Dear Internet,
What you’re about to read was written damned near a year ago, never finished, and languished in my drafts box waiting to get some love. It seems appropriate, with my incessant working on self-care to update the mother-fucker and then post it in a more timely manner and by that I mean today, February 10th, 2017.
Let’s re-cap, shall we? I have a nervous breakdown in October 2015 (you can watch this in real time by reading anything from July 2014 until April – May 2016.) I am back in Louisville at that time with TheExHusband and he persuades me to start seeing a talking and medicating therapist, which I do, as I cannot afford, financially, to be hospitalized. My melt-downs are happening less but I’m still very fragile state of mind. I put together coursework, and started collecting inspirational quotes (pithy statements). (click here to jump down to the content after the quotes).
Here are 70 of them:
- Sleep doesn’t help if it’s your soul that’s tired
- Everything falls apart when you forget who you are and everything comes back together when you remember
- Life isn’t about waiting for the storms to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain
- Be good to people. Even the shitty ones. Let the assholes be assholes. You’ll sleep better
- You’ll never have to force anything that is truly meant to be
- Stay away from people who make you feel like you’re hard to love
- Don’t believe the things you tell yourself when you’re sad and alone
- Some trite inspirational quote about overcoming some things or some shit. I don’t know. Fuck off
- Goddess of courage
- Admire someone else’s beauty without questioning your own
- Life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful
- You are never too old to to set another or dream a new dream – C.S. Lewis
- Maybe life isn’t about avoiding the bruises. Maybe it’s about collecting the scars to prove we showed up for it
- I am not normal. I don’t want to be. I don’t pretend to be. I am me
- You are bad ass. You can do this
- FEAR = Forgetting Everything is All Right
- You are writing your own life
- Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes that reason is you’re stupid and make bad choices
- If today was the last day of my life, would I want to do what I’m about to do today? – Steve Jobs
- You have to let people see what you wrote. It’ll never be perfect but perfect is overrated – Tina Fey
- Half the failures in life arise from pulling in the horse as he is leaping – August William Hare / Julius Charles Hare
- Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new – Albert Einstein
- If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you – not much – Jim Rohn
- Don’t let what you can’t do stop you from doing what you can do – John Wooden
- You are the author of your own life story. You can start a new chapter anytime you choose
- Live your dreams – they are worth it
- You are a steward of pleasure – Lisa Rabey
- Do not forget your humanity – Lisa Rabey
- You are not alone
- Find the goddess inside yourself instead of looking for the god in someone else – Francesca Lia Block
- Seduction is something that lies within us, it’s not an external appearance – Kitty Cavalier
- You always have choices
- You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection – Buddha
- Body is a state of mind, not a state of body – Gala Darling
- When we focus on other’s happiness, we forget our own
- It’s not about others – it’s about you
- I cannot change what has already happened
- Fighting the past only bends me to my present
- The present is the only moment I have control over
- This moment is the result of a million other decisions
- This moment is exactly as it should be, given what’s happened before it
- The present moment is perfect, even if I don’t like what’s happening
- We are not our thoughts
- The best apology is changed behaviour
- The greatest prison people live in is the fear of what other people think
- Your story isn’t over yet
- Die trying
- Have hope
- Don’t ever give up
- Dream big. Dream bigger
- Life is short – be happy
- It’s one thing to be grateful, it’s another to let that dictate your choice
- Never give up, never be lost
- Love takes all and be’s all
- Only you can take care of you
- Love yourself and live the amazing life which is waiting for you – Gala Darling
- We are all born naked, the rest is drag – Rupaul
- My goal is to always come from a place of love … but sometimes you just have to break it down for a motherfucker – Rupaul
- You are beautiful purely because you are hear, you exist, and you are doing the best you can – Gala Darling
- Only you can save yourself
- Believe in yourself. Have faith in your abilities. Without a humble but a reasonable confidence in your own powers, you cannot be successful or happy – Norman Vincent Peale
- If you decide to not dream, you’re not only injuring yourself but taking away the amazing beauty from everyone else who would enjoy your dream more. It’s your responsibility to put these great things out there
- Fall down seven times, stand up on eight
- You are more capable than you think you are
- There are no limits to dreams
- Feelings are not facts – they are simply feelings and cannot harm you
- Feeling stuck boils down to feeling fear – Gala Darling
- Radical self-love is knowing when to get out of your own way – Gala Darling
- Only you are responsible for your own happiness
- Instead of asking yourself why this is happening to you, ask why this is happening for you. – Christine Hassler
Some of these quotes came from books, others were saved from the constant roll of inspirational quotes on my news feed on Facebook, and yet others I’ve randomly come across while I scour the internets for whatever.
