For a while I’ve been wanting to write about an amazing change God has transpired within me. I decided not to since it concerns my neighbor(s) and I don’t want to write about them. They’re in the past and that’s where I want to leave them. Nevertheless, this urge would not go away. Within this […]
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Posted in Read Along
Posted in Read Along
I love my mom. She’s a constant supportive and stable person in my life.
I’m sick, I have bronchitis and I’m trying to quit smoking. Slap those two together and I’m one irritable fuck. I called my mom a couple times but couldn’t carry on conversation. I kept getting frustrated, just not caring what she had to say. Usually I do, she always has something interesting to say. I’m used to saying “I’m going to let you go” and then chatting for 5 minutes after that. But I snapped at her. I felt terrible.
I went and bought a pack of light menthols and smoked one. I went back inside and called her again.
I felt like a bitch. I felt like an asshole. Who yells at their mother, someone who gives them the world, and always have, and will until the day they can’t anymore?
So I was crying. My mom picked up. She asked what was wrong. I said I was sorry for being so mean to her, for being such a bitch. That I was sick and craving cigarettes and I was just being mean and she didn’t deserve it.
She didn’t get mad.
She said, “You’ve been a lot worse, kiddo. Being sick isn’t easy, and neither is quitting smoking” and we chatted for a half hour and she forgot about it. She forgave me for it. I kept apologizing and she said not to worry.
I love my mom. She’s always forgiven me, even when I don’t deserve it. She always loves me, even when I don’t deserve it. She’s never told me I don’t deserve it.
But she did say, “You’ve been a lot worse”. And she’s right. I have.
She also didn’t bat and eye when I came out to her as being genderqueer. She was supportive and said she’d support me no matter what.
Everyone needs a mom like mine.
I can’t remember the stuff I need to take with me on a ride, I keep having to go back inside to fetch things: keys, water bottle, maps. By the time I’m ready to go my head is boiling, steam is rising through the ventilation slits in my plastic hat. What I leave with on my ride into the countryside is grasping repetition. Nothing has changed. It is always like this – as familiar and as inevitable as the traffic circles I navigate as I head north to reach the countryside less than a mile from my home.
It doesn’t take very long before my mind is full of visions – tarmac, number plates and indicator lights. And then the green sway of the long grass lining the road appears as I follow the hard grey blade underneath my tyres as I cut through fields following the dips and climbs I know so well.
Uncertainty, and a lack of trust in one’s own abilities, are classic signs of mental health problems. From the crippling scratching of anxiety to the dirty yellow walls that encroach upon the mind of someone with paranoid delusions, all these crumple the mind. Our ability to remember sits like a discarded slip of paper with a list of tasks, in unrecognisable handwriting, resting in the waste paper bin at our feet.
Help is always closer than we know when the anchor of memory shifts uneasily in the unseen seabed of concious, loyal experience. But we discard it the moment we fall against the banal, disinterested breast of our own despair.
So often I cannot remember for myself what I suggest, describe and explain to people I want to cajole onto the path of recovery.
And then there are things I cannot forget.
The route to Bramber, to Shoreham, Devil’s Dyke, the road that leads all the way to Horsham.
But that’s not all.
I cannot forget the moment when, sitting at my desk in the office of the mental health day centre I was the manager of, I saw a sheet of paper with the clinical description of the symptoms of depression, and saw my reflection staring blankly back at me.
I cannot forget the moment that I told my colleagues 2 days later that I was going to have to take some time off (2 weeks initially) because my G.P. had diagnosed me as suffering from depression. 2 weeks stretched into another fortnight.
I cannot forget my first appointment with a psychiatrist, his insistence over the coming weeks and months, that I must give up my job if my recovery was going to stand a chance.
I cannot forget the moment, at a regular appointment with the occupational health doctor over a year later, that I announced to his (and my) surprise that I was finally going to take that advice and resign.
I cannot forget the view from my bed of the block of flats several streets away that rose up to stare at me every morning and afternoon, nor the fluctuating moods of the sky as the seasons passed.
I cannot forget the moment, in the autumn of 2010, that I cycled through a narrow pedestrian cut – through in a wall near my home at 10mph and came clattering to a halt, sprawled on the tarmac and realising that this was no ‘ordinary swoon’. There was some, as yet unnamed, tear in the fabric of my life.
from To a Skylark
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
**********
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne’er knew love’s sad
satiety.
**********
Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal
stream?
**********
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of
saddest thought.
**********
Yet, if we could scorn
Hate and pride and fear,
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should
come near.
**********
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the
ground!
**********
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know;
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am
listening now.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822)
Posted in Read Along
Posted in Read Along
I have been depressed for the past week. In fact, I had not left the house in a whole week. It is now 6 am and I have not been able to sleep. If you know anything about bipolar disorder, you know that a lack of sleep can lead to mania.
My ex-husband told me one time that he thought I worried myself into manic episodes. There is a lot of truth in that. Because I panic when I am not sleeping and think I am going to get manic, I get stressed about that. The more stressed I get, the less I sleep I get. This stress and lack of sleep will oftentimes lead to mania.
I would get nervous about not sleeping and having to go to work the next day. My mom pointed out one time that everyone has nights that they can’t sleep. Even though she knows that not sleeping can lead to mania, she tried to assure me that I would be fine. (She did know that I still could get manic. She was just trying to point out that it could be nothing, also.)
I had a psychiatrist one time tell me that if I can’t sleep after a half hour to get up and do something for awhile and then try again. If I can’t sleep, then just stay up until I crash. She told me to do this even if it meant I stayed awake more than 24 hours.
