Category Archives: Mental Illness

Did you know you’re supposed to be able to feel your face?

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I shared with my partner today that I’m starting to be able to feel my face- the way it behaves on its own accord, all the little twitches and emotions that play across it that I don’t plan on.

It’s wild. This is new to me.

I’ve always felt like some gray blob of consciousness with a dim glow, trapped in the skin of me which is hollow and full of darkness.

I can know the factual truth about muscles and bones and organs. I can even have seen them, I once got a peek inside my chest when my surgeon showed me a process picture of my top surgery.

Doesn’t matter, I’m a stupid sad little gray blob trapped in a hollow body filled with expansive darkness.

Doesn’t make sense but it’s my self concept. Trust me, I’m in therapy, and it’s ON THE LIST.

I asked my partner if it’s normal to be able to feel your face. She (surely) lied back to me that it was.

I woke up today and did things that I needed to do outside the house of my own volition, and alone. I returned pop cans. I picked up meds. I bought toilet bowl cleaner. I made phone calls. I did chores to get ahead for when my partner got home. I took care of an unpleasant post office form. I did an email I’ve been dreading.

I need you to understand that this represents a nearly unimaginable level of energy for me. I MADE PHONE CALLS.

I have wanted to kill myself since I was in the second grade. I’ve gotten better and I’ve gotten worse and I’ve gotten lists of different diagnoses and I’ve gotten tons of medical trauma and I’ve been in institutions and I’ve been to rehabs and I’ve gotten CBT and IOP and ECT and REBT and DBT and trauma informed therapy and gestalt therapy and the one thing I never did was manage to get a real remission.

There’s little tingles, little pulls of strings, an occasional stab.

I didn’t realize how dissociative I was until systems started coming back online.

I’ve been on Auvelity for only 3 days and I’m starting to feel less hollow…

Rusty

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I admit I am becoming drunk on the sense of possibility.
I should explain.
I’ve always been so goddamn suicidal that the answer to the question of what I wanted to do with my life was meaningless.
I wanted to die.
That was it.
That veil is lifting now and I’m remembering what it’s like to use my brain for things.
Good lord am I rusty.
But I’m getting better.
I’m seeing potential in things and ideas whereas before I only saw obstacles.
What a gift.
Now to go gently, so I don’t flame out.

Truce

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I have reached
a bit of
a stalemate
with my
neurochemicals.
They don’t
hurt me
and I don’t
hurt them.
No more
drinking
and various
self abuses.
I’ll take
my meds.
I’ll do the
sunshine thing.
I’ll even
exercise.
This gets me
to the point
where I can
exist at equilibrium
only the
faintest whispers
of the
craving of death
pounding
like a heartbeat
from the
hollow cavern
in my chest,
I feel like
this is
as close
to normal
that I may be
capable of.
I’ve made
a truce
with my
brain.
We don’t talk
as much shit
about each other
any more.
I’m learning
to remember
the love
I had for it once.
Before the
shock therapy
And the concussions
And the whole
“smacking myself
in the head when
in distress” thing.
I’ve apologized
to my hallucination goo.
I’m gentler on it now.
I hope it can forgive me.

Unlicensed Food Truck

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I’ve realized what’s been missing in my life. I’ve had a general level of lazy survival distraction filled with ennui and a simmering craving for death. Just- existing. Not managing to get anything really done or use my habit trackers or do my diary cards or show up to therapy consistently. I realized that it’s time to dig in, make the effort count. I’m getting back into the system and if the journal entries from here on out aren’t a whole lot more consistent, well, I’m fucking human and progress isn’t linear. So I’ll cope with that. I can deal with gaps in dates for entries, but I cannot survive long term lack of any structure. I try. I try so hard. But I do not do. Must do. 

I was listening to the MBMBaM podcast and the topic of unlicensed food trucks came up and the strangest thing happened. It just hit me like a punch to the gut. I processed my feelings for a moment and came up with what it was touching on. 

When I was a child, I was super entrepreneurial. To my detriment in many ways, honestly. But I remember putting together business plans and sketches and studying about loans. At one point I put up a couple sawhorses and a board with a sign I made advertising a dog boarding service. I sat outside, waiting for customers, apparently thinking that people are just driving around with dogs they need boarded. After a while, I went to ask my dad why I wasn’t getting any customers. 

He had no idea what I was up to, naturally. So he said “you can’t do that!” and took down the setup. I do not remember exact words of the lecture as much as I do feelings and a sense memory of a sneer. I was crushed in this moment. I think it may be a root memory for fear and inadequacy. 

But I realized… this is just a harmless kid thing. Anyone driving by would probably be going too fast to read the sign and they’d think it was just a lemonade stand. No one stopped, but it was totally normal and developmentally appropriate kid behavior. I hurt no one but they hurt me for it. 

And that was the lesson I learned from the unlicensed food truck. 

Daily Habits

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I haven’t been talking much about how I’ve been doing. I think part of that is shame. I feel bad for doing so well, comparatively to before, during such a tremendous and world enveloping crisis. I feel like if I was suicidal when things were more okay, I should be crushed right now under a grief so total that it should destroy me. 

