.. to not have to worry about what that other person expects of you.
I wouldn't trade my partner for anything, but I know how hard it is to try to be a Good and Normal Girlfriend when you're also Mentally Ill.
Thursday, 2 July 2015
Mini Update of Sorts?
I think I'm doing a little better. Coping a little better, maybe, is the best way to describe it.
I've been waking up early - for me - which is anywhere between 7:30 and 9:30, and just automatically getting dressed, putting on some makeup... doing what I would do to get myself ready for something. This is good. I'm getting ready every morning.. for the day. So I wake up, get ready, and either make a coffee or a smoothie. Then I read (leisure) for about a half hour, until I decide I should at least attempt to be productive in my coursework.
Today, I got one more lesson in my book done. There are five lessons in four books, and I've just started this course - which I'm told is a "really heavy course"... but the book I have to read and barely analyse is Stephen King's The Body. It's not even technically a book. It's a novella. It's in a compilation of his other short stories. And it's written for twelve-year-olds.
That's enough of my griping. I got the end of lesson assignment done today, which made me feel accomplished. Like I'd done something productive and was therefore allowed to do as I please.
My best friend* is getting home from Hollywood on Saturday, and we made plans for Monday. I'm actually really excited to - leave the house - and see her. We're meeting at this local hipster coffeehouse down the street from my apartment, and then coming back to my apartment to watch bad horror movies. .... And she's said she has presents for me... which I feel guilty for getting excited about.
DBT group is going well... I made a friend.. I think. She's older and LGBTQIA and a Buddhist, former Wiccan... a few weeks ago we ended up talking about crystals. Long story short, this Tuesday we've planned to go to this crystal shop together. I'm nervous and excited.
Another thing with DBT group.. every week before homework we do a mindfulness exercise. I 'volunteered' to lead it this coming Tuesday, and I'm anxious about it. However, I came up with what I think is a decent idea. I found a container we never use, and went to the dollar store and bought a pack of decorative seashells. When I get to the CPC - Community Psychiatry Centre - before group, I'm just going to duck into a bathroom and fill the container with some water. The shells will be immersed in the water. The logic is that water as an element represents emotions, feeling, healing, cleansing.. all good things for folks in a DBT group. I'm going to explain the significance of this, and ask that everyone take a shell from the 'pond'. It'll be an 'observe and describe' mindfulness, because the shells are all the same type of shell, but there are always tiny abnormalities and differences. So, I'm going to give everyone about five minutes or so, to feel the moist shell, touch it, feel it, and think about how it's just that little bit different. ...... I really hope this isn't a terrible idea.
On top of all that positivity, I get to start violin lessons on Wednesday. My boyfriend and his boss are in charge of scheduling, so my time slot isn't absolute yet. He did tell me it will probably be in the evening, though, which is nice; what I wanted. I'm so excited to get back into actively learning and playing an instrument. It's therapeutic in the way that horseback riding is. Plus, my individual therapist is loving the music idea.
Overall, I'm just trying to enjoy what rays of sunshine the Gods are sending me for the time that they are sent. I know the dark will fall again, and that's a looming fear, but it's summer, and I'm just trying to be a 'normal' girl as much as I can.
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* This best friend is the 'new' one.
I've been waking up early - for me - which is anywhere between 7:30 and 9:30, and just automatically getting dressed, putting on some makeup... doing what I would do to get myself ready for something. This is good. I'm getting ready every morning.. for the day. So I wake up, get ready, and either make a coffee or a smoothie. Then I read (leisure) for about a half hour, until I decide I should at least attempt to be productive in my coursework.
Today, I got one more lesson in my book done. There are five lessons in four books, and I've just started this course - which I'm told is a "really heavy course"... but the book I have to read and barely analyse is Stephen King's The Body. It's not even technically a book. It's a novella. It's in a compilation of his other short stories. And it's written for twelve-year-olds.
That's enough of my griping. I got the end of lesson assignment done today, which made me feel accomplished. Like I'd done something productive and was therefore allowed to do as I please.
My best friend* is getting home from Hollywood on Saturday, and we made plans for Monday. I'm actually really excited to - leave the house - and see her. We're meeting at this local hipster coffeehouse down the street from my apartment, and then coming back to my apartment to watch bad horror movies. .... And she's said she has presents for me... which I feel guilty for getting excited about.
DBT group is going well... I made a friend.. I think. She's older and LGBTQIA and a Buddhist, former Wiccan... a few weeks ago we ended up talking about crystals. Long story short, this Tuesday we've planned to go to this crystal shop together. I'm nervous and excited.
Another thing with DBT group.. every week before homework we do a mindfulness exercise. I 'volunteered' to lead it this coming Tuesday, and I'm anxious about it. However, I came up with what I think is a decent idea. I found a container we never use, and went to the dollar store and bought a pack of decorative seashells. When I get to the CPC - Community Psychiatry Centre - before group, I'm just going to duck into a bathroom and fill the container with some water. The shells will be immersed in the water. The logic is that water as an element represents emotions, feeling, healing, cleansing.. all good things for folks in a DBT group. I'm going to explain the significance of this, and ask that everyone take a shell from the 'pond'. It'll be an 'observe and describe' mindfulness, because the shells are all the same type of shell, but there are always tiny abnormalities and differences. So, I'm going to give everyone about five minutes or so, to feel the moist shell, touch it, feel it, and think about how it's just that little bit different. ...... I really hope this isn't a terrible idea.
On top of all that positivity, I get to start violin lessons on Wednesday. My boyfriend and his boss are in charge of scheduling, so my time slot isn't absolute yet. He did tell me it will probably be in the evening, though, which is nice; what I wanted. I'm so excited to get back into actively learning and playing an instrument. It's therapeutic in the way that horseback riding is. Plus, my individual therapist is loving the music idea.
Overall, I'm just trying to enjoy what rays of sunshine the Gods are sending me for the time that they are sent. I know the dark will fall again, and that's a looming fear, but it's summer, and I'm just trying to be a 'normal' girl as much as I can.
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* This best friend is the 'new' one.
Wednesday, 1 July 2015
Forgive Me
... I forgot I ran this blog. So, please, my dears, forgive me. I'll do my best to re-cap.
The last post I made was in May... early May, so I'll start there. May was hard for me, really, brutally, teeth-grittingly hard for me. Flashbacks, all the lot of what you can get with PTSD. It sucked. I was a mess. .... Even more so than usual. However, my (awesome) individual therapist has been helping me with that, and she had me go to a CPT for PTSD information session near the end of the month. Trauma treatment is not a thing I'm excited about, but I know I just can't live like this forever. I can't. With that in mind, my therapist is trying to get me ready to start trauma treatment in (I think) late September. She thinks that if I do this treatment while I'm still in DBT for BPD, it'll be easier, because I'll be able to use and keep learning skills that can help me tolerate what this trauma treatment demands. I'm mostly just going along with whatever she thinks is best, or what she thinks I'm ready for. If I let myself completely be in charge of those decisions, I never would have gotten help to begin with. So that was May. Teary, tumultuous, just ... bad. Dark.
That's not to say I'm a ray of sunshine today, though.
June was better, I'll say that. I finished my philosophy course - which felt like a big achievement given all the 'vulnerability factors' - and started a new course, studies in literature. I can carry it into the summer, and even though the school is only open on Wednesday afternoons in the summer, I get to get - hopefully - another credit. My guidance counselor is hopeful that they'll be able to grant me about five or six 'freebie' credits based on life experience/etc. ... Which would mean that I only have to take between one and three courses in order to graduate. Which would allow me to graduate around January. Which would have me registering for college. I'm really happy about that.
Another development is my quickly-expanding friendship with a girl I've been 'kind of good-ish' friends with since late 2013. She and I have been spending a lot of time together - we have similar mental health issues; we both kind of.. have no one else*; we have a lot in common, we just get along. We just 'get' each other. I don't feel like I have to wear my daedric armor around her.. she's safe.
The anniversary of my being recovered from drug addiction was.. well, it was hard. I had intense cravings the night before and the day of. I resolved to celebrate only the 'big' anniversaries. This was six years.
Church/temple's been going really well, too. I'm getting to know a lot of people and I'm feeling really accepted. I've never had a community like this before, and it's just blowing me away at how positive it feels.
And now, to the now. Summer's out, so the boyfriend is working less. I'd really like it if we could go to the zoo or to a conservation area and go swimming. I'm - hopefully - starting violin lessons soon, I just need my boyfriend to get it all squared away - he's in charge of sign-ups. I'm trying to write more. I'm trying to enter into participation more. I'm trying to be more social. I'm trying to start doing nice things for myself.
Also, on a 'meds' tangent, I'm two weeks into taking Abilify and haven't noticed too much. Any experience or advice is welcomed.
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*Story time: My 'best friend', the one I've known since kindergarten, has in the past year or so begun to prove herself as not the kind of friend I want in my life as an adult, increasingly so. I haven't trusted her in well over six years, and I'm afraid a falling out would mean a spilling of my secrets. She's a very narcissistic person but also plays the martyr.
The last post I made was in May... early May, so I'll start there. May was hard for me, really, brutally, teeth-grittingly hard for me. Flashbacks, all the lot of what you can get with PTSD. It sucked. I was a mess. .... Even more so than usual. However, my (awesome) individual therapist has been helping me with that, and she had me go to a CPT for PTSD information session near the end of the month. Trauma treatment is not a thing I'm excited about, but I know I just can't live like this forever. I can't. With that in mind, my therapist is trying to get me ready to start trauma treatment in (I think) late September. She thinks that if I do this treatment while I'm still in DBT for BPD, it'll be easier, because I'll be able to use and keep learning skills that can help me tolerate what this trauma treatment demands. I'm mostly just going along with whatever she thinks is best, or what she thinks I'm ready for. If I let myself completely be in charge of those decisions, I never would have gotten help to begin with. So that was May. Teary, tumultuous, just ... bad. Dark.
That's not to say I'm a ray of sunshine today, though.
June was better, I'll say that. I finished my philosophy course - which felt like a big achievement given all the 'vulnerability factors' - and started a new course, studies in literature. I can carry it into the summer, and even though the school is only open on Wednesday afternoons in the summer, I get to get - hopefully - another credit. My guidance counselor is hopeful that they'll be able to grant me about five or six 'freebie' credits based on life experience/etc. ... Which would mean that I only have to take between one and three courses in order to graduate. Which would allow me to graduate around January. Which would have me registering for college. I'm really happy about that.
