RealMental

Her message, “Please call me back as soon as you can because I need your help” her voice desperate and sad. This is the message she left on both my cell phone and my home phone. I know she needs help but I can’t help her.

She wants to die. Her pain is squeezing the very life from her soul. She tells me she is trying to withdrawal from a boy. I try to explain that it isn’t the boy, but her idea of who the boy is and what he represents to her.

We see in other people what we want them to be, not how they are. In reality, we are attracted to ourselves that we see in the other person. If you think you are not the least bit narcissistic, think again.

When relationships get rocky, we lie to ourselves. We tell ourselves “this is the only person that I’ve ever loved; there will never be another person that I will love as MUCH.”

We mistake our pain to mean that we are supposed to be together because it hurts so much. Otherwise, it wouldn’t hurt so much right?

I have to remind myself that those big huge needs that I have cannot be fulfilled by a human being. If only my husband was better at expressing his emotions, cleaning up the messes he makes, not work so much, we would be more conjoined, and I would be less crazy.

The old “if they would just do this” then “I will be OK.” It doesn’t work like that. I’ve tried hard to have it work like that and so have many people I’ve known, but it doesn’t work like that.

This is why people have affairs, why they develop shopping/food/money/drugs/alcohol addictions. They need the distractions in order to keep running from themselves.

Am I a better person because I’ve learned this about myself? Perhaps, but I do find it comforting to know WHY I do the things I do. I have found that the more I learn about myself, the easier it is to understand why others do the things that they do.

From this, I can feel empathy for people’s suffering without having to rescue them.

I tried to explain this to her, that I cannot rescue her from herself. I love her and I support her, but I cannot be her comfort cozy. As a heroin addict must lock themselves up in a room in order to kick their addiction, she must live through this without any distractions.

That is, if she really wants it to be over this time.

By CP

There comes a point when you have to forgive yourself.

I spend so much time dwelling on the things I have done wrong in this life. I spent the first 40 years of my life being cruel, calculating and deceitful. I didn’t know any other way to be. No one taught me to be this way…it just was. I never questioned why I was so different than everyone else. I assumed I was one big character flaw. I was a continuous disappointment to my parents. They read my diary and were shocked by the things I revealed there. To be perfectly honest, I almost wanted them to read it. It would save me the trouble of lying. They grounded me. I climbed out of my window and continued to live my life. I was reckless as a child and more reckless as an adult. I have done some very cruel things to people I care(d) about. It is only now, while well medicated, that I can see the forest for the trees.

How many times do I have to try to
tell you that Im sorry for the things I’ve done.
And when I start to try to tell you that’s when
you have to tell me Hey, this kind of trouble
has only just begun.
I tell myself too many times why don’t you
ever learn to keep your big mouth shut.
That’s why it hurts so bad to hear the words
that keep falling from your mouth…
tell me…why?

I embraced my kind of crazy. I never thought of it that way. I just thought that I was an extraordinary kind of human being with little emotion, or sometimes, way too much emotion. I spent most of my days turned inside out because I never knew what I could expect next from myself. Everyday was a new show, like flipping channels. Hundreds of channels, but nothing is ever on. And no one understood me. I preferred it that way. There was no one to have to answer to that way. I could be diabolical one day, sweet and loving the next and never would I have to explain myself. It was just me, take it or leave it.

Yet, during those times, I said and did a lot of things that were hurtful. And, it is only now, now that the medication has given me some clarity, that I want to go back to each of those people and fix my mistakes. I care now, which is a very large burden to bear. Sometimes I think it is easier to be manic and just not care…or be so depressed that no one else exists but you. You could care less about anyone else, because in your own mind…you are three quarters of the way to dead inside.

I can’t go back and fix all the wrong I have done. Therein lies the problem.

I have to start to forgive myself. This is a nearly impossible task because I am my own worst critic. No one is harder on me than I am. And if I was to leave the crimes of my mania to the jury of my depression, I’d be swinging from the gallows without hesitation.

When can you start to forgive yourself for transgressions gone by?

