What now?

What am I going to do?

Will we break up?

Will I quit my job?

Will I be without a place to sleep and keep my belongings?

I’m stressed, obviously. There’s been a breakdown. I had no idea the topic of housing would do this. But the stress is so high, I cannot think. I cannot make decisions about the simplest of topics any more. The anxiety is high, the stress is high, and I can’t focus on anything.

Schoolwork, tonight, seems irrelevant, when I don’t know really what my life will look like in two weeks. I mean, obviously we’ll just move in with his dad for now. Right? And I won’t mind it, once I’m there. I’ll adjust and it’ll be fine. (bf has executive fuction issues, too. Nightmare combo when it comes to this topic, it seems. or maybe he doesn’t care as much as I do, about where we live?)

But I’m mad that we never discussed it. We can’t, now. It’s too late to have a rational conversation with me. My walls are sky high and I can’t think. I’m in the haze. My mind is fuzz. My pulse is fast and weak. I shake a lot and my muscles are in pain.

I can’t talk anymore. This is shut down and I don’t know how to get out of it. So I say to myself, I could just leave altogether, and where would I go? I put in a sort of MORE official notice for my work last week. So I’ll have no income. But I’ll get a minimum-wage job, very parttime, and have a pathetic income. I looked up housing; I can’t afford anything around here on my own. So what am I going to do?

I have dreams about going Home all the time now, as the vacation slowly approaches. I’m wearing a wig and different clothes. Will that be enough to disguise myself? Maybe I shouldn’t go Home. I’m still too afraid of how my ex could respond if he sees me.

I have this headache. I get it every day. It comes along with this black, black, blackness in my head. How can I see the world in a positive way with this blackness hanging over my head?

My grades are still good. I’m doing all right, in school. It’s EVERYTHING else that is falling APART.

I ran this morning. I don’t mean that I physically ran, although I should do that for health reasons, but I left. My bf let me know that he was going to go grab a coffee with his roommate and his gf and I was free to join or meet them there or whatever, and I could sense they were in a hurry, so I started to say I’d like to join, but then could sense it again, so said go without me. I had just gotten out of the shower but actually only needed shoes in order to be ready; I’d already gotten dressed. Then I had this huge anxiety attack or something and like the walls were closing in around me. Like I just stand there and can’t make up my mind. Days go by and I just stand in one spot and can’t make a decision about the silliest things anymore. The sun rises and sets and I haven’t moved.

So I packed my school things and left and turned off my phone location settings so nobody could know where I was even if they looked. But I calmed down some minutes later and turned it all back on and wrote a note to say I’d be back soon. I’m just falling apart.

I spent like two days ago, I think, dissociating. I can’t take this stress right now. I’m so behind in so many things.

Afterward, today, my bf and I met his parents at the animal shelter near here, and we got to meet all of the cats and dogs. It was nice. My bf had set that up yesterday for me.

First appointment with my new psychiatrist today (Journal#053)

I had therapy this morning. I’m not sure how I got out of bed and made it only um, was it 15 minutes late? Still, that’s pretty amazing. Especially considering that at the time my appointment should have started, my uncle (who is my ride) was out front washing dog poo off his shoe). LMBO. I did not hurry that process along…

Wow, it’s really sad but I don’t remember much from therapy today because I was so tired. I remember birds that I wanted to photograph but didn’t, and I remember encouragement to locate/test-bike/try volunteering at an animal shelter. ❤ But I’m kind of forgetting a lot of everything else we talked about today, which is really sad.

Then I went to work. I’ve been trying to avoid coffee but I wasn’t going to make it through an hour without trying caffeine. So I did that. I stayed awake. I was actually somewhat productive, and I felt really good about that. I wrote myself a list of to-do’s for tomorrow at work, broken down into bite-sized pieces so I should actually be able to do them, regardless of my mood/productivity-level.

Okay. So I left work early, and walked quickly to my psychiatry appointment. I have had some misgivings about meeting her because her initial paperwork was very money-focused. I mean just about every packet explained yet again how many hundreds I’ll owe if I miss an appointment without calling like a week in advance (well, the amount of $ and advance time is in direct proportion to the length of the missed appointment). Sheeeiiit. I will have to wait and see if this happens. In the past, I have simply quit the person then and there. Even though it was my fault for missing the appointment. But I can’t justify wasted money like that. But yeah anyway, I’m getting stuck on the money part again.

