Tag Archives: mental health

PTSD

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I have PTSD
which does not stand for
Pretty Truly Sucky Drama or
Panicky Trifling Solution Denier or
Performing, Trying, Slowly Dying
but there are aspects
of those things in
every meltdown,
every flashback,
every nightmare,
as I recall the thick coagulation
and the fingers dragging loosely
and the furor
and the passion
and the way a man
turned into a little boy,
curled up in a hospital bed,
waiting for his stitches
no longer yelling
about the bitches
who didn’t love him
so he stabbed himself
once
twice
thrice
and now my brain pan
is stuck with the same scars
that laced up and down his arms,
isn’t that nice.

 

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.

Kidnapped

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Coming out of depression isn’t like a fog lifting or a flower blooming. That’s entirely too romantic. It’s more like a bright light, but it’s only just spiking through, it’s mostly dark, you’re tied up. Rough. Burlap and rope tied around you, left alone to figure out your confinement and your freedom. Everything is rough and cold but it’s a real feeling. You take inventory, try and figure out where the pain is worst, try to piece it together with a memory stunted by sedative. Bones creak and scars are measured. Checkmarks go with traumas as you remember the things that you agreed to when you weren’t a qualified advocate for yourself. You’ll pay for those for the rest of your life. You were kidnapped by depression. It owns that part of you. It’ll always creak behind your thoughts. But today you’ll get to wonder if this chance at freedom is real.

Snotmanglers? Why not?

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There’s a little secret to writing- it’s spewing crap so the screen isn’t empty. It’s not a secret to writing well, but it gets something on the page, which is often just enough motivation to continue.

And that, my friends, will be what we talk about tonight. Continuing. In spite of boredom, or frustration, or a goddamn broken foot. Continuing, when you’re in the fog and it seems endless.

I had a meeting with my sponsor last night and she expressed some worry. We went through a book she had and determined that I’m showing 6 out of 9 relapse warning signs.

Then I introduced her to Gorski, who she had never heard of, and we found that there’s 7 phases of relapse warning signs before one even starts missing meetings!

Which I guess I was doing. I got a tad complacent after my 90 in 90.

I’ll be honest. I’m getting a bit bored with the program.

My psychiatrist said that being bored was absolutely a good sign, because depressed people don’t get bored. They just lie around being depressed. With a broken foot and being off work, who wouldn’t be a little bit bored? It’s great news!

But that was boredom in GENERAL, not boredom with RECOVERY.

People just say the same thing over and over.
It’s just recitations from the Big Book.
The readings take forever.
Like 30% of everyone’s share is them saying how grateful they are.

God, I’m a whiny little brat.

It never fails that I feel better leaving a meeting than I did walking in. There’s not many things that can make that claim. Not even making art- that sometimes frustrates the living snotmanglers out of me and throws off a whole day.

I hate who I was as an alcoholic. Granted, I hated myself since I was sentient. The key is that that is improving as I get more sober time under my belt, and the quality of person that I am improves directly with the application of the steps. Where do I learn more about applying the steps? Those stinkin’ meetings.

I need to spend time associating with people and hearing their stories. I need to spend time telling mine. Otherwise I get jammed too damn far in my own head and I start forgetting that I’m not alone.

So you know what?

I think I’ll continue coming back.

The Pit

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I think one of the scariest things about depression is how alone that you feel. A depressed person is not only lonely, but lost and forsaken, feeling unworthy of love. It isn’t about physical presence, because you can be in a crowd and be the only one there. It’s not about mental presence, because you can be engaged with somebody, wholly involved in an experience, and still be desperately alone. It’s not even about emotional presence, because a depressed person can still be a functioning partner in a relationship.

It’s about the pit.

I imagine an endless gray landscape, dotted with abysmal pits. I imagine a smattering of trees, and a thick fog. This is where people go when they are depressed. All you can see is the inside of the pit, the clammy, rocky walls of the pit. They are rough, jagged, hopeless. Far above, there is a pinprick of light. The opening. There is nothing comfortable about this pit.

It is not impossible to get out of the pit, but it takes help. Help that IS OUT THERE because DEPRESSION LIES and YOU ARE NOT ALONE. There are people that love you milling around outside that pit, wondering the best way to get you out. Waiting to help in any way that they can. You can’t see them, though. Because you’re in the pit. You don’t have the right perspective.

Maybe someday something magical starts to happen. Your medication starts to work. You’ve started ECT. Something clicks in therapy. Suddenly, there’s a rope being lowered into the pit. You don’t know whether to trust it, but you give it a few yanks and it feels solid. So you start to climb.

It’s hard work. Everyone is looking down into the pit and cheering, but their voices bounce off the walls, seemingly turning into mockery. Depression, you see, has a tendency to distort everything. But you climb. And climb. And climb.

Maybe you get out this time. Maybe it takes a few tries, a few rests, some time to strengthen your muscles. But you make it!

And shockingly, there’s all your friends and family. You just couldn’t see them before. I’m looking around right now, on the cusp of genuine okayness if not wellness, and I can see that the droning that was driving me mad while I was in the pit is my support system excavating a staircase down to the side of my pit. These are my skills and coping mechanisms, now out in the light and ready to be practiced daily so that I may learn them truly. So that future visits to the pit can be a lot easier to get myself out of. So that they can come visit me.