I take my medications like a good girl, every night, without fail. The thought of not taking them scares me. Then again, the thought of taking them daily makes me feel defeated. Why can other people function daily without pills to pull them through but I cannot? Again, I put myself on trial and submit to a life sentence on a daily basis. I hate swallowing those pills, but I also know that I am scared to death of the woman I am when I don’t take them. I never used to be afraid of her, but that was because she was cloaked in the disguise of me. When I looked in the mirror back then, I saw only one person…one very damaged person. Now when I look in the mirror, I see all the pieces of me, all the very different individuals. So many facets to one person and yet, I couldn’t bring them all together to make them whole without the help of these pills.

Two white ones. One white capsule. Four blue capsules.

How am I ever gonna get through this,
back to myself again.
Say it isn’t so.
Watch me falling, see me falling
through the vortex of a sky.
Darkness and light,
that’s what’s in side.

I rely so heavily on these pills to make me right, whole and complete that I never actually give myself credit for my own accomplishments. I mean, are my accomplishments my own, or are they a product of the manufacturer of my drugs? Tiny little pieces of me that come in a bottle. The finished product comes when I swallow them. I drain the life force out of these pills for 24 hours til it comes time to take more. I hurt myself over and again, batter myself emotionally for having to be so reliant on these mass produced pharmaceuticals. But I remember the girl I was before them and frankly, she scares me still. The person I owe the most apologies to is myself, for all the times I let myself down. All the bad choices that I made. And sure, you don’t need to be bipolar to make bad choices. That’s not exclusive to those with mental illness. I supposed in some ways, we are all sick. We all need help.

The problem is when you cannot recognize yourself in the mirror. The problem is when you are standing with glass in your hands, blood dripping from your fingers and you have no idea how or why…or even whose blood is on your hands. The same girl that I love so much is the very same girl I despise so. It is so hard to love yourself when you scarcely know who you are. And the times that I would love myself? They were more frightening than the times I thought I didn’t. Manic. I would show my love for myself in the most dangerous of ways. What I want, when I wanted it…no thought of consequence.

And sometimes, I ache for that. I pine for it like a long lost lover.

So I am undertaking the task of apologizing to myself in lieu of all the others that I can never say I am sorry to. The people I hurt physically. The people I hurt emotionally. The people who tried to help me whose hand I closed in a door, both figuratively and literally. I want to send all of them notes…forgive me, for she knows not what she hath done. But I can’t and I add this to my list of failures.

Again, I am harder on myself than anyone else could possibly be. When I strive for perfection, I succeed in the eyes of others and fail miserably by my own decree. So where is the happy medium for someone who is used to doing everything in excess? How does someone who has been bipolar for their entire life suddenly go about putting out the fires that she caused?

Maybe I’m still searching,
but I don’t know what it means.
All the fires and destruction are
still burning in my dreams.
There is no water that can wash away
this longing to come clean.

I hate nights like this. I hate when I analyze myself right before swallowing these pills. My Lamictal. My Prozac. My Geodon. My life. I can’t live without them and they can’t live without me. They want me to be their walking, talking demonstration of how well they work. I am a disappointment to them as well.

What I ache for the most is something that I will never have. Peace. Pure and simple peace. A life lived. Not just existing, but living, understanding and realizing that we are all just pieces on a gameboard. I want to be set free and fly away from myself, but I cannot. I am stuck here, on permanent hold. I can’t be me, because I no longer know who “me” is. Am I the girl I was before the medicine or am I the creation of these pills? Was this me all along, trying to get out of a reckless body and mind? Or am I just fooling myself right now?

I don’t want the answer to that. I don’t want to know.

I can almost hear the rain falling.
Don’t you know it feels so good.
So lets go out into the rain again.
Just like we said we always would.

I want to get well. I want to stay well. I feel like I am backsliding though. I know the levels of my medicine need to be increased, but I am reticent to go back to a psychiatrist and let them know that what is saving me is now failing me. I see the symptoms, the signs. They are all laid bare before me yet I choose to ignore them because, quite frankly, mania feel so good. There is no drug high quite like it. It is a free falling feeling, like a roller coaster that just keeps diving and dipping and speeding and flying. It puts stars in your eyes and makes everything else just go away. You don’t care. Tomorrow doesn’t matter. You could die right here, right now and fear it not. You will die happy and content in your mania. It blinds you to what is real. It makes it all go away. A temporary fix, like a shot of heroin in your arm.

