PLEASE READ! I Need YOUR Help!

Reblogged from ...But She's Crazy:

I have a crazy, wild idea — just bear with me and give it some thought because I need you guys involved to actually make it happen. (If you’re an impatient reader, feel free to skip the next couple explanatory paragraphs.)

Thanks to posts by and comment conversations with Pride In Madness and Sarah at bi curious, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the struggles of the mentally ill as a social class and the desperate need for a worldwide conversation about and realistic understanding of mental illness.

Read more… 1,227 more words

Something we should all get behind!!

Indifference II

Shawn asked me when was the last time I was truly happy, with no negativity in my mind, just … happy.

I told him I would have to think about it and get back to him.

It has been a week. I have given it as much time as I could afford to give it, and I’ve still thought of nothing.

Tristan asked me how I have been lately and I told him that I feel like

I am walking forward in a very strong wind, making a concerted effort to keep moving forward. All the while I am waiting for the wind to stop so I fall on my face.

I have determined that people are the problem. When I am not around people, there is no one there to hurt me. I have been thinking of the people in my life who might be disposable.

The worst feeling in the world is indifference. I would rather be insanely enraged, intensely anxious, extremely happy, immensely sad, etc, than completely indifferent. Back when I was a cutter, I would cut specifically when I was indifferent because the pain of the blade puncturing and slicing through my skin, the sight of the blood, my anemic thin blood, were the only things that reminded me that I could feel at all. Now that I don’t cut, I don’t know what to do with myself when I am indifferent. I feel nothing. I suppose someone with a panic disorder and all the other disorders I (allegedly) have would beg to be indifferent, but this usually begins long bouts of depressed feelings for me. Feelings of no joy. Ugh. I really don’t want to go through that again. I don’t know what triggers this in me. I don’t know what to do with it. I can’t process it. Now would be a good time to have a good friend, but when I get indifferent I realize that I am a complete burden to everyone, so I cocoon.

Brains. Sheesh.

Anyway, I know it has been a while since last I wrote on here, but this indifference is a struggle. Please bear with me while I fight the silence.

Thanks for reading.

Ummm…

Have you ever dropped your glitter in the middle of a tornado? I think that is what it must look like inside my brain right now.

this is how I feel right now...

Observations and diagnosis.

Depression challenges my intelligence, and so I learn. Panic challenges my ego, and so I stay humble. Obsessions challenge my commitments, and so I prioritize, phobias challenge my fear, and so I gain courage. It is tragically beautiful. It is my brain. It is me. I am loyalty, I am strength. I am damaged, but still like new. Used, but recycled. Abused? No. Tenderized. I am me. I am loved. I love in return. I hurt, I bleed, but I heal, and my scars may be unsightly, but they are my story, my history, me.

I feel good today.

Have you ever wanted…

Have you ever wanted to drive to a secluded, wooded area and just SCREAM at the top of your lungs? I feel this way right now because no one seems to hear me anyway, so I may as well be alone.

Control.

I just finished (for the millionth time, it seems) watching Control , a film about Joy Division. If you haven’t yet seen it, I do recommend it, especially if you are a fan of Joy Division, New Order, or Anton Corbijn.

This movie gets me thinking.  Ian clearly has a rough life, albeit mostly of his own volition (Annik). While I don’t endorse suicide as an option to get out, I won’t lie and say that when my depression peaks, suicide hasn’t crossed my mind. It’s just so… permanent. This is the thing that keeps those thoughts at bay for me. If I do that today, what will I miss tomorrow? kind of thinking. It works for me, which means that thankfully, I am not really ready to bow out. Ian, however, died at 23 years old. In 1980.  May 1980.