ANYway, so I was ready to quit her just from reading through half the paperwork (I gave up after the first half and didn’t look at the 2nd half). BUT it turns out she seemed very nice. From one appointment alone, I like her so far. Time will tell. But she seemed to listen well and she seeeeeemed to understand some things. She expects to meet with me again next week and have some kind of plan formed. I can’t. freaking. wait.

The part of all this that makes me the most hopeful of all is that I feel as though, somehow and somewhere and somewhen, she, my therapist, and maybe even my primary care doctor will try to figure something out for me. That’s never happened before. Dammit I’m crying again for the freaking 10th time in two days (is it a full moon or what?!?! Hang on, lemme check… | Hmm, 9 days left. Shouldn’t be having any mood swings yet. Anyway).

Yeah, so it’s kind of hopeful. I mean, I don’t want to get my hopes up but. It felt hopeful. I don’t want any part of new medications. I want to be done with the current ones. But, here I am, daring to hope. A bit.

Oh my God[] I want a life back. I want to be alive again and live and feel safe and be able to see my parents and my dog and my pony. I want some sense of normality and to feel alive and worthwhile. I want to feel capable(not exhausted) and productive and reliable and dependable. What if this is possible?

Not my most “up” day, perhaps. (Journal#052)

I cracked open my laptop tonight to see if writing a post would help me feel better. I may have had an anxiety attack a little bit ago. I’m not sure. Tears were involved. I’m actually not much of a cryer so it’s always a big deal to me when I cry. It means something is off, either my blood sugar, menstruation, or a bit of an anxiety attack.

So here goes my exploration. First of all, Saturday. Saturday, I did what I’d intended to do. I rested. I napped. I rested some more. I think I did chores that evening. Sunday, I spent most of it with “Joe”. We watched tons more episodes of Star Trek TNG and we went on a walk. I’ll admit to you guys that we may have snuggled on the sofa while watching. All G-rated, but his arms were definitely around me and my head was resting on his chest and I didn’t want to ever move again. Ever. Complete. Bliss. If I could freeze those moments in time and just let the rest of my life play out like that, I would. Nothing more and nothing less.

This might sound positive but it is not. I don’t know if I’ll be able to put to words. something extremely important and desperate. something that does not deserve to live in me but it is there and will rear its head whenever and however it damn well pleases.

Desperation.

Desperation. Forgive me, I may offend as I try to type this. I don’t know what I’ll say or how this is going to come out.

All I can do is say PTSD. How else could I possibly describe it.

In my second year of college, I was starting my mental breakdown. It went on through the whole year, getting progressively worse the entire time.

There came a time when I consciously realized the desperation that had grown within me. At lunch, I would sit with a group of people in the cafeteria. I would sit with them. I would stare at them. I would try to memorize them and their presence with me and their company. I was desperate. I would not go for food any longer; every second spent getting food was a second not spent with them. I would begin to cry when one of them would have to leave to go back and study, attend class, etc. The loneliness.

It got to where I would begin to cry preemptively. Lunch would have just begun and I would burst into tears because I knew they would all have to leave shortly. I cannot put this into words strongly enough to convey. I would have done anything. What did I have to lose anymore by that point? I was desperate for company and did not attain it.

But also, I could not. Because even if someone tried to spend a moment with me, I was wracked with the loneliness and knowledge that they’d be leaving shortly.

THERE IS A WAY IN WHICH COMPANY WORSENS IT. It gives me that taste again. It gives me something to miss again. In many ways, it is easiest and best to be alone. Because otherwise, this neurotic part of me can rise again.

Well it did today. Tonight, I was so lonely I cried. And I wanted a hug. And I wanted company. And I don’t want to be alone right now.

The higher the high, the more painful the fall. I have had this now for over a decade. How did it subside long enough for me to date and marry? I don’t understand.

I thought, perhaps tonight I was triggered because I had just finished filling out a psychiatric history form for a psychiatrist I am finally going to see. But I did perhaps an overly-thorough job of going back all the way to the first time I was diagnosed with anything, and going forward from there, which means I did give a quick mention to that year of college and the time following.

Will this loneliness-I-would-kill-for-companionship feeling go away? Please, please let there be some way of letting this feeling die once and for all.

It’s a loop, too. It fuels itself. Because guess what keeps people away quite easily? Being neurotic. So my desperation for you, once I can no longer hide it, will be the very thing that keeps you away, fueling my desire to sacrifice any and all aspects of myself for companionship.

