tripping over the side table
It has been so long since I have written anything really mental. My life has been caught with mostly good things. Good things. Some travelling, spontaneous purchase of a new house, won a trip to China to go to the Olympics, went to NYC for the first time, stayed with a fabulous hostess and the most terrific time. I did see a Surgeon who wanted to Surgeonate my knee. I scheduled and then cancelled. It didn’t feel right. All the Good Things were and are overwhelming me. Change is overwhelming me. I changed from Paxil for my anxiety, which I didn’t believe was doing anything to Effexor, which I think is doing something, but we are tweaking the dose. If you read my regular blog, you would also know that I had weight loss surgery in December, just before Christmas. More change. Rules. Rules are meant to be broken and CONTROLLED when people tell you what to eat, even though I am almost 40 years old. How to exacerbate an eating disorder: give someone rigid rules about what to eat and when and how much and then a list of vitamins and activity or your expensive paid for out of pocket operation will be for naught. I got it done to gain health, and the losing of the weight surprises me a bit. My clothes fit differently, but I feel the same about myself. My skin is drooping, sagging, my boobs, oh dear, my boobs.
I am still on the lamictal for mood stabilization, and the effexor, but still taking a fair amount of klonapin to keep my shit together most days. Still taking diabetic meds, except have pretty much stopped my injectible insulin altogether. My sugars were so low after the surgery and I honestly haven’t been monitoring them. I am 3 months late getting blood work. Ok, I lie, I am 4 months late. I am not monitoring my blood glucose levels. I am shit at self care right now.
I am scattered and paralyzed. I wish I could add the adderal back into the cocktail of drugs for the ADD. My memory is sketchy, I miss appointments, I have to write almost everything down. I am very jumbly and klutzy and trippy and my word aphasia is bad. It is a good thing I am not working a full-time job right now. Self imposed deadlines are killing me. Deadlines like let’s say, packing. We are moving into the new house on May 15. I have done nothing. The spouse has all sorts of boxes, his office is packed. I just lie in bed or watch tv or flit away time on the computer. That reminds me I have an eye appointment sometime in May. As usual I am trying to keep up the ok, functioning façade that only so many people in my life even buy anymore. Even when I am feeling jitter anxious and tell people so, my affect falls flat and I wonder if they believe me. I am having a bad day, like a computer reading it.
I can’t tell hypomanic from feeling less anxious. Initially the Effexor made me feel a little hypomanic, but I think that has subsided. Still seeing psychologist and psychiatrist. The meds are ultimately what is helping me right now. I don’t even want to talk about coping mechanisms. They might make me give up my ostrich like behaviour. Sleeping, shutting doors, television, senseless errands. I sit here in my home office and the debris is everywhere. It has been for months. I don’t even know where to start. Last week I lost my wallet and became obsessed with finding it. Looking in the same places over and over and over again. I felt I could not do anything but take my kid to playschool and back. I felt lost and annoyed because I knew I has misplaced it IN the house. My husband found it 5 days later and the relief I felt was disproportionate to the actual event. I felt freakish. I feel freakish and crazy.
I have been having little paranoid moments where I keep needing reassurance that people like me and aren’t going to leave me. Seriously, do you really like me or are you going to change your mind once you find out the mysterious secret thing that is permanently flawed about me that even I am now aware of. That is why people leave me, or reject me, or ignore me.
I have been chastising myself for not writing here. Reneging on commitments that I made. I hate breaking promises or not following through. Or not even starting, finishing. You know, classic ADD. I do stupid things all because of my mind? No, I make choices for certain, but sometimes it doesn’t feel that way.
April 28th, 2008 at 8:25 am
Aaron has ADD and depression too (not bipolar though), so though I can’t say I know how you feel, I can say I live very near how you feel. If I am trying to conquer an incredibly messy room, and I feel overwhelmed, I start at the door, and work in rows about 2ft. wide. I just clean the room like I mow the lawn. It’s very helpful, because you just deal with what’s in front of your eyes. Love to you. Moving is a bitch.
April 28th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Hi Jen – I’m a lurker at your jenandtonic blog.
De-lurking to say..well, crap, there’s probably nothing I can say that can help.
How about “I read (hear) you.”
