RealMental

It’s been almost eleven years since I went to rehab. I spent six of the longest months of my life there trying to build myself back into a human being. It was the hardest and best thing I’ve ever done, the most painful, and by far the most frightening. It was something I did out of necessity not virtue, a decision that thankfully changed the course of my life.

I started drinking and using drugs for one reason. Drugs and alcohol allowed me a brief reprieve from what had been a lifetime of pain and confusion. What I felt when I got high was relief, a literal opiate wave numbing my psyche, a sense of peace, the ability to relax and breathe. For all the anguish I’d experienced since I was a child, I’d finally found a cure. A cure.

But those moments were fleeting and the more I used the more I needed until I was using just to exist, just so that I could get up and walk around from time to time, so that I could pretend to exist among the god damned normal people. My cure had turned into a means of staying one step ahead of the pain, which lurked around ever corner, always waiting, and I knew that if it ever caught up with me it would end me, tear me limb from limb. I used and drank and ran until the drugs and the alcohol just stopped working.

After several months of weeping and screaming and shaking treatment became a safe harbor, a place where I could sift through the wreckage of what had been my life. Once I was able to comprehend feelings and words and regained some semblance of a thought process I realized that I had suffered all my life from depression. I was crazy, maybe, but my illness had a name.

A kind doctor diagnosed me and spent countless hours listening as I talked about things I’d never talked about before, and eventually convinced me that I was not a terrible person. It took some doing. Very slowly, I started getting better. Once I began treating my depression, my need to otherwise medicate became much less of an issue.

Here’s the thing: Even though the abuse of drugs and alcohol almost ruined my life, I know that it also saved my life. That’s a hard thing for people to understand. Drug abuse and alcoholism is often seen as a weakness or an indulgence but I’m living proof that they are sometimes neither. Sometimes self-medicating is all a person has left and that is a terrible and horrifying thing- salvation via destruction. The selling of one’s soul for just a few moments peace.

Whenever I encounter an obvious drug user and they ask me for money I always give it to them. I know how bad, God have mercy, it hurts to run out of your medication.

I am learning.

Very slowly, I am learning.

The very thing that I need to see the most has been the very thing that is most clouded. I said to my therapist recently, “why didn’t you just tell me this in the very beginning so I could have been working on it?”

The thing is he probably did.

He probably did, and he wasn’t alone; there have been others that tried to help me to see. The very truth that I seek is shrouded in smoke.

Like a flimsy fish, I grab hold of its slippery body hoping to hold on and it wiggles out and swims back out into the ocean of my dreams.

My psyche is like an ocean liner, which turns slowly. Unlike a speed boat, a turn is fast. Some days I wish for the speed boat, and probably some days I get the speed boat.

Those bigger, meatier issues that slither within the curves of my brain are the ones that are the most reluctant to leave. Perhaps it took more time to build them, making their dismantle more elusive.

Some days I am the speed racer running from here to there, GETTING THINGS DONE. Some days, I am the ocean liner moving slowly and gently through the currents.

On the slow days, that voice in my head likes to remind me that I suck, I am in efficient and do not stack up well with my peers.

That is the mean voice, more than likely the voice of my mother. Every thing that is wrong is her fault right? I jest as I know it is not her fault. The fault is in allowing the voice to continue its rental status in my head, free of charge.

I told you, I am learning.

And today was an ocean liner day.

Since calling back the therapist and booking my first appointment for this coming Friday I have felt lighter, happier, more bright, and motivated to get up and go every morning. As the appointment gets closer I wonder if I’m already pushing myself to heal before I get there — like when someone hires a maid but cleans the house before she arrives.

The want I have to become ‘normal’ is so overwhelming some days. In the last week and a half the husband and I have re-connected so well that I don’t want to let anyone else into the spectrum of my thoughts. It cheapens the experience, to share, even here. I cannot describe the love we have without sounding cheesy or overdone but I will say this man is my best friend and I love him with everything I’ve got.

Jesus, even that sounds silly. Go ahead, laugh. I am.  But sometimes I want to be more ‘normal’ for him.

I’m so appreciative of this rock in my life that I can break down to, that I can trust completely, and that when I am up, as I have been as of late, he continues to inspire me on a daily basis to be myself, which is a happy person for the most part.