And, once it is in full swing, this is not something that will leave my head. I will not be able to think of anything else during the 24hr day. I mean this literally. It’s never occurred to me before now, but perhaps there is some OCD in there as well. As is, these are reasons I do not trust myself and I think I am dangerous to others (because I HAVE gone through times when I would say and do anything. Lie. Be someone different. Set aside anything Real for just one moment of time with someone). But I wonder now, if I were to consider it anymore as nothing more than an intrusive thought, maybe I could treat it as such. It feels more Real and more Tangible and more Controlling than that, but maybe, just maybe that’s all it is now. I wonder if I can think of it that way. I wish to God[] I could be normal and have normal, healthy relationships.

[[P.S. I was still in tears when I cracked open my laptop to try and explore this topic here, but before I started this post, I read all of the beautiful, so kind comments on my previous posts. ❤ ❤ I didn’t feel as lonely then. Thank you, everybody! ❤ ]]

Just a journal post (Journal#029)

Fountain

This is just going to be a journal post because I feel like writing down some of what’s taken place the last couple of days.

So, tomorrow is Sunday. Two days ago, I did not go into work. I did not intend to stay home. It just happened. My Taskrabbit told me that one of the train stations I use was closed down. In my groggy head, I decided I should best see if any of my coworkers were going to go in, and to let them know if I wasn’t. But I don’t have any of their phone numbers. And I couldn’t remember how to access my work email from home. So I sent out a text to the guy who trained me, because he remembers things like how to log into the email and stuff. So while I was waiting for him to write me back, I fell back asleep.

And I did not wake up again until 1:30p. I went upstairs and was a wee bit talked to about my irresponsible behavior. (Everyone means well when they give me these talks – sometimes they are meant to motivate and encourage me to strive for more; they just don’t realize I’ve been hearing variations of them my WHOLE LIFE. I KNOW I have irresponsible-type behaviors at times. I’ve been so desperate because of them, I thought the only way I could live was to be on disability [I had an appointment and got the paperwork, but only made it through the first page because it was all so complicated and overwhelming]). Thing is, and I know this is irritating and pathetic, but there are certain things about myself that I feel so hopeless about, it’s akin to just wanting to literally die.

My brain can do the lame-o snowball thing in a heartbeat: I was irresponsible today and “blew off” work. There’s “no excuse” = I’m a bad employee = I’m a bad person = I screwed up {yet again} = I am a screw up = why do I burden people with my existence, etc. Heartbeat quick.

So yeah, that was a kind of a shit morning. If you remember, the night before was the night I fucked up with Facebook and let myself indulge in too much sugar that night. SOOO I fucked up the morning / work, I was feeling like a zombie because of the sugar overload the night before… Perfect stage for my cousin & her boyfriend’s arrival that evening!!!

I’m not going to talk about the rest of the visit. I think it went okay. I hope so. I know I had trouble faking smiles sometimes, because I’m still fairly depressed, but I was so glad they were here and I really hope they had an okay time too. I know she has some major health issues and frankly she couldn’t always fake a smile during the visit, either. There were times when she was either in extreme pain or was extremely anxious. I couldn’t tell which. It could have been either or both.

That reminds me, here’s some bellyaching for you. So tonight he says to me, “SHE has real problems. You don’t have a problem, it was easily solvable by [getting divorced].” Nothing like having my own fucked up head be compared with a loved one who is suffering a lot of physical pain and some emotional pain besides. Note to self: Just fucking pretend around him from now on. Don’t reveal any inner thoughts and don’t let on when you’re down.

Maybe it’s time for another fresh start. I think my job is getting me DOWN DOWN DOWN DOWN DOWN. It’s horrible and I don’t want to ever go back. The job is falling to pieces internally and I just don’t want to be anywhere near it. And I have one day left to apply for the health insurance. Just thinking about it is making me cry, literally. I really want to apply. I hope tomorrow will not be too late. It’ll be my only goal for tomorrow.

I feel like, one of my biggest problems is probably that when I’m down, I can’t recall what it was like prior to that, and it feels like it’ll stay for weeks or months. It just occurred to me, because I’m fairly down, that I feel like I’m an annoying fuck who’s always down and bringing everyone else down and on & on & on. It’s like, once I’m up again, things will seem so much … see so much farther into the distance / being able to see the sun, far away. / this is immediate, intense and overwhelming. But next week could bring back a stable feeling, more cheerful and bright and hopeful and there could be some possibilities. Maybe there will be just one thing in the world that I look forward to again.