In the film, Ian kicks his wife, Debbie, out of the house and he plays Iggy Pop on the record player, he drinks himself into a stupor, and he has a seizure. Now, we will never know if Ian’s intention from the start was to hang himself in the kitchen of their home. We will never know if the seizure is what put him over the edge, that is not what this makes me think about. I ask myself, when someone has decided to die of their own hand, if they chose a time, for instance, a time of night when they knew no one would stop them, do they wait? Or do they make other arrangements to get the task done quicker? There has to be some level of desperation in order to actually go through with it, right? One would think that they would want the task done quickly. Maybe if they wait they would change their mind, but if they changed their mind, did they ever really want to die? These things baffle me. I know I shouldn’t be thinking of these things, and this is a depressing subject in and of itself, and I’m sure someone is going to think I am crazy or even suicidal myself, but I assure you that this comes from a place of needing a deeper understanding of why and how this person got to be so very miserable. Maybe if I understood that a little better, I could also better understand my own misery, or someone else’s, perhaps thereby preventing another tragedy. It is physically painful to me to think that anyone would feel that they had no other way, that killing themselves was the only option. It’s horrifying. I mean, I have thought that way, that there was no other way, that I would be miserable with this depression and this panic for the rest of my life, and of all the times that I have hit that low, I have only crossed the threshold of contemplation a few times, and when that happened, I immediately sought help. But to step over that boundary… I have been as miserable as any human being should ever have to be, most likely because I think like I do, but that is another topic and another day altogether. But even the day that I sat in the dark corner of my bedroom with a bottle of pills in my hand, crying to the point of convulsions, miserable beyond any misery I had ever known, I couldn’t step over that boundary. It is so permanent. The day after that happened, I decided to get professional help. I had to. All that happened in May of 2009. I haven’t been the same since. Seeing the things that a mind can make you see, and being in such an extreme state of sadness changes you. This is another reason why I wish people would stop telling me that I am doing it to myself. I wish people could at least TRY to understand that I don’t choose to live with this. I just do. Just like Ian in the movie, he had epilepsy. He couldn’t control that any more than I can control my issues. Sure, I have a little more control over a panic attack if I can get a hold of myself and concentrate on stopping it, but that isn’t always possible. When will people understand that? I can’t stop a panic if it happens while I am asleep. That is the perfect example. All the naysayers out there that tell me that all I need to do is think positively and I will be cured, there is a thing called SUBconscious, and panic lives there, too.

Anyway, this is not a cry for help. Thankfully, with the therapy that I sought after that incident, I am a little more capable of handling my sadness. This was just a brain that ran away with an idea, so no need to flood my comments with “let me help you!” because, while I  appreciate the concern, I am not suicidal. Your thoughts on the matter, however, are welcomed. If you knew you were going to die at midnight, would you live the rest of the day to the fullest or would you end it on your terms? I will honestly say that I have no idea what I would do. I would want that level of control, because I am a control freak, but I think knowing what is supposed to remain unknown to us would satisfy my need to control the situation, allowing me to live the remainder of my life the way I should, with the people who love me. Hmm. Brain food.

May.

I fucking hate May. I am terrified to see what this loathsome month will bring.

What was I doing when I was 8 years old? Why can’t I remember my childhood? I mean, I don’t need details, but for Christ’s sake did I even exist then? Because I remember NOTHING.

Just when I started to feel better about things… I was finally existing without the Turtle. I was letting go of all that guilt I harbored for three years while I tried to fix something I didn’t break… and I am back here again. Depression, when will you take your claws out of me and let me live?

May. Fucking May. May 23, to be exact.

When I get to my final days and I look back on my life… will I remember any of it? Why have I blocked all this out? My brain just didn’t want the memories, so it spit them out? How does that happen? My therapist tells me that it is a defense mechanism. What am I defending against?

Every time I get moody like this, I think of this photo that I took while playing with a new app on my phone. I really do look sad, don’t I? People have asked me why I frown all the time and I tell them that that is just my face, that is what I look like. I am not consciously frowning. I honestly feel like two different people. On the outside, I am this fun chick who likes going out and having fun, and on the inside I am this frowny-faced little kid. You know the kind of kid I am talking about… the kid who everyone says “they had to grow up so fast”. I’m that kid. I’m that kid, crouched in a corner in a dark room, staring up in to the darkness with big blue eyes that are tear-filled, just shy of spilling over. When my therapist first asked me to describe my childhood, this is the kid that flashed in my memory. Why? Had I been that kid once in real life? Or have I merely imagined her?

Fucking May. I refuse to end April thinking that something bad is going to happen because it doesn’t have to be that way. I just want the torture to stop. I want a moment of peace.

I had a conversation with one of my regular customers the other day. He asked me about my photography and we got on the topic of my book. He said he is excited to see the book and I told him not to hold his breath. Writing the book was awakening too many of my demons and it became uncomfortable to even think about. He asked what I could possibly mean by that, so I explained it, the book is about my panic disorder, major depressive disorder, OCD, and GAD. I explained that with every page that I wrote I got closer to a panic attack, and with every panic attack, it pushed me further from my book. He nodded at me and called his wife over. He pointed at me and said to his wife, “she has panic disorder, too.” His wife turned to me, shaking her head. “You’re so young! When were you diagnosed?”

