Been Brewing

This is going to be long post. It's been brewing for a while.

Things at home, with Jb, are getting rough and rocky, and I know it's my fault. But I also know I can't control it. He's as much a victim of my mind as I am. I'm reading John McNamanay's book on living with bi-polar/depression, and he talks about how your mind drives your body around. And it's true, though these days it seems like my mind drives my mouth around.

My mother used to tell me that we were "discontented souls," and that was why we were never happy like other people. And worse, that we'd always be that way. I believed her. After all, wasn't I always critical? Wasn't I always aggravated by people who couldn't keep up? Wasn't I judgmental? It's one of the main reasons my mother and I could never co-exist.

That's how I feel lately. Discontent. With everything. Myself, Jb, the world, our situation. I'm resentful of things I'm expected to do, and I'm resentful of the people who ask me to do them. Jb tells me he wants me to do something, heavy emphasis on the something. As if I do nothing. As if I don't battle everyday to maintain some facade of equilibrium.

It comes on worse at night. Sometimes, it even starts in the morning. I'm aggravated, angry. I feel slighted. Any form of neglect, any perceived rejection, and it cuts right to my heart, which is like a discolored bruise that cowers from a touch. Instead, a mere touch feels as if someone's socked me in the heart, and there's a physical pain to it. Words cut.

Tonight, trying to expend some energy because my mind wouldn't stop, I laid on the bed and kicked my feet, and turned around restless, and stretched and twisted, and took some slim enjoyment from hearing the muffled impact of my shins on the mattress. Jb asked me if I was having a seizure, calls it having a tantrum, tells me I'm childish, seeking attention. And perhaps the last part is somewhat true. I do want attention. Because I feel like the Tinman, an empty shell where a heart, or some sense of self, should be.

Mostly, I am trying to deal. I am trying to tire myself out. I am trying to let things out, and yet keep them inside. Jb says I talk too much, tells me to shut up. That's a dagger. Who is this person he despises so much that she's not even allowed to speak? He says I'm always bitching, always whining and whining and whining. And I don't see the whining, I don't. But the bitching... yeah. When I'm in that mood, when the aggravation takes over, when nothing anyone could do would be right, I'm witty as hell. The comebacks come quickly and painfully. They hit below the belt. They're meant to hurt. It's the way my mother used to treat my dad.

And then there's the fact that Jb thinks he gives me his time when, to me, all I see is that he gets up around 9am, logs into the computer, and stays on it until well past midnight. I'm left alone. To my own devices. And it's like living with Greg all over again. Once upon a time, Jb would seek me out, would stop playing simply to connect with me. Now it's a battle. Requests and expectations are known, but not acted upon. And that hole inside aches more. Except, it's me who's driven him away. It's me who makes him shrink into himself. It's me.

I can't expect someone to fill that gaping abyss that is self-loathing, guilt, a need for constant reassurance, for someone to cherish me and hold my hand, the way someone might take care of you if you were physical sick in bed with a high fever. I'm overly needy now, and I don't think Jb can handle that. I think it's part of why he retreats into World of Warcraft. I think that's why Greg retreated into his games, too. Both were good at looking out for themselves. And here's me: unable to even know who I am apart from Jb.

How do you get across things like you can't be bothered to cook when your boyfriend is constantly telling you he's disappointed in you. Everything seems to worsen everything. I don't want to play WoW, I don't want to play Spore, I don't want to watch tv, I don't know what to do with myself online or off. I wish Jb would read the bits in McNanamy's book that were taken from replies on his bi-polar/depression site. If only to catch a glimmer of what I'm thinking, going through, dealing with. Because I can't put it into words.

I feel lost, and alone, and as if there's no one to turn to, no one to take care of me. And it's my childhood all over again. So many expectations, and all I can do is try to build walls. But these days, those walls never hold strong. They crumble. Let things in. They don't keep me safe. And so I shut down, I recede, I walk around in a third person narrative, where things never happen to me, they happen around me--and slowly, oh so slowly, so that the world looks strange to me. But the world is as it always was. It's me who's out of step, out of time.

Knee Slapper

It's all a big joke. People sucked into games and out of their own lives. Escapism at its finest. Arthur C. Clarke shit. And where is the other person in the relationship left when they don't want to spend their life in an illuminated box? If I had a Post Secret, I think it'd be: Mostly, I wish he'd pick me.

24/7

Flat out: it's been a bad few days. Crying, too sensitive, bruised. disillusioned, angry--so angry. Jb says I threw a tantrum the other night, that I was acting childish. But it wasn't that. It was this rage, and better I beat pillows on the bed and punch the mattress than take it out verbally on him, which I do far too often.

The nights seem longer. I seem less motivated. SSDI comes in bits, very small bits, because it's so much information, and some of it, I can only guess at. The creditors want to sue me, the DHHS needs medical documents, which my psych will fill out, but which feels like one more thing on my back. And it's too much to deal with.

And that's how it is. Rolling fine, feeling close to normal, or as close as I know to normal, and then, despite all meds, I get worse. I'm snappy, angry, unforgiving, judging. I become a different person. All my barbs hit below the belt. I'm witty in cruel way, and it comes so easily. I can see it happening, and yet, I can't stop it.

Any Plans for the New Year?

You know you have a mental illness when someone asks you, "What are you doing for New Year's Eve?" And you say, "Going to my psych."