Another development is my quickly-expanding friendship with a girl I've been 'kind of good-ish' friends with since late 2013. She and I have been spending a lot of time together - we have similar mental health issues; we both kind of.. have no one else*; we have a lot in common, we just get along. We just 'get' each other. I don't feel like I have to wear my daedric armor around her.. she's safe.
The anniversary of my being recovered from drug addiction was.. well, it was hard. I had intense cravings the night before and the day of. I resolved to celebrate only the 'big' anniversaries. This was six years.
Church/temple's been going really well, too. I'm getting to know a lot of people and I'm feeling really accepted. I've never had a community like this before, and it's just blowing me away at how positive it feels.
And now, to the now. Summer's out, so the boyfriend is working less. I'd really like it if we could go to the zoo or to a conservation area and go swimming. I'm - hopefully - starting violin lessons soon, I just need my boyfriend to get it all squared away - he's in charge of sign-ups. I'm trying to write more. I'm trying to enter into participation more. I'm trying to be more social. I'm trying to start doing nice things for myself.
Also, on a 'meds' tangent, I'm two weeks into taking Abilify and haven't noticed too much. Any experience or advice is welcomed.
--------------------------------------------------
*Story time: My 'best friend', the one I've known since kindergarten, has in the past year or so begun to prove herself as not the kind of friend I want in my life as an adult, increasingly so. I haven't trusted her in well over six years, and I'm afraid a falling out would mean a spilling of my secrets. She's a very narcissistic person but also plays the martyr.
Thursday, 30 April 2015
Wear Purple
Tomorrow is May 1.
I didn't know it until today, but May is sexual assault awareness month, and there's this campaign. 'No One Asks For It!' encourages people to wear purple in a show of support, and it's all across Canada, which is pretty neat. It's a simple idea, and it'd be really cool if it caught on and the hashtag trended. It's listed as an event on Facebook, and I'm sure would be easy to find - I decided to keep the link out of the post.
I love that this is a thing, and I'll absolutely be wearing what little purple clothing I own. Though I do worry a little about how much I publicly involve myself, especially on social media. I don't think I can take any prying questions about my experiences. I think, though, that it's important to try.
I find it hard, sometimes, being in the positions of both activist and affected. I feel like it's important to be vocal about these issues, but it can get really uncomfortable when you, as a victim, inevitably feel some sensitivity. It makes it hard to lead a rally.
Tomorrow is May 1. Sexual assault awareness month begins. #NoOneAsksForIt.
I am an 'affected'. I am a victim. I am a survivor.
It's been years, and it's still harder than I would've imagined. I don't like to talk about my experience or really give any details, but I feel very connected to this campaign. I wish I could be stronger. I wish I didn't equate strength to being able to 'get over' a trauma. What I mean is that I wish I had my PTSD under control, and knew how to cope, and was able to advocate the campaign and talk about myself, rather than uncomfortably always speaking in the third person and making everything objective. .....But that isn't where I'm at yet, and that's okay. I'll get there. This is the year that I decided to eventually go into PTSD/trauma treatment. When I'm ready. When my therapist thinks I'm ready. For now, this is the best I can do. But it's real, and it's important.
Tomorrow is important. It's important that people are participating and paying attention. It's amazing, and the support is beautiful.
I didn't know it until today, but May is sexual assault awareness month, and there's this campaign. 'No One Asks For It!' encourages people to wear purple in a show of support, and it's all across Canada, which is pretty neat. It's a simple idea, and it'd be really cool if it caught on and the hashtag trended. It's listed as an event on Facebook, and I'm sure would be easy to find - I decided to keep the link out of the post.
I love that this is a thing, and I'll absolutely be wearing what little purple clothing I own. Though I do worry a little about how much I publicly involve myself, especially on social media. I don't think I can take any prying questions about my experiences. I think, though, that it's important to try.
I find it hard, sometimes, being in the positions of both activist and affected. I feel like it's important to be vocal about these issues, but it can get really uncomfortable when you, as a victim, inevitably feel some sensitivity. It makes it hard to lead a rally.
Tomorrow is May 1. Sexual assault awareness month begins. #NoOneAsksForIt.
I am an 'affected'. I am a victim. I am a survivor.
It's been years, and it's still harder than I would've imagined. I don't like to talk about my experience or really give any details, but I feel very connected to this campaign. I wish I could be stronger. I wish I didn't equate strength to being able to 'get over' a trauma. What I mean is that I wish I had my PTSD under control, and knew how to cope, and was able to advocate the campaign and talk about myself, rather than uncomfortably always speaking in the third person and making everything objective. .....But that isn't where I'm at yet, and that's okay. I'll get there. This is the year that I decided to eventually go into PTSD/trauma treatment. When I'm ready. When my therapist thinks I'm ready. For now, this is the best I can do. But it's real, and it's important.
Tomorrow is important. It's important that people are participating and paying attention. It's amazing, and the support is beautiful.
Illuminated by Forty-Nine Candles
It's been two days, going on three, so I feel like I can safely say - without 'jinxing' anything - that I'm feeling better than usual. I'm feeling better than I have in months. I'm feeling better than I have since 2014, probably earlier.
I haven't cried since Monday. I haven't felt so anxious or depressed that it was overwhelming since Monday.
I feel productive. I feel good about school - I feel like I'm doing well and that there actually is some 'light at the end of the tunnel' that is my 'high school' career. I want to get up in the morning. I don't feel sleep-deprived. I have energy. I'm enjoying things.
I feel like, at least for now, I'm out of 'crazy mode'. I feel like I can switch to 'girlfriend mode' and do all the things I want to do with my boyfriend. Or to 'student mode' and work harder at school. It's nice. I know that this spell of feeling better can't last - it never does -, but I feel so good. I don't even feel that good. I don't even feel happy.. but I'm actually experiencing positive emotions and I can't remember the last time I've felt.. normal. Above my baseline, at least.. low as it is. I don't know how to feel what I'm feeling, though. I feel like this, feeling good, doesn't belong to me. Like I don't deserve it. I feel guilty for feeling good. I feel bad for feeling good, because I just don't know how to handle that.
It doesn't matter, though. I'll take it. I know this won't last, so I'm just.. trying not to think about it. I'm trying to just live it, this period of feeling good, and allow myself a break from the stress of literally always being in a low mood, almost completely unable to feel anything positive for more than thirty seconds. It's nice. It feels.. smooth. Like ice, but comfortable. Warm. Like a water slide at a public pool, all warm and cleansing and bright and easy and happy.
I know I'm going to have to face up in May, but I'm trying my best to ignore that inevitability.*
I'm trying my best to feel the sun. I'm feeling good about so many things, without even trying. School. I've been making progress, and I'm finally almost at the end of the booklets for my philosophy course. Therapy. I feel like I'm learning about myself and accepting so much, and I feel really good about my individual therapist. My boyfriend. He's been just as stressed as I have - in completely different ways. I'm just feeling good about things, like I'm accepting things. I've been reading and playing video games, and I've been eating. I've been able to eat more normally than I think I have in a long time. I feel good about being awake. I want to be awake. Clearly, I'm still in a state of surprise about this.
With this Saturday being Beltane, I'm feeling like the way I'm feeling isn't coincidence. Well, it probably is... but with this being an auspicious time, religiously, I feel like the Goddess - and maybe the God, too - has something to do with it. Like somehow maybe this is a reward of sorts for beginning my foray into Wicca.
I'm just feeling good, and I'm trying just live it, not dissect it. I'm treading uncharted waters.
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*My diagnosis of PTSD is related to a trauma that happened in May.
Wednesday, 22 April 2015
Hellmann's
I feel like Bilbo. Thin. Butter, stretched over too much bread.
Only now, I'm not butter. I'm.. Mayonnaise. Someone else's condiment, borrowed, because all I've got is gone, but all I hear is people urging me on. I feel like I've spread out all I have in the time that I have, and everyone is telling me that there is so much... but there's not. I feel like I've lived to capacity - had enough experiences, enough loves and losses and failures and trials and errors and mistakes and rejections and... enough. Just enough. I've lived as much as my mind can take.
But my therapist and my boyfriend and my best friends and my family and the people who aren't much more than Facebook friends, they all think there's still room on my slice of bread. They don't see it completely covered in the paper-thin layer of butter that just can't reach any more. So I borrow energy, drive, light, power, from another, and I'm going over that thin layer of butter with a glossy layer of mayonnaise.
It feels contrived. I know that I could make that mayonnaise my own, but I don't even want it in the first place. What I want is to be gone. Gone, burnt up and mentally somewhere in oblivion or a void or a beautiful shiny white empty place where nothing external exists. I go to that place sometimes, when I'm dissociating. It's beautiful. It's calm. It's quiet. It's safe, and nothing exists but my mind..... and my mind is, for once, silenced.
The mayonnaise fills the holes and gaps in the butter with therapy sessions, nights spent close to my boyfriend, embarrassing attempts at finishing school, waking up in the morning, doing anything. Everything I do now is mayonnaise. My butter ran out, and somebody shoved this jar of mayonnaise at me and said, "Keep going."
It doesn't feel authentic. It feels empty. My current existence... empty.
I reach for the knife, the pills, the keys to lead me astray.. and I have this jar of mayonnaise. Like I should be done, I should be gone, but something, someone wants me here and I have no say in the matter.
I'm just tired. I'm so incredibly tired, and I'm done. I don't know how I go on. It's not like it's because I want to. I feel fleeting positive emotions, but even in the moment they feel foreign to me, like they don't belong, like I don't deserve them, like they've gone the wrong way and are lost here.
I just want that beautiful mental silence. The wonderful shiny white endless nothing where I have no thoughts, no body, nothing. I just want to quiet my head.
Only now, I'm not butter. I'm.. Mayonnaise. Someone else's condiment, borrowed, because all I've got is gone, but all I hear is people urging me on. I feel like I've spread out all I have in the time that I have, and everyone is telling me that there is so much... but there's not. I feel like I've lived to capacity - had enough experiences, enough loves and losses and failures and trials and errors and mistakes and rejections and... enough. Just enough. I've lived as much as my mind can take.