 

But I’m not. I’m growing, I’m changing, I’m experiencing a spiritual awakening. This, I’m realizing, is not instead of the grief but because of it. If I had not managed to develop the coping skills and system that I did, when I did, I surely would have been obliterated by the weight of the world right now. It was a necessity of the moment. The seed was placed in enough darkness that all the potential work it had put in allowed it to sprout. 

 

Early on in the quarantine I wanted and probably needed to go to a mental hospital. I knew that it would reset my year without hospitalizations in order to get bariatric surgery but i was ready to do so anyways. Then I heard that they would place you in an isolated room in the hospital for 5 days to ensure you didn’t have symptoms before even bringing you to a unit. I have enough history with hospitals to know that those 5 days would not be care, they would be abuse. They would be a constant stream on regurgitating everything that was bothering me to any medical staff that wanted to know, over and over again. I knew I’d be without belongings or clothes, for my safety. I knew I’d be educating half the people who came in to talk to me about trans issues and how to properly refer to me and a lot of them still wouldn’t get it right. The more I played the tape through, the more I saw that I could probably do the good things that a hospital does at home and without having to experience all the trauma. 

 

I could create routine, regular meals, a study of psychology on my own as “group time.” I could work on the level that was appropriate and interesting for me, rather than relying on whatever was pulled out of the binder that day to go over. 

 

So naturally, I started watching YouTube. A quick review of “mini habits” and how having low expectations to check something off as achieved for the day often led you to do more, since it doesn’t paralyze you. Knowing that you only have to open the book and read two pages is much less intimidating than telling yourself that you have to read for an hour, but it gets you over that inertia burst, that hardest part of the task, which is starting. You may set up and start meditating for two minutes and find that 20 have passed when you are done. Learning this theory was a key moment in establishing something that could work for my brain. 

 

From there I wrote out a spreadsheet with a variety of things that I wanted to achieve every day. I put this in Google Drive so that I’d have access to it across any devices and lose excuses for tracking. My list is living and growing week by week, as I learn that I am capable of achieving all of these things every day and find my interests pulled in different directions, I expand more. I’m currently thinking about spreading about my “reading” section into workbooks, philosophy, art, education, and psychology but I haven’t done it yet. 

 

I made a section below the list with each day, asking the same questions:

Daily gratitude?

Synopsis of the day?

How did you work toward your goals?

 

In this way I created little classes for myself and I started to modulate the inputs to my brain. I began putting in better stuff. Instead of focusing on all the bad in the world and on the news, I began to learn constantly and feed myself with motivation, inspiration, and the seeking of a better, healthier soul. 

 

Things like meditation and watching TEDx talks, stretching, chores, taking meds, and attending to Activities of Daily Living, those are a good place to start. Add more as to your interests and skill sets. I watch a lot of educational videos and have started reading again, I can’t believe I had forgotten how much I loved to read. 

 

It’s not perfect. I had a panic attack yesterday that left me non-verbal and in tears. I spent most of today in bed. But I still managed to knock out my daily habits, and that’s more than I can ever say I did when in that sort of state before. I would have done something harmful to myself. And I didn’t.

 

Astonishingly the suicidal thinking has abated to a level I’ve have no memory of ever being this low. It still comes, in the rough times, in the critical times, in the times when it is a worn groove that requires conscious effort to jump out of. But not having it be constant, drumming, persistent, always in the back of my mind? I feel lighter. It’s easier to exist. My mind is friendlier to be with, and ultimately that’s the goal, because your mind is the one and only companion you’ll have for every moment of your life. It’s a lot better when it doesn’t want you to die.

Death Penalty

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I am me. 

At the core of my goo.

I am the spark,

the electricity,

the action

the character that shows 

by what I do

and I am not satisfied with me.

I have long wanted to kill myself.

I managed to mostly get over that;

I continue on and talk to my head,

not as a rival or a hated adversary,

but as a lonely and rejected friend.

It is one that I’ve abused, 

for so long

that I almost don’t know how

to not.

So I decide that I will show action. 

I will do the things I need to do.

I will take care of myself.

Because the truth is that I will be 

alone with this self for the 

rest of my existence and a 

contented sort of banter is a 

much better way to 

handle my suicidal thoughts 

than a bottle of pills.

So now when a 

perfectly justified

self criticism 

comes up, and 

that part of me 

slithers,

oily, 

out of my gut 

and whispers 

that I should die, 

I can confidently say back 

“I don’t think they 

currently suggest 

the death penalty 

for stains.”

Hey look a Coronavirus blog

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It’s really stupid, what got me writing again. It’s a psuedo-scientific journal of my rat colony’s behavior over time. But it made the keys clack. It reminded me how it felt to put sentences out in the world. So I thought I’d say a few things about coronavirus and mental health.

Right now we’re in a world crisis and I am calm. I am hopeful. I am ashamed for being calm and hopeful. But I am compassionate with myself because I know that this calm, this energy that I’ve received, is from having played out so many worse situations in my head, day by day, minute by minute.

