RealMental

My house is in a state of deconstruction. Fix It Dude comes over everyday at 7 a.m. (yes, even in the -26 C weather) and wakes me up with the sound of a crowbar against aluminum siding. He rips off pieces of my abode, tossing the metal and wood in an unruly pile on my deck and replacing it with overpriced insulation.

My house was built in 1946, and if you look at the front of it at the moment, you can see all the layers of its existence, from the recently added pink Styrofoam insulation and red tape, to the tacky white and yellow aluminum siding from the 70s, to the even worse teal blue wooden siding underneath that, to the black tar paper beneath it all. It’s a mishmash of 51 years of renovations and I gotta say, it looks like hell.

(And it’s going to look like a construction zone all winter, because we can’t stucco over the hot pink insulation until spring.)

But then I remind myself that this is all necessary. Those layers need to be excavated and ripped down so that I can start fresh and have a home that I’m proud of, not just one that I’m living in. As crappy as it looks now, when we’re done, it will be worth it.

This is how my life feels right now – in absolute disarray. It’s frustrating and exhausting and it seems like there is no end to the difficulties I am facing. I can’t even imagine what my life will look like when this is all over. It’s hard to believe that it will ever be over.

But I keep chipping away at it. Taking the drugs. Going to therapy. Doing the hard work. And hoping that what works for houses works for people, too.

Originally posted at Saviabella on November 27, 2007.

I am so frustrated and exhausted, I have no idea where to even begin. Remember how I was waiting for the Wellbutrin to kick in? Well, it didn’t. Or rather, it did, with disastrous results.

After two months of being on it and noticing no change in the near-crippling depression I was experiencing, my doctor decided to increase the dose. I didn’t notice the change at first, but looking back, I can see that shortly after the increase, I became more and more anxious. I started isolating myself from my friends, believing that they didn’t want to be around me and that some of them were actively turning people against me. I stopped picking up the phone, going out, writing emails. I felt utterly alone and scared.

And then, the panic attacks started. I thought I had experienced these before, but I’ve never felt anything this extreme. Racing thoughts, a barrage of negativity, shaking hands, heart pounding out of my chest, difficulty breathing, inability to sleep, and the intense fear that I was going to lose control and do something I didn’t want to do.

Once they started, almost anything triggered the anxiety. I went to work last week and had to go home after a few hours because everything set me off. A simple assignment, a notice of a meeting taking place in a few weeks, even getting a new email filled me with panic. I was paralyzed by fear, unable to work or even be in that place.

It’s now a week later and I still can’t shake that feeling.

I can’t get into my doctor until Tuesday, but I know she’ll take me off the Wellbutrin, so I’ve stepped myself down to the regular dose. Since I did that, the attacks have stopped and the anxiety has abated (though I’m sure taking work out of the equation also helped), but the depression is back. I’m not sure what she will put me on next, but I’m beginning to dread it, because as we have seen, my track record with negative drug reactions is less than stellar.

I feel like we’re playing chemistry set with my brain, but I don’t know what else to do because I can’t get an appointment with a psychiatrist for three to six months. So, we put on our white frocks and pull out the test tubes and see what happens when we mix up the next batch of chemicals.

Cross your fingers for me.

I got my second tattoo yesterday.

The first one was two years ago, for my 30th birthday. I needed to mark myself to commemorate everything I had been through in the first three decades of my life.

Once I had the urge to do it, I knew right away what the tattoo would be – a treble clef on my right ankle. That symbol is very meaningful to me, because throughout the difficult and hellish times in my life, I’ve always used music to calm me down and lift me up. I remember crying myself to sleep every night after my father died and then singing to stop the tears.

From that point onward, singing became one of my coping mechanisms. There’s something very cathartic about taking deep breaths with your diaphragm and pushing your emotions out of your body, filling a room with the sound of your soul. I needed to put that symbol on my body to remind myself that I had made it through some very dark times, in the hopes that it would inspire strength in future dark times.

When I got the tattoo, I swore that it would be the only one. I had no urge for more and no other symbols meant as much to me. But these last few months, that stance has changed. After two difficult years characterized by anxiety and depression, I felt a very strong need to mark myself again. And I knew exactly what I was going to get.

It’s an alto clef on my lower back. Most people have never seen one, unless they’ve taken musical theory or play the viola, as those are the only places it is used. However, way way back, it was used in choral music, placed higher or lower on the staff for the different vocal ranges.

I’m a mezzo soprano, so my vocal range is in between soprano and alto. I like the fact that the two symbols tattooed on my body – a treble clef and an alto clef – represent me. I’m neither one nor the other. I am the harmony between the two.