I started looking up new jobs today, but didn’t see much. I’m more interested in trying classes again anyway, but I told that to my brother and he said I was putting the cart before the horse again. That I have to have a stable job and then just do a class at night or whatever. I can’t juggle multiple things like that, but maybe a halftime job, halftime student thing would work. I just … Dunno. I’m off.

(WP deleted my spacings again/tried to recreate 😛 )

Suicidal (recording a memory from six months ago) (Journal#027)

I’m only here to jot down a memory I just had. I am NOT suicidal right now! I’m just remembering things because of my little mis-hap with Facebook a little while ago.

I remembered something that I don’t think I’ve told anybody.? I don’t remember telling anybody, but if I spoke with my therapist or psychiatrist around that time, I might have told them. But I don’t recall it. You might be the first people I’ve told. It hasn’t crossed my mind a single time since I moved.

It must have been shortly before my divorce, because that’s when I was having bloodwork run, I asked the phlebotomist to kill me. In hindsight, I’m not sure how I got up the nerve to actually ask that. What a strange memory of such a bad time. I asked her if she would please inject some air into my vein so long as she was there with a needle anyway, and assured her that nobody would be able to tell it was her. She didn’t seem to understand what I was saying. She finished her job, I got up and left. I promptly forgot about it. Later that evening, I got a call from the hospital. My phlebotomist had reported the conversation. They were calling to check in. I was still severely depressed but I must have talked with my psychiatrist or therapist or was about to the next morning or something. I don’t remember the details of that, but I remember I had either seen or was about to see somebody and was feeling like I’d make it that far without any problems. So that was that.

P.S. It’s weird to think that I didn’t even care. I wasn’t relieved and I wasn’t disappointed that she did not respond to my request at the time. It was just nothing. If she had complied, I also wouldn’t have felt relieved or disappointed. I didn’t feel anything but emotional pain at that point.

P.P.S. Tell you what. I don’t even know for sure that this is the time right before my divorce. This could very well have been from the time before that, the first set of blood tests I had to have run because of a poor choice I made, and closer to the start of the beginning of the end of the relationship. That almost seems more likely. That would have been the time when the shit was hitting the fan. That would have been the time when I was so afraid of what was going to happen when realization set in. But I know I was saying suicidal things before the divorce. I wish I could remember. Even though I’ll probably just forget it again anyway, I wish I had the whole story in my head, right this second, so I could study it and understand it. But it’ll just go away again anyway. The past is the past is the past. It’s just become the present for a brief moment, but soon I’ll lock it all back away where it belongs, in little, far-away bits of my brain that I don’t access much.

Well now I’ve done it. (Journal#026)

Fins

I just royally fucked up. I went to Facebook to reminisce about some of my old fish, and share some pics with my folks and cousin, in light of one of my bettas, who is 4 years old, has just stopped eating. The other Old Man Betta is still healthy.

But anyway, one of the pics brought me the fuck DOWN. Because my ex has a comment on it. And the link is black because we’re no longer FB friends. I couldn’t understand why I could view his new profile pic. I would have expected him to have blocked me. Anyway, so my curiousity drive me to … Fucking click the name. Which didn’t look like a link. But it was.

Then of course I kept looking and scrolling. I was looking to see if he’d said anything nasty about me, I guess. I didn’t find anything publicly, so I should be grateful. Or I shouldn’t care. And seeing all of our mutual friends commenting and supporting him. They don’t talk to me anymore. One of them texted me when his wife had their first baby a month ago. I later wrote back to ask how he(my once friend) was doing, silence. That’s not the first time. They won’t talk to me.

Because after what I did, I was the Monster. And he was the one in desperate need of help and support. And that’s the way it was. And they still support him. And I got to see pics of the his new girl. And thank God he’s doing good and has that support or he might have tried to contact me again, and I can’t have that. I’ve been too mixed up as it is.

There will ALWAYS be things I cannot share on here. As much as I want to be Free and write and say whatever I want, that’s not a reality. Not unless I want some really, seriously bad things to happen.

P.S. I don’t use FB anymore because I couldn’t figure out who I needed to block amongst all the mutually-known people. Too complicated. But my pictures are there.

To self-injure or not (Journal#017) with 2 updates

Gray Autumn Tree

By the time I’m here, posting, it’s already in my head and won’t go away. The choice is made. I already have the knife with me. I’m already in a private location.