So. Things aren't much different. Taking meds. Upping my Zoloft to 150MG. I'm doing better, but my psych keeps getting on my ass to start the SSDI process. I started last night online. What a headache. I was completely drained after the first two parts.

The other thing my psych and I argued about was my recovery time. He says I'll need about a year once I get stable. I was all, "You're kidding me, right? A freakin' year?!" I swear. I wish I could pretend there was no such thing as mental illness. I hate my meds. Resent them.

Inertia

It's one of those nights. Up at 4am, on the computer until 6am. There are things I, supposedly, wanted to do today: See Twilight. Having read the book, every trailer I've seen has made it more and more enticing to me (perhaps, too, because I knew I couldn't go; we were too poor). Now I'm up in the middle of the night, wondering what it's all for. Jb got laid off a month early. No help forthcoming from JSSA. I'm supposed to do grocery shopping tomorrow, and I can't be bothered with it. In fact, I simply don't want to do it. Not in a stomp your foot, two-year-old tantrum sort of way, but in a deadened, "I don't have the heart," way. And for some reason, at 6:33am in the morning, I feel like crying and mourning my marriage. But then, I flip like a switch and mourn anything these days--anything without discretion. I've become a "Fragile: Handle With Care" package.

What to Say?

My mind's gone dumb. I have no wish to write anymore. I don't even know what to say. I seem to be all right, and then I'm arguing with my boyfriend. He's extremely hurt and upset, and I almost don't care. I do, but it's this far away part of me. But it's the up front, face to the world, part of me that wants to sleep, that doesn't want to cook dinner, that doesn't want to play the new WoW expansion, who doesn't want to get up early to drive Jb to work, or drive to the therapist or psych, or drive to pick Jb up from work.

I'm smoking more. Almost half a pack a day. I have a bad smoker's cough going, too. It's another sign that I'm in this holding pattern, circling around and around the airport tower not sure if I'm going to land or be sent around for another lap. The thing is that I felt fine last week. I did. Then Jb and I argued Sunday--well, not argued, per se, but something happened that upset me--and it set me off later that night all over again. Now I don't give a shit. About much of anything, and I hate being in that place. I hate feeling so distant.

I'm more into Spore than the World of Warcraft expansion that Jb's been dying for. He's upset I'm not as excited and all-consumed as he is, and... I'm not. I don't know why. I don't know if it's because nothing really excites me, or if his excitement sets me off, triggers me into this overwhelmed anxiety that I can't deal with well. And shouldn't I be able to after all this time? Spore is easy. You sit in your little editor and make your little creations and it's like art therapy in the hospital. It's private, personal, no one rushes you.

Anyway, I go see the psych tomorrow. Woo. /sarcasm. I have no enthusiam for anything.

Throw Out a Lifeline

The last I wrote here I'd had a breakdown. A pretty good one. I didn't take my meds for a week. I wasn't eating. I had hit apathy so hard that nothing mattered at all to me. Part of this, Jb and I am sure is that I lost my therapist for about three weeks while she was nursing her son who'd shattered his foot and had to have multiple surgeries. I don't think I understood how very important therapy had become for me. How balanced it helped to keep me.

My dose has changed again. 100MG of Zoloft, 300MG of Lamictal twice a day, and Klonopin 3 times a day. We're winnowing the meds down, which is one of the reasons I like this psych. He had tried me on Lithium, and I couldn't stay hydrated enough to keep up with the shakes and disoriented, vertigo-like sensations. So we dropped as not a good drug for me.

In between, I've been moving along as well as I'm able. I had a week and a half after the major depression where I couldn't sleep. I'd be up until 5 am and running on 4 hours of sleep a day. I was restless in bed, could not fall asleep, thinking and thinking and thinking. I think I might have swung up into a bit of a hypo mode. Anyway, now that's gone, as if hypo episodes burn my body out, and now I'm feeling exhausted and unmotivated and all around... feh.

An amazing thing happened last night, though. Jb came with me to therapy. He actually wanted to. How many guys would do that for you? My therapist thinks he's the best thing on two legs. It was a productive session. I think he got to say a lot of things that were on his mind, and none of them exactly hurt or were negative toward me, but I couldn't help feeling guilty, and ashamed, and humbled by how much he truly cares for me, regardless of my condition. There was so much love and worry there that it really made me tear up.

So. Apparently, I have the best boyfriend in the world.

Last tidbit about what I've been dealing with. Balance issues. I'm still having them. In fact, right after the therapy appoint when we got home, I literally fell on my ass when I got out of the car and rolled down the grassy slope. I'm always tottering. I almost fell on Jb while he was lying on the bed, and when I was cleaning the other week, I feel smack on the metal garbage can we keep in the front room. I've bruises on my arm, bruises on my foot where I dropped a fan on it, and I've fallen into the closet door in the bathroom more times than I can count.

What else. I've a DHHS appointment to review my foodstamps and temporary disability. It's at 8am, and there's really no way we can work the single car situation with Jb working. I've called to see if they'll reschedule, but I had to leave a message. I'll try again later because frankly, I don't trust them to get back to me.

And the SSDI. I got the info about my doctors, though I couldn't get all the dates of tests and visits. I had to fudge and guess years of when I saw some of them. Best I could do. But I can't seem to get further than that. I brought up the online application page and just sat there looking at it for an hour, overwhelmed and unable to start it.