RealMental

I’ve been so anxious at work, so depressed at home, that I haven’t had time to think through what I’ve been going through beyond, “gotta get outta here” and “gotta try something different with the meds.” Both are right, but I’ve been feeling like I’ve been living in tunnel vision for weeks.

I had a brief talk with my immediate boss about the crazy and abusive behavior of the big boss, which has been the cause of my sleepless nights and anxious, teary days, and when posed the either/or of “should I take a leave, or just quit?” he was strongly in the leave camp, but added, “I have enough bad karma to be mad at you if you left. You have to decide what’s healthy, what you can put up with.” So that was a bit of a relief, because other things aside, I’d hate to never speak with him again if I left.

I also had some “progress” on the headache/dizziness/depression front, in that I had a head CT (negative) and a long talk with my lovely shrink about my past month & a half. She thinks it’s a metabolic reaction of the lamictal with the increased effexor. Since I’d had occasional migraines on the lamictal before this recent dose increase, she thinks I need to come off it. I’m not happy about that– because within four days of starting the lamictal last June, when I was in the depths of despair, it had kicked in, and literally was a lifesaver. I hate to let go of something to which I owe so much gratitude, sanity, creativity, and joy. But at the same time, it’s not working anymore. The headaches and dizziness are getting worse, not better, and I can’t tolerate them and try to work, or figure out what to do about work, at the same time. So we talked about other options, and she wants me to consider lithium or Depakote.

I’m frightened of both. Lithium, because my father had a girlfriend who was manic-depressive, on lithium, and still not controlled. I know I’m a different case, and that it’s the gold standard for a reason, but that past experience continues to taint me. At the same time, though? The weight gain effects of Depakote terrify me. I’m a former bulimic, have a huge comfort-eating problem, and a massive oral fixation to boot. No pen cap is safe around me. I will always have issues with my weight, even though I’ve been pretty ok the last 10 years. At the same time, though, my mother and my aunt, who if you saw us all together in a photo, you would automatically know we’re related? Both over 250 lbs. And that’s without Depakote. I’m terrified of what would happen, even with trying my best.

Also, a really whiny, self-indulgent part of me does not want to give up my nightly glass of wine. Alchohol is a lot more contraindicated with these two drugs than with the lamictal, and I just don’t want to give my wine up. But if I have to, I have to. I actually defended a doctor years ago in a case where a bipolar on lithium ended up with tardive dyskinesia, a parkinson’s like neurological deterioration, because she was an alcoholic and continued drinking all the years she took the lithium. She was pretty much wheelchair-bound by the time the case made it to trial.

And the last part? I am terrified about what will happen to my mood during the taper down. I have a lot of work scheduled in the next month– I don’t want to hand it off, because these are my personal clients, not the firm’s, and at this point, I sort of feel like they’re all that I’ve got. But at the same time, it’s going to suck, to put it mildly, decreasing the lamictal to zero, then starting the lithium. (She doesn’t want to do a “close taper,” because there isn’t a lot of research on it since lamictal is still new in the bipolar formulary.) My husband asked me if I was going to take the end of the lamictal taper off, and it tells you how tunnel-visioned I am that it simply didn’t occur to me to reschedule stuff that week, rather than hand it off. It’s true that “I will be out that week for medical reasons, and need to reschedule.” No one else needs to know more.

It’s all too much, or almost too much, but it’s got to be done anyway, and I am scared shitless. I just hope that in response to all the resumes I am sending out, I don’t get a crucial interview on what might turn out to be a dream job, the week I’m off my mood stabilizer, and starting another. That would be a little too interesting.

By She She

There is so much of my twenties that I don’t remember. I wanted so desperately to feel something authentic but did everything possible to make sure I didn’t feel anything at all. I drank and engaged in all sorts of risky behavior, but personally, I was risk-averse. I was shy, awkward, depressed and afraid. And my fears kept me safe, but they also kept me from experience. I think this is why I can barely remember so many of these years. I ghostwalked through them, never feeling more than I had to. A non-participant in my own life.

Looking back, it’s like a movie that I kind of remember seeing. I have a vague plot line, but I can’t really remember individual scenes. It’s scattershot. Sometimes someone will tell a story from that time, and I’ll nod and say, “Oh, yes, I remember that now.” Or, “I don’t remember that at all. You’re sure I was there?”

A few weeks ago, I thought of one moment that brought me a small twinge of pain and regret.

