Daily Archives: December 27, 2012

Liar, Liar, pants on fire

I admit this with no pride whatsoever…

But sometimes, I lie.

I LIE.

I told R today I had to leave at 3 o’clock for an appointment because the anxiety was getting so bad, I was freaking out inwardly. And since he’s not very interested or supportive in that respect, being honest does not work. He essentially tells me to suck it up and put on a happy face. That is pretty much the world consensus attitude.

Would that the world could handle the truth and respect mental issues for the crippling hindrance they can be, white lies and fibs would not be necessary.

Since the truth serves no purpose…

I can live with an occasional lie to save my sanity.

Oh, yes, I know…A panic attack isn’t going to kill me.

All the same, I’d rather not test that theory every second of my life. For every nine times I step up to the plate and face the terror and panic, there’s that one time where retreat to safety is necessity.

Today was that day for me.

And while lying causes a severe cognitive dissonance in me as I so value truth…Sometimes, you just gotta say what the fuck. People simply don’t view mental stuff as pertinent or important. The lie is more for them than me. If they’d accept the truth, I would happily dish it out. My top self edict for the past twenty some odd years has been not to allow the world to shame me into hiding my conditions like they are dirty and I’ve done something wrong. Honesty, for me, is like confession. You get in front of something, it lessens the chance if it biting you on the ass.

Not being able to just say, “I am having a panic attack and freaking out and I might die if I don’t go home to my safe little hovel within the next ten minutes” sucks.

I have tried the truth. The truth was part of what made me R’s ex girlfriend. Some people-most people- simply cannot deal with mental issues. Too much work or too complex to grasp or too depressing, who knows or cares. It’s their fucking problem, it just blows that I am usually the one to get hurt in the process of them figuring out they can’t handle someone who has my issues.

Okay, that was the panic and idiocy portion.

Onto the mood stuff.

Yesterday totally sucked from every angle. I was sick with a cold, hacking up a lung, feeling feverish yet freezing, and it put me into this gray depressive state where every second of the day felt grueling and neverending.

After being up until 2 am with coughing fits thanks to Mucinex doing its thing…

Today, I was manic. Jokey, happy, bouncing off the walls energetic manic.

Morose to manic. In a 24 hour span.

Now I am calm, mellow, the panic has died down (though I am still jumpy as fuck, courtesy of the Cymbalta, about the only bad side effect I have noticed.)

Up, down, all around.

I try not to take others on the roller coaster ride. Sometimes, this means keeping people at a distance while I work through the severe and rapid mood shifts.

Of course, the downfall of this is being told by my family how unfriendly and anti social I am, and I never just visit, blah blah blah, I think I am too good to spend time with them, yada yada.

Since my mom and sister opted to accept depressive misery as “just life” rather than take meds, they have sort of looked down upon me, as if I am weak or something. So trying to explain to them my mental states as they vary from hour to hour is pointless.I am so sick of “suck it up” and “snap out of it”.

There’s even this little annoying voice in my head (no I don’t hear voices, this is…well, my voice, saying what others have said, trying to self bully) saying, “Oh, grow the fuck up and quit being a child, life is tough, grow a pair and deal, you can’t run home every time a panic attack kicks your ass, you pathetic little bitch!”

It’s not helpful, but it plagues me.

Then I have my family adding to it.

And my so called best friend who simply prefers to never ever talk about my disorders unless to point out why we broke up…

My support system is nil.

Yet I feel bad for a white lie.

Doesn’t that say something about my character?

I don’t want to lie.

But the truth does not solve anything. It makes people bully me, as if doing so will somehow cure me and make me act in a socially normal acceptable way.

That just makes things worse.

So I tell a fib here and there.

And feel shitty.

Catch 22.

It pisses me off because if I needed to run home because I forgot to inject insulin or something, that’d be acceptable.

But if I forgot to take my psych meds…Well, that can wait until later.