But my therapist and my boyfriend and my best friends and my family and the people who aren't much more than Facebook friends, they all think there's still room on my slice of bread. They don't see it completely covered in the paper-thin layer of butter that just can't reach any more. So I borrow energy, drive, light, power, from another, and I'm going over that thin layer of butter with a glossy layer of mayonnaise.
It feels contrived. I know that I could make that mayonnaise my own, but I don't even want it in the first place. What I want is to be gone. Gone, burnt up and mentally somewhere in oblivion or a void or a beautiful shiny white empty place where nothing external exists. I go to that place sometimes, when I'm dissociating. It's beautiful. It's calm. It's quiet. It's safe, and nothing exists but my mind..... and my mind is, for once, silenced.
The mayonnaise fills the holes and gaps in the butter with therapy sessions, nights spent close to my boyfriend, embarrassing attempts at finishing school, waking up in the morning, doing anything. Everything I do now is mayonnaise. My butter ran out, and somebody shoved this jar of mayonnaise at me and said, "Keep going."
It doesn't feel authentic. It feels empty. My current existence... empty.
I reach for the knife, the pills, the keys to lead me astray.. and I have this jar of mayonnaise. Like I should be done, I should be gone, but something, someone wants me here and I have no say in the matter.
I'm just tired. I'm so incredibly tired, and I'm done. I don't know how I go on. It's not like it's because I want to. I feel fleeting positive emotions, but even in the moment they feel foreign to me, like they don't belong, like I don't deserve them, like they've gone the wrong way and are lost here.
I just want that beautiful mental silence. The wonderful shiny white endless nothing where I have no thoughts, no body, nothing. I just want to quiet my head.
Tuesday, 21 April 2015
Speedbump Update
Looking back to the last time I posted here: I was a mess.
I still am, really.
I'm just a bit more anchored to life than then.
I started group DBT; this morning was my second group. It's a group of all women, and they all seem nice enough. I think I'm still too anxious to think about making a friend there. The group itself is.. confusing. The week that I started, they were doing one of the 'hard' parts of DBT. (Dialectics.) So, it didn't quite take, but I have at least a year of this to get it right. Today.. this week is mindfulness.. it makes a little more sense.
I've still been having my individual sessions with my therapist, and they're going really well.
I'm a rollercoaster in black-and-white. I get down, so down - 'pits of hell' down - and when I start to feel better, I start to feel worse because I shouldn't be allowed to feel good, or I don't deserve it, or I start feeling worse simply because I'd even instantaneously felt some relief.
My going to the Wiccan Church is helping... it's really great. I even made a friend there. Everyone else is wonderful and nice and welcoming. My therapist thinks this - religion - is good for me. Having a higher power to place faith in when I need help.
I don't have too much to tell, it'd just been a while.
I still am, really.
I'm just a bit more anchored to life than then.
I started group DBT; this morning was my second group. It's a group of all women, and they all seem nice enough. I think I'm still too anxious to think about making a friend there. The group itself is.. confusing. The week that I started, they were doing one of the 'hard' parts of DBT. (Dialectics.) So, it didn't quite take, but I have at least a year of this to get it right. Today.. this week is mindfulness.. it makes a little more sense.
I've still been having my individual sessions with my therapist, and they're going really well.
I'm a rollercoaster in black-and-white. I get down, so down - 'pits of hell' down - and when I start to feel better, I start to feel worse because I shouldn't be allowed to feel good, or I don't deserve it, or I start feeling worse simply because I'd even instantaneously felt some relief.
My going to the Wiccan Church is helping... it's really great. I even made a friend there. Everyone else is wonderful and nice and welcoming. My therapist thinks this - religion - is good for me. Having a higher power to place faith in when I need help.
I don't have too much to tell, it'd just been a while.
Monday, 30 March 2015
I'm Still Alive
It's been a tumultuous couple of weeks.
My depression - that usually spans October/November - February - is continuing into April with a vengeance. It's gotten bad.
Last week, on Thursday, I wanted to kill myself. I wanted to do it. I was going to do it. I could barely stop to catch a thought, my mind was racing. I was hysterical, crying and incoherent. It was when I got home from my CBT group, and it was about 4PM, so my boyfriend was at work. I called him, because I didn't know what to do, and he's the first person I turn to in every situation. In retrospect, I feel incredibly guilty for putting him in that position. He couldn't leave work, and I made him worry he'd come home to me passed out, or a corpse.
So I called a local youth crisis hotline. I'd never called before. I'd always had my boyfriend call and speak for me, because I would get too anxious and I would be crying so hard I couldn't speak properly. Well, that was still the case this time. I don't know how I managed to make the call, but I'm kind of glad that I did. It was a woman who answered, and she was really helpful. We talked for about a half hour, and I felt much more calm, and a little in control by the end of it.
I was going to call a local shelter - more of a safe environment really - to see if I could just go there for a few hours until I felt safe, but I felt like I was okay enough to try to stay safe on my own.
I took a hot shower, used my favorite body wash - strong smells can be grounding - , put on comfortable clothes, made a tea, put a movie - Twilight - on, and got my 3DS and the stuffed Hello Kitty that my boyfriend gave me. I curled up in a blanket writing in my journal, and I tried to be okay. I made it through the night... obviously.
I've been more in control every day since, but every day I still have strong thoughts and urges to hurt and kill myself.
I don't know how to cope. I've been drinking more than I should but I don't care. I woke up for school this morning and went back to sleep for an hour and a half before I finally got up and half-assedly went to school.
I've been trying to write more, because I can turn my blood into ink. I've been listening to music.. a lot. I've been amping up my studies in Wicca, and just today I picked up some more incense for the coming full moon and invoking Hecate, and to dispel the negativity in my life; also picked up a leather bag just the right size for my raw clear quartz point on a string. I burned frankincense earlier today, and cleansed the crystal, and took the opportunity to attune with the Goddess. I'm finding things that.. not work, but help. Improve the moment.
I've been seeing my new therapist - in the DBT program - weekly, and I feel really positive about that. I feel like she can help me. When I saw her on Friday, we talked about Thursday night, and we talked about why I feel like CBT isn't helping me. She made a good point in asking me if exposures are really going to help me get better if I don't have trauma treatment. That my lack of improvement and progress in my attempted exposures is valid, because I have this impediment that the rest of the women in my CBT group don't have.
I get to start group DBT on the fourteenth, and I'm excited about that. It's going to be hard... really hard, but I need to do it. I can't live like this forever. I mean, I would, I absolutely would... but I want to be the kind of girl my boyfriend can love without stress, keep forever, not have to worry about. I know recovery should come from within, but I'm not quite there. I feel like I'm a little closer to being 'there' now than I was a year ago, so that's something. I don't care if I get better, to be honest. However, I care about my boyfriend - I love him more than I hate myself, most of the time - and I want to be better, healthy, recovering and eventually recovered for him. If nothing else, I want a life with him. I also have my goal of becoming a published poet.. so I have little motivators.
I get to - finally - see the psychiatrist on the ninth, which is a great thing, because my medications are in need of some serious tweaking. I know I need my Valium upped. I want to up my Wellbutrin, because now that my purging is almost completely under control I'm much less at risk for seizures, and my depression is at a point where I feel like I need .. more. I love Wellbutrin. I haven't gained at all on it, and I had virtually no side effects, and it just.. works. I just need a little more. .... And I feel like something needs to be done about my psychosis. I'm on Lithium and Saphris - antipsychotics - and I feel like something could be done with that. .... And now that I think of it, I'd like to up my Clonidine - sleep medication - too, because I'm on a very minimal dose, and it doesn't do as much as it could in terms of keeping trauma nightmares at bay.
I don't know what I'm doing. I feel like I'm robotic, just going through the motions and every day is the same, occasionally needing to re-charge and being completely useless for a time.
So I'm still here. Alive. Safe.
I'm not okay, but I'm doing my best.
My depression - that usually spans October/November - February - is continuing into April with a vengeance. It's gotten bad.
Last week, on Thursday, I wanted to kill myself. I wanted to do it. I was going to do it. I could barely stop to catch a thought, my mind was racing. I was hysterical, crying and incoherent. It was when I got home from my CBT group, and it was about 4PM, so my boyfriend was at work. I called him, because I didn't know what to do, and he's the first person I turn to in every situation. In retrospect, I feel incredibly guilty for putting him in that position. He couldn't leave work, and I made him worry he'd come home to me passed out, or a corpse.
So I called a local youth crisis hotline. I'd never called before. I'd always had my boyfriend call and speak for me, because I would get too anxious and I would be crying so hard I couldn't speak properly. Well, that was still the case this time. I don't know how I managed to make the call, but I'm kind of glad that I did. It was a woman who answered, and she was really helpful. We talked for about a half hour, and I felt much more calm, and a little in control by the end of it.
I was going to call a local shelter - more of a safe environment really - to see if I could just go there for a few hours until I felt safe, but I felt like I was okay enough to try to stay safe on my own.
I took a hot shower, used my favorite body wash - strong smells can be grounding - , put on comfortable clothes, made a tea, put a movie - Twilight - on, and got my 3DS and the stuffed Hello Kitty that my boyfriend gave me. I curled up in a blanket writing in my journal, and I tried to be okay. I made it through the night... obviously.
I've been more in control every day since, but every day I still have strong thoughts and urges to hurt and kill myself.
I don't know how to cope. I've been drinking more than I should but I don't care. I woke up for school this morning and went back to sleep for an hour and a half before I finally got up and half-assedly went to school.
I've been trying to write more, because I can turn my blood into ink. I've been listening to music.. a lot. I've been amping up my studies in Wicca, and just today I picked up some more incense for the coming full moon and invoking Hecate, and to dispel the negativity in my life; also picked up a leather bag just the right size for my raw clear quartz point on a string. I burned frankincense earlier today, and cleansed the crystal, and took the opportunity to attune with the Goddess. I'm finding things that.. not work, but help. Improve the moment.
I've been seeing my new therapist - in the DBT program - weekly, and I feel really positive about that. I feel like she can help me. When I saw her on Friday, we talked about Thursday night, and we talked about why I feel like CBT isn't helping me. She made a good point in asking me if exposures are really going to help me get better if I don't have trauma treatment. That my lack of improvement and progress in my attempted exposures is valid, because I have this impediment that the rest of the women in my CBT group don't have.