I had traveled to Paris to visit a friend over the Christmas break. She’d been invited to a New Year’s Eve party at a friend’s estate in the country. I hadn’t packed a party dress, so Claire lent me a sweater and one of her black work skirts, which I wore with my black biker boots. Between being underdressed and not speaking the language very well, I felt conspicuous and self-conscious.

After we arrived, Claire left me to mingle with her friends. The music was loud, and I could barely understand a word people were saying. One young man asked me to dance. He really wouldn’t take no for an answer. He tugged my hand gently and said in his lovely accent, “C’mon. Let’s dance. I want to dance with you. Please. Dance with me.” I backed away. “No, no. I don’t want to dance now. No, thank you. I don’t want to dance.” I felt so self-conscious, alone, and out of my league with these young socialites. I’d never felt so far from home. I just wanted to leave. Finally, he kissed my cheek and walked away to ask someone else.

I want to tell my 22 year old self, Go! Dance! Say yes! There are some things you will never get a second chance to do.

But I don’t dance. I don’t say yes. Instead, I sit at a table on the side watching the whirling, laughing figures while a dour young Frenchman harangues me for an hour about how evil America is. Mmmm-hmmm. Yes. Oh. Americans bombed Canadians at Dieppe on purpose, you say? Oh. Well. Yes, that’s awful. What’s that? Yes, I would like another drink.

I’ve turned this memory over so many times in my mind over the last few weeks that there are very few sharp edges of regret left.

So I’ll put one in the column of Opportunities Lost. And I’ll put one in the column of Lessons Learned. And I’ll try not to be the girl who won’t dance.

Original post here.

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.

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

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.

I can remember screaming that once, long ago. I was just a kid, and had been talked into getting on “The Spider” at a county fair up in north-central rural Arkansas, by some long-forgotten friend. Some of you may know this ride as “The Octopus,” or another name. What it is, is a kind of a jacked-up version of the Tilt-A-Whirl, with long “arms,” and the cars set on an angle. The arms move up and down, individually, from the base of the machine, spinning around the base simultaneously. While this is going on, each individual CAR is also free to spin at will, which it does, at a crazy pace. Good gosh, I was sick after just a few moments. I can vividly recall screaming at the ride operator to PLEASE stop the machine–and it seemed like a perfectly reasonable request to my 10-year-old brain. They could stop the ride, let me off, and resume the thing for all those fortunate, iron-gutted riders who wished to continue. But the thing was, I needed OFF, and I needed off NOW, before I slung vomit over all and sundry and ruined everybody’s day. I even remember timing my shrieked pleas for mercy so that I was doing the bulk of my screaming precisely as my car swooped down over the ride operator’s head.But that carny was either hard of hearing, uncaring, or just plain MEAN, because he didn’t stop the ride, and I had to, somehow, find within myself the literal intestinal fortitude to tough it out until the ride was over. I still don’t completely understand how, but I did it. And I never, ever, EVER got on an Octopus/Spider/Hellmachine ever again. Although, go figure, I grew up LOVING “The Zipper.” Hardly matters, because ever since my big surgery in the summer of 2000, I can’t even ride the stupid Tilt-A-Whirl any more without getting woozy, and EVERYONE knows that the Tilt-A-Whirl is a BABY ride. Anyway.

My life is feeling a little like that Octopus-ride at the moment. And while I don’t really want to get off and abandon the ride, I’d like to just slow it down a bit, please. Just for a while, so I can catch my breath, and maybe hand off my cotton candy to someone on the ground so it doesn’t wind up spiderwebbed all over me (this is another reference to an ACTUAL childhood carnival experience, when my little sister and myself brilliantly carried cotton-candy onto a Tilt-A-Whirl, with hilariously embarrassing results) in the meantime.

Seriously: I’m not worried about anything superficial, like my metaphorical hair getting messed up–I just don’t want to explode metaphorical stomach contents all over the whole metaphorical world. Wait–the world is real, isn’t it? But you get my meaning. It’s just too much, too fast, too up-and-down, too back-and-forth, and with ENTIRELY too much spinning, one axis mounted upon another, mounted upon yet another…and it seems like some cosmic, metaphorical carny is adding to the base, for yet MORE spinning potential, each and every day, just to see how much I can take. It’s like a NASA stress-test, and I’m the rocket. What, I’m mixing metaphors now? Sue me.