Then you spaz out and get a lecture on why didn’t you take your meds.

Catch 22.

All around me, catch 22.

My existence, is catch 22.

If this comes across as whining, it is not intentional.

I am just so fucking frustrated.

I’m bent.

I’m not broken.

Why can’t anyone see that and have an ounce of empathy?

And yes, I would like some cheese with my whine.

Mild cheddar, preferably.

 


The P-Word

When depression manages to get a good hold on me, I often have to wrestle with the p-word. The p-word is ‘pariah’, and it ofttimes feels as if the story of my life is summed up in that one word. We moved all the time when I was a kid, meaning I was constantly the new girl. I’ve never subscribed to a need to conform to what the ‘cool kids’ were doing, because they were going to pick on me no matter what I did (or threaten to beat me up and steal my things in junior high for being white, ’cause yanno… gangster gangster). I am the black sheep of black sheep amongst my family by dint of being only halfway related to them. You get used to being the odd one out over the years.

Having said that, I feel that people tend to avoid me for fear of upsetting me. Bipolar tends to make for a mercurial temperament, and on some level I do understand that it’s a freaking pain in the ass to be near. Or that some people who love me give me so much space that I never get to talk to them for fear of them setting me off, leaving me isolated and with no real way of getting out of the hole depression drops me in, or indeed, no real reason to. If nobody is going to talk to you, why bother?

Still, it hurts. A lot. One of the things that I was reminded of recently in regards to Bipolar II is that the constant cycles of depression mean that one is pretty much shot in the foot on developing and maintaining friendships. From Wikipedia:

Functioning

The deficits in functioning associated with Bipolar II Disorder stem mostly from the recurrent depression that Bipolar II Patients suffer from. Depressive symptoms are much more disabling than hypomanic symptoms and are potentially as or more disabling than mania symptoms.[19] Functional impairment has been shown to be directly linked with increasing percentages of depressive symptoms, and because sub-syndromal symptoms are more common—and frequent—in Bipolar II disorder, they have been implicated heavily as a major cause of psychosocial disability.[13] There is evidence that shows the mild depressive symptoms, or even sub-syndromal symptoms, are responsible for the non-recovery of social functioning, which furthers the idea that residual depressive symptoms are detrimental for functional recovery in patients being treated for Bipolar II.[22] It has been suggested that symptom interference in relation to social and interpersonal relationships in Bipolar II Disorder is worse than symptom interference in other chronic medical illnesses such as cancer.[22] This social impairment can last for years, even after treatment that has resulted in a resolution of mood symptoms.[22]

The bolded emphasis in the second half of the paragraph is mine. It’s definitely an answer to a question that I’ve never wanted to ask, but I always knew to be the case. I’ve hidden it well for a long time, but that was also under thick layers of alcohol and illicit drugs, which made it easier to ignore the state of my health (neither of which are a part of my life anymore, though I’m still tempted by the minor relief that smoking brought to my soul). I try my best to express that I still have social needs and desires, but people don’t seem to be comfortable with the open invite. I guess I would be wary of it too if it came with a chance of getting my nose bit off. Having said that, some of my favorite people to converse with are just those sorts, and I love and accept them as they are. But all in all, I don’t know what I can do more. I don’t have the spoons to chase up relationships; most of the people I talk to are people who I know so well that they cost me no spoons to converse with over the course of the day. I have faith that any friend could, in time, become a zero spoon person, but that requires the effort wanting to be made on both sides. I admit that I am not the best at expressing the depths of my regard for other people because I have seen time and time again how it scares people off.

I’m not sure what I can add to that which wouldn’t push this ramble into full-blown whiny, so I’ll leave it there. Maybe it’ll give some folks food for thoughts on how lonely mental illness is, maybe not. I know that for myself, I keep up the facade of getting by because it’s as much to keep making myself plod along as anything else. I have a feeling that is a familiar story for most people with abnormal mental states.

So… yeah.

<3

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