I get to start group DBT on the fourteenth, and I'm excited about that. It's going to be hard... really hard, but I need to do it. I can't live like this forever. I mean, I would, I absolutely would... but I want to be the kind of girl my boyfriend can love without stress, keep forever, not have to worry about. I know recovery should come from within, but I'm not quite there. I feel like I'm a little closer to being 'there' now than I was a year ago, so that's something. I don't care if I get better, to be honest. However, I care about my boyfriend - I love him more than I hate myself, most of the time - and I want to be better, healthy, recovering and eventually recovered for him. If nothing else, I want a life with him. I also have my goal of becoming a published poet.. so I have little motivators.
I get to - finally - see the psychiatrist on the ninth, which is a great thing, because my medications are in need of some serious tweaking. I know I need my Valium upped. I want to up my Wellbutrin, because now that my purging is almost completely under control I'm much less at risk for seizures, and my depression is at a point where I feel like I need .. more. I love Wellbutrin. I haven't gained at all on it, and I had virtually no side effects, and it just.. works. I just need a little more. .... And I feel like something needs to be done about my psychosis. I'm on Lithium and Saphris - antipsychotics - and I feel like something could be done with that. .... And now that I think of it, I'd like to up my Clonidine - sleep medication - too, because I'm on a very minimal dose, and it doesn't do as much as it could in terms of keeping trauma nightmares at bay.
I don't know what I'm doing. I feel like I'm robotic, just going through the motions and every day is the same, occasionally needing to re-charge and being completely useless for a time.
So I'm still here. Alive. Safe.
I'm not okay, but I'm doing my best.
Monday, 16 March 2015
Post-Birthday Update
My birthday came and passed, and I'm still alive. I'm not sure exactly how I feel about that, but I'm trying to see things in a less (completely) negative light.
My boyfriend bought me this really nice metal travel mug that I know was expensive as hell, and he's giving me a bunch of money to see Andrew Jackson Jihad on the 24th, which is too nice of him.. so it's a good present(s).
I had plans to go out with my mother to get coffee and get our nails done. I really thought about cancelling because I hadn't voluntarily seen her in probably a year or more, but I ended up going. It was... awkward, initially, but we started talking, just casual light catch-up stuff. She gave me a book for my birthday - 9-11 by Noam Chomsky - which was really sweet, because I`m pretty sure I`ve only ever mentioned liking his stuff once or twice, and that was while I was still living with her.
We got our nails done, which was nice. We got to talk but nothing of real weight because, well, very public. Afterward we went to go get another coffee, and ended up talking until around 9:30pm. We caught up on years. It was really good. I feel like it`s safe to have her in my life again. She`s doing really well, and knowing what she`s gone through - and having gone through it myself - I feel rather proud of her. I`m just really glad I can be in regular contact with her again. I really did miss her.. I just didn`t realise the extent until we talked.
I`m alive. I didn`t feel the need to drink heavily, or feel the urge to attempt any more than I usually do. Less so, even.
I`m not sure if being off school for a week will be helpful in terms of mental rest, but at least I have the ability to take time to rest. I have, however, been doing some schoolwork. I got more work for the break, in case I finish the book I`m on and want to do more work.
My dad told me that he and my step-mom are probably coming down to visit next weekend - they were going to come for my birthday, but my dad planned it so last minute that they couldn`t make it. They live about five or six hours north of me. When I do see them, though, it will probably include some sort of family gathering - I don`t have a big family, just grandparents and two sets of aunts and uncles and cousins. It`ll be nice, though, because my dad will probably have my birthday present. He ordered it online and it didn`t come in time. Plus, seeing extended family so soon after my birthday almost guarantees birthday money. That would be infinitely helpful in getting started with Wicca.
This week is going to be okay. I`m going to make it okay. I have CBT group on Thursday, and I have my one-on-one with my new DBT therapist on Friday. I`m going to read a lot, rest my mind, and just try to live.
My boyfriend bought me this really nice metal travel mug that I know was expensive as hell, and he's giving me a bunch of money to see Andrew Jackson Jihad on the 24th, which is too nice of him.. so it's a good present(s).
I had plans to go out with my mother to get coffee and get our nails done. I really thought about cancelling because I hadn't voluntarily seen her in probably a year or more, but I ended up going. It was... awkward, initially, but we started talking, just casual light catch-up stuff. She gave me a book for my birthday - 9-11 by Noam Chomsky - which was really sweet, because I`m pretty sure I`ve only ever mentioned liking his stuff once or twice, and that was while I was still living with her.
We got our nails done, which was nice. We got to talk but nothing of real weight because, well, very public. Afterward we went to go get another coffee, and ended up talking until around 9:30pm. We caught up on years. It was really good. I feel like it`s safe to have her in my life again. She`s doing really well, and knowing what she`s gone through - and having gone through it myself - I feel rather proud of her. I`m just really glad I can be in regular contact with her again. I really did miss her.. I just didn`t realise the extent until we talked.
I`m alive. I didn`t feel the need to drink heavily, or feel the urge to attempt any more than I usually do. Less so, even.
I`m not sure if being off school for a week will be helpful in terms of mental rest, but at least I have the ability to take time to rest. I have, however, been doing some schoolwork. I got more work for the break, in case I finish the book I`m on and want to do more work.
My dad told me that he and my step-mom are probably coming down to visit next weekend - they were going to come for my birthday, but my dad planned it so last minute that they couldn`t make it. They live about five or six hours north of me. When I do see them, though, it will probably include some sort of family gathering - I don`t have a big family, just grandparents and two sets of aunts and uncles and cousins. It`ll be nice, though, because my dad will probably have my birthday present. He ordered it online and it didn`t come in time. Plus, seeing extended family so soon after my birthday almost guarantees birthday money. That would be infinitely helpful in getting started with Wicca.
This week is going to be okay. I`m going to make it okay. I have CBT group on Thursday, and I have my one-on-one with my new DBT therapist on Friday. I`m going to read a lot, rest my mind, and just try to live.
Friday, 13 March 2015
What I Want
My new therapist, today, asked me what it'll look like, when I get into therapy and start learning coping skills and start getting better.
What I want it to look like.
My answers were, in my opinion, lacklustre. Going to college, improving the relationships I have.
What I want in my life that I don't right now, because of my illnesses.
If money weren't an issue, I want to be riding again. I need it. So, a job. If I had a job, I'd have the money to ride again - believe me, it's expensive to take lessons and buy everything necessary.
That part of the conversation reminded me of what I want, what my ultimate life goals are. What I feel I must accomplish before I die.
Become a published poet - even if only 100 copies of my collection is printed.
And, if I get so lucky, buy a horse. I do, technically, have a horse at my grandparents', but as I've said, she's pretty old for a horse and can't do most of the things I want to do. She is a huge sweetheart, though, and will always be up for a hack in the fields - being a mare though, she does have a tendency to be an asshole from time to time. I have the scars on my chin (fell on my face so as to break my fall properly and not break my neck which easily could have happened) to prove it. I used to take lessons, but stopped. I loved it though. It was the highlight of every week. Mucking out a stall actually makes me happy.
I have things to look forward to. I have things I want to do, to have. I have reasons to stay a while longer. I have a great love. I have two best friends whom I can say I actually trust. I have the opportunities to try to get better, through therapies that are completely free to me because I live in Canada. I have so many books I want to read. I have religions to explore. I have places to see. I have tattoos to get.
I will make it to ten minutes from now. I will make it to thirty minutes from now. I will make it to an hour from now. I will make it to safely getting myself to bed. I will make it to the morning, and in the morning, I'll take it as slow as I need to.
I think I just decided to live, for the time being.
What I want it to look like.
My answers were, in my opinion, lacklustre. Going to college, improving the relationships I have.
What I want in my life that I don't right now, because of my illnesses.
If money weren't an issue, I want to be riding again. I need it. So, a job. If I had a job, I'd have the money to ride again - believe me, it's expensive to take lessons and buy everything necessary.
That part of the conversation reminded me of what I want, what my ultimate life goals are. What I feel I must accomplish before I die.
Become a published poet - even if only 100 copies of my collection is printed.
And, if I get so lucky, buy a horse. I do, technically, have a horse at my grandparents', but as I've said, she's pretty old for a horse and can't do most of the things I want to do. She is a huge sweetheart, though, and will always be up for a hack in the fields - being a mare though, she does have a tendency to be an asshole from time to time. I have the scars on my chin (fell on my face so as to break my fall properly and not break my neck which easily could have happened) to prove it. I used to take lessons, but stopped. I loved it though. It was the highlight of every week. Mucking out a stall actually makes me happy.
I have things to look forward to. I have things I want to do, to have. I have reasons to stay a while longer. I have a great love. I have two best friends whom I can say I actually trust. I have the opportunities to try to get better, through therapies that are completely free to me because I live in Canada. I have so many books I want to read. I have religions to explore. I have places to see. I have tattoos to get.
I will make it to ten minutes from now. I will make it to thirty minutes from now. I will make it to an hour from now. I will make it to safely getting myself to bed. I will make it to the morning, and in the morning, I'll take it as slow as I need to.
I think I just decided to live, for the time being.
Well, This was Unexpected
It's the night before my birthday. Twenty-second, if anyone's interested.
It's causing... major depression... and suicidal thoughts. Including plans and intent. I just.. I never planned - when I was in my early teens, I made myself a promise that I wouldn't live to nineteen. When I did, however, make it to nineteen, that old promise wasn't on my mind. I celebrated by going out with my grandparents, and later going for drinks with a friend. I had reasons to live. I had a life I felt was worth living. Sure, I was working part-time at a pizza place and I'd dropped out of high school, but I had my boyfriend. I had - still have - this great love, this wonderful, beautiful man who loved me for every good, bad, and `somewhere in between` thing that makes me up.
Well, as time went on, my mental health got worse, and I`ve said before that I got to a point at which I was attempting several times. I did almost everything I could to succeed. My boyfriend had other plans. He has physically restrained me multiple times, stripped me down in an instant and thrown me into the coldest possible shower - dive reflex - taken me and stayed with me in emergency psych, everything. He did his homework on every of my diagnoses, and he loves me harder than I deserve. He`s why I`m alive. Cheesy, I know, but when you think you have no reason to live, any motivation is good motivation.. and I think in time, eventually, I`ll be recovering for myself.