And, “You matter.”
xoxoxo from a CA stranger-friend
April 28th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Apart from the meds and the surgery, I relate to so much of this post. I don’t know if that’s good news for you or bad news for me, or vice versa! But maybe it’s helpful to know that life is too much with all of us from time to time?
xo
April 29th, 2008 at 12:50 am
Cymbalta is similar to effexor but works better for me. Well I take a combo but only 37 mg of effexor otherwise I can’t sleep and get edgy. effexor can def. set off the hypomania. I just deal with anxiety and depression so I am not exactly sure how that feels.
Keep breathing and know things will get better eventually. At least mine usually does. ;)
April 29th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
I like you. A lot.
April 30th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Your feelings of forgetfulness, klutziness, etc could be a result of the surgery. I had surgery in February and I learned that the anesthetic stays in your system up to a year afterward. I was really forgetful, stumbling into things, and couldn’t find the proper words or sustain a conversation without forgetting what I was saying for a few months afterward. I still am very tired and have to nap after I do anything even mildly active – like laundry ;)
May 1st, 2008 at 8:25 am
Another Canadian lurker, in possession of a super secret flaw that keeps people from liking me (or perhaps more importantly, keeps me from liking myself).
I’m listening too, and you matter to me. Hope you feel better soon.
May 2nd, 2008 at 5:00 am
Dear Jen,
It’s hard to do all the stuff you do. It’s hard to LIVE. It’s hard to be a mom. Shit, it’s really, really, really hard to move! Holy crap, it’s hard to get major surgery. Major abdominal surgery! It’s mind bogglingly hard to change the way you have been eating your entire life. Wait…did you say your body is totally changing? HARD. What? You mean you have to take care of yourself all the time because you have an ongoing illness. HARD! You have a young child. HAAAAARRRRRDDDD. Even having boobs is hard. Being concerned for the state of one’s boobs? Quite hard.
I want to hug you and pat you on the hand but also kind of sock you in the arm (in a friendly way) and say: SHUH? HELLO? Are you going through a total change in your life down to what you eat and wear and your entire body and then have to move? What would you say to me because I am an utter basket case and want to hide under a blanket until 2020? I suspect you would be nice to me. Call me crazy. No, I know you would be. Jen, you are wonderful, fabulous, amazing.
Change sucks. I discovered this crazy secret that only sometimes works which is that when I am not mean to myself for screwing up then it is so much easier not to screw up. Not like this is easy to do or anything. This might not work for you. I dunno. But if I say ‘damnit I MUST x, y, z. Why do I suck?’ then I won’t. If I secretly hug myself (not in public, it looks weird) and I’m like ‘oh, honey, how about a nice cup of tea?’ then for some reason I will do whatever it is I need to do. But I admit, this is difficult because I usually want to smack myself with a 2X4. (Sorry, I don’t know what a 2X4 is in the metric system. Translation: A large board. I want to smack myself with a very large, heavy board. I have actually done this on occasion.)
The wallet story! Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow! That was a page from my life. I could have told that story at least 10 times. It’s quite scary, what I’ve gone through because of losing my wallet. I also find it again. Can you not add the adderall? Provigil? However, I agree with the person who said surgery can give you aphasia.
It’s going to work out. I wish I could help you move, though. Can you get some company? Someone to come over and chat with you while you pack your boxes? Pay someone to pack the rest of the boxes? But if you can’t afford that, can someone come and chat with you? Things like this become a huge obstacle in our minds and distraction is sometimes the only solution.
May 5th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Hi Jen, I have just recently started reading Real Mental (even had a post put up here once) I am so sorry that you are having such struggles right now but agreeing with Ozma and other commenters – change is hard. Even a little change is hard for me…all of the change you have gone through? I would say you are doing incredible. I don’t know much about some of the meds you are on but I have just recently come off of Klonopin and wow has my world cleared up. It was a life saver to me for many years and I had to come off of it while I am trying to have kids. While I was on it? Lost my glasses when they were on top of my head. Car keys? I can’t tell you how many mornings I had to take the bus simply because I could not find them! And my cell phone? Lost. Many times a month! Change can do this to us. Feeling overwhelmed can do this. Meds can do this. All of those things at once? I think you are doing great with everything you have going on. Take a deep breath and try to be gentle with yourself.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
I’m a slacker here, too. Lame.
But I like you–really like you, and I’ll never, ever leave you.