There can be something comforting about the pit. If nothing else, it’s yours. It’s a safe place. A place for you to feel miserable, but safely so. It is so devastatingly difficult to leave, but so easy to return to, especially if you are afraid to make a new normal. The kind of bravery it takes to get out of the pit is nothing compared to what it takes for the first few steps to the land of new being. That’s where unhealthy coping mechanisms get analyzed and shed, where toxic relationships pass into memory, where bad habits meet their demise. Replacements for all of them are forged, and you become a stronger, healthier being.

Wherever you stand today, friend, I would like to encourage you. Do not succumb to the lies of the pit, nor those of the gray landscape. Keep stepping forward.

Becoming

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My mother often jokes about the crayon marks on the wall- you’d think that in a 150 year old house, with a husband that does custom paint jobs on cars, my artwork would have been painted over in the last twenty years. However, it perseveres, abstract renderings that my mother claims will make the house worth more when I’m famous. I think of this sometimes when I traipse through the living room… What will these be worth when I’m successful? That phrase then sticks in my head, wandering over and over, taking laps through the same worn paths. Half the time I can’t tell whether the thought “when I’m successful” boils down to “when I’ve achieved something of significance in my life” or “when I’ve done it right while attempting suicide.” I’m sure both would add value to the scribbles on the wall, entirely different kinds, but still, something.

I’ve attempted suicide twice in the last two months. Maybe this is too honest, maybe I shouldn’t be sharing this. But things don’t change by letting them sit in silence. When I get chastised for joking about another attempt(as I do), I’ll often reply “I’ll try harder next time.” How this becomes a joke for me can be unclear to others, I know, but I can’t help it. I’ve wanted to die for as long as I can remember. It’s all I know. I think it’d be evidence of being more unbalanced if I COULDN’T joke about it.

Cognitive distortions. I’m told these are the things that tell me I am worthless. I currently only see them as truth. That is the way it will be until I put in the very, very difficult work of training myself otherwise.

Someone once told me, “If you could see yourself through other people, you’d know you are worthwhile.”
My reply was “If I could see myself through other people, those people would need to go to the hospital.” Snark is a defense.

The hospital is a place I’ve been several times. It doesn’t seem to help for very long. Therapy is a place I‘ve been several times, through several programs. It doesn’t seem to help for very long. Hey, I’ve even had an exorcism. That sure as hell didn’t help.

A last ditch effort was ECT, electro convulsive therapy. The phrase makes most people immediately jump to a Cuckoo conclusion, but things are very different now than were portrayed in that film. It’s highly civilized and ultimately very hopeful. I got several weeks of what may have been normalcy out of it. I’ve also gotten a fair amount of damage to both my long and short term memory systems, some of which may shake out, some of which is permanent. However, once again it didn’t seem to help for very long. I did more damage to myself than I ever have before, after having been normal and happy for awhile.

Now I’m starting DBT, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which is all about teaching people to respond to stress, harmful impulses, bad thoughts, etc. in healthier ways. I’ve just started, but I’m feeling very hopeful. I’ve already gotten a bit of practice with one of the techniques. It’s an intense program, and a commitment. A patient signs up for an entire year of the program, which, for me, meets an hour away and twice a week. It will be worth it if I can achieve healthier mannerisms through this process, naturally, but if this also fails me, then I have run out of options.

I am determined to make this year mean something.
I will learn.
I will learn to believe, believe the good things that people tell me that I am.
Because I am stronger than I can see.
I am more than I believe.
I am above the sum of my faults.
And I am worthwhile.
I am creative.
I am kind.
I am talented.
I am loved.
I am smart.
I am funny.
I am giving.
And I am capable of changing the way I think about myself.
I am capable of becoming what I am.
I can’t think of anything that would make me more successful.
Wish me luck this year.

Youthful hopes.

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The rubber strap wraps around my arm.

“This will be tight, I’ll loosen it as soon as I can…”

I’ve heard Melissa use that exact sentence probably dozens of times as she starts an IV on someone in the prep room. Melissa is tall and slim, with chin length wavy silver hair and the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. I can’t help but ask- “So how many times do you think you’ve said that?”

She smiles. “That’s something that I’m gonna ask God when I see him. My husband wants to ask what’s the closest he’s ever been in proximity to buried treasure.”

I smile and take a deep breath as she warns me “Little poke…”

She fiddles with the tape and looks at me before she asks “If you could ask God one question, and he had to give you a straight answer, no comparisons, no parables, just something you could completely understand, what would it be?”

I try to come up with something clever but the phrase “Why me?” pounds through my head over and over, eventually leaking out my tear ducts and my lips.

Her face melts with empathy. “You mean with the struggles you’ve had to deal with?” She asks me my age and tells me that when she was my age she struggled a lot too. “You know, a friend once told me something that I found to be true. There’s people that struggle when they are young, and there’s people that experience their struggles when they get older. You’re just getting yours out of the way. Things will get better.”

Saline drips down my arm. “I sure hope so.”

“I wouldn’t have believed me when I was your age either. But know that there’s hope.”

They wheeled me into the treatment room for my weekly seizure, the ones that feel like hope.

Value

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I was having a discussion with my parents today and the following statements came up:

You’re perfectly capable. You have ten fingers and ten toes. In fact, you’re above average in a lot of ways. You’re very bright. You’re above average intellectually and have above average skills, and yet your intellect is trying to process your self worth, and you’re accepting some lies that are mixed with some truths. In your heart and in your spirit you know you have value, but you’re processing mistakes and failures in your mind and you’re assigning your self esteem and your worth to these mistakes and failures and that’s not right.

They asked me if I had anything to say about that.

I did.

“Can you write that down?”