Or, a bandaid on a bullet hole.

And the more I miss the mania, the more swiftly it comes back for me. I yearn for it and it calls out to me. It tempts me and teases me. It is almost erotic in its persistance, like a outcast lover. It’s alluring, like silvery waters. It’s soothing like the wind.

And deadly. As deadly as anything else that can render you lifeless.

A depression is always sure to follow. A deep depression, one that feels like you are stuck in a grave. After coming off such a lofty high, any depression is going to feel like a death sentence. And again, like with mania, you could care less.

I am on the fast track backwards, so I want to get my apologies out of the way. I am sorry to the ex-husband that I had the affair on. Yet, I am not sorry, because it paved the way for me to be with the man I am now married to. I am sorry for all the times I made my children have to learn to live by themselves because I was holed up in my bed, rocking myself into a deeper state. Either that, or they had a mother with scissors who ran so eratically that she would never slow down long enough to help with homework. I apologize to the man I met online and hurt so deeply that his life was literally shattered by my actions. I apologize to my mother for the hell I put her through. She needed compassion because she was sick as well, but I didn’t know that…and if I had, I probably wouldn’t have cared anyway. I am sorry to my present husband for making him live with me for the first seven years without my pills. Sorry for yelling at him. Sorry for breaking things. Sorry for anger that came unexpectedly and without warning.

Sorry for so many things…but mostly for myself.

I swore I would never live a life of regret, but since these pills, it is all I can manage now.

I walk along the city streets so dark,
with rage and fear.
And I wish I could be that bird
and fly away from here.
I wish I had the wings to fly away from here.

In this aspect, I am burdened. The pills force me to take a long hard look at myself and the picture is not so pretty. Sure, a beautiful face stares back at me. 41 years old and barely a trace of time on this canvas. My face is truly a work of art. It lies without speaking. It’s a farce and a truth all at the same time, it depends on how you turn it and which side is facing the light. I was blessed with the good genes of my mother and her mother before her. Our faces are barely touched by time…but if you look long enough into our eyes, you will see something cold and insincere. I am trying so hard to soften my eyes, to bring out the warmth in them. It has proven a nearly impossible task, though my husband swears my eyes are warm and beautiful.

In many ways, I think he is more delusional than I.

Cold. It is how I have spent my whole life. And I am tired of it. Exhausted by it, in fact. I am so over it. So over the pain of my tears and the pain of my sidesplitting laughter. I am so tired of the extremes. My body is weary from trying to keep up with my mind. I am trying to hard to be a good person, like my husband is, that I am exhausted by it. It comes so naturally to him. With ease, with grace…he sails through his days with nary a worry to furrow his brow. I want to be that person. I yearn to be that person. I want to be someone’s rock.

Dying is easy,
it’s living that scares me to death.
I could be so content hearing
the sound of your breath.
Cold is the color of crystal,
the snow light that falls from the
heavenly sky.
Catch me and let me dive under
for I want to swim in the
pools of your eyes.

Since I am apologizing, let me add one more. I am sorry for trying to make myself into something I am not nor will I ever be. I am sick. I am diseased and I am only fooling myself.

Originally published here.

She emailed her grocery list to me. Walking the aisles picking out the items, I felt as if I was going to have a nervous breakdown. Or, at the very least, could I just PLEASE cry? Please, just let me cry when other people aren’t around.

Following her list very carefully, I have a hard time finding the right pork, chicken, and beef. The 79 cent frozen dinners were easy to spot. This food kills people, the 79 cent food. The pop tarts bought for emergency diabetic attacks of low blood sugar. I notice they are stashed in many different places throughout her home.

I guess it’s too late for her, she’s been eating toxic food her entire life. Her body is a vestibule of toxic waste. She doesn’t know any better. She only cares that she saves money by buying everything on sale. She is worth so much more than that.

