Tag Archives: Anxiety

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.

A bit of medical advice

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I feel like people grow up learning that doctors and dentists and such are authority figures, because as children we are small and they are adults and specialists and it breeds an unhealthy mental relationship. If you ever are belittled, or don’t feel safe or listened to by a medical professional, you need to advocate for yourself. You can get other referrals. You can fire them. They are not your superiors because they went to school for a long time. YOU are the expert on your symptoms. You are a goddamn grown human being with worth and value and they are too. You are EQUALS. Remember that. You are not inferior to someone with more education. Your sickness doesn’t affect your inherent worth and value and shouldn’t affect your treatment.

Writing a Suicide Note to Myself

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I think I deeply underestimate the effect of pain on my mental health.

Oftentimes that pain will lead me to seek out medical care.

That medical care will fall short in myriad ways.

The most damage is done when I am treated like I do not know what I am talking about(which I do, it’s my body and I’m a smart cookie).

They go on to not listen or ignore symptoms.

Systemic misgendering.

Ultimately, ineffective treatments and I have wasted hours, expending myself mentally and physically, with nothing new tried, no answers, no treatments, no referrals, no belief that it would improve, a whole mess of micro aggressions, and worsening pain.

I was writing my suicide note in my head while driving home.

I wasn’t worth listening to. I wasn’t worth respecting. I wasn’t worth treating. I was a drain on the system.

 

A creature of pure torture and it wasn’t going to get better.

Because I will always be the person that writes “LOL” when a form leaves 8 spaces for you to put your medication list.

Because I will need multiple specialists who for some reason can never coordinate their blood work requests.

Because the combined costs for the surgeries I will need to no longer squirm like a child at a funeral just at the idea of being in my body exceeds that of most suburban homes.

Because I have wanted to die as long as I can remember, and only regular therapy, medication monitoring, inpatient hospitalizations, and the occasional emergency interventions keep it from happening.

 

There’s so many stories lately about resuscitating addicts. Someone mentioned a “three strike rule,” where they’d no longer administer emergency medication.

So where does that come in with suicide? How many times do you wake someone up with a smile and tell them they aren’t worthless and sit beside them coloring and chatting as they stare off in to space and beg the universe that JUST ONCE someone would have thrown up their hands and said “well I guess they weren’t worth saving after all.” How many times do you say hello and goodbye to the staff that all knew you anyway before the EMT blacklists your house?How many interventions does it take until when a patient says “I’m worthless,” the reply is, “Well, you’ve met your mental health value quota so, yeah, you’ll have to find some worth somewhere else in life. ”

The mental health system is slow, toxically still full of stigma, and prey to every -ism.

But here I am still.

I was past three strikes years ago, folks.

I thought a line should go in my suicide note- “In lieu of flowers, please send letters to local hospitals and your congressmen.”

 

I came up with some clever lines. Even some stuff about the selfishness of suicide.
Because it’s not. It’s not about you, and you’re being arrogant if you think that. If anything, it’s selfish of you for wanting to keep someone who is suffering that much around, just so you can feel marginally better.

Things like that mindset guarantee I’m not pleasant to be around, I’m pretty sure I don’t have all that many friends, mostly acquaintances.

Profound mental illness, it turns out, is uncomfortable.

I hide behind biting sarcasm a lot. It’s actually the shield that bites back.

 

Then I got to thinking about family. Ain’t that a can of worms.

I thought about the funeral. It’d probably be at the church I grew up in and was chronically awkward in. The one that was 400 people that met in a pole barn when I was 2 and vomited on someone’s shoes and will never live down. I was there as it expanded. As it moved. As it kept rejecting me socially. I was there for the newest addition, millions upon millions of dollars raised. I toured it it when it was scaffolding, sheets of plastic and exposed concrete. I watched as it stretched a video outreach across the globe and my father would occasionally do some paint touch up work on the pastor’s massive boat.

Somehow non-denominational is its own particular denomination. Whodathunkit, it has some very traditional and conservative mindsets.

I knew that without a legally changed name and gender marker, I would be deadnamed among my family until we were all dirt.

And when I came out as pansexual I was told that “a line has been crossed in the eyes of God” if I would ever touch a woman.