My twentieth and twenty-first birthdays weren`t upsetting. They were nice. Drinking with friends, having a casual gathering of safe people.
This year, for some reason, it`s different. I don`t know if it`s because my mental health just still isn`t getting better, or maybe is getting worse, but the idea of having lived one more year in this consciousness is repellent, abhorrent, terrifying to me.
Like I said before, the notion of dying at twenty-seven is ... intruiging - five more years.. I think I might be able to manage five more years. More intruiging is dying on my birthday.. better still, dying the night before.
I'm working so, so hard, just to stay. To think of reasons why.
I have my boyfriend.. and he loves me, or at least makes a very convincing falsehood. He's told me he would be (his words) a wreck if I died. If I killed myself.
I have small events and things coming up I'm excited about. I'm seeing one of my favorite bands with one of my best friends on the 24th. I'm doing well in school. I'm finally able to start the therapy I've been waiting a year and a half for. I'm reconciling with my mother - tomorrow, we're supposed to go get our nails done together and catch up. My boyfriend spent money he didn't have on a present for me.. and as much as I feel guilty that he spent money on me, I love presents. Little celebrations help me get though things.
What's huge right now is therapy. I just today had my first appointment with my new DBT therapist. She's lovely, an older white woman who seems... relatable.. like I can, eventually, be open with. I'll get to start group therapy in about a month. I know DBT works for me, and this program is a million times more intensive than the one I did in 2013... so that's a reason to stick around. Why not wait a couple of months, see if therapy helps or even does anything? It's worth a shot, right? Maybe I'll even start to get better, or make progress. I want to learn how to cope, and I want to live forever with my boyfriend. Logically, it's easy to see that I shouldn't attempt. I have love in my life, supports in place, goals - I want to get my high school diploma, go to journalism school, and be a published writer/poet. In that order. Those are things I want out of life. I want to be published, and I want a horse. I'm trying my best to focus on things that could happen in the future that would be good enough to make me hold on. Graduating high school. Applying to colleges and universities, and getting an acceptance letter. Maybe even getting married - that 'maybe' was brought to you by commitmentphobia. Buying my first horse. Traveling. Seeing more than this section of the world. Writing for sources I love - Jezebel, Feministing, Bitch Media. Writing poems I'm proud enough of to try to get published, and actually getting published.
Right now, I'm trying to keep myself safe. I've confined myself to the living room - I brought water, snacks, the stuffed Hello Kitty my boyfriend got me (that's really just comforting), I have Netflix, Animal Crossing and Pokemon, music, I have my journal and my poetry notebook, I have a number to call if things start getting out of hand... I'm doing all that I can to make it through the night.
That's all I can do. Go day by day.
But that sickly sweet desire is smelling stronger.
It's causing... major depression... and suicidal thoughts. Including plans and intent. I just.. I never planned - when I was in my early teens, I made myself a promise that I wouldn't live to nineteen. When I did, however, make it to nineteen, that old promise wasn't on my mind. I celebrated by going out with my grandparents, and later going for drinks with a friend. I had reasons to live. I had a life I felt was worth living. Sure, I was working part-time at a pizza place and I'd dropped out of high school, but I had my boyfriend. I had - still have - this great love, this wonderful, beautiful man who loved me for every good, bad, and `somewhere in between` thing that makes me up.
Well, as time went on, my mental health got worse, and I`ve said before that I got to a point at which I was attempting several times. I did almost everything I could to succeed. My boyfriend had other plans. He has physically restrained me multiple times, stripped me down in an instant and thrown me into the coldest possible shower - dive reflex - taken me and stayed with me in emergency psych, everything. He did his homework on every of my diagnoses, and he loves me harder than I deserve. He`s why I`m alive. Cheesy, I know, but when you think you have no reason to live, any motivation is good motivation.. and I think in time, eventually, I`ll be recovering for myself.
My twentieth and twenty-first birthdays weren`t upsetting. They were nice. Drinking with friends, having a casual gathering of safe people.
This year, for some reason, it`s different. I don`t know if it`s because my mental health just still isn`t getting better, or maybe is getting worse, but the idea of having lived one more year in this consciousness is repellent, abhorrent, terrifying to me.
Like I said before, the notion of dying at twenty-seven is ... intruiging - five more years.. I think I might be able to manage five more years. More intruiging is dying on my birthday.. better still, dying the night before.
I'm working so, so hard, just to stay. To think of reasons why.
I have my boyfriend.. and he loves me, or at least makes a very convincing falsehood. He's told me he would be (his words) a wreck if I died. If I killed myself.
I have small events and things coming up I'm excited about. I'm seeing one of my favorite bands with one of my best friends on the 24th. I'm doing well in school. I'm finally able to start the therapy I've been waiting a year and a half for. I'm reconciling with my mother - tomorrow, we're supposed to go get our nails done together and catch up. My boyfriend spent money he didn't have on a present for me.. and as much as I feel guilty that he spent money on me, I love presents. Little celebrations help me get though things.
What's huge right now is therapy. I just today had my first appointment with my new DBT therapist. She's lovely, an older white woman who seems... relatable.. like I can, eventually, be open with. I'll get to start group therapy in about a month. I know DBT works for me, and this program is a million times more intensive than the one I did in 2013... so that's a reason to stick around. Why not wait a couple of months, see if therapy helps or even does anything? It's worth a shot, right? Maybe I'll even start to get better, or make progress. I want to learn how to cope, and I want to live forever with my boyfriend. Logically, it's easy to see that I shouldn't attempt. I have love in my life, supports in place, goals - I want to get my high school diploma, go to journalism school, and be a published writer/poet. In that order. Those are things I want out of life. I want to be published, and I want a horse. I'm trying my best to focus on things that could happen in the future that would be good enough to make me hold on. Graduating high school. Applying to colleges and universities, and getting an acceptance letter. Maybe even getting married - that 'maybe' was brought to you by commitmentphobia. Buying my first horse. Traveling. Seeing more than this section of the world. Writing for sources I love - Jezebel, Feministing, Bitch Media. Writing poems I'm proud enough of to try to get published, and actually getting published.
Right now, I'm trying to keep myself safe. I've confined myself to the living room - I brought water, snacks, the stuffed Hello Kitty my boyfriend got me (that's really just comforting), I have Netflix, Animal Crossing and Pokemon, music, I have my journal and my poetry notebook, I have a number to call if things start getting out of hand... I'm doing all that I can to make it through the night.
That's all I can do. Go day by day.
But that sickly sweet desire is smelling stronger.
Wednesday, 11 March 2015
Maybe a Kind of Therapy my Therapist Would Disapprove of
So I've been interested in Wicca - rather, learning about it - for probably over six months. A few months ago, I picked up a couple introductory books of sorts (Scott Cunningham's Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner and Soraya's The Witch's Companion)
I've just barely made progress reading the former - as in, I started reading it today - and already I feel like it just.. makes sense. Speaking religiously, from what I'm reading, Wicca is the closest thing to my core religious/spiritual beliefs. As a child, I believed in the power of nature, the likelihood of reincarnation and multiple deities.
I love the idea of rituals, and am very excited to (eventually) perform some. I've been into crystal healing since I was about sixteen, I just didn't associate the powers of the crystals with Wiccan beliefs. (I got clean at sixteen, and wearing an amethyst point made me ... feel strong. I'm not quite sure how else to put that.) I've also been reading my own tarot cards since I was about seventeen, but didn't associate that either.
I've found some great-looking starter sets on Etsy, plus some decently-priced crystal balls and cauldrons because those are the only things the sets don't include. I'm just really hoping for birthday money. My birthday is this Saturday, so there is hope.
To get to the point, I'm feeling like Wicca may well be a very positive thing for me... however, I know that most therapists don't relish the thought of a patient who practices magic and believes in what is typically beyond the normal.. who also has frequent psychosis issues. That's not to say I'm letting that stop me from getting into this, though. I think learning Wicca and becoming a witch could actually help me help myself - I already know that the crystals make me feel stronger. I wear a wire-wrapped rose quartz any time I'm dressed, and I wear stone plugs (in my ears). As of late, I've been wearing tiger's eye. I did have a fantastic malachite pair but they're too small now.
I'm just feeling very positive about this... venture. It feels like a light at the end of what might as well be a literal tunnel, with the way I've been doing lately, and especially given that my birthday is only getting closer.
The Wiccan principle that to hurt your own body is to go against the belief system is actually something I feel like I might be able to convince myself is a good enough reason to try a little more - to stay self-harm free, to work on my eating or at least make eating manageable, and maybe even to try to stay alive.
I don't know. I'm just feeling ... well, not positive, but much less negative.
I've just barely made progress reading the former - as in, I started reading it today - and already I feel like it just.. makes sense. Speaking religiously, from what I'm reading, Wicca is the closest thing to my core religious/spiritual beliefs. As a child, I believed in the power of nature, the likelihood of reincarnation and multiple deities.
I love the idea of rituals, and am very excited to (eventually) perform some. I've been into crystal healing since I was about sixteen, I just didn't associate the powers of the crystals with Wiccan beliefs. (I got clean at sixteen, and wearing an amethyst point made me ... feel strong. I'm not quite sure how else to put that.) I've also been reading my own tarot cards since I was about seventeen, but didn't associate that either.
I've found some great-looking starter sets on Etsy, plus some decently-priced crystal balls and cauldrons because those are the only things the sets don't include. I'm just really hoping for birthday money. My birthday is this Saturday, so there is hope.
To get to the point, I'm feeling like Wicca may well be a very positive thing for me... however, I know that most therapists don't relish the thought of a patient who practices magic and believes in what is typically beyond the normal.. who also has frequent psychosis issues. That's not to say I'm letting that stop me from getting into this, though. I think learning Wicca and becoming a witch could actually help me help myself - I already know that the crystals make me feel stronger. I wear a wire-wrapped rose quartz any time I'm dressed, and I wear stone plugs (in my ears). As of late, I've been wearing tiger's eye. I did have a fantastic malachite pair but they're too small now.