The less time I spend thinking about petty things and history, the happier I become. I find if I get my freelance work done in the morning (I work from home) and head off to the gym or go for a walk or even just shower and throw laundry in, I feel as though I’ve accomplished something. It beats sitting on this couch while surfing the net and feeling incredibly guilty about such a waste of time. If I stay on the computer too long, I mope and get so down. But I haven’t sat around on the computer for over a week. Now, by mid-day I’m ready to tackle any project and I’ve even found made time to read a novel again, or knit (I know), or just snuggle with the kids and talk. I used to brush all that stuff off to surf the internet.

It’s gray here – the snow hasn’t come and the sun is scarce, so I’m missing the brightness. I’m really busy with life though, and the kids. I haven’t yelled at them since God knows when, except to call them for dinner. By the end of the day I’ve done so much that 9 p.m. seems late and I crash. I’m making lists of house stuff and errands and getting them done, which is big for me. Hello, meet the Former Mrs. Procrastinator. I’m eating 3-5 small meals/snacks a day, cooking more for winter and sleeping a regular pattern, as opposed to the starving myself of sleep and food.

Like I said, the maid has been hired, and I’m cleaning the mental house.

Well it’s Tuesday morning and I’m supposed to post here but I don’t much feel like it.  Been up all night and I want to sleep but if I go now, getting up in two hours will be hell.

I called the therapist back.  She answered her own phone and I told her right off that I wasn’t sure if our health insurance would cover her.  “Oh!” she exclaimed, “You’re completely covered by the government!”

“Well then,” I replied, “I need fixing.”

We scheduled the appointment for the 23rd.

I have no clue where to begin with this.  So I go in there, full guns of verbal diarrhea and let ’em fire?

Right now I can’t think that far ahead.  Everything is coming at me again as far as life goes, so I am busy dealing with the brushfires of kids, home and work, like everyone else.  There’s not much room for thinking, which really?  Is probably good.

Thank you to everyone that encouraged me to call her back.  I think I’m glad I did.  She sounds nice and comes highly recommended, so we shall see.

In food news, which I know I need to talk about here, I’ve been sort of okay.  The husband, when he is home, notices the not eating sometimes so he makes extra effort to make things I will eat, like fish, salad and cut up fruit.  Part of me wonders if I do this to see if he will notice.  I think there’s a few layers that need to be peeled back there so I can see clearly regarding this.   Especially since I do avoid food even more so when he isn’t around, like I’m testing myself too, seeing how long I can go, which is like 14 hours now.   See?  Even here it’s a sick pride, quickly followed by a shadow of shame.  I know it’s wrong, and I feel stupid for doing it, but at the same time I’m all like 14 hours!  That’s such an accomplishment!  And then right back to shame.

I am really a huge mess of a person, and when I have all these overwhelming, noisy thoughts swirling in my head like leaves in the park, I just want to run like hell.  But where the hell would I go?

By Blue

The therapist called today.

I’ve never met her. I was referred to her in March. March! It’s now November. Thanks Mental Health Safety Net – good thing I tried to figure this shit out on my own, sorta.

I’m not sure if I want to call her back and begin this process. I’m afraid. Really afraid.

Oh I know I should go and talk to a professional, but I do not need drugs. I will refuse them and look even crazier for doing so, I’m sure. I’m still not sleeping much – maybe 4 hours a night, but usually less. I function with coffee in abundance and eat as little as possible unless something I’m really in love with comes into the house. Like now it’s the Halloween candy and holy shit this stuff needs to go already – it’s only been 2 days (I bought the stuff for trick or treaters as late as possible so I wouldn’t touch it) and already I feel completely yucked out by the taste of sugar on my tongue constantly. Binge eating is always punished later – though I’m not puking anymore, which is good. I just won’t eat tomorrow until I feel faint – then maybe an apple. Whatever. At least I’m not refusing to talk to friends like I did back in March, but I will say I’m doing a lot more ‘faking it.’ Nobody has noticed about the eating this time around. The headaches are killing me though.

Getting back to the therapist. Here’s the breakdown for me:

1) I KNOW what I need to do to get better. I need to sleep, to eat properly, to cut way back on coffee. I know that things that were done to me were wrong and I know they weren’t my fault but the adult in me is saying “Grow up and get over it.” I worry I will sit and tell Dr. Therapy my problems and she will think I’m a huge whiny baby who needs to get over it, which hello? I KNOW.

And the thing is, I did think, at some point that by burying shit, that by throwing it into the recesses of my mind, that I HAVE dealt with things — haven’t I?