And when I came out as transgender I was told that “this was an exploration” and “I will find a revelation.”

“God loves her more than we love her.”

You can change if it’s supposed to cut or be supportive depending on what you emphasize.

My dad had said in the session with my therapist that I have an “emotionally built feminine psyche” and that “guys don’t deal with these emotions.” He figured that a part of my transition goal was to get over trauma through that reasoning. He also said he has nothing but compassion for those that are internally conflicted, which I have been for a very long time.

He challenged me to find one person who was truly happy having done this, 10 years out, figuring that anyone who was transgender would just be so conflicted that they’d never really improve their lives.

Months later my mother was teary eyed when she asked me if I thought I was still saved.

She said “I have to hold onto the thought that you might still be in heaven.”

I wondered at the hellfire that was currently eating her alive, fresh and meaty and ripe, right on this plane of existence.

I thought of all this while I plotted my suicide note. The idea I could be so wrong, so broken that I would be cursed to brimstone and damnation had such a hold on her heart. I fumed.

I spewed. You know, in my head.

Then I craved. I wanted someone to read the note at my funeral. Read the note at the church I was raised in.

I wanted someone to tell them that this is not the gospel. Christ’s blood was spilled so no more has to be.

 

I got home.

I took some medication.

I pet fuzzy animals.

I relaxed on the bed.

I felt a little bit better.

 

Then I got angry.

Angry enough to do some good.

When you are low enough that you’ve almost stopped feeling bad, stopped feeling anything, you can find angry.

You can tap into it.

 

I realized that no one is going to do my advocacy for me.

I may already be fighting hard.

I will have to fight every damn day.

And it will keep hurting.

But I can’t give up and leave my mantle for another, they must carry their own.

I have to be vulnerable.

I have to do it myself.

I have to tell my story myself.

I have to live long enough to improve MY life myself.

To show who I am.

To prove it.

Maybe only to myself.

Whisper Sweetly

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I have never been able to view myself as smart. Other people would hold that for me- teachers, tests, peers. My self esteem would not allow it. My parents had a systematic lack of regard for what I HAD done versus what I COULD do. “A 97? Why not a 100? A 100? Why not perfect attendance? We’re worried about your weight. Say, why are you coming home in tears so often? I guess it’s a teenager thing. Must need some space.” I lived in the shadow of my own potential, and my potential whispered sweetly about dreams and a future and having worth.

I cried writing the end of that sentence right there. It sinks me that I remain so far away from viewing myself as a creature with worth, yet I can dialectically hold the concept that all lives have inherent worth. I remain a raw, rotten lump of meat in the corner, an exception.

It’s been a rough 6 weeks or so. I’ve gotten strep, kinda beat it, had it come back with a vengeance and morph into walking pneumonia. My testosterone shot caused a giant weird painful lump in my leg. My mental health regressed enough that I ended up in a crisis residential program for a week. Additionally I’ve been in the ER three times, the Urgent Care once, and my PCP once. I got in a car accident and messed up my shoulder nicely. My anxiety is through the roof. Also, I’m not sure if it’s related to the car accident or the strep-hell but I can’t bind because it makes me completely unable to breathe. I’ve missed enough work that I’m worried about whether they’ll just give up on me like my last employer did.

I also got married, so that was cool.

I kept doing this weird thing during all this stress though. I kept house shopping.
See, I found out we were eligible for a down payment assistance program that’s really nifty.
It was a fun distraction if nothing else. But I let myself hope, and when it came down to it, if you’re getting 36 hours and your company still calls you part time, you have to have been there for 2 years.

Bye-bye hope.

I’ve had big dreams in the past.

Now all I want is a cute little fixer-upper and to SOMEDAY finish a damn degree above an Associate’s.

I was supposed to be so smart. One of those assholes that throws off the curve.

I’ll probably work entry level for the rest of my life because I am deeply, profoundly mentally ill.

Maybe smart doesn’t mean much if you’re broken.

The big bad monster crept out of my mind to stab potential repeatedly.

It doesn’t whisper anymore.

And still…

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There was an incredibly powerful exercise that I did once in a group session with other alcoholics and addicts. It was about the first step-admitting you are powerless. It was recommended by one of our peers, who said his sponsor guided him through it. He gave us all an index card and told us to number one through ten, leaving two lines for each number.