I have taken that advice a few times since. There is no reason I should just keep lying in bed with my mind racing when you can get up and accomplish something. This is where worrying can come in. If I were to sit here thinking right now that a manic episode is on the horizon, it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Yes, I need to take every precaution that I have in my action plan. If I don’t sleep sometime today or the next night, I need to make an appointment with my doctor.
I know that right now I am in trouble because my medication need to be adjusted. To be frank, I am sick of this roller coaster since my medications have been changed. I had to switch medication because my insurance no longer covered the medication I was on. Don’t get me wrong, I was still cycling when I was on the medication that my insurance no longer covers. Therefore, I was hopeful that trying something new might be the answer. I have not given up as I have not been on them very long.
I know I will be ok and will stay out of the hospital. I know that I can do things that will keep me out of there. I need to lay low, eat right, not going anywhere or spend any money. I need to let the people in my support system know that I am in danger right now.
I have confidence that everything will be ok. I am not worried because I know that I will be ok. I have a great doctor, a wonderful supportive fiancee and a loving family. We have gotten through so many things together in the past.
I am so sick of this. I am sure they are too.
I usually am not so open about my current struggles. I was not intending on sharing my current situation when I decided to write this blog.
Can Worrying Lead to Mania? The answer to my question is yes. I do think worrying can lead to mania.
If you are reading this and think you are getting manic and worrying about it, I would suggest that you take a second look at your situation. Worrying and stress definitely can lead to mania. Try and remove the stress. Even if you have to take work off for a few days, do it. It is better to stop the mania in its tracks before you end up getting full-blown manic and end up in the hospital missing a lot more of work.
There are a lot of cliches about how worrying is a waste of time. However, it is easy to get trapped into the web of worrying.
My suggestion is to realize that you are going to be okay. I am going to just keep saying that to myself.
The good news is that by writing this blog entry, I have gotten tired enough to go to sleep.
Good night! Zzzzz
Posted in Read Along
I have been depressed for the past week. In fact, I had not left the house in a whole week. It is now 6 am and I have not been able to sleep. If you know anything about bipolar disorder, you know that a lack of sleep can lead to mania.
My ex-husband told me one time that he thought I worried myself into manic episodes. There is a lot of truth in that. Because I panic when I am not sleeping and think I am going to get manic, I get stressed about that. The more stressed I get, the less I sleep I get. This stress and lack of sleep will oftentimes lead to mania.
I would get nervous about not sleeping and having to go to work the next day. My mom pointed out one time that everyone has nights that they can’t sleep. Even though she knows that not sleeping can lead to mania, she tried to assure me that I would be fine. (She did know that I still could get manic. She was just trying to point out that it could be nothing, also.)
I had a psychiatrist one time tell me that if I can’t sleep after a half hour to get up and do something for awhile and then try again. If I can’t sleep, then just stay up until I crash. She told me to do this even if it meant I stayed awake more than 24 hours.
I have taken that advice a few times since. There is no reason I should just keep lying in bed with my mind racing when you can get up and accomplish something. This is where worrying can come in. If I were to sit here thinking right now that a manic episode is on the horizon, it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Yes, I need to take every precaution that I have in my action plan. If I don’t sleep sometime today or the next night, I need to make an appointment with my doctor.
I know that right now I am in trouble because my medication need to be adjusted. To be frank, I am sick of this roller coaster since my medications have been changed. I had to switch medication because my insurance no longer covered the medication I was on. Don’t get me wrong, I was still cycling when I was on the medication that my insurance no longer covers. Therefore, I was hopeful that trying something new might be the answer. I have not given up as I have not been on them very long.
I know I will be ok and will stay out of the hospital. I know that I can do things that will keep me out of there. I need to lay low, eat right, not going anywhere or spend any money. I need to let the people in my support system know that I am in danger right now.
I have confidence that everything will be ok. I am not worried because I know that I will be ok. I have a great doctor, a wonderful supportive fiancee and a loving family. We have gotten through so many things together in the past.
I am so sick of this. I am sure they are too.
I usually am not so open about my current struggles. I was not intending on sharing my current situation when I decided to write this blog.
Can Worrying Lead to Mania? The answer to my question is yes. I do think worrying can lead to mania.
If you are reading this and think you are getting manic and worrying about it, I would suggest that you take a second look at your situation. Worrying and stress definitely can lead to mania. Try and remove the stress. Even if you have to take work off for a few days, do it. It is better to stop the mania in its tracks before you end up getting full-blown manic and end up in the hospital missing a lot more of work.
There are a lot of cliches about how worrying is a waste of time. However, it is easy to get trapped into the web of worrying.
My suggestion is to realize that you are going to be okay. I am going to just keep saying that to myself.
The good news is that by writing this blog entry, I have gotten tired enough to go to sleep.
Good night! Zzzzz
Posted in Read Along
That’s how I equate my mood today. Crunchy fresh poured cereal versus soggy milk logged aged cereal. The former being good, the ladder being crap.Today is soggy. Too bad because yesterday prior to panic palooza my mood was decent.
So what happened?
Nothing. The only factor is it was 70 degrees out yesterday and 40 degrees out today.
On the plus side, my anxiety has been barely noticeable today.
On the bad side, I have accomplished nothing, it’s like I want to, know I need to…but I don’t know where to start because I am a bowl of soggy cereal and the only thing to do is dump the bowl and start with some fresh crunch loops.
Meaning, sleep it off and hope it shifts tomorrow.
When I see that fill in shrink this week, I am going on a soapbox to get off this Viibryd. I don’t think it’s doing shit.
Or maybe I am just doomed to being soggy cereal for life.
Posted in Read Along
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