2) If I do decide to dredge up all this messy, intricate webs of slimy seaweed and place it on my lap to unravel and untangle it all…can I handle that? Can I handle the sticky, wet mess in my lap, in the forefront of my mind as I sort it out? What will it do to my personality? Will it be a strain on my marriage? I can’t hurt him. I just can’t — but I look at us, at him, at me, and wonder how long it will be before he gives up. Sometimes I think never but he is so normal that I just wonder if he has it in him to love me through this? Will those feelings of inadequacy surface so strong that I will drive him away for fear of him hurting me first? Will I be the driving force in our destruction? I wonder that a lot.

3) How will regurgitating the past affect me as a mother? I so do not want to be a mess. Right now I’m a controlled mess. If I go to Dr. Therapy, I’m not sure I’ll make it through this journey.

I am terrified.

“Blue”

I won’t mince words initially.  The psychiatrist I have been seeing since late 1998 is part of my past.  She helped me I first started to see her, she understood things no one else seemed to.  She could peg me when I sometimes said only a few things or struggled with words.  The medication she gave me seemed to work.  Sure, she was always late.  LATE.  1, 2, 3 or more hours late.  At  first I didn’t care, I mean I was not at work and had more free time.  I would bring a book or magazines and settle in for a little “me” time.  As time went on it became more irritating, disrespectful.  She briefly referred me to another Psychiatrist to treat my eating disorder (binge eating disorder).  Now this Psychiatrist almost proved herself initially helpful.  We talked about me and some new things I discovered that helped me deal with things.  After a few months she started to break appropriate doctor/patient boundaries.  She asked me to volunteer with her eating disorder education program, which was initially ok and even enjoyable.  The lines became blurry.  She called me at home a lot.  She hosting candle selling parties and invited me (seriously).  I was becoming more and more involved in the volunteer work and when I has appointments we never talked about me and my issues. Eventually I quit her, and realized that is was a horrible relationship.

I went back to making-me-wait-doctor.  At least I trusted her.  Fast forward, same shit different pile.  I saw waiting-doctor about 2 weeks ago what I think will be our final meeting.  We were talking, and all of a sudden she started flipping through my file, from late 1998 until now.  Quickly flipping.  She started muttering about “history of migraines” (no longer), and a history of “brittle” hypertension (wrong, it was high, then treated and just before I saw here, I was taken off said medication), and said “you know, your short term memory has never been very good (me: barooo?), “I think I will send you for a MRI of your head”. AN MRI OF MY HEAD.  She suspected that all these things she described were indicative of me having TIAs (Transient Ischemic Attacks) “ http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/tia/tia.htm a transient stroke that lasts only a few minutes.” What the of the to the fuck?  I laughed!  I said, I sometimes struggle for words, but when she sees me at my PSYCHIATRIST appointment, I am not taking an IQ test.  You don’t know me personally, but “TIAs manifested by major symptoms such as dense paralysis or severe language disorder” and “Drooling, imbalance, decreased alertness, difficulty swallowing”, “Confusion, headache, seizure”.  SERIOUSLY?  I knew instantly she was way off base.  She said she has ALWAYS thought my short term memory was bad.  I know, since I am crazy, this may sound weird, but I seriously though she was bat shit crazy.

Longer story shorter.  I found a new psychotherapist for talk therapy and she found me a new Psychiatrist to take care of my meds, but not all my crazy talking/listening.  I did this all within 2 weeks and I RULE.  I interviewed two talk therapists/psychologists and I can’t decide, but I will next week.  I feel positive about all of these changes for the first time in a long long long time.  I think I just picked the short straw when I was assigned Psychiatrists.  Twice.  I think I was partially concerned that if I told the tales of my two mental health providers, my DOCTORS, people would think I was even crazier and not believe me.    I still know I have a list of things to fix in my messed up noggin, but having new support makes me feel awesome

I’ve been having a hard time at work, and debating leaving, and some things that occurred recently confirmed that it just isn’t the place for me.  I’ve actually been debating leaving for a long time, just based on salary issues, but recently had the crazy waved over my head for no (to my mind) justifiable reason.  So I was describing this to my therapist last night, as being the final straw, and she said, “Oh good.  You needed a kick in the ass to get out the door.”  I so heart her.  After I told her not to hold back, tell me how she really feels, we got down to brass tacks.  But I love having someone who is frank, who challenges me, and who doesn’t just sit there nodding, or saying “that must have been hard for you.”