I also like the shape of it and the fact that people interpret it in different ways. If you look at it one way, it looks like a stylized letter B (Bella, perhaps?) If you look at it another way, it’s the number 13 (a lucky number for some). But it means a lot more than that to me.

My last tattoo was about the past. This one is about what I want for myself now. Balance and harmony in body, mind and spirit.

I’m not there yet. My life is so far from balanced right now, and I’m finally realizing that it always has been. Chemical imbalances, hormone imbalances, imbalances in work, activities, relationships. Everything feels so off-kilter right now that the slightest shift might send it all flying. Originally, I wanted to wait until I got my shit together before getting this tattoo, so that it would be a reward for my triumph over imbalance. Another milestone etched into my skin.

But then I had a different thought. What if I didn’t wait? What if I just did it now? If I put this symbol on the core of my body, the place where we get our physical balance, then maybe, just maybe, all those other kinds of balance will follow.

I hope so.

The first time I was depressed The first time I was depressed and anyone noticed was when I was 24 years old. I was working at a flaky job in a flaky workplace with an even flakier boss and not being paid nearly enough to scrape by. I had been dragging myself into work absolutely miserable for months when the flaky boss and a flaky coworker confronted me and told me I was depressed.

Now, you’d think that an intervention on your mental health would be a compassionate thing, right? Not so much. Here’s how it went down:

Flaky Boss: You’re depressed.
Savia: I know. I am.
Flaky Boss: What kind of exercise have you been doing?
Savia: None.
Flaky Boss: Not even walking?
Savia: No.
Flaky Boss: Why not?
Savia: I’m exhausted. It’s hard to do anything.
Flaky Coworker: Have you been eating right – lots of organic vegetables and fruits?
Savia: No.
Flaky Coworker: Why not?
Savia: I don’t know.

They then proceeded to tell me it was my own fault that I was depressed because I wasn’t taking care of myself. If I had been eating right and exercising, I wouldn’t be in this position. Flaky Boss recounted some time when she was depressed for three months but then snapped out of it, proving that “she knew what it’s like.” They told me I wasn’t allowed to come to work anymore because, as Flaky Boss said, “You have no idea the effect that your energy has on other people in the workplace.”

I left and never went back.

I do believe that physical health and mental health are connected. However, what “healthy” people don’t understand is that when you’re severely depressed, you can’t take care of yourself. You know there are things you could be doing to make yourself feel better, but you simply…can’t…do…them.

Every day that you get out of bed in the morning and make it to work is a great accomplishment. When your entire body hurts and you feel exhausted and heavy, you’re not going to go to the gym. You’re not going to go for a walk. You’re going to curl up on the couch with a blanket wrapped around you like a cocoon while you eat chips and watch TV.

You’re not going to take the time and effort to go grocery shopping and prepare something healthy. You’re going to order take-out. Something greasy, something that will slide down nice and easy. And you’re going to feel proud of the fact that you’re eating at all, because mustering up the energy to dial that phone, answer the door, and lift the food to your mouth is no small feat.

Thus is the nature of the disease. You’re depressed, so you don’t take care of yourself, so you get more depressed because you feel like a failure for not being able to do the simple, rational things that you know will help make you feel at least a little bit better.

This is something I’m struggling with right now. I know I eat crap. I know I’m inactive. But I’m not at the point where I can do anything about either of those things. Yet I know that if I just made some little changes, they’d make a world of difference.

I did make a small step, though. Last week, I had an appointment with a naturopath. We talked for two hours about my medical history and the depression I’m currently dealing with. Then, she gave me an elimination diet to follow. I looked at the sheet and I looked at her and said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” This piece of paper said that I wasn’t allowed to eat dairy, meat, gluten, shellfish, eggs, corn, tomatoes, sugar, chocolate, soy, peanuts, salt, caffeine, alcohol, and the list went on. What the hell was left?

“You don’t understand,” I said. “I can barely get out of bed in the morning. I’m just now starting to cook and eat borderline healthy meals after months of take-out and eating chips for supper. There is no way I’ll be able to handle doing this.”

“Just try it. Even if you’re just taking this powdered vitamin and protein supplement every morning and trying to avoid some of these foods, it will make a difference,” she said.

I looked at her skeptically, took the sheet and supplement and made it home before I burst into tears. The entire weekend, I stared at the sheet, told myself there was no way I could do this for three weeks and cried my head off. I felt that by taking the sheet, by telling her I’d try, I had set myself up for failure.

And then, something weird happened. After three days of crying, it felt like a switch went off in my head. I just stopped. Stopped crying. Stopped beating myself up. Stopped making excuses for why I couldn’t do anything. For the first time in months, I felt…normal.