With coronavirus, people who are mentally ill lose major coping outlets in quarantine. They’re flat out closed, inaccessible, or inadvisable. They may lose access to therapy. Anyone goes a little loopy when cooped up for a long time, but when you’ve already got a disorder that hates you and your life and your joy working against you, it can be hell. Check on your friends. Really check on them, press harder. If they just say they’re okay, ask again, gently. Pressure builds without a vent and social contact allows us to release a lot of emotions. We suffer without each other.

I have anxiety and depression, so not only do I imagine the worst case scenarios, I kinda want them. When a semi comes up close to my car and I can feel the draft of it and the space between the wheels would fit my car just right if only I yanked the wheel and then…I imagine everything that would happen next. All the horror. All the trauma. All the unnecessary guilt. The urge goes away.

It’s a weird place to be, to be a vulnerable person in a pandemic, be deeply suicidal on a regular basis, and somehow still care about getting it. I thought I might’ve had it because I had a connection to a positive case, but my symptoms could have had to do with my ear infection going rogue or something. I want to die without clogging up a hospital bed for 15 days. I don’t want to be more of a waste on the system than I already am. .

I see a disturbing number of people flat out not caring, or being racist, or denying what’s going on. But here’s the thing: people you know will die. People you care about will die. And lots of people that you apparently don’t give a damn about will die too, because of your reckless callousness and total disregard of the common good of society. There’s a line that gets used a lot that I’m gonna try to remember right: “I don’t know how to convince you to care about people.”

That’s it. That’s the end of it. That’s absolutely all of it. Do you care about others enough to make a sacrifice for a little while, hide out in your house and do as much nothing as possible. Please catch up on your home projects. Watch those educational YouTube videos, maybe learn sign language or something. Make art. No such thing as good art or bad art, you aren’t competing, you’re playing as a human person, put emotion into it. Read. Nap. Do absolutely nothing at all and appreciate the deep relaxation. But remember that what you’re doing is caring. Caring about the weaker and more vulnerable, reassuring that those lives have value.

They tell me that humans live to 80. If this goes on for 6 months or the 18 that was projected, it’s still a blip in your existence. This will be the past soon. And you’ll be able to look back on it and think of all the craziness and be totally detached. But not everyone will have that luxury. A lot of people will die. A lot of people will have permanent lung damage. We are paying for poor decisions in blood and the bodies will keep on stacking up as this progresses.

Don’t be a disease vector. Act like you already have it and need to protect everyone else from getting it from you and you’ll be about on the right track. And please, please, please, just stay home.

Squelch

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It hits with a sudden shame,
the realizations of all the people
who have given me relief,
cash in times of need,
a bed when I was homeless,
when I have failed to offer them
even the slightest regard in return
and failed to keep my promises.
My cheeks flush
and names begin to pound in my head,
debts that I owe,
time of my life that
I must offer back,
amends that must be made.
My heart rate goes up
and I feel top heavy.
I stagger to the bedroom
and consider,
this is a road well traveled.
I can go into the shame pit.
Just moments ago
I was so excited
about the possibility
of getting into a new apartment,
starting new ventures,
even pleased as punch
at the simple hot dog I was eating.
I was satisfied in life.
A rare feeling.
I was due to self sabotage.
And so now I contemplate
the nature of the psychic drama,
petting the cat
and accepting that
recovery can mean sitting back
and feeling the feelings
in a controlled way
and asking the questions
that really matter
like “does this thought
help me or hurt me?”
or “does following this path
of self pity lead me towards
where I want to go in life?”
My head’s still buzzing
but my thoughts
aren’t controlling me anymore.
I can choose to slog
my way out of the marshes
but I have to pick a direction
and go!
Then I recall
that my
worst flaw
is that
I for sure
lack action.
We shall see
if I can go
but did you hear
a boot squelch?

Deaths of Despair

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In response to this article: https://time.com/5606411/millennials-deaths-of-despair/

 

Go ahead
and tax
the alcohol,
like that
wasn’t part
of the plan
anyways.
Make the
prescription drugs
harder to
get for
pain patients.
Ramp up
so called
abuse monitoring.
It all
suits the goal.
Think about
making it
“affordable”
to get
health care
as if
any one
of us
had the
unique opportunity
to decide
whether we
could afford
our illnesses
or afford
our fates
or afford
ever having
been plopped
on this
damn planet
in the
first place.

If this
is your
solution to
deaths of despair,
you are
showing your hand.
You don’t
understand the
depth of despair.
And you’re
likely one
dealing it.

Happy Pride

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I wish a

“Solemn Wrath”

to the people

who can’t yet

muster up “Happy”,

or “Pride”.

To the folx

who realized

why it was

that they

wanted to kill

themselves,

only to realize

that now

there’s a

huge faction of

vocal and cruel idiots

that want you dead

instead of you

and you have to wonder

at every moment

if you are worth it

if you are real

if you are more than a plague

if you aren’t really an abomination

when mothers

clutch their children

away from you

in the goddamn grocery store,

to you I wish an armor

so mirrored and fabulous

that you might return

every laser gaze of hate

with a reflection of understanding,

followed by a spiraling dance of non-caring,

and an eye shattering glow of exposure,

bringing to light the hateful hearts

of those that wish

to strike you down.