I'm just feeling very positive about this... venture. It feels like a light at the end of what might as well be a literal tunnel, with the way I've been doing lately, and especially given that my birthday is only getting closer.
The Wiccan principle that to hurt your own body is to go against the belief system is actually something I feel like I might be able to convince myself is a good enough reason to try a little more - to stay self-harm free, to work on my eating or at least make eating manageable, and maybe even to try to stay alive.
I don't know. I'm just feeling ... well, not positive, but much less negative.
Thursday, 5 March 2015
I Really Want This to be Positive
So, today is Thurday, which means it's therapy day. More specifically, CBT for mood disorders in group sessions, day.
Every week when we come in, they have us fill out the same questionnaire. Things that evaluate your depression, anxiety, and stress levels. Things like, "I found it hard to wind down this past week," or "I couldn't get excited about anything this past week," or "I felt down-hearted and blue this past week," or "I felt scared for no good reason this past week". Things like that. And then, at the bottom of the page, "Things felt so bad that I had thoughts of killing myself." Every week. If, between 0-3, you score higher than a 1, one of the therapists has to come and at least check in with you.
Every week I'm at least a 2. Sometimes, I add my own '.5' to that 2. Today was a 3.
I feel like the reasons are self-evident, but still.. my depression is getting steadily worse, and quickly. I feel like it has something to do with my birthday coming up, though I can't place why. This past week, I've made suicide plans, thought about my funeral, thought about what to wear and how to do my makeup in preparation for an attempt, whether or not I'd leave a note, whether or not I would attempt at home, all of it. I just haven't started counting out pills, or hoarding a knife, or sneakily buying a fresh pack of blades.
The positive in this is that when I spoke with my therapist as is required, I was honest with her. I told her that there is definite intent, but I feel like I would most likely go to EPT in the event that I was about to attempt. I did tell her that I knew there was a chance that that wouldn't happen.
She told me I need to have a safety plan in place before I need it, so that when I need it, I'll be more likely to actually follow it.
So... my plan is that, if things get to that point, I will
I also feel better, and validated, knowing that my therapist agrees with me that given my depression and suicidal ideation, I should be taking it easy, and not doing any exposures that are too risky.
Every week when we come in, they have us fill out the same questionnaire. Things that evaluate your depression, anxiety, and stress levels. Things like, "I found it hard to wind down this past week," or "I couldn't get excited about anything this past week," or "I felt down-hearted and blue this past week," or "I felt scared for no good reason this past week". Things like that. And then, at the bottom of the page, "Things felt so bad that I had thoughts of killing myself." Every week. If, between 0-3, you score higher than a 1, one of the therapists has to come and at least check in with you.
Every week I'm at least a 2. Sometimes, I add my own '.5' to that 2. Today was a 3.
I feel like the reasons are self-evident, but still.. my depression is getting steadily worse, and quickly. I feel like it has something to do with my birthday coming up, though I can't place why. This past week, I've made suicide plans, thought about my funeral, thought about what to wear and how to do my makeup in preparation for an attempt, whether or not I'd leave a note, whether or not I would attempt at home, all of it. I just haven't started counting out pills, or hoarding a knife, or sneakily buying a fresh pack of blades.
The positive in this is that when I spoke with my therapist as is required, I was honest with her. I told her that there is definite intent, but I feel like I would most likely go to EPT in the event that I was about to attempt. I did tell her that I knew there was a chance that that wouldn't happen.
She told me I need to have a safety plan in place before I need it, so that when I need it, I'll be more likely to actually follow it.
So... my plan is that, if things get to that point, I will
- do the dive reflex (which for me is simply sticking my entire naked body under the coldest shower possible)
- if that doesn't work, reach out to someone trusted (the boyfriend)
- if he's not able to physically help me, go to emergency psych at the hospital.
I also feel better, and validated, knowing that my therapist agrees with me that given my depression and suicidal ideation, I should be taking it easy, and not doing any exposures that are too risky.
Tuesday, 3 March 2015
You'd Think by Now I'd Know How to Cope
Things started getting progressively worse yesterday.
It started off slow, and then hit me all at once. I was crying and incoherent and actively suicidal - though that part I did downplay for the sake of my boyfriend's sanity - and I was feeling. Feeling everything all at once and also not at all.
That carried into today. Once again, the day started off all right... well, less 'all right' than yesterday morning. This morning I started getting ready, putting on makeup, etc. and just found myself wandering back to bed. I sat on the bed beside where he was sleeping, covered him with an extra blanket, and tried to coax a sleepy agreement out of him. Even half-asleep, it didn't work, which is probably for the best. I managed to get myself to school by around 9:20, and got more work done than I'd expected of myself given my current state. As the afternoon rolled around I started feeling worse. At first, I felt like it was manageable. Just a little more depression than usual. No big deal.
By the time I was leaving to catch a bus, I was already a lot worse. I had to stop at a school water fountain to take a Valium - not exactly a confident moment. It took longer than usual to get home, because of the snowstorm we had,
When I did get home, or rather got off the (second) bus that stops on my block, I was already crying. I was completely numb but also hyper-sensitive. This is still the case. When I got in, my boyfriend was in a work call, so I peeled off my wet clothes and put on flannel pyjama pants and my 'sad sweater'.* He had to leave for work almost right after taking calls, so we talked for a few minutes, and he kissed me goodbye a few times, plus one of most comforting hugs known to humankind. (Probably just me, but hey.) I tried to convince him I was okay, but I know he didn't believe it. He's seen me at my worst, and knows what constitutes 'okay'.
When he left, I figured it would be a bad idea to sit around doing nothing, because all that would accomplish would be lingering and possibly worsening negativity. So I made some tea. Harmless. I thought a couple of pieces of shortbread (a comfort food... blame it on my ancestry) might be nice. They sat on the coffee table all of two minutes before my ED shouted "NO" and I had to put them away. That was a moment when things started to really get worse. I couldn't look at them. I felt disgusting just holding them. So, I resolved to simply drink my tea and work on my chords. I tried that, but my hands were so shaky that it took an abnormal amount of time to not get fret buzz or have ... finger issues, for lack of better phrase. I had an 8tracks playlist playing in the background. I don't know why, but I snapped. Every built up negative emotion I'd repressed all day came out. Accordingly, my depression spiraled. My depressive instincts quickly followed suit.
After getting a message on my Tumblr blog from a concerned follower, I decided to take their advice, and do something nice for myself - they suggested a hot bath, but with my ED and PTSD, lying naked in a tub of semi-clear water isn't exactly a good idea. I resolved to do some of the things that work.
Yesterday, I did my nails, and tried to focus on watching movies, but I couldn't shut it all out.
So I thought, amp it up a bit. I was already in my comfy clothes, and I always have my favorite blue blanket on the couch in case I need it (I'm always cold, and a lot of the time, having something soft and warm can be calming or grounding), and I had my tea and a box of tissues (I cry... a lot). I went to the bedroom, grabbed the stuffed Hello Kitty my boyfriend gave me - he also sprayed it with his cologne, which is remarkably comforting - and my kitty ears. The ears (probably seems odd, but as I've said before, I'm a submissive, so this can be comforting to me) pin to my hair and stay put. I went to the kitchen, as quickly as possible, to get a bottle of ice water. As a finishing, and distracting, touch, I decided Disney movies were in order, Horror movies are my favorite, but with my psychosis and paranoia, especially if I'm in a low mood can be a recipe for disaster. I remembered I've never seen any of the Toy Story movies. I found streaming links easily, and that's what I'll be doing upon finishing this post.
What's really prevalent in my mind right now are the very convincing and appealing thoughts, commands, demands, of attempting again.
I texted my boyfriend, who I know is at work, but I know that when I'm feeling this bad it's okay to let him know - and it also forces me to 'promise' to keep myself safe to the best of my ability.
I don't know what the 'message' or the 'take away' from this is, but it's probably close to yesterday's. I'm here. I'm alive because he stopped me more than once, and I've kept it that way because of him, and what I want with him, for us. My writing is a close second. Although I have actually asked close people to publish something I've written in the event that I die before I manage to be a published poet, that's something I want to accomplish. The big something.
So... yes. I'm feeling worse than I have in over a month, and I have 'plans' in mind, but I'm fighting them as hard as I can.
*The 'sad sweater' is a pink and blue Puma hoodie the boy bought from Costco. It's nothing special, but the first time I had to stay a while in emergency pysch at the hospital, I was wearing that sweater. For whatever reason, when I was feeling that badly, that sweater seemed like a good option. So it's oddly comforting.
It started off slow, and then hit me all at once. I was crying and incoherent and actively suicidal - though that part I did downplay for the sake of my boyfriend's sanity - and I was feeling. Feeling everything all at once and also not at all.
That carried into today. Once again, the day started off all right... well, less 'all right' than yesterday morning. This morning I started getting ready, putting on makeup, etc. and just found myself wandering back to bed. I sat on the bed beside where he was sleeping, covered him with an extra blanket, and tried to coax a sleepy agreement out of him. Even half-asleep, it didn't work, which is probably for the best. I managed to get myself to school by around 9:20, and got more work done than I'd expected of myself given my current state. As the afternoon rolled around I started feeling worse. At first, I felt like it was manageable. Just a little more depression than usual. No big deal.
By the time I was leaving to catch a bus, I was already a lot worse. I had to stop at a school water fountain to take a Valium - not exactly a confident moment. It took longer than usual to get home, because of the snowstorm we had,
When I did get home, or rather got off the (second) bus that stops on my block, I was already crying. I was completely numb but also hyper-sensitive. This is still the case. When I got in, my boyfriend was in a work call, so I peeled off my wet clothes and put on flannel pyjama pants and my 'sad sweater'.* He had to leave for work almost right after taking calls, so we talked for a few minutes, and he kissed me goodbye a few times, plus one of most comforting hugs known to humankind. (Probably just me, but hey.) I tried to convince him I was okay, but I know he didn't believe it. He's seen me at my worst, and knows what constitutes 'okay'.