I can’t remember who was with me on the day of that fateful Spider ride, way back when. It can’t have been my sister–she’d have been too short to get on. But whoever it was, whatever young peer, I do remember them more or less talking me through that nightmare ride that seemed it would never end. The way it worked was through distraction, pure and simple. Whoever that wise young friend was (MAN, I wish I could remember, and could thank them), he/she kept my attention focused on his/her voice, and gave me a metaphorical life-preserver to cling to until the vertiginous nightmare was over.

I say all that in the “now” to say this for posterity: Isabella is my life-preserver. It seems that I can’t possibly be tossed about enough that a rousing rendition, complete with hiney-shucking choreography, of “Grey Squirrel, Grey Squirrel, shake your bushy tail…” can’t bring things zooming right back into focus, and still the ground beneath my feet. Her sweet smile, her hugs and kisses, her mere existence is like BEDROCK. I want her to know, when she’s looking back in years hence on these pages, why I did this, wrote these things down. I want her to know that she did this for me, even before she was born. She makes it matter, she makes it right, and she makes me stay on the ride and weather the dizziness.

I guess she made me a “mommyblogger.” Among other things, all of which are vast improvements over anything I was before she came along.

Today’s post was brought to you by the word “metaphorical.”

Originally published at www.ninjapoodles.com

Republished from A Woman Scorned, July 2007.

Bittersweet.

That’s the taste in my mouth as I realize the long-term effect of personal transparency.

In my first ministry I saw the sins of omission and lies nearly collapse an entire church. I thought that the only thing that can bring you down is the secrets you keep. When I left there and came to my current employer, I vowed to speak the truth and be as transparent as one can be.

So I have practiced my beliefs and never hid anything about my mental illness from my employer, co-workers, family and friends. Throughout my entire life I have battled depression. My first serious episode was when I was 9. My last serious episode was over 10 years ago. Of course, there have been smaller episodes throughout my life, but they are managed by counseling, medication and occasionally taking a mental health day. I make no secret of it and often joke about it. Sometimes, when I am overly emotional, I know that my depression has contributed to me being emotional, angry, loud or hurt. The only thing I can do is apologize and try to compensate or minimize the impact. I thought I had earned the respect of my co-workers, family and friends by the way I manage my illness.

I was wrong. I recently discovered that the opposite is true. Some of these people have judged me based on the abnormal behaviors observed and discounted the normal behaviors completely boxing me in to a ‘crazy lady’ status. This isn’t totally surprising but it is disappointing.

Did you know that until 1994, employers were allowed to ask about treatment for mental illness on an job application but not about other physical illnesses? Until 1999, the California insurance companies weren’t required to cover the expenses for mental illness because they weren’t considered physiological illnesses. Now we all know better, right? Although the cause of mental illness can come from a variety of sources (biological, psychological, or environmental), the treatment is often pharmaceutical in combination with therapy.

People with mental illnesses have made significant and profound contributions to our world; a few of the well known are: *Paula Abdul, John Quincy Adams, Lionel Aldridge, Buzz Aldrin, Drew Barrymore, Kim Basinger, Justine Bateman, Ned Beatty, Irving Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, Ludwig von Beethoven, Steve Blass, Robert Boorstin, Art Buchwald, .. (100’s more in the C through U headings) .. Jean-Claude Van Damme, Vincent van Gogh, Ben Vereen, Queen Victoria, Kurt Vonnegut, Mike Wallace, Damon Wayans, Ricky Williams, Robin Williams, Tennessee Williams, Brian Wilson, Frank Lloyd Wright, Tammy Wynette, Boris Yeltzin and Robert Young.

Now that I know that some discounted me because of my illness, it makes me question the value of transparency. Should I have kept it secret so that it couldn’t be held against me? Is my reputation and contribution worthless because of my transparency?

And knowing I am being judged: Will it only be after my death that my contributions will be appreciated or respected (no, I am not assuming that I of the caliber of those on the list above)? Do I succumb to the devil in the disease that says, “They will never trust you. They will never believe you are capable. They will always discount you because of your mental illness”?

The answer is ..and pardon my choice of words.. no f**king way! I am a child of God. Unique and wonderfully made. My life has purpose and meaning with or without your approval. By being transparent I have lived out my values and honestly, have no regrets for it.

One thing will change – those who wish to continue to box me in know this: it is not acceptable. I may not be Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill or Robin Williams (and neither are you), but I am a contributing member of society (just like you).

For those of you feeling like you might be one of “those” people in my life – you probably aren’t. The ones who are “those” people won’t have their eyes opened by this rant. Thanks for listening.

Wendy Johnson
San Diego, CA

Republished from A Woman Scorned, July 2007.