Then he said “I want you to think of ten of the worst things you did while you were drinking, and write them down. Leave an empty line.”

Our leader, Bob, was feeling sassy, so he timed people. The first person completed his in 27 seconds. Others needed to think a little harder. I was in the middle of the pack.

Then he gave us the key for the exercise.

After every statement, we had to write “and still I kept drinking.”

We had to confront the fact that not only did we facilitate these terrible experiences, we chose our demon again. And again. And again.

So for me it would start out a bit like:

I broke a goddamn toilet, and still I kept drinking.
I was sleepwalking naked, and still I kept drinking.
I let the horses out in the middle of the night, and still I kept drinking.
And so on.

It occurred to me recently that this same method could be modified a bit for other situations. I thought of my parents, the spiritual abuse they put me through, and how I’d keep crawling back to them.

So here’s another list. Yeah, it’s different, because the first reflects more personal choice rather than something being done to or with you. It was still a key moment for me to process this list, though. I think it’ll help give me strength.

1. They taught me how to tie a noose when I was really young*, and still I gave them more chances.
2. They told me I was getting fat, and still I gave them more chances.
3. They had me work for the family business in a shop from an incredibly young age, and still I gave them more chances.
4. They made me write pages from the Bible every day to improve my handwriting, until I developed carpal tunnel, and still I gave them more chances.
5. They held me to such high standards that it was impossible to ever succeed or feel like I could be good enough, and still I gave them more chances.
6. They stayed close with my exes even though it made me uncomfortable, and still I gave them more chances.
7. They put down my perfectly healthy dog unexpectedly without telling me while I was away in the hospital, and still I gave them more chances.
8. They left bible pages open about raising godly children after finding a dildo at age 16, and still I gave them more chances.
9. They guilt tripped me for how I was making them feel by choosing to live in my car rather than with them during a complicated time, and later gave me a mattress shoved behind a couch as a bedroom, and still I gave them more chances.
10. They refused to let me see a therapist or get medication for my depression, then insisted on a Christian counselor when it became court mandated after my first institutionalization, and had him perform an exorcism on me, and still I gave them more chances.

It was a pretty frequent pattern that I’d get sick of them and run off, or end up in a mental institution. But I always crawled back, and was always made to feel broken and wrong.

The last couple weeks, I kept getting little barbs from my Mom that indicated that she knew about the transition although I hadn’t had the guts to come out directly to them. Things like telling me how I was the feminine version of my dad, or how girly looking my hair was coming along to be, or how “a girl can dress up pretty and wear makeup and heels and have fun but when a boy does it it’s weird.”

It got to the point that I just walked out the door and left their property after she said something like that. Stopped talking to her. I texted her and said if she wanted to talk, I was meeting with my therapist and she could join, so she did.

She claimed she didn’t have a clue about the transition. She said that when she looks at me she sees “a very confused young person.” When my therapist gave me a chance to express how I was feeling, all I could come up with for a minute was “tense,” and she jumped in saying “And I’m devastated.” Not only did she continue to deadname and misgender me after we explained my wishes, she actively tried to correct my therapist and fiance when they were using the right ones. She asked my fiancé if he was okay with this, and after contorting her face in disgust when he said yes, asked “WHY?!?!” When he explained that his love had nothing to do with my gender, she said “Wow, so anybody can do what they want if they love ‘em.”

There’s another therapy session scheduled.

I added to the list number 11. They invalidated my choices about my gender and sexuality.

Any chances from here on out are to be supervised by a professional.

*It actually wasn’t until very recently that I realized this was fucked up. I mentioned something about it in passing on Facebook and a number of friends jumped in saying how gross that it was. I had been under the impression it was fairly normal, like a Boy Scout thing or whatnot.

23 Pills and a Biweekly Injection*

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That’s what it takes to keep me in operating condition.

Not particularly fantastic operating condition, either.

I creak, I groan, I piss and moan.

But I’m still alive.