She doesn’t know any better, it’s where she came from, and it’s her family of origin. Self worth was not an asset; you wore your self hatred and suffering like a badge of honor.

Arriving at her house with the groceries, I walk in and I look down at her swollen red feet. I’ve pleaded with her to at least elevate her feet as she sits in the chair.

Why won’t you take care of yourself anymore? “I’m old” she replies, “I just can’t do it anymore.” I tell her that is bullshit. I know a ton of people her age that did not give up and are not suffering as she is.

She lets out that sigh, long and slow and rolls her eyes and looks away from me. As if, I have no idea. Deep down, she knows I do. She knows that I know.

For the millionth time, I explain that this isn’t old age, its MENTAL ILLNESS. She won’t accept that answer, as if her current quality of life is much more honorable than to be labeled with mental illness.

She gave up a very long time ago. I have no idea what made her think that giving up was even an option. I mean, she had one more daughter that had not had kids yet. She owes me a grandmother for MY kids.

I realize, that’s selfish but it’s honest. Just because it isn’t as I think it should be, doesn’t mean it isn’t as it’s supposed to be. Good thing I am not in charge of everything.

It’s hard to watch the illness growing like a cancer. Eventually it covers your entire being like vines until the real you is barely traceable.

I love you Mom, and I’ll never forget who you are.

I’m in one of those moods. The one in which I think it might be time to come off of my medication. I seem to be odd person out amongst my fellow writers on this blog and that’s ok. In fact, it could very well be a sign from the universe.

All of these awesome and beautiful writers here know that thinking about stopping medication is a huge deal. Not only to the individual, but also to those who love you the most. The very ones that have suffered the side effects of your mental illness.

Most times, I don’t know a good idea until I’ve put action into it. When something is done, I can refer back and exclaim, “gee, that was a good idea!” It is the walking through the good idea that seems to be the hard part. The whole day, hour, minute, second aspect of a good idea all the while you are breathing innnnnnnnn and outtttttttttt.

One big motive in wanting to escape the harsh reality of medication is how it is affecting my liver. I’ve just learned that these types of medicines do bad things to your liver. How could I not know this? Perhaps I just pushed it down.

Being that I am a recovering drug and alcohol addict, my liver needs to be ok. The other motives, not as important would be to lose weight and get my body back in fighting stealth mode. There are more reasons involved (lest I sound flippant about it because I’m not) that I don’t feel like writing about.

When I first got back on medication after a long hiatus, I put up a humongous fight. People around me were suggesting it for some time. I guess the last straw was the time I called the police on my husband because he was trying to make me stay where we were physically located and not let me drive away for some quiet time away from him. Our son was about 6 months old and we were in the process of moving from one place to another.

Something set me off and I began to rage. Then he insinuated that he didn’t think me driving off with our son in tow was a good idea, seeing as I was quite angry. So I put up that “I’ll be damned if someone is going to try and boss me around” fit.

At the time, we were not legally married so I explained that I had full rights and he had none (which was a big reason WHY i didn’t marry him then). And honestly, even though I was in a rage at the time, I would never do anything to endanger my child or anyone else’s child. Ever. To his credit, I understand why he was concerned.

That was my bottom. It wasn’t post partum, it was scared shitless. I’d had it ever since I’d learned I was pregnant. I am at my absolute WORSE when I am afraid.

We had begun counseling and I asked the therapist if he thought I should go back on medication. Dude didn’t skip a beat and barely let me finish when he exclaimed, “YES!”

When I first began taking Effexor XR, I was told that I would probably lose weight and it wasn’t addictive like Paxil. I’d had a hard time with Paxil. I was not interested in revisiting anything remotely familiar.

Well, five years later and I’m beginning to research the withdrawal from Effexor and it seems that it’s very much like Paxil in the difficult weaning process. AND? It makes you gain weight. As I’m perusing the library of Google College, I think to myself “mutherfucker, not again!”

Some folks speak of separating granules from their Effexor capsules. Wish me luck, because that’s about all I can count on right now.

