All in My Head

I don't know who I am. I can't define myself by any one title: friend, daughter, partner, writer, bum, mentally ill. I love animals, books, words, things beyond my ken. But more and more, Shakespeare runs through my head:

What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That thousands of strange shadows on you tend.

I live so much of my life in my head that at times I feel completely disconnected from reality and from those around me, as if the only reality is that of my dreams, my inner imaginings. Characters, dialogue, scenes, whole stories, vivid dreams, they play themselves out inside my head so that it's more interesting to reside there, where things seem more true than the brittle reality of the world around me. I always feel twice removed from the world.

Maybe that's why I'm always so desperate for my loves to pull me into and keep me in the real world, as if they could possibly have responsibility for me. It's an expectation doomed to disappointment. And I always am. Stupid me.

Lost It

Completely flipped the fuck out at the psych's. Anxious all the way there, pacing the office while I waited, he'd barely sat down when I started trying to talk to him about work. Couldn't sit for my nerves, just kept walking back and forth, and goddammit if I didn't start crying. Told him about how my job had forced me out, the deal of unpaid leave for insurance, the lack of a determination from the county, everything, and his reply? Why didn't I take the voluntary resignation, go on unemployment and take Cobra. And I had no reply for that, except that Cobra's expensive. But now I don't know. Maybe that's exactly what I should do. The situation couldn't be worse than the one I'm in now, and even after paying for Cobra, I couldn't be bringing in less than the county's giving me. So why the fuck not? I plan to look into it.

But what truly pisses me off is that that was my appointment. How's the Klonopin? Sometimes it's enough, sometimes it isn't. I don't go out unless I'm with my boyfriend. It's too hard. Do you have enough Lamictal? No, I'll run out this week. Do you have any samples? No, Lamictal's going generic, so they're not handing out any samples anymore. (Then it doesn't matter because I can't fill this prescription until I have the money anyway.) Are you seeing a therapist? I'm on the waiting list for one. Why? Because they're sliding scale. You're making an appointment for one when you go out front. Do you need to see someone today? No, don't worry about it. I always worry about it. You're seeing Nicole in one week and making a therapy appointment.

And out the door. What the hell did that do for me? I'm hustled off to his psychiatric nurse practioner for prescriptions and off to his wife therapist for her 15m of infinite wisdom: "Take a 10m walk, take one thing at a time . . . " Because, you know, I'm not a fucking moron who hasn't had successful and useful cognitive-behavioral therapy before. I've a Master's degree for Christ's sake. I'm not an idiot. I think it's time to take things into my own hands, to shut the hell up, dust myself off, and get out there and do what needs to be done. No more cowering. No more safety net. No more allowing myself to be weak. I need to muscle through. No excuses. If I'd done that, I would have never ended up in the hospital or lost my job.

And to top off my day? My fucking computer won't boot. I'm so screwed.

I Don't Know Anymore

I don't know what I'm doing or how I'm feeling anymore. I'm down. A minor depression maybe. Maybe something more. Brought on by days of heavy bleeding and IBS. That's enough to put anyone down for the count for a few days. I'm broken out like I'm 16 again. The bathtub's been stopped up, so I haven't showered. I feel disgusting and out of place and unable to face the world. I don't want to go out. I don't particularly want to do anything. I'm definitely going through the motions when it does come time to do things. I'd be hard-pressed to get myself beyond the front door today.

On a brighter note, I've been turning over the idea of a book in my head for, oh, a year or three now, but I hadn't considered doing anything with it because I had no characterization, and thus, no plot. There was no motivating force behind one of the main characters. Except that suddenly, today, while starring testily into the bathroom mirror, the character's motivation burst full bloom in my mind. Suddenly, I knew exactly what had happened to him, who he was, and what he wanted, or didn't want, and why he had become what he'd become. Moreover, it gave me a better handle on the other main character. I've a tertiary character that's still vague to me, but a little research might help me flush that out. Do I have any energy to do anything with all this, though? I doubt it. Which upsets me more, and it becomes a whole cycle of "I want to be a writer, but I don't write," along with accompanying feelings of guilt and failure. Guilt for wasting what talent I might have and fear of failing. Then there's the commitment and time it would take, and the game you play if you want to publish, and maybe all the work would be for naught. Then what? Then I wasn't good enough--just like I thought. (And if that's not self-fulfilling prophecy thinking, then I've never had cognitive-behavioral therapy.)

Otherwise, there's nothing much to say. I see the psych Thursday, I think. I don't even know what I want to discuss with him. I'm so very meh about the whole treatment process. I don't care about the drugs, I don't want to take them, and I'm fed up with being "sick." I should be better than this, I should be bigger than this, I should be able to handle this on my own. Treatment and meds have never, ever helped me. And I've tried a few. Effexor, Paxil, Zoloft, Prozac, Topomax, Wellbutrin, and now Remeron, Lamictal, Klonopin. I don't even know if I can put any faith into a diagnosis. I feel like I'm in that revolving door of doctors and meds, where you wait 30m for your scheduled appointment to sit 15m with your psych who tells you next to nothing while handing you a few more prescriptions across his desk. All the while you're barely keeping your head above water with all the doctor bills and prescription costs.