You’ll notice some are nearly identical to the other. You’ll also notice most of them do not have citations. You’ll notice a lot of them presume everything is about a matter of choice. It doesn’t take into effect mental illnesses or issues where these mantras could do more harm then god. I was just thinking of someone who is suicidal reading a number of these as and taking their own life because these quotes seemed impossible to believe. Other times I get angry and I want to punch people in the throat because we never read discussions about the pain to get from a to z. “Only you can save yourself” sounds great in theory but in practice is too vague — too condesending — too much of a copout. To save myself is requiring lots of drug therapy and a talking therapist not a pithy statement found on a t-shirt or bumper sticker.
Some days, not so much as I did last year, I feel as if I’m one step away from hospitalization. My melt-downs are less but they still happen. The other night I woke up to pee and found myself in a state of panic so bad one hour of meditation didn’t work so I took a Klonopin and tried meditating again for another 30 or so minutes. When neither that or the Klonopin worked, I took a second pill. At some point, heart still racing, I fell asleep and slept for 10 or so hours. That following day was shot. I moved around like a zombie and the only work I could concentrate on was stuff that was not taxing to the brain. I didn’t shower but I cleaned up by putting on fresh underwear and tshirt. I washed my face. Later I brushed my teeth. Anything more than that would have been too exhausting.
I told TEH that presenting as “normal” exhausts me. Keeping it together to function outside of my safe space takes a lot of effort and control. I cannot do more than one thing a day outside of home. I had a chiro appointment and a hair appointment scheduled yesterday back to back and I called in and rescheduled both as even five hours worth of presenting was too much and it was, among other things, why I had the panic attack the night before because even the idea was too much.
TEH says, well, you’re not like this with me. Of course not. With you I can be my version of normal without the facade – there is no judgement just concern. I can sit around working on something (writing, knitting, watching a movie) without worrying of having to present myself to you as someone else. I noticed, he said, when we were out with $gameplaying couple (the woman I met at a Jane Austen society meeting), you seemed on edge and terse. Yes, I said. That’s exactly it. Finally, he understood. (They still wanted to see us after that so maybe I didn’t come off as terrible as I felt that I did.)
But sometimes you cannot articulate those feelings — I know I’ve been struggling to say here, this is what being “exhausting” means to me because on the outside, the invisible disability is just that, invisible and when you meet me, and knew nothing about this, you would think I was a charming fellow. A bit obnoxious, sure, but charming all the same and on the inside, I would be screaming.
I don’t want to be here — this place after what all has happened. Who does? My life is crippled and on hold and I bitterly laugh to myself that at 44, soon to be 45!, all the things I wanted to be and do by now seemed impossible. Not because I am not passionate enough for them but because emotionally, mentally, and yes, yes financially, they are out of reach. But, I console myself, this is all temporary. I know this is temporary. I can survive anything and by accepting this state is temporary gives me some breathing room and relief. I have no plans on killing myself, let us be clear on that, but I am in a much better state than I was a year ago and a year from now, I will be even better.
So we wonder, I wonder, what it’s like when your brain breaks and you’re picking up the pieces but we don’t talk about it. Friends don’t ask me because maybe — I don’t know, they just don’t. So, I think, it’s time for this disease to not control me, having me lying sobbing on the couch or bed, and it is time I can summon up the strength to control it.
Because fuck it, I’ve got this.