You know, I ain’t right. And I don’t really know where first to turn to try and find out why not. All I know for sure is that the last several years (let’s review: Got married, new husband went into full-blown manic episodes, no one knew what was going on, but he was disappearing for days on end, engaging in substance abuse, and emptying our bank account. Then I got pregnant, and Husband went floridly manic again, got hospitalized against his will, was released to rehab, got ninny psychiatrist who totally mismanaged his treatment for bipolar disorder, stayed a month in a rehab facility then moved into an apartment, because I could not have him come home just then. Later, he moved back home, we had our beautiful daughter, and before you could say “relapse,” he disappeared when she was just 4 days old. Manic episodes continued until spring when he finally went off the deep end and wound up forcibly hospitalized again, this time landing in a GOOD psychiatric facility and securing a GOOD doctor who prescribed a GOOD treatment and had him participate in a GOOD outpatient rehab program, the result of which has been sobriety and relative stability with NO manic episodes since May of 2004) have been hard, emotionally, and then the last three years (let’s review: My father suddenly and tragically died, ripping a hole out of my very heart and changing the fabric of WHO I AM, I miraculously got pregnant for the second time, and then seven weeks later lost that precious baby to a miscarriage…grief compounded by grief) have been…tragic, desperate, and then this past year since the hysterectomy has just been bizarre. I’ve dealt with depression and anxiety, grief over the definitive end of my childbearing potential, which seem to come and go whimsically, and catch me off-guard. I took one anti-depressant after another over these years, and suffered side effects galore without ever really feeling significantly better. Anti-anxiety meds (read: benzos) helped me through some tough spots, and then I’d go several months without any before needing them again.

The only sure thing is that my moods and anxiety/panic attacks always corresponded with something going on externally. You know, like lying awake at 4:00 AM wondering where my husband was, or lying awake sobbing for my lost child, or lying awake crying into my pillow because I NEED MY DADDY BACK. In other words, if things were going okay, I was fine. But somewhere along the line, especially since Dad died, something had gone KABLOOEY with the coping mechanisms that had served me for the first 35 years of my life. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around this, that some external event(s) could occur that could trigger a weakness, a malfunction, in my brain.

One day this spring, while I was discussing this with a wonderful friend–a friend who just happens to have been, for the last few years, a MUCH better friend to me than I’ve been to her, or to anyone else–who happens to be a doctor of pharmacy, not to mention having much personal experience with clinical depression and the meds that go along with it. I listed to her all the anti-depressants I’d tried, told her how none of them had worked, and asked her, “What (meaning what drug) can I try next?” She looked at me, and after just a moment’s consideration, said, “You know, Belinda, even though you’re depressed, you may not have an actual chemical imbalance. I mean, you’ve been through some pretty horrible, awful stuff, just year after year recently, and you have every right to feel despondent without it meaning that your brain is all wonky…like mine.” And then she laughed. And I saw a light. And I loved her like she was part of me, because she got it. And then she told me the hard part.

She said, “Sometimes, you can’t even live life ‘one day at a time.’ Sometimes, you have to live it in 30-minute increments. You can do almost anything for half an hour, no matter how badly you don’t want to. So on days when I just want to stay in bed with the blinds drawn, I make a deal with myself to go out to the barn and groom one horse. By the time that’s done, I might look over at YOUR horse” (she’s been keeping Misha for me for way longer than I meant for her to) “and decide that his mane needs detangling, so I brush Misha’s mane. Then I might want to clip his bridle path, and before you know it, I’ve spent half the day out in the sunshine, DOING something, instead of wallowing.”

Just when I had decided that Kerri was the most brilliant, insightful woman on the face of the planet, she confessed to having developed this coping mechanism after hearing a version of it in the film, “About A Boy.” She said, “Yep. 10 years of therapy and I finally learn something useful from a Hugh Grant monologue in a movie. Not the book–the MOVIE.”

She IS brilliant, my friend, and she’s definitely onto something. I can’t help but think that, since no AD has helped me feel better–not really–that whatever is wrong with my brain, it’s not something that an AD can “fix.” I’ve been off the most recent AD, Wellbutrin, since early March, with no noticeable effect at all. I don’t feel better, I don’t feel worse. Just the same. The anxiety symptoms have abated (I’m not having falling-down panic-attacks in Wal-Mart any more), but are still present to some degree, in proportion to what’s going on in my life. Every once in a while, I suddenly get HOT all over, start sweating from head to toe, my nose runs like a faucet, my heart pounds, and I just need to be HOME.