Still Here

I am . . . here. Which is to say that I have nothing to say, despite feeling somewhat better than I have, mentally speaking, since the hospital. My body, however, not so fine. First period in fourth months, non-stop IBS during the day . . . it's really more than I can be buggered to say that I actually swept up some and have a load of laundry going down in the basement. The dishes and dinner are waiting, but I can't quite bring myself to that yet.

Overall, I'd say I'm very . . . meh. With a bit of restlessness and random anxiety thrown in. Maintenance was supposed to be by to fix the tub and oven. No show, of course. And I've been sitting here waiting for them all day. Thus, no doubt, the anxiety. I still don't like the idea of having to deal with strangers or having people in my "space." I actually was resistant enough to the idea of leaving the new apartment that I rescheduled last week's psych appointment for this week. And I still don't want to go.

I don't care to write anymore either. That's be supplanted by reading. I'm reading again. And with that, the writing's dried up. There is nothing intelligent in my brain to say, no spark of personality to put forth. These are clunky words put together by a clunky mind and typed by clunky fingers. We're broke. I have no job. I have no idea what I'm doing with myself. Epic fail.

By the by, when I went down to do the laundry, I really took a good look at the basement, and promptly wished I hadn't. There are, I'm certain, the largest cockroaches I've ever seen down there. They're all dead, which is a good sign, I guess, but dear god. As long as they stay down there. The spiders are welcome to them.

Back to moving around the apartment and random futzing with this or that to pretend I'm being productive. If I were working, this would be one of those days when I couldn't be buggered to do my work because I'm too distracted and unable to focus. My body feels leaden, and I'm utterly unmotivated, except that I owe it to Jb to do something. Feh.

8:08 a.m. Med Check

I took my meds. I didn't yesterday. The IBS has been on flare-up all week; that's five days now. I read an article that described the link between IBS and depression. It comes down to a scenario of what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Most gastro doctors, including my own, consider IBS to be linked to mental health problems (i.e. depression causes IBS, so if the depression is treated, IBS should go away). However, it's easily argued that having IBS in the first place can make a person depressed. I can attest to this. It certainly does not make it easier or make you feel better about yourself. There is even some possibility, apparently, that IBS and mental health share a genetic link. A Mayo Clinic study show that people with IBS also tended to have a family history of alcoholism and mental illness. Since IBS, alcoholism, and mental illness share a genetic link, if a person isn't an alcoholic, there's a good chance they'll have IBS instead. Both alcoholism and mental illness run in my family, which, I suppose makes me a shoe-in for IBS since I'm not an alcoholic.

1:27 p.m. Breakdown & Death

It was inevitable, I guess. Last night, we watched CSI and House M.D. It was like a one-two punch. CSI focused around the "death" of a girl with bipolar. House spun around a dying man and the concept of life after death. The rest of the night, I couldn't stop thinking about death and whether there was actually anything to think about. Are near death experiences merely the last hurrah of nerve endings firing in your head, your brain flooding with endorphins, creating delusions? Is there anything out there?

At my bleakest, I am sure that religion, mythology, and spiritual beliefs are all stories we make up to convince ourselves that life is worth living, that there is some reason and reward beyond ourselves. After all, why is it easy to look back on the ancient Greeks, to throw stones at their gods, without being aware of the hypocrisy of our own belief systems. The peasants in Medieval times seem uneducated and desperate for some hope of release and reward in an unconscionably hard existence, but how much more uneducated and desperate will we seem to those who look back at us a thousand years from now?

This is where I become lost. If there is no sense to living hand-to-mouth, to spending so much time at work that we see more of our colleagues than we do our families, to death and decay and poverty and injustice and hunger, then why--why--bother? Your parents raise you, as best they can, to be a productive member in society, but what happens when that conditioning no longer rings true to you? What happens when it begins to slip? For me, I despair of having to fill countless hours with things I have to do for other people, things which have no meaning whatsoever in the grand scheme of things. Why? Why work? Why sell your life to someone else? Why struggle? Why continue on in such pain and misery and anxiety?

I spent last night grieving my wet-headed, ninja kitty again, though it's been over a year. But there's such guilt there. I knew something was wrong with him. I could tell he wasn't making his jumps, his balance was off, he was sleeping all day... And we laughed at him for being clumsy. And we didn't take him to the vet for over a week because we didn't have the money to spare. And by then, he was so sick. There was nothing we could do, except make the difficult decision, stand by him until his heart stopped. I was hysterical with tears, and was again last night, remembering it. What is it that we do here? That we can believe in to weather such things? What can we do except make up stories to give us hope, to ease the grief, to find some explanation.