I don’t know what happened. If the Wellbutrin finally kicked in. If three days of eating fruits and vegetables and the protein/vitamin supplement had given me the nutrients I had been sorely lacking. If the very act of going to that naturopath appointment made me feel empowered and in charge of my health. Or a combination of all of those things. I don’t know why; I just know that I’m feeling better. I’m finally feeling like I’m starting to claw my way out of that dark, dank hole.

And that’s all that matters.

I got a message from my mom today. She said my uncle just had five shock treatments and she was happy to report that this had “snapped him right out of it…for now.”

He’s the third of my mother and her siblings to be diagnosed with bipolar. All later in adulthood. All after a stressful event in their lives. No real symptoms before that. Or at least none that I know of. Add that to my grandmother’s long-standing diagnosis and if you got that side of the family together to have a potluck and only asked the non-bipolar people to bring the food, there would be a mere two dishes on the table.

This scares the hell out of me. I know this disease is hereditary. I know that biology is stacked against me. I can’t help but feel as though there is a ticking time bomb in my head, just waiting for the right combination of stress and circumstance.

Reading this site has helped me see this diagnosis in a different light. I can see that there are so many people out there living with this and doing quite well, thank you very much. It’s not a death sentence. It’s not the end of the world. It doesn’t mean that you can’t have a regular and happy life.

But it doesn’t sound fun. And while depression and anxiety seem to have found acceptance in our society because they have become so prevalent, bipolar still caries a whole load of stigma along with it. People don’t understand it. They’re scared of it. And all they see in the media are the really extreme cases, the ones that reinforce the stereotype of bipolar people as crazy, crazy, crazy. And dangerous. Don’t forget dangerous.

So, thank you for telling your stories. Thank you for showing everyone out there that is struggling with this disease or the possibility of this disease that they are not alone. It makes it a little easier to face, to deal with.

I’m still scared, though.

I’m depressed.

I know that doesn’t sound like a monumental statement, especially here on RealMental, but for me, it is.

I’m depressed.

It’s not like I haven’t been depressed before. I’ve certainly been more depressed than I am now. I’ve been suicidal depressed, wanting to scream my head off depressed, crying, crying, crying hard everyday for weeks and weeks depressed, and wanting to hurt myself just so the pain could be physical instead of inside my head depressed.

But each one of those times, I could point to something that made me feel that way. Coming to terms with childhood sexual abuse. Someone whom I loved and trusted betraying my trust and breaking my heart. My mother trying to kill herself. Being in an extremely abusive workplace that was stifling my soul, my body, my mind. There was always a reason, and usually a very good one.

Not this time. I’m…just depressed.

There isn’t a reason. My life is really great by anyone’s standards. I am smart. I have an education. I have a job that I’m good at, with nice people who appreciate what I do and support me and believe in me, even when I don’t believe in myself. I have incredible friends who love me. I have a soul mate who worships me, whom I adore, and who is actually moving here to be with me. I have a house and a car and a dog and two cats who like to cuddle. I have debt that’s manageable. I’m cute. I’m funny. And I know how to write.

What more could you want?

Maybe to be not depressed?

In the past, I could always point to what was going on and say, “Anyone who found themselves in this situation would be depressed.” I even had therapists say those very words to me. There was always a reason, an excuse, something to explain it all away, something external.

And now, there’s nothing. The only reason left is that I have a chemical imbalance in my brain. That I need to take drugs. Because there’s nothing more I can change about my life. I’ve quit all the extra activities that seemed to be draining my energy. I’ve cut all the negative, poisonous, judgemental and passive aggressive people out of my life. I even turned down a promotion because I was concerned about what the extra stress would do to me.

But none of that made a real difference. It didn’t pull me out of the depths. It just left me treading water. Barely keeping my head above the waves.

And so, I put my faith in this drug. This little white pill that I’m hoping can help me swim. And I wait for it to start working.

Because that’s all I can do.

By Saviabella

Yesterday, I made an emergency appointment with my doctor because I had a horrible reaction to the drug I’ve been on for the past few months. Effexor combined with my monthly PMS symptoms to give me a lovely manic attack. A week’s worth of roller coaster mood swings, insomnia, and really strong impulses to do things that were not consistent with my personality or normal actions. It scared the fuck out of me. Fortunately, I am very self-aware, knew this was a possibility on this drug, and am strong-willed and stubborn as all hell, so I didn’t do anything I would have regretted. But I could have. And next time, it could be worse. So, I’m getting the hell off and trying something new.

It felt good to march into my doctor’s office and tell her what I wanted: off the drug, on a new drug that wouldn’t trigger mania or make me fat, a referral to a psychiatrist who wasn’t an asshole and whom I could work with collaboratively to explore the possibility of some version of bi-polar (which does run in my family), a note so I could drop the class I’m in without academic or financial penalty, and hell, throw in a blood test for iron and B12 levels while you’re at it because we all know I’m a crappy vegetarian.