Something is particularly difficult about mornings, about just getting out the door. Once I’m out, I’m pretty good for a few hours, but my calm seems to have a shelf-life, and I need to get back home in the afternoon. I like to plan things pretty far in advance, but I have trouble committing to things in advance. Anti-anxiety meds help. I’m not wild about how they make me feel, i.e. slightly dopey, but I do use them when I need them.

And then there’s the hormone angle, which I don’t even know for sure how to approach. Something has GOT to be going on there, since the weirdness has escalated by, um, a bunch, since my hysterectomy last fall. When I first came out of surgery, on estrogen deprivation, I literally felt, for the first and only time in my life, that I had lost my mind. It’s like nothing I can describe–the misery, despair, agony, anxiety–the certainty that it’s never going to be better, ever. After a couple of weeks, I was able to start estrogen replacement therapy, and it was like a miracle…at least to a point. It made the extreme crazy go away, but like I said at the beginning of this post, I still ain’t quite right. But then, I’ve never had the dosage checked or adjusted, so there’s a thought…

And I can’t help but think that a large part of what keeps me “down” and anxious is the disarray of my lifestyle–I keep Bella clean, fed, loved, dressed well, entertained, cared for…and that’s almost (but not quite) the limit of my motivation…and THAT is my motivation for this effort. I don’t know yet if it will work, but I know that to have peace and calm, I must first have order. I need it, Bella needs it, Alex needs it. And I need to provide it. I’m on my way, I hope…the house is still a mess, but I’ve done certain chores more regularly this week, and my family has had a hot, homemade, nutritious meal on the table every night this week, with NO takeout. That’s got to be a start. And Alex, bless his ever-loving-heart, cleaned the living room today, which lifted my mood unbelievably.

I’d love to hear from anyone who’s been through, or is going through anything similar, especially from the hysterectomy angle. Or not. Just whatever. Can you just have bad things happen to you and suffer a shift in actual brain function? (Yes, these are questions for my shrink, but my next appointment’s a couple weeks off. Humor me.)

Adapted and significantly augmented from a nearly simultaneous post at www.ninjapoodles.com

Being the one that throws up the signal that something is wrong is not the popular course. Even if that signal is as silent as you trying to take care of yourself and setting boundaries with no words spoken.

You are denied and judged by your peers, your very own family of peers. They want to know, “what is wrong with YOU?” “Why are you always bringing up the past and trying to ruin everything?”

No matter how much your therapist, your sponsor, your safe friends tell you that YOU ARE OK. You wonder if you really are ok.

Maybe the family of origin is right? Maybe I am a waste of space that is always living in the past. They ask, “What is wrong with YOU?” as if, I am the root and soul of the problem. No, those questions are merely a distraction from what is really the problem.

Now, I know better. The pain that comes with questioning yourself. No more, I know better. Now, I do.

You are trying to remove yourself from the insanity that lives in a hoarded stack of papers, plastic things, and food from 1996 that cannot be thrown away. The thick smell of smoke and of a person that hasn’t bathed.

The smell of sickness, the dark, pungent smell of mental fucking illness. It makes you physically ill, and no breakthroughs in therapy can protect you from the despair or emotional reaction of knowing that this is what you came from.

WHY DO YOU ACT LIKE EVERYTHING IS OK?! I won’t do it. I will not act “as if” EVER AGAIN FOR HER OR YOU!

You are all sick, banding together stifling the sickness with alcohol and drugs. If only we all could be as peaceful as you try and convince me that you are. I know you are not. I know.

Now more than ever, I am assured that I am on the right road for me. Your road is different from mine, and that’s ok. I am no longer so emotionally intertwined so that I believe everything I do must also be done by you in order for you to be ok.

I only know what I need to do for myself. After many years, I’ve never been surer of anything else in my life.

