Dear Internet,
A bottle of Methylphenidate (the generic for Ritalin) is currently keeping me company this evening, while I’m writing, staring at me from across my desk. I eye it precariously for starting Saturday, I begin the regime that could potentially change my life. My prescribing doctor dressed up the benefits like snake oil – allllll of the problems I’ve been experiencing for years that were often described as being part of my charming personality and/or because I was lazy, lacked focus, or motivation (to name a few reasons) now has an official name. That name is ADHD and with that single diagnosis, my world just got a little bit clearer.
I say potentially for I’m scared. And skeptical. Delighted. But skeptical.
I’ve been rather sporadic about writing about my mental health updates, and I think part of it is how much I need to get clear in my own head before I present it to the world. After I wrote this in October, I finally got the courage to call my old therapist and he scheduled me to meet with him within a few days. Since our first meeting, I’ve been seeing him weekly and having someone there, for it is the one true safe space I can dump, dump, dump and not have to explain, slash, define, remove, or edit in any form my thoughts, has been glorious. There is lot that is going on emotionally in the last year (lots and lots of loss) that I haven’t been dealing with coupled with all the new responsibility (house! job! husband!). I’ve been documenting, rather sporadically, my depression, anxiety, and other brain malaise this year but it’s not enough. I felt like I was at the end of my rope; not suicidal, but feeling like I was teetering on the edge. So much was happening! No explanation on how to handle or even, to cope. I felt like I was swimming in murk with no way past.
A month of visits goes by and Dr. P. makes a comment that perhaps I was ADD and further clarified that while the Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) was more than likely correct when I was diagnosed way back yonder, it’s not as evident now. This blew my mind. Finally, a diagnosis that made sense and explained not bits and pieces of my mentalness (as BPD did, as did Bipolar), but seemed to tie everything up in a nice tiny bow.
Except, I was diagnosed with ADHD (and bipolar) in 2005. For the last seven years, I’ve been clinging to this idea that I was strictly BPD and totally forgetting about the bipolar and ADHD. Seven years. Who forgets they were diagnosed with ADHD/bipolar for almost a decade? Apparently me. My then therapist sent me through DBT training, which I still use, but I dont’ remember doing anything for the bipolar or the ADHD. I remember she weaned me off the drugs that the medicating psychiatrist prescribed because part of the regime of DBT was that I was to be as drug free as possible. The only drug I remember being on, at that time, was Klonopin, which I take very sporadically now. (A prescription of 15 pills can last me a year, that is how sporadic it is.) [When I started writing this in late November, I was taking Klonopin on a as needed basis. I’m now taking 1/2 of a .5 mg pill day. It’s helped. Tremendously.]
I have no memory of why the bipolar and ADHD were never addressed then. I also have no idea why my then therapist seemed more fixated on BPD then on the other disorders. The more that I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that she thought the DBT would give me skills that would carry over into the ADHD/bipolar world.
But no matter, let’s look to the present, and the future. Not wonder about what/ifs, for we’ll never get anywhere.
So, then, to the now. Dr. P. sends me off to a local ADD expert, who also has ADD himself. Today I spent an hour and some change working through the questionnaire and every light in my head is burning bright. Things that were often associated with other things (like I used to take work-ordered anger management class for my outbursts of anger — turns out, this is because of ADD). Things are finally starting to make sense. I knew I wasn’t depressed in the traditional sense, just always frustrated. Always not being able to figure things out. Dr. P. says the cycle goes from ADD causes my frustration, which builds up my anxiety, which then leads to my depressed state which starts the cycle all over again.
So tomorrow we start the Ritalin. I start with 1 pill, wait and document how I feel, take another and document how I feel and max this out at 3 pills. Ritalin is instantaneous. Effects are short (a few hours), which is why the build up the dosage. Clear head? Not wanting to be so damned obnoxious (also apparently a trait – the talking out of turn)? Can this legal drug be my new snak eoil of hopes and dreams?
We shall see.
Love,
Lisa
Tag: Bipolar
song was unintentional, i swear!
Okay, question:
I am bipolar with a side dash of social anxiety disorder. I’ve been feeling pretty damn good for these last eight months and yah I’ve had my ‘days’ but not like it used to at all when I used to be crippled up in bed for days because I was so depressed or I was so manic that I’d stay up for days on end.