I took clonazepam at least 40 minutes ago. So the anxiety has subsided. But the self hatred is still here. Maybe I can talk myself through this until I no longer feel this way.

What happened? I came home from work late. I chose to stay late, off the clock, to write the post about washing dishes. See, I wash people’s dishes as part of my job at work, so it was on my mind, and I was super excited to write that post. So instead of coming home, I stayed and wrote.

I made it home and was talking with my mom on the phone. She had questions for my uncle. He was home so I put her on FaceTime so she could ask him directly. That all seemed fine.

But then there was a little incident where she asked me if my brother knew that we’re not doing Thanksgiving until Friday. So I had the mental image of him arriving a day early, so I said hey, I’ll write him right now. So I minimized the video window and went to text him. For those of you with an iPhone, it doesn’t stop the FaceTime — you can still hear each other like a regular phone call. You just can’t see each other.

Well my uncle freaked out. I can’t repeat the words because I’ve forgotten them. But it was basically a tantrum of sorts. DON’T WRITE HIM NOW. WRITE HIM LATER. I’M TALKING WITH YOUR MOM. I froze. I wasn’t moving. I wasn’t writing him and I also wasn’t switching back over to FaceTime video screen either. It raises a stubborn bit of me and I sure as hell wasn’t going to switch back with him screaming at me and panicking. As with any animal training, you respond back in the calm times, not the enraged times. Of course, I am not a human psychologist and he did not calm down but freaked out even more, yelling at me not to write him, not to write him, stop it, why aren’t you stopping it, what is wrong with you, just do it, switch back, I have to see her in order to talk with her. He was finally just going to walk away. My reaction is basically, and meaning no offense to y’all, but Jesus Christ. Calm the fuck down and talk to me like a civilized human being. I had stopped all actions — I WASN’T writing him — I had NOT even pulled up a text window — why was he still panicking?

So basically I let the conversation go on a bit longer (I turned the video back on) and then said look, hate to cut this short, but I have to go to the bathroom. He suggested to keep my phone and continue talking with my mom but I wasn’t having that. If they wanted to chat still, they could have called each other back on their own damn phones but I wanted to go into my room and cry in the dark. I wasn’t going to keep it together much longer.

I took my clonazepam then, and kept it to just one tablet, as tempted as I was to take extra and just sleep now through tomorrow. I’d like to stay asleep for days. It did cross my mind to research if overdose is possible on clonazepam alone, which is one I haven’t researched in quite a long time.

HERE’s the real moral of this story:

When you are starting to allow yourself UP times — like the times I’ve written about with the moments of peace, of contentment, of joy, of gratitude, of bliss…. Well with that, I’ve opened myself up to a shit ton of possibilities of getting hurt emotionally. It’s like, opening the chest up slowly and the good starts to come in… But the excessive sensitivity and quickness to feel hurt is right up at the surface, too. I wonder if really it is more useful to live in a numbed state. I don’t know if I can handle the ups and the downs.

On the plus side, writing this all out has actually removed my about-to-cut status. I’m going to pee and then go to bed. I’m already in my jammies and have brushed & flossed my teeth. What more is there to life? I will certainly meditate again tonight.

**UPDATE** It’s the next day now. I just talked with my mom about it a tiny bit, because she was on the phone when it happened. She didn’t take my uncle’s reaction that seriously. She knows him better than me (they did grow up together). Most people just shrug it off. She thinks it’s possible that he freaked out because I broke his concentration when I grabbed the phone to multi-task. He’d been in the middle of talking about the upcoming menu. [At the same time, I also just learned that my brother *didn’t* know about dinner being Friday and would have changed his plane tickets had he known, and his girlfriend would have been able to come too. So he’s annoyed now. But is literally just getting onto his plane right now (and he only just now found out about the Friday dinner).] But yeah, I do feel guilty now, for having freaked out my uncle who is very ADHD and maybe did panic a little because I broke his train of thought. It’s possible. Ah well, such is life. Can’t win every day.

**UPDATE x2** I am sort of wondering, now, seeing this written out, if some of the desire to cut came from my feeling the loss of control over my own actions (where I wasn’t allowed to move or anything for a moment there). It isn’t just self-hatred — I KNOW that because I feel self-hatred over loads of different things and it doesn’t bring up the urge to self-harm. I’m going to keep my eye on this theory in the future.