When he left, I figured it would be a bad idea to sit around doing nothing, because all that would accomplish would be lingering and possibly worsening negativity. So I made some tea. Harmless. I thought a couple of pieces of shortbread (a comfort food... blame it on my ancestry) might be nice. They sat on the coffee table all of two minutes before my ED shouted "NO" and I had to put them away. That was a moment when things started to really get worse. I couldn't look at them. I felt disgusting just holding them. So, I resolved to simply drink my tea and work on my chords. I tried that, but my hands were so shaky that it took an abnormal amount of time to not get fret buzz or have ... finger issues, for lack of better phrase. I had an 8tracks playlist playing in the background. I don't know why, but I snapped. Every built up negative emotion I'd repressed all day came out. Accordingly, my depression spiraled. My depressive instincts quickly followed suit.
After getting a message on my Tumblr blog from a concerned follower, I decided to take their advice, and do something nice for myself - they suggested a hot bath, but with my ED and PTSD, lying naked in a tub of semi-clear water isn't exactly a good idea. I resolved to do some of the things that work.
Yesterday, I did my nails, and tried to focus on watching movies, but I couldn't shut it all out.
So I thought, amp it up a bit. I was already in my comfy clothes, and I always have my favorite blue blanket on the couch in case I need it (I'm always cold, and a lot of the time, having something soft and warm can be calming or grounding), and I had my tea and a box of tissues (I cry... a lot). I went to the bedroom, grabbed the stuffed Hello Kitty my boyfriend gave me - he also sprayed it with his cologne, which is remarkably comforting - and my kitty ears. The ears (probably seems odd, but as I've said before, I'm a submissive, so this can be comforting to me) pin to my hair and stay put. I went to the kitchen, as quickly as possible, to get a bottle of ice water. As a finishing, and distracting, touch, I decided Disney movies were in order, Horror movies are my favorite, but with my psychosis and paranoia, especially if I'm in a low mood can be a recipe for disaster. I remembered I've never seen any of the Toy Story movies. I found streaming links easily, and that's what I'll be doing upon finishing this post.
What's really prevalent in my mind right now are the very convincing and appealing thoughts, commands, demands, of attempting again.
I texted my boyfriend, who I know is at work, but I know that when I'm feeling this bad it's okay to let him know - and it also forces me to 'promise' to keep myself safe to the best of my ability.
I don't know what the 'message' or the 'take away' from this is, but it's probably close to yesterday's. I'm here. I'm alive because he stopped me more than once, and I've kept it that way because of him, and what I want with him, for us. My writing is a close second. Although I have actually asked close people to publish something I've written in the event that I die before I manage to be a published poet, that's something I want to accomplish. The big something.
So... yes. I'm feeling worse than I have in over a month, and I have 'plans' in mind, but I'm fighting them as hard as I can.
*The 'sad sweater' is a pink and blue Puma hoodie the boy bought from Costco. It's nothing special, but the first time I had to stay a while in emergency pysch at the hospital, I was wearing that sweater. For whatever reason, when I was feeling that badly, that sweater seemed like a good option. So it's oddly comforting.
Sunday, 1 March 2015
It's March
Just a heads up, lovelies, this post is pretty bleak. It may be triggering, and it may be disconcerting, but I promise you all that I have more than one safety plan in place in the case that I should need it. And I have people who will force me to be safe when I'm refusing as hard as I can. So please, please don't worry that any of this will likely come to fruition.
It's March 1 and after a couple weeks of starting to feel (just the smallest bit) better, I can feel myself spiraling again.
I'm (more) suicidal. I don't even want to bother with trying to numb the feeling with drugs, or booze, or cutting, or anything self destructive. I just want this to be over. I feel like I'm done.
My birthday is on the fourteenth, and for some reason, that's making me feel worse. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because, when I was fifteen I swore to my closest friends that I wouldn't make it past, or even to, nineteen. I feel like now, now I'm formulating a new plan. A death plan B. I keep entertaining the idea of killing myself on my twenty-seventh birthday. Five years. I can use those five years to write - to get serious and actually write something worthy of publication. That's really the only 'goal' I have in life. To be a published poet. Sure, I want to see the world, and I want to own a horse, but when I think about successfully attempting, those things don't matter. Writing does, to some extent - I have attempted multiple times, with every intention of being successful. I hadn't written anything of consequence then.
I'm crying every day, more than once a day. It's really hard, because for the past couple weeks I've been trying to hold myself together just enough so as to not add any more stress to my boyfriend. (Who is normally fully able and willing to deal with me and help me, but he's having problems in work, with his car, with the people who run our apartment building - and I feel that I'm enough of a burden on him on a good day, so.. I've been trying to at least appear less badly than I am.) But with the advent of the month and the looming birthday, plus this is still in my 'bad' part of the year - usually November to April, maximum - I just can't contain myself anymore.
I don't feel hunger. It doesn't register in my brain until I force myself to eat something that my body was hungry. I'm in a constant state of dizziness, shakes, headaches, stomach distress. My body is reacting to my mental state.
I wish that I could be writing a post about how I'm doing better, how treatment is working wonders, how I'm starting to have the ability to feel positive moods, but I can't. This is where I'm at. Everything feels completely transitory and therefore pointless. Yeah, I'm getting mid-90s in class. Yeah, my family and friends are being incredibly supportive. Yeah, I'm getting back into a hobby I've always loved. Yeah, I'm actually making new friends and trying to socialize. None of that matters. It's not enough.
I wake up every morning and go through the motions all day. It's the same structure every day. The same patterns at the same times and the same constant state of mind.
I'm trying. I'm trying harder than I want to, than I believe is worth it. I do things to try to make myself feel less terrible, even for a short period of time. I've been trying to do as much self-care as possible. All of this therapy, friends, family, boyfriend, trying to write, making myself pretty and playing video games and watching happy animated kids' movies to try to decrease the severity of my mood - it's not working.
I keep telling myself that I have things to look forward to. My first appointment with my new therapist the day before my birthday. Going to see Andrew Jackson Jihad ten days after my birthday with one of my best friends. Getting birthday money and presents, and being able to buy myself nice things online, or get another tattoo. Finally starting the DBT program I've been waiting to get into since December of 2013. Summer break, when I'm out of school and my boyfriend isn't teaching, and we can go to the beach, or the zoo, or just go on 2AM drives to drink Tim Hortons tea and talk for hours under the stars. Those things help, temporarily. They remind me that I do care about some things, that some things are exciting enough to make me consider sticking around. That's the positive. I try so hard to focus on those little things. I have so many people rooting for me, but I feel completely alone. Because no one can make my head stop. No one can silence the voices or stop the memories or convince me with certainty that everything really is okay.
But I'm here. I'm trying to stay. I want to want to. For my boyfriend, the one person I'm not afraid to commit to, the first person I've had a healthy romantic relationship with, my rock, my gentle giant, my almost everything. For the poems I haven't written, that haven't been published yet. When it comes down to it, those are my only reasons - but honestly, it's an improvement. Not even six months ago, my boyfriend was my only reason, and the foundation for him being that only reason wasn't as great as it is today.
I suppose a message I can take away from this... public musing... is that... things.. can take what feels like a very long time to get minutely better.. but those tiny additions are important. I wouldn't have realised that writing is one of my reasons to live if I weren't alive. I wouldn't have realised how much I love my boyfriend, how much I want with him, how much a heart can mend and grow, if I weren't alive.
So maybe that's all I've got. I can accept the truly abhorrent nature of my mind at present as the beast that it is. I can try to do that, and try to, every hour, convince myself to make it through to the next hour.
It's March 1 and after a couple weeks of starting to feel (just the smallest bit) better, I can feel myself spiraling again.
I'm (more) suicidal. I don't even want to bother with trying to numb the feeling with drugs, or booze, or cutting, or anything self destructive. I just want this to be over. I feel like I'm done.
My birthday is on the fourteenth, and for some reason, that's making me feel worse. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because, when I was fifteen I swore to my closest friends that I wouldn't make it past, or even to, nineteen. I feel like now, now I'm formulating a new plan. A death plan B. I keep entertaining the idea of killing myself on my twenty-seventh birthday. Five years. I can use those five years to write - to get serious and actually write something worthy of publication. That's really the only 'goal' I have in life. To be a published poet. Sure, I want to see the world, and I want to own a horse, but when I think about successfully attempting, those things don't matter. Writing does, to some extent - I have attempted multiple times, with every intention of being successful. I hadn't written anything of consequence then.
I'm crying every day, more than once a day. It's really hard, because for the past couple weeks I've been trying to hold myself together just enough so as to not add any more stress to my boyfriend. (Who is normally fully able and willing to deal with me and help me, but he's having problems in work, with his car, with the people who run our apartment building - and I feel that I'm enough of a burden on him on a good day, so.. I've been trying to at least appear less badly than I am.) But with the advent of the month and the looming birthday, plus this is still in my 'bad' part of the year - usually November to April, maximum - I just can't contain myself anymore.
I don't feel hunger. It doesn't register in my brain until I force myself to eat something that my body was hungry. I'm in a constant state of dizziness, shakes, headaches, stomach distress. My body is reacting to my mental state.
I wish that I could be writing a post about how I'm doing better, how treatment is working wonders, how I'm starting to have the ability to feel positive moods, but I can't. This is where I'm at. Everything feels completely transitory and therefore pointless. Yeah, I'm getting mid-90s in class. Yeah, my family and friends are being incredibly supportive. Yeah, I'm getting back into a hobby I've always loved. Yeah, I'm actually making new friends and trying to socialize. None of that matters. It's not enough.
I wake up every morning and go through the motions all day. It's the same structure every day. The same patterns at the same times and the same constant state of mind.
I'm trying. I'm trying harder than I want to, than I believe is worth it. I do things to try to make myself feel less terrible, even for a short period of time. I've been trying to do as much self-care as possible. All of this therapy, friends, family, boyfriend, trying to write, making myself pretty and playing video games and watching happy animated kids' movies to try to decrease the severity of my mood - it's not working.
I keep telling myself that I have things to look forward to. My first appointment with my new therapist the day before my birthday. Going to see Andrew Jackson Jihad ten days after my birthday with one of my best friends. Getting birthday money and presents, and being able to buy myself nice things online, or get another tattoo. Finally starting the DBT program I've been waiting to get into since December of 2013. Summer break, when I'm out of school and my boyfriend isn't teaching, and we can go to the beach, or the zoo, or just go on 2AM drives to drink Tim Hortons tea and talk for hours under the stars. Those things help, temporarily. They remind me that I do care about some things, that some things are exciting enough to make me consider sticking around. That's the positive. I try so hard to focus on those little things. I have so many people rooting for me, but I feel completely alone. Because no one can make my head stop. No one can silence the voices or stop the memories or convince me with certainty that everything really is okay.