And these *very expensive* pills are to blame for that. They can be a bit of a curse. It’s obnoxious to go pick them up all the time, my insurance doesn’t allow the pharmacy’s prescription syncing service because they hate progress or something. It takes me about an hour and a half for me to watch a comedy special and prepare the next three weeks of pill cases. It’d take less time if I were singularly focused, yes, but I’d also get so angry that I’d probably start chucking pills at passing cars. Truly though, cars don’t pass by my apartment often enough to let out that rage so I might feebly try to anger-juggle the bottles or some shit like that.

I used to swallow pills one at a time.
A few overdose attempts and having a regimen like this managed to train me out of that.

I also used to swallow Cheerios like pills when I was a kid. I’m not exactly sure why I felt I needed the practice, but I can’t argue with the results. I’m a real pro.

My psychiatrist appointment yesterday brought up my starting Testosterone. It all had happened so quickly, that he hadn’t even been informed yet. He was definitely surprised, but also said, “well maybe we’ve hit a root issue here and once you’re further along, we can start to back you off on stuff again.” That’d be nice. Maybe regular human doses and such!

A few months ago I weaned off Abilify because of drowsiness and weight. It went fine for awhile, then I tanked. So we are trying its new big brother, Rexulti, which is more potent so you take a lower dose and get less side effects. It’s also retails at around $1,100.

Yeah, I want off meds. It sucks that I have to take them. However, I have confronted the fact that I do not have a normal brain. I will never be able to be free of them and have a decent quality of life.

I doubt I’d be able to go off them for 6 months and physically survive, actually.

So, 23 pills and a biweekly injection.

I continue into the fray. I depend on them. They are my sword and shield in a harsh forest full of monsters.

When it comes to advocacy and stigma, I won’t say “I am medicated, hear me roar!” I don’t think we need more associations of crazy.

I might say “I am medicated, watch me manage!”

 

 

 

 

 

*Some are supplements, and none are fun.

Because I’m Afraid

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Silence had broken out in The Garage, a workstation in a small town where nerds met weekly to plink away on projects and be nerdly in step together, never quite locking eyes in their imagined social landscape. This was actually almost inevitable, since my friend and her husband and I were the last ones left, and her husband was in another room, buzzing on circuits and code.
I finally decide to confront the feelings that have been choking me the past couple weeks.

 
“I don’t think it’s anxiety, but…”

 
This was in reference to a coworker of mine who had said “I don’t think it’s anxiety, I just have this sense of impending doom.”

 
That’s the goddamn definition of anxiety.

 
“I don’t think it’s anxiety, but I have this sinking feeling in my chest.”

 
“Is this a new feeling?”

 
Word vomit was my answer. “I don’t think it’s new in the sense that I’ve never felt it before but it’s new in the last couple weeks and I had been doing so well and I’m just concerned that I’m slipping backwards and what if…”

 
She interrupted. “Lock the door. Hide the key. Turn out the lights. Pretend you aren’t home.”

 
“Maybe it’s just loneliness?”

 
We ended up discussing this at length. How loneliness just is, how it shouldn’t bring such pain with it, how I need to learn to sit with loneliness, and historically have epically failed at doing so.

 
So really, at the root of it, what am I afraid of?

 
Because that’s the goddamn definition of anxiety.

 

On one layer of it, I am afraid to be alone.

 

But I’m also afraid to be with someone, afraid of the things that would come out, afraid of who I am when I’m also defined by someone else.

 

And along the way, I am afraid to put myself out there, to try with people.

 

Or, another example, I am afraid to fail artistically, so I take tricks and little advantages and cheats. I can’t get by without my reference photos and projectors and tracings. It makes the art more likely to be “successful” on the first crack, but I know my own limitations and weaknesses. I’ve guaranteed that I will never be able to view something as truly successful.

 

So, so, scared to succeed. That’s way worse. That’s why I self sabotage so expertly and so devoutly.
This is a tangent, but a relevant one. Dr. Bell looked at me one day and asked me what borderline personality was. I parroted back to him “It’s a personality disorder characterized by at least 5 of 9 traits, such as impulsivity, anger issues, lack of identity, suicidal tendencies, and a few others.”

 

His reply was “That’s just a list of symptoms. If I asked you to describe what diabetes was, you wouldn’t just say it makes you pee a lot.”