Downward: Deleting my phone pictures (Topic#026)

The Ice

**UPDATE** Now that I realize I have a flu, I’m quite relieved! All of the negativity of the week (and all the weird headaches I’ve had all week, and the total exhaustion) will all get better as soon as I am healthy again! I will be back to my more chipper self soon enough! Whew! I’m headed home from work early today, and will go straight for my jammies and a pile of blankets! ❤ ❤ **

My phone has been too full for me to take any more photographs with it, which is a problem. I’ve deleted every app I can, plus many songs, and still no space.

So I finally downloaded the pictures onto a computer and burned them to a disc, so I will have them in storage.

That is good, but it became time to delete them from my phone. There are some that make me very happy to see, and I wanted to keep them. So it meant going through the pictures one by one to select the ones I wanted to delete.

I just deleted at least 1200 photographs. It just got more and more painful. These are photos from the past six years, in some cases. These are photos of the happy moments, like my ex husband hugging his cat. Or the time we went ice skating in a wind storm and blew all over the lake, and I photographed it the whole time and it was so much fun. I am crying now & feel so alone. I know it’s silly, because they’re on DISC. But somehow, it is very distressing to delete from phone.

I wanted to delete all of these because how else can I stop thoughts of that time period from entering my mind? If I think about what I did to bring the marriage down, it is more painful than I can bear. But I WANT to have pictures of my cat on my phone. The cats stayed with my ex husband. But I have so many pictures of them that I love so much. Yet if I see them, I am brought back to that time period, and that’s not healthy.

So I think I’d better delete the cat pictures, too. I suspect I should even delete the horse pictures from then, because those pictures remind me of that time period, too. But I loved those horses so much and I want to be able to see them when I want. But I think it would be healthiest if I delete everything from before I moved HERE, so I can really be starting fresh. It’s just SO OOUUCCHHYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But maybe in a month from now, I wouldn’t miss the pictures and would be glad I removed the reminders from my easy vision?

The truth is, I’ve been EXHAUSTED this week (I fell asleep while talking with my TaskRabbit again this morning!!). And every since my mom mentioned “that time period” (the things I did to bring down the marriage), it’s been kind of on my mind too often. (And I’ve had headaches all week, feel stiff and sore, and feel very nauseous at present. Maybe I caught a flu, which could explain the yucko mood).

As I walk down the streets here, I keep thinking I see my ex-father-in-law. Which is very distressing because he has cancer and I don’t even know if he’s okay right now, and I can’t ask anybody. I wish I could stop thinking I see him. It’s strange how many people around here look very much like him.

I have also started thinking more about my ex husband and that time period. I don’t WANT to but I’m not sure how to shut off the thoughts now that they are open. It is so painful!

So how can I get out of this funk in the short term? I’ll try to ignore my phone for a while, forgetting about the pictures. I’ll listen to some music (see my list of “grounding” music on my Music page — I’ll be choosing from that list!). I’ll get some exercise later. I’ll put away my clean clothes and maybe vacuum again. Productivity will help me feel better. [I’m not sure why, but WP just made me re-create my paragraph breaks again. I don’t know if I placed them in the same spots they were originally.]

OCD: Fear of BEING crazy (originally titled: Disorientation and paranoia that led to a ground-breaking realization) (Topic#025)

Streams of Falling Water

This is by far the most embarrassing post I’ve written. I am actually quite anxious about having posted it. But if just one person relates and maybe feels less crazy because of it, it will have been worth it.

I just got one of these moments of disorientation so I wanted to attempt writing about it/explore it/see where it takes me/help me not fear it. I doubt that I can give it justice. [I get weird shifts in reality at random from time to time. No idea why. My ex-best-friend with temporal lobe seizures experiences something like that, too, which has made me wonder. But it doesn’t seem to matter since even if I did, I wouldn’t want to take even more medicine. The shifts can affect different parts of my perceptions at different times. This will only describe this one moment in time, where a perfectly normal-for-me way of viewing the world suddenly changed for no reason.  And it’s really only me writing about THE RESULT of the shift, not the shift itself. That would be too hard to explain. Dang, now I want to try… So… Like I’m having a perfectly ‘normal’ day and suddenly **BLAM** Suddenly it’s like reality is a bit different than it was, and I’m thinking about the world in a different way, and viewing things a different way, experiencing things a different way. Feelings could be different, or sight, or sound, or mood, or thoughts. My sense of Reality is just somehow *different* and for NO reason. I could just be sitting there watching TV and have it happen. I can almost describe it, sometimes, a bit like when your ears have been plugged for ten days straight and you’re used to it that way, and then suddenly your ears unplug and in that instant, things feel a bit different. Man I wish I could describe this better.]