But I'm here. I'm trying to stay. I want to want to. For my boyfriend, the one person I'm not afraid to commit to, the first person I've had a healthy romantic relationship with, my rock, my gentle giant, my almost everything. For the poems I haven't written, that haven't been published yet. When it comes down to it, those are my only reasons - but honestly, it's an improvement. Not even six months ago, my boyfriend was my only reason, and the foundation for him being that only reason wasn't as great as it is today.
I suppose a message I can take away from this... public musing... is that... things.. can take what feels like a very long time to get minutely better.. but those tiny additions are important. I wouldn't have realised that writing is one of my reasons to live if I weren't alive. I wouldn't have realised how much I love my boyfriend, how much I want with him, how much a heart can mend and grow, if I weren't alive.
So maybe that's all I've got. I can accept the truly abhorrent nature of my mind at present as the beast that it is. I can try to do that, and try to, every hour, convince myself to make it through to the next hour.
Thursday, 26 February 2015
The Promised 'About Me'
I'm never sure how to go about describing myself, so I'll just.. dive in.
My name is Jess, and this is my recovery blog.
I'm 21, and I'm a student - finishing up high school credits to get into journalism school.
I'm very passionate about social issues and politics. I'm a Marxist feminist, a white cis woman, and I identify as pansexual. I have a cis male partner whom I love dearly, we've been together a few years now. Our age difference is generally a topic of conversation at first - he's 20 years older than me. I'll get it out there right now that my relationship is non-traditional in that it's a BDSM relationship. I'm a submissive, and that feels like a big part of 'who I am' most of the time. (However, that isn't the focus of this blog, though I'm sure it'll pop up from time to time. I just didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable.)
I love literature, and I do write - mostly poetry, but I'd like to try my hand at a novella. I love music, and am currently focusing on guitar. My first instrument was trombone, and I was in my school's orchestra. I was first chair. My first and likely strongest love is horses. I've been in the saddle since I was about two years old, and I grew up lucky enough to have family with horses. I had a pony to ride through childhood, and now, the mare that I ride is a roughly 15hh Appaloosa. My second great love is travel. I love roadtrips, hopping a plane, train, or greyhound in the spur of the moment. It works wonders for my creative process.
I spend an inordinate amount of time on Tumblr. It's embarrassing, actually.
And, as you may well know, I have a handful of mental illnesses, and I'm also a recovered drug addict (five years!). I don't hide those things about myself, but I'm not one to share, either.
That's about all I've got at the moment, but feel free to ask away (though I'm not sure if Blogger has an inbox in the way that Tumblr does..)
Sending good vibes.
My name is Jess, and this is my recovery blog.
I'm 21, and I'm a student - finishing up high school credits to get into journalism school.
I'm very passionate about social issues and politics. I'm a Marxist feminist, a white cis woman, and I identify as pansexual. I have a cis male partner whom I love dearly, we've been together a few years now. Our age difference is generally a topic of conversation at first - he's 20 years older than me. I'll get it out there right now that my relationship is non-traditional in that it's a BDSM relationship. I'm a submissive, and that feels like a big part of 'who I am' most of the time. (However, that isn't the focus of this blog, though I'm sure it'll pop up from time to time. I just didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable.)
I love literature, and I do write - mostly poetry, but I'd like to try my hand at a novella. I love music, and am currently focusing on guitar. My first instrument was trombone, and I was in my school's orchestra. I was first chair. My first and likely strongest love is horses. I've been in the saddle since I was about two years old, and I grew up lucky enough to have family with horses. I had a pony to ride through childhood, and now, the mare that I ride is a roughly 15hh Appaloosa. My second great love is travel. I love roadtrips, hopping a plane, train, or greyhound in the spur of the moment. It works wonders for my creative process.
I spend an inordinate amount of time on Tumblr. It's embarrassing, actually.
And, as you may well know, I have a handful of mental illnesses, and I'm also a recovered drug addict (five years!). I don't hide those things about myself, but I'm not one to share, either.
That's about all I've got at the moment, but feel free to ask away (though I'm not sure if Blogger has an inbox in the way that Tumblr does..)
Sending good vibes.
Preface
I'm new to proper blogging - I hail from the land of Tumblr, so I'll do the best I can.
All that said, I'm doing the best I can.
I'm trying to do things to feel.. not happy, but at least lessen the bad thoughts for a time. I've picked up playing guitar again, after over a year of not playing out of depression. I play games on my 3DS all the time. I'm writing my poetry again (it's not my best work, but at least I'm producing).
I may not be ready to 'recover' right now, but I'm taking baby steps.
This blog will be primarily about my treatment, but I'm sure some other personal things will slip in somehow.
I'll probably make a (much shorter) post as a kind of 'about me'.
I've had 'issues' for as long as I can recall. My teens were a figurative disaster area, and it's been a rollercoaster of sorts since. To really give the best preface possible, I should explain. I was a teenage drug addict. I lived an incredibly high-risk lifestyle, and I'm lucky I got out okay. I've been clean for five years now, six this coming June.
After I got clean, things got a little easier, but my mental health only improved in the addiction regard. Looking back, the warning signs were clear, in terms of mental illness.
It wasn't until about October of 2013 that my mental health started interfering with my life - rather, my ability to hold a part-time job. I was, however, already on anti-psychotics for a mental illness no doctor could put their finger on. Before that time, though, I was.. functioning. I got by.
After I got clean, things got a little easier, but my mental health only improved in the addiction regard. Looking back, the warning signs were clear, in terms of mental illness.
It wasn't until about October of 2013 that my mental health started interfering with my life - rather, my ability to hold a part-time job. I was, however, already on anti-psychotics for a mental illness no doctor could put their finger on. Before that time, though, I was.. functioning. I got by.
It was around that time that my restricting got worse, I started self-harming again, and I made a few unsuccessful suicide attempts.
My memory of my first visit to the emergency psych ward at the hospital is a little fuzzy. I was dazed, and was at my worst point yet. It wasn't until my second time there that the doctor and nurses referred me to treatment. They referred me to a six week DBT program, because they speculated that I might have BPD (borderline personality disorder).
I got into the program quickly after being referred, and after being officially diagnosed with BPD, started both group and one-on-one therapy. It was at this time that my other diagnoses were.. examined. I had already been diagnosed with anorexia - purge subtype, as well as dysthymia. After a.. screening, for lack of better word, I was diagnosed with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). I was also diagnosed with social anxiety, though meeting the criteria didn't involve quite as many questions.
The psychiatrist assigned to me found a combination of medications that fit together, fit me, and also wouldn't be a trigger (my psychiatrist made sure that every medication she put me on was not what she called "a weight gainer"). The program was time-limited, so at the end of the six weeks I was referred to a much more intensive DBT program, which I was told could be at least a year long depending upon my progress. The waiting list for this program was approximately eighteen months. In the meantime, my therapist referred me to a short CBT program for social anxiety/phobias. I also started attending a self harm support group, and on January 19 of 2014, I stopped self-harming. I can proudly say that I haven't relapsed - though the temptation is always there.
My memory of my first visit to the emergency psych ward at the hospital is a little fuzzy. I was dazed, and was at my worst point yet. It wasn't until my second time there that the doctor and nurses referred me to treatment. They referred me to a six week DBT program, because they speculated that I might have BPD (borderline personality disorder).
I got into the program quickly after being referred, and after being officially diagnosed with BPD, started both group and one-on-one therapy. It was at this time that my other diagnoses were.. examined. I had already been diagnosed with anorexia - purge subtype, as well as dysthymia. After a.. screening, for lack of better word, I was diagnosed with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). I was also diagnosed with social anxiety, though meeting the criteria didn't involve quite as many questions.
The psychiatrist assigned to me found a combination of medications that fit together, fit me, and also wouldn't be a trigger (my psychiatrist made sure that every medication she put me on was not what she called "a weight gainer"). The program was time-limited, so at the end of the six weeks I was referred to a much more intensive DBT program, which I was told could be at least a year long depending upon my progress. The waiting list for this program was approximately eighteen months. In the meantime, my therapist referred me to a short CBT program for social anxiety/phobias. I also started attending a self harm support group, and on January 19 of 2014, I stopped self-harming. I can proudly say that I haven't relapsed - though the temptation is always there.
It was a while before I got into the CBT program, and when it did, I didn't find it to be very helpful. Even so, I went every week, did all the homework, and just tried.
After that program ended, my depression was peaking again, so my CBT therapist found me another CBT program, for mood disorders (mostly anxiety and depression). I'm in that program now, and today was session five of twelve.
After that program ended, my depression was peaking again, so my CBT therapist found me another CBT program, for mood disorders (mostly anxiety and depression). I'm in that program now, and today was session five of twelve.
A little over a week ago, I got the call I'd been waiting for. The head of the DBT program had found me a (female) therapist, which meant that I'll be able to have my first appointment with her (March 13, the day before my birthday) and start one-on-one. From what I'm told, a few weeks into that, I'll be able to start group therapy, and I'll have a psychiatrist to manage my psych medications.
Now, at present, my mental health is on the decline again. I work really hard to eat every day, at least once, and ideally something small while I'm at school. My depression is spiking again, and I do have very self-destructive thoughts. Some of them are suicidal ideations. My psychosis is rearing its ugly head again - for the past three days, I've been in and out of dissociating, and constantly derealized. My anxiety, like my depression, is a constant, something I just.. live with.
All that said, I'm doing the best I can.
I'm trying to do things to feel.. not happy, but at least lessen the bad thoughts for a time. I've picked up playing guitar again, after over a year of not playing out of depression. I play games on my 3DS all the time. I'm writing my poetry again (it's not my best work, but at least I'm producing).
I may not be ready to 'recover' right now, but I'm taking baby steps.
This blog will be primarily about my treatment, but I'm sure some other personal things will slip in somehow.
I'll probably make a (much shorter) post as a kind of 'about me'.
Sending good vibes.
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