This is the road of clarity that I never thought I’d walk, but I made it. I’m here. It is possible.

And, NO ONE can take it away from me. Once you know, you cannot ever NOT KNOW.

By Karen Rani

I never loved nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting my heart truly
I got lost in the sounds
I hear in my mind
All these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind all this music …

~ Regina Spektor, Fidelity

I can honestly say I love Daren and the kids fully. With everyone else, including myself, I do have one foot on the ground.

That is about to change.

I’ve been abusing myself for years ~ a silent string of insults in my head and sometimes coming out of my mouth:

“God, I’m so fat.”

“If I had self-discipline, I could be better at controlling the food one way or another.”

“I’m so stupid.”

“I can’t have that, I’ll only gain more weight.”

“I can’t participate in ____, I’m too fat.”

“What are you doing in the kitchen AGAIN, you dumbass.”

“I’m such a lazy ass.”

None of these things are actually true, I know, but some of us are our own worst enemies. Would you call your friends any of those things? I hope not.

Furthermore, my oldest picked up this crappy attitude towards himself and began calling himself names that didn’t fit him either.

This morning before I went to the gym to meet with my trainer, I had this whole different post planned for the Stop the Abuse campaign I wrote about last night.

As my trainer showed me new moves with free weights, made me do squats for the first time in my life (you might recall I was asked to squat once before and how well that went),and introduced me to new machines, I said some things that she finally called me on.

I called myself a fatass, made jokes about my klutziness and although I didn’t complain about the work I was doing to improve myself, I was being very negative about ME.

My trainer told me that while I was doing all this work, I was being too hard on myself and that I needed to stop talking like that, to be more positive. She was really sweet about it, but stopped me in my tracks. She said that even by joking about ourselves that way, it’s negative. Pairing that with the fact that I constantly joke about whatever pains me, I think she is right.

You see, I went through a self shit-kicking in the last year that stemmed from a huge surge of emotions coming to surface after suppressing those very emotions for years. In short, I went a little nutty. I lost friends, I pissed off family. Hell, I pissed off strangers and readers! I felt very alone. And now? I feel pretty stupid about sharing it all with the internet.

Live and learn, I suppose. I won’t delete it ~ it’s part of my growth over the last year and I’m proud I made it through all of that.

For those who weren’t here for that, basically I was drinking a lot, starving myself, acting out, and being a hot mess in terms of my emotional topography on a daily basis. It was everything short of shaving my head. It’s all here on this site somewhere if you care to dig.

This self-abuse was so destructive, that I nearly wound up in the psych ward. My doctor wanted to put me away ~ called me bi-polar ~ wanted me on Lithium. That alone was scary enough to at least warrant a huge step: opening up to Daren about everything I’ve never shared with anyone. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, and yet best possible thing I could have done.

While I’m still healing, and have come a long way since what we can call Karen Rani’s Nervous Breakdown of 2007, up until a few weeks ago, when I hired the trainer and decided to do things right for my body, I was still drinking. Every. Single. Night.

I love wine. Wine makes me tingle and numb and never makes me sick, like vodka does now. Funny thing about that Vodkarella, she hates vodka now…what will she do about her site name? Ideas?

The Self Abuse Train has stopped. It’s sitting on the tracks, always there to chug up again, but this time I’m tossing the keys in the river and walking away.

I’m walking towards daily fitness, towards the advice of my trainer, who says 5 small meals a day and lots of water, towards only drinking on the weekends, if at all, towards moderation, self control and positive thinking and speaking (and writing).

I want to love myself fully. There are some difficult habits to break, like this self-depreciating inner voice, but I’m giving it my best shot. I have a lot of personal goals, like getting fit enough to run a marathon by next spring, and learn to skate well enough to play hockey next winter, but this one goal is most definitely the most important for a lot of us, I think.

Ironically enough, tomorrow (September 27th) marks one full year of not smoking. What a way to celebrate!

So while I applaud those of you who are already at this point in your lives, and I’m anxious to join you, I suspect I’m not alone in this journey and hope that those who know they need to, will Stop the Abuse: of themselves.

xo

Also posted here.