The problem is, in these parts, the wait to get in with a psychiatrist is three to six months. Even people who, as my doctor puts it, “are in really urgent situations”, are unable to get in before then. There are too few in this city, and they’re overworked. The only way you can see one right away is if you’re hard-core suicidal, and I am determined not to let it get that bad. So, we wait. And we try another drug in the hopes that it doesn’t do something similarly nasty in the meantime, though we’re aware of that possibility with any of the drugs she can give me.

Finding a drug to try was a bit of a hassle. We ruled out Effexor, of course, because that’s the reason I was there. Then, she asked me, “Have you ever tried any other drug?”

Why, yes. How ’bouts I take you on a walk down memory lane, doc darling?

Right after my second university degree (I was about 24), I found myself in another city working a flaky job for a flakier boss. It did not end well. I became severely depressed and just wanted to go to therapy. But there was a wait for that, too (seriously, if you’re not suicidal, it’s hard to get help sometimes). My doctor shoved Zoloft at me. I didn’t want to take it, but she assured me, “If you don’t need it, it won’t do anything to you, and if you do, it will make you feel better, so you have nothing to worry about.”

Bullshit.

It certainly didn’t make me feel better. I was shaky all the time. I didn’t feel any less depressed. I just stayed in my apartment, being unemployed and watching my legs twitch for weeks, waiting for it to kick in, and knowing that it could take a full six weeks to do so. At around the seventh or eighth week, something happened. I started having suicidal thoughts. And not just any suicidal thoughts – I mean detailed, graphic, violent suicidal thoughts. I was terrified. I had felt suicidal in the past, but it was never anything like this, never anything this violent or graphic. I certainly wasn’t suicidal before I took the drug, so I knew it wasn’t me. I was scared that something terrible could happen to me, so I gathered up all the knives and drugs in my house and shoved them at my best friend for safe-keeping. (Now, that was a fun conversation. Would you mind taking all these sharp objects away so I won’t be able to hurt myself without meaning to? I can’t even have them in my house because I don’t know what I’m capable of. Thanks. You’re a doll.) I ate my steak with a butter knife for awhile and decided I was getting the hell off these drugs. Somewhere along the way, I wrote this poem:

Zoloft

I
Shaky
Jittery
Stomach tied in a knot
(one of those special kinds you learn
in Girl Scouts.)

II
I don’t want to leave my room.
Oh God, I want to leave now!
No, I don’t.
Yes, I do.

III
I’ll tell you what I want
what I really really want.
I want to take one of those
large kitchen knives
(and none of this sissy dainty
wrist-slitting crap) and
I want to plunge it violently
into my arm – tear
through muscle and tendon
grind away at bone
just to see what it would be
like.

IV
But instead,
I throw the little yellow happy pills
into the toilet
and pee on them.

Yes, I am now aware that it’s extremely unenvironmental to flush drugs, but at the time, I just needed to literally piss all over those motherfuckers and get them the hell away from me. I went to my therapist (I finally had one) and told her what was going on and that I was quitting the drugs. She encouraged me to take the drugs back to my doctor and tell her what happened, because doctors need to know when things go wrong so they can report adverse reactions to the drug companies. She had a point. This was 1999, before there were any warnings or implications on patient drug information that these drugs could cause suicidal tendencies in some people, so, looking back, she really had a point. Maybe my case actually made a difference? Ah, probably not, considering the fuckwad doctor I had. Observe:

Savia: [shoving the drug samples back at Fuckwad Doctor] Here. You can have these back. I’m not taking them anymore. They made me suicidal.
Fuckwad Doctor: Oh, that’s just the depression coming back.
Savia: I wasn’t suicidal before I started taking these drugs.
Fuckwad Doctor: You just need a higher dose.
Savia: No. I’m done. I’m not taking these or any drugs anymore. I’m just here to let you know that.
[Fuckwad Doctor looks at me like I’m a fucking idiot who is likely going to end up dead in a back alley somewhere, and I walk out of the office.]

I went off the drugs cold turkey and the suicidal feelings went away. I continued with the talk therapy and was fine without drugs to manage anxiety and depression for years.

But the fact that I had that reaction from Zoloft those many years ago means my current doctor, who is not a fuckwad by any means, is leery to give me any drug in that class. So, that eliminates all the old standbys – Prozac, Paxil, Celexa are out, and we’ve already established that Effexor is out, so that leaves us with a small third class of drugs, the best bet of that being Wellbutrin.

Any of you out there on this one? What do you think of it? I figure it’s worth a shot, and am knocking wood that it will help me get through the next three to six month wait to see someone who will actually be able to help me. After all, they say the third time’s a charm. Let’s hope they’re right.