“Fourteen.” I answered.

“And how old are you now?” She asked, reaching out to touch my hand but pulling back at the last moment when she saw me flinch.

“Thirty one.”

She proceeded to tell me that her husband had debilitating panic attacks in the past. He broke in and added:

“I wished for anything else. I wished for cancer, or a heart attack, or anything but that. I just wanted it done.”

I knew what he meant. A heart attack, cancer, any number of other diseases kills you. Granted, cancer is a bitch and it can drag out the torture for a long while, but with panic, it isn’t going to kill you. It is going to torture you until you die of something else. It’s going to make you wish you were dead. It is going to rob you of your life until you die.

Except… he got better.

He is nowhere near as bad as he said he was at the beginning.  He hadn’t suffered as many years as I have, however, he got better. He said he rarely has any attacks anymore, and even when he does, they are little jolts of anxiety that are higher than they would be for a “normal”, but they are manageable.  He gave me some tips, some things that I have already done and some that I haven’t yet tried. He said he didn’t know how to address the OCD or the MDD, but maybe if I could control the panic, the others would become more manageable. Maybe. Here’s hoping.

Fucking May. I hate you, May. You are supposed to be when the weather gets nice here in Cleveland. You are supposed to be about cookouts and camping, sitting in the grass with a good book, sipping iced tea, and basking in the sun. May makes me want to hide. Of all the life-changing shit that has happened in my life (that I can remember), almost all of the bad shit happened in May.

But, last week I re-read my old blog posts and I read about May. Last May I made a positive spin and I got through May with little issue. A lot of shit has happened to me since May. Most of it spanned beginning of October through end of November, so those are making the list of hated months right behind May. Maybe I will be spared this May because I got the quadruple dose of bullshit in October and November.

I don’t know how much of this is anticipatory anxiety and how much I should be concerned, but my heart has been going haywire lately. It’s been interrupting my sleep, causing me to not be able to fall asleep, and almost stopped me in my tracks while I was cleaning my house today. It has been a couple of days of this now, and I am not experiencing any pain in my chest, but I wonder if I am ignoring something major because I believe it to be anxiety. There is ALWAYS debilitating fear and uncertainty with this unholy disorder!

Well, I have decided not to burden my family/friends with it this time around. The Turtle runs away screaming when I start talking about this, and I really don’t need everyone running away from me right now. I need… Fuck I don’t know what I need. I need everyone to clamor around me and I need everyone to stay the fuck away. I need to cry and I need to STOP FUCKING CRYING. I need to punch a wall and I need a gentle hug. I just need a break. I need all of the shit in my head to STOP. CEASE. DESIST. I take a vacation from work, had a great time, but it only put the stress on hold.

I really thought things were on the upswing. When I wasn’t shaking all the time on my vacation I thought, “Finally! I am at peace!” Lame. In all actuality, I got cocky and sent the Turtle a text that said how happy I was that I was finally letting go of the guilt I harbored for the last three years, thinking I had done something to deserve his abandonment. I’m no better off now than I was. I had another mask on. That was a good mask, too, because it had even me convinced.

Even me. Even keel. Level. Level headed.

Wishful thinking.

I need to utilize these things my customer suggested. He tells me drugs saved his life. I told him drugs might end mine. He shrugged. “You won’t know until you try.”

Cool. Then bring out the cot because I will be staying with you until we are sure I’m not gonna swallow the entire bottle of pills, how does that sound?

8. When I was 8 I had never heard of panic disorder. That isn’t to say I didn’t have it, I had just never heard of it.  I wonder if I was a pessimist back then. I wonder if I was this jaded, this cynical. I wonder if I had ever crouched in a corner with tears welling in my big blue eyes, staring off into the darkness, clutching my knees to my chest, terrified of what lurked in that darkness.

I should be a writer. I enjoy it so. However, they always say to write what you know, and all I seem to know is my depression. All I seem to know is how to make myself panic without even realizing I am doing it.

I would be willing to bet that they feed off of one another. Depression begets panic, panic begets depression. That would explain the cycles I go through.

Fuck. Why does anyone put up with me?