I was thinking about a particular person and suddenly felt a shift in my head. Suddenly, I was thinking about, is this person insane or completely grounded? I mean, please excuse the words I use to describe this. (A lot of the words I use to describe the rest of the post are offensive, but I don’t mean to be offensive. I am trying very hard to be honest about the anxious thoughts I have/had, and offensive words are part of it.) But I mean it quite literally. I realize, I have no idea. I have no idea if he’s perfectly normal and grounded or is actually quite out there. I get so insecure. Because it’s really a crazy feeling. I genuinely don’t trust whether or not another person is experiencing the average “reality” or is actually quite insane. It leads me to think about other people, too. So many people I know experience/view reality VERY DIFFERENTLY and they don’t even realize it. Differently from each other, I mean. Different people I know view the world and life COMPLETELY DIFFERENTLY from each other and that is very disorienting for me sometimes. Going between different people is a bit like traveling between completely, completely different realities. I can’t find words BIG enough to describe what I mean! It’s like a COMPLETELY alternate life when I’m with different people, even for short amounts of time.

And of COURSE leads me to wonder if I’M insane and can I trust my own perceptions? I wish I could figure out how to explain this!  And there’s no way of ever, ever believing. What if people are just going along with the things I do and say because I’m actually insane and they’re just humoring me? MAN I wish I could explain this but I just can’t figure out a way! I’ve re-written these top paragraphs for at least an hour or more so far. (The rest of this post is even more of a mess, because I was trying SO hard not to censor my words and to be quick enough that I could still remember the feelings so as to write this.)

This is one of my deep, down, insanely strong fears. It rears its ugly head time and time again.

Here’s the thing. I will NEVER KNOW what ANY of you actually think of me. I’m talking you amazing people who read this. I’m talking anybody I’ve met in person in the past year. I’m talking anybody I’ve known my whole life. I’m talking the people who humor me and chat with me in text or over the phone on the occassion that I call somebody.

I have the deep down paranoia that every person I interact with is just humoring me and that really I’m insane or have mental retardation and I just don’t realize it. These memories are coming back right now. In elementary school, I used to be SO SURE that really I was mentally retarded and in a wheel chair and that the way I was viewing the world was all in my head and that the people around me were all humoring me. I used to feel that way strongly and worry about it aaaaallllllllllllllllllllll the time.

Literally speaking, the ONLY PEOPLE I BELIEVE are people who are so messed up themselves, that I trust they are not just pulling the wool over my eyes. These are the people who are extremely depressed or have other severe emotional problems, -OR- people SO socially awkward and have such symptoms as they are actually on the autistic spectrum and don’t read people very well.

Holy. Shit. I think I may have just found the “why” of why I only date and gravitate toward untreated-mentally-ill people. I. never. thought. of. this. before.

I can’t even believe it. You guys don’t know how hard I’ve thought about this and how many times I have grasped at straws in trying to come up with an explanation when people ask me.

If a person seems “normal”, I am afraid of them! Afraid of them humoring me and being “in” on my issues that I don’t know I have. That my every movement is SO LAME and is actually quite offensive at times, and I’m the only one who doesn’t know it. That I am a buffoon.

I honestly believe it is impossible for me to ever not feel this way. I will. NEVER. TRUST. that you are not “in” on it.

So yeah, I was super, super paranoid about this in elementary school. I do wonder if this is related to the childhood ‘abuse’ I previously wrote about. Because he did tell me time and time and time again how I was so stupid and lame and mentally retarded and everyone was humoring me and nobody liked me. And he did set up things to make it seem that everyone was ‘in’ on it, like the time I wrote about already. And I was always the butt end of jokes. When I read, “Flowers for Algernon,” I cried and cried because he was me, or exactly how I felt, at least. That was me completely. I was always the butt of the jokes but I laughed right along with everybody. I just loved being included in the group.