 

He went on. “Typically, in a borderline person’s life, someone was there that they looked up to, a person of authority, typically a parent, who would tell that person to do something but not how they wanted it done. And the child would try it their own way, because everyone’s got their own way, I’m a psychiatrist but my son’s an engineer, we have different ways, anyways, the child would try it and the parent would be upset that it wasn’t done perfectly in their image. The parent would say something like ‘No, you idiot, what’d you do it that way for?’ and that would be the smack. So the child tries again, and again, different ways, becoming a chameleon for what they think that person wants. Then they’ll grow up and do this for anyone important in their lives. That’s what they mean by lack of identity. ”

 

“But,” he continued, “these people, you are, very bright. And they’re afraid of failure, afraid of that smack, but they’re just as afraid of success. In fact, it seems like when things start going well for a borderline patient, like a good business deal, a graduation they’ll often self sabotage. Why do you think that is?”

 

This was hard for me. Precisely because it hit so close to home, and it felt like some real therapizing was about to happen. “Because…it’s easier…not having people expect anything of you?”

 

And there it was. It’s not just insecurities, worrying about what people thought of me, it was worrying about being a constructive member of society. About setting myself up to fail bigger down the road.

 

I’m afraid to have anyone rely on me.

 

Because I’m afraid I’ll let them down.

 

Because I’m afraid I’m not good enough.

 

Or simply not… enough.

 

Ultimately, I think that there’s something in me, that’s afraid to simply be. On a molecular level, I’m jittery.

 
I don’t think I’m alone in this.

The things you find

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I was looking for a spool of jewelry chain. See, I had an idea for a sculpture, actual inspiration! I’ve been so lacking in inspiration lately, it’s seeped away and taken my motivation for living with it. I knew, I just knew, that I owned a spool of fine aluminum chain that would be perfect for prototyping my idea. Trick is finding it among the scattered remains of 3 household and 5 buildings that my life is divided between. I looked through stacks and boxes and tubs and piles and simply could not find my bin of craft supplies that I would have expected the chain to end up in.

But I found a lot more along the way. I gave up on finding the chain and resigned myself to buying a length of chain at the hardware store. I stopped by the freezer to grab a pizza for lunch, and my eyes landed on one last box- a box out of place, out of order. I set the pizza on the punching bag and started rifling through the box.

There was lots of stuff in there. Pounding board for leateherworking, a number of books, a ream of paper, paintbrushes, a computer monitor, an unopened package of lip glosses that had been a gift, and one item that ended up being the greatest girt the box had to offer. No, it wasn’t the spool of chain.

It was a sketchbook, unblemished except for one page. I have this tendency to hoard art supplies but then never use them. Before they are used, they are nice and clean and have the utmost of potential. They could turn into anything. After I touch them, they tend to have turned into trash. At least in my head. However, this sketchbook had a To-do list written on it.

Start load of laundry

Finish load of laundry

Bucket to compost heap

Get over yourself

Get over yourself.

GET OVER YOURSELF!

Do NOT take a pill

Bucket back to house

Throw away booze

Put seeds in pile

Fucking plant them

Throw shit away

Cough drops back downstairs

This was probably the last thing I had written before spending three weeks of May 2012 in a mental institution. I was living in squalor and shame, I was trying to stop drinking a fifth a day and had chosen to get anxiety meds to help in that goal. I just needed to get to my first counseling appointment on Sunday with my parents, I just needed to make it til them. Ativan, twice a day, no booze. Seems like easy enough instructions, but I had failed to tell the nurse practitioner how entrenched I was in the drinking.  I remember him asking if I felt I could take the pills as prescribed. I didn’t know. Did I live alone? No, I had my grandma. She was in the waiting room.

Of all the appointments that I brought grandma too, this was the only one for me. I was nervous and I wanted her with me, I don’t know if that was selfish, at the time she was fighting some persistent infections and was fairly weak. I sometimes wonder what she was thinking that day, as she waited for me in  my appointment. As she was called in to consult about holding my medications for me, I remember thinking that she wasn’t the right person for the job. She was having a hard time remembering what she had done in the morning by lunchtime, it would be too easy to lie to her.

We went home, freshly re-diagnosed with depression with anxiety and I felt victorious over my baser instincts. Here I was, choosing the medically sound way to start handling my demons, instead of drinking to forget. Surely this was the path towards pulling myself up and out.

It’s too bad it wasn’t.