But there is no explanation. There is no knowing. We are robots: our body working in set sequences until it can't anymore. We are conscious, yes, and we have free will, but what does it lead us to? So, individually, we choose what we live for: the love of family and friends, the love of a partner, the satisfaction of living life on our own terms, the pride of being successful. Each of us must find some reason to go on, else why bother? And it's during times like this I can understand those who choose suicide. What is it all for in this shallow, shadow world we live in? Tired, and alone, and depressed, how can we choose to go on when we see so clearly? What if we cannot find that one thing worth living for?

And despite this, there are moments I want to believe, but I catch myself. Even in my dreams, when I die, there is nothing. I'm alive, and then I'm not, and everything is blackness. Only once did I dream that I died, and having died in one existence, found myself in another, parallel existence, living another life in another consciousness that was like my own, but not. And perhaps we live that way, on parallel plans of existence, time meaning nothing. Or maybe the true blackness is inside of me, an empty void of loneliness. And maybe I'm grieving for myself as much as I am for my cat, my marriage, my father, my grandmother. All I know is that I cannot understand the struggle, and that I am lonely in my lack of belief.

1:28 p.m. Better?

I haven't written here in days. I have no desire to and feel as if I have nothing to say. I've been med compliant, and despite a lack of motivation, I feel as if I'm better. And with that comes this sense of "I can't imagine what all that fuss was about." There's a part of me that can't even comprehend how I ended up in such a state as to need a hospitalization. The days of being unable to get out of bed, the panic attacks, the throwing up and nausea, the IBS flare-ups due to anxiety, the inability to sleep, or sleeping too much, the constant worry and thinking, the slow fall of that thinking as I fumbled for darker places, away from the constant stress, anxiety, and depression--these are all gone. Given, I had a bad year or three: separated from my husband, moved in with a new boyfriend, supported that boyfriend through three different periods of unemployment, found out my father had a tumor that was possibly cancerous (but was able to be removed, thankfully), and had my cat of seven years, who I loved dearly, die a week after my father's diagnosis. On top of this, I'd moved positions at work to a very tedious new position that did not have any of the interest I thought it would. The perks didn't outweigh the boredom.

This combined with all the other stress and anxiety in my life, and surely, I can see why depression and sickness might have crawled up on me. It looks rational now. There were things I needed to grieve, too much change, and I wasn't able to keep up with the constant transitions. This is a pattern I've followed in the past. But this time, I went so much deeper. My body refused to cooperate with my constant efforts to hold onto my job until, finally, I was literally unable to. And that's when I went into the hospital. And as selfish as this might be, I think I needed it. I think I needed that safe environment where all I was responsible for was myself: showering, eating, meds. group, group, eating, napping, group, eating, me time, visiting, meds, snacking, then sleeping. No bills. No other person to take care of. No nothing. There was freedom in being caged in the ward, strangely enough. I didn't have to be polite, or happy, or productive, or friendly, or rational, or well. I could be just who I was as I was.

Now, more and more, I feel like it's coming time for me to get back out into life. To do something, bring in some money, be productive, help Jb since he's been helping me this whole time. Even as I write that, though, I can feel my stomach clenching, the anxiety rising. My stomach is starting to hurt, so is my gut. There's fear there. Fear I'll have to do and be what I don't want to do or be anymore, simply for a paycheck. Jb was able to find a job he truly enjoys. I'm afraid I'll be forced to take a job simply to have a job, and I'll be right back in the position that put me in the hospital. I didn't like my job, but I had to keep it because I had to support myself and Jb. It was a necessity, an evil one, and it made me sick. I don't want to do that to myself again, but I don't know how to get around the fact that we need money. It's an awful Catch-22. And there are questions of insurance, and how to keep receiving the treatment I need. I start thinking about it and it all becomes overwhelming.

* * *

Jb just called to ask me about my day. I tell him what I've been writing and thinking on, and I'm starting to actually tear up on the phone. Clearly, I'm not completely better yet. I had thought I was past such things. Granted, there was no hysterical breakdown, no sobbing--just the start of tears, a little mistiness. And the IBS has been in flare-up since yesterday. There are obvious things here that need to be dealt with, anxieties that I'm not seeing, or don't want to see. Perhaps that's why I haven't written. Perhaps I felt as if I was feeling better, so I didn't want to examine that feeling too closely. I wanted to be better. I wanted to be done with all of this. I wanted to be able to move on, but I can't. I'm not quite there just yet. And it's hard to be in this limbo, this half-life, where I'm not horribly sick and I'm not overly well. It's the med-compliant purgatory of those getting well, where we sit and wait, probing old fears and anxieties tentatively and with great reservation, less we break the seal of some emotional dam.