RealMental

This was me last week.  I am really struggling here.  As I have said before, I am not sure people know what to say to me anymore.  Either the people I see day-to-day or my regular blog readers.  So I am re-posting  something from last week, with some changes.  I hope no one minds.

Love,

JenB

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I can’t answer in one word.  Let us try a few:  cautious, scared, worried, i can wear a size 14 jeans from the gap.  I am actually getting anxious writing this post.  I have been avoiding writing this post.  I have been avoiding: seeing the doctor, getting my blood work done, checking my sugar levels, eating as prescribed, working out as much as I should be, doing anything right really.  I have been: eating sweets, not eating enough protein, sleeping a lot, changing my (going off of Effexor) psychiatric medications, hemming my workout pants so I don’t trip on them.

I have been doing good thing in fits and starts.  Protein shake here, no white carbs there, seeing my trainer twice a week, but not doing even remotely enough cardio.  We b ought the Wii fit, for fun mostly, I thought it would energize me to do more serious workouts at the gym and some yoga at the very least.  I had no idea the Wii fit <strong>WEIGHS</strong> YOU.  I have not weighed myself or been weighed since March when I saw the orthopedic surgeon about my knee.  Then it became scarier and scarier and one day I would be convinced I had lost a few pounds over the past month and then I would be certain I was almost back to my heaviest (impossible according to what size of clothing I am wearing).  It is now become my great white whale, which is funny really, i mean you know FUNNY.  Whale = fat, okay, I am over explaining a lame joke.

I am worried this is it, I will either stay where I am, or I will slowly gain it back and be what I was before.  Which I cannot even define other than “fatter”.

I was always worried that when the goals of the weight loss surgery started turning into how I looked and buying new clothes and having people say I look good or I have lost weight or GOOD FOR YOU! We were afraid you were going to be the fat one forever.  I am plateauing or gaining, or fuck if I know, right?  My mom and dad “how is the weight loss thing, you know surgery and diabetes and everything going”.  I am defensive.  “What do you mean?  Do I look fat?  Does it look like I have gained weight?  WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?” Articulating everything in my own head that I wish they wouldn’t ask me about ever. That I wish I could just update people without having to answer to anyone or ever talk about it really.  I want to be the person who got to a reasonable weight after 11-12 month, stay at that weight and then be able to advise and muse about how it was to be so heavy and so reasonable and ok with my weight now.

So many obstacles in my way.  The hugest one is me, lots of parts of me.  The eating disorder, always lurking. Someone, (doctors, books, dietitians, my MIND, the interwebs, the world, THE MAN) is telling me what I should be eating, I almost automatically say FUCK YOU, I will have this donut, bowl of chips, ice cream bar.  Bingeing is decidedly smaller amount, but bingeing when you stomach is wee and you know you shouldn’t but you WANT to HAVE to, is still bingeing.  It is still a fuck you to the rules.  I am 13, 14, 18, 25, all over again.  I had a similar reaction when I found out I was diabetic.  Rebellion via diet.  I am so cool.  I wish I could just pierce my nose, or bungee jump.  Instead I retreat inside myself and eat in secret, hiding it from everyone, pretty much successfully, all the time.  Am I self sabotaging, my therapist asks?  I don’t know.  I am afraid of finally losing the weight?  Maybe, I don’t know.  Is it a control issues?  Fuck yes, I can control what I eat and I can’t control what I eat or don’t eat all a the same time.  I am the mobius strip of food control. Yes, I feel expectations from family and friends.  I do not feel understood because I do not understand myself.

I feel like this will be another thing I will not complete, I will fail at.  I have trouble starting things and even more trouble completing them.  I don’t think I know how to be successful, at anything.

I know the small steps my therapist, husband, friend, tell me I should start at.  Get my blood work done, make sure I am not anemic or my blood sugars aren’t totally fucked, or my liver enzymes are elevated or other things that could go wrong.  Step two would be to actually make a doctor’s appointment, well, the doctor would call mewith my lab results, I feel sure there would be something to discuss there.  Once I go to the doctor, they will weigh me.  Weigh me.  Weigh me.  My worth a 3 digit number.  My success, my progress, who I have been since having the surgery will be those numbers on the scale.  I want to talk myself out of that melodramatic bullshit, it sounds so juvenile, so junior school, so first true love breakup story.

I am so scared I have already fucked this up to a place where I cannot return.  So scared.  Terrified.  My bed is so less scary. My sleep, my books, my solitude.

I have to be honest with you: times are tough.

I have not known what to write over the last while, because I have been in alternating cycles of depression and anxiety that have pretty much crippled my creativity and ability to perform even simple tasks. I have been here before but not to this extent in a few years, and, to be honest, I am both shocked and not in the least surprised to be here again.

I am shocked, because I have been able to push through some truly trying times over the past few years with little more than my strong will to survive and the occasional use of pharmaceuticals from different doctors at as many different walk-in clinics when I found myself falling into old patterns of paranoia and circular thinking. I am not the kind of person who finds it at all easy to ask for help, and I have done my best to avoid it and won.

Won what, though? I’ve won more of the same with ever increasing regularity, which is also why I am not in the least surprised. I look back at the last ten years of my life, and I see a person who has never been able to stop struggling. I have never found truly stable ground. I have been able to hang on, push through, manage a regular working life to some extent, be more or less functional, but I have never had an entire week in which I did not have to talk myself out of bed or force myself into social situations just to get out of the house.

I have become used to a barely functional existence. It has become my norm. I have actually convinced myself that I am doing well despite the amount of time I spend curled up in a chair paralyzed against constructive action. It is so wrong that my barometer for measuring my psychological wellness is based on whether or not I have joined the shuffling herd of people from the local psych ward who yell I am the Easter Bunny! at me when I go to buy toothpaste.

I have spent the last week-and-a-half basically immobile but for when I get up to refill my coffee mug or go to the bathroom. Bathing happens only when absolutely necessary and eating only when my hands start shaking. Part of this is due to the fact that my medication was upped last week, and so I have not only had to deal with my original depression and anxiety but also a powerful round of nervous jitters, an electrified feeling that numbs my fingertips, insomnia, nausea, headaches, and excessive sweating.

If anything, I am learning the great reaches of the Palinode‘s patience. He has been nothing but supportive, and it is because of him that I have been able to do as well as I have.

Tomorrow afternoon, I have an appointment with a family doctor who will refer me to a psychiatrist. I have not taken the steps toward psychiatric help since fifteen years ago when three different psychiatrists diagnosed me with three different psychological conditions and fed me as many drugs that did more to complicate than ease my problems.

Making this appointment was fucking hard to do. When I walked into the clinic three days ago to make the appointment, I could barely force my voice above a whisper.

What doctor would you like to see? the receptionist asked.

Dr. P, I choked out.

What? she asked.

Dr. P. I want to see Dr. P, I repeated, my voice barely carrying over the counter.

I am crossing my fingers that my experience with psychiatry all those years ago was just a bad run, because I have to stop spending so much of my day in bed, and soon. When you spend twelve to sixteen hours a day in bed, you end up having to launder your bedding a lot more frequently, and I really hate doing laundry.

(Originally published at Schmutzie’s Milkmoney Or Not, Here I Come)