When I came back from college and was having my first mental breakdown, the paranoia got WAAAAAAAY worse. I constantly worried that maybe my parents had set up cameras all around their house, to be watching me all the time because somehow they knew how insane and suicidal I was. I worried that the medicine I was prescribed were actually being written and filled as placebos. That placebo pills were stopping my panic attacks, proving that it was all in my head and nothing was “wrong”, etc. That the therapists were actually humoring me and watching me make a fool of myself day after day. At the same time, I worried that I was losing my mind completely and losing all touch on reality (I kind of was, though, in hindsight). I was worried that I was going to somehow make myself schizophrenic. (And I was extremely sure that all of my thoughts were going to cause me cancer.) I was extremely worried I’d be diagnosed bipolar. (I have nothing against bipolar now, but I was PETRIFIED of it back then.) I told one of my therapists that I would kill myself if I was diagnosed bipolar. Months later, I finally had the nerve to ask her if she thought I was bipolar and she said no and explained her reasoning. But of course, I didn’t know if she was telling me the truth or knew I was still not ready to hear it (and, as with all of these thoughts, there IS NO WAY for me to believe you, no matter what you do or say). When I read that the first antidepressant I was prescribed was to be avoided for those with bipolar (because it can worsen the symptoms), I did believe her just a tiny bit. To this day, I always wonder if I’m bipolar, but it doesn’t scare me like it used to.

All of these things are IN me, surfacing from time to time, but otherwise living just barely beneath the surface.

Dissociation, as my best friend and worst enemy (Topic#022)

Falling Water

I just finished the post on childhood abuse. And it lead me to think of dissociation. When I came back from college with my first mental breakdown, one of the things I was diagnosed with was a dissociative disorder. The therapist told my parents, behind my back, that I would never recover from it. They grieved and grieved and were in a very bad place for a long time after that. THANKFULLY the therapist was WRONG. After two years, I was able to feel alive again. More on that to come.

I’m going it do my best to describe dissociation as I experience it. I’ll work backwards, for now. So when I came back from college, so very many things were going on. I was barely alive. I should have been hospitalized but my parents are too scared of such things ruining the future (they didn’t know I was so suicidal). I couldn’t feel, physically. I had no sense of touch anymore. I could close my eyes and touch both a pile of feathers and a pile of sandpaper and not be able to tell them apart.

I was having experiences like hearing somebody talking but not understanding what they were saying and not recognizing the voice….and then realizing it was my OWN voice. I was talking but was so far apart from myself, I didn’t know I was talking and didn’t know what I was saying. I would see a hand reach for a doorknob in front of me and not recognize it as my own hand. At one point, in the midst of the most stressful point of college, the part that lead to the destruction of everything, my vision altered, too. The horizon became diagonal, although my head was straight.

I could go places and experience nothing from it. I wasn’t there. It wasn’t that I was looking down on myself from above — I wasn’t there at all.

At some point, I picked up a childhood dog puppet. Scared my parents TO DEATH. But I could “show” the world to the soft, friendly dog puppet I’d had forever. I could walk around the world and point things out to the dog puppet, and that is how I started to “see” things in the world again. My mom actually allowed me to take the dog puppet with me everywhere I went for like two years during this time. That’s huge for her. There are pictures of me at a music workshop in another state, me wearing the dog puppet and looking out at the ocean, and the dog puppet looking out at the ocean.

The first time I actually experienced reality again was in my childhood bedroom — I had my hand out my bedroom window and suddenly felt a breeze on my hand. That was the first feeling I’d had in two years. It marked the start of recovery from the dissociation. Up until then, we were all told and believed that it was going to be a permanent condition for me. (I made no commitments to life or to stay alive at that point.)

Since then, I was quite afraid of travel in general, for fear it would cause me to dissociate again. But NO, I have NOT gone through another phase like this. THANK GOD.

So when did I first learn to dissociate? Anyone who read my previous post already knows. Childhood ‘abuse’. There were more times than I can tell you for all the times I dissociated as a child. For example, when he pinned me down, held my eye open and touched my eyeball with the eraser of a pencil (yep, that started some OCD symptoms, too — like the fear of me stabbing my own eyes out with metal hangers, that I’ve previously mentioned). You can’t be present for that. Where do you think you go? That is dissociation. I would simply not be present when he would pin me down and do things to me. But not just for physical things — it’s also useful in events of verbal stress. Like if someone is yelling at me.
That’s how I deal with stressful verbal situations today. If you’re going to trap me in “conversation” in which I can’t respond and can’t escape physically, then I’ll mentally escape.

Safety.

It comes in handy for other things, too, like when a kid throws up on your leg and you’re still 15 minutes away from your destination and can’t do anything about it until then… Just turn your head and go someplace else mentally.

I don’t feel like I’ve described this very well. I’ll probably go back through and add some links later.