So my question is, should this not concern me that I’m bipolar? I’ve done the drug route (and have been on lithium, buspar, wellabutrin, celexa, and other half dozen I can’t remember) and all the shrinks have not worked (been seeing them since I was nine) and I guess I’m going the more au natural route but either I’m too strong willed or something because being bipolar is a major illness and yet I’m kinda like, totally nonchalat about it. In fact I’d say than othe the rare really blue day, I’ve been pretty even keel.
Questions? Ideas? Anything?
please forgive me
Please forgive me
If I act a little strange
For I know not what I do.
Feels like lightning running through my veins
Everytime I look at you
I SHOULD be working on a paper that is due today, i NEED to finish packing and instead i keep thinking about things that i shouldn’t be thinking about and daydreaming. But hey, i actually got holiday cards out BEFORE THE HOLIDAY so i must be doing something right.
Two main themes keep running through my head and that is: the holidays and love. they seem to be pretty intertwined these days and it doesn’t help that i hole myself up in my bedroom watching chick-flicks when I need a picker upper (exactly what a i need a pick me up from is anyones guess). I could watch Bridget Jones’ Diary 1500 times and I’ll still get mushy knees thinking about the look Colin Firth gives her at the end of the movie.
As we all know, and if you don’t you will now, i hate the holidays, sometimes with the passion that makes others nervous. Without fail something always happens around Christmas time that makes me want to go chop off the heads of the carolers as they come singing about god, Jesus and love. Christmas when I was a child used to be great. I come from a large family (my mother is the eldest of 7, and I’m the middle grandchild of nine) and including extended relatives, we had a good old fashioned German Christmas everywhere.
[The images are not scanned in well, I’ll fix that later]
Christmas 1975
Christmas 1979
14′ high ceilings with 12′ high trees, that were decorated with ornaments my mom had collected over the years. Me and the infallible teddy bear. That one in the picture died shortly after that was taken when I got sick on him. A new one was dispatched and replaced and he still sits quitely by my bed and I still often sleep with him. But I am digressing.
Christmas and love. Love and Christmas.
Christmas 1992: After dating for nearly a year, I find out that Alan has been dating another woman and breaks up with me after Christmas dinner at his brothers house. I would have died for this man. I haven’t been able to say that about anyone since.
Christmas 1994: Shortly before exams, I slip on ice outside my parents house, I suffer double fracture and a dislocated ankle:
outside angle
inside angle
Christmas 1996:My grandfather dies on 12/23/96. I spent Christmas day driving to his funeral and being harangued by my cousins.
Christmas 1999: Spent solitary.
Christmas 2000: Spent in Miami. There is something not right about 80 degree weather on Christmas day.
Christmas 2002: ?
Love and Christmas. Christmas and Love.
This year I decided I wasn’t going to be the grump I usually am come October and thought I’d get into the holiday spirit. I’m TRYING to get into the holiday spirit and it’s getting a bit distracting because it’s not quite going that way. Here we are 14 days before the holiday and nothing is what it’s supposed to be at this time. I’ve told Paul over and over that my gift to him would be a ticket back to Miami for the holidays and i’ve been waiting for him to get on the phone to find out when to schedule this little trip and he has yet to do it. I know that it will end up with him screaming at me about how it didn’t work out and etc etc etc. But I don’t want to talk about that either.
So every year I keep revisiting the old journals and looking at what I’ve written and one thing I can say about myself is that I am consistent in my opinions on a lot of things, but the one thing that really bothers me above anything else is I keep apologizing for who I am. It’s thinly veiled some days and others it’s in your face, but no matter what, I’m always questioning who and what I am as if this would somehow make things better.
I’m sorry I’m loud. I’m sorry I’m obnoxious. I’m sorry I’m smarter than you, wittier than you and TALLER than you (unless you are taller than me). I’m sorry my life is in a constant flux. I’m sorry I’m not blonde, blue eyed or a size 4. I’m sorry that I snort when I laugh, that I am not afraid to eat in front of people, that i twirl my hair, make faces constantly or collect toys. I’m sorry I like sex, I’m not afraid to discuss it and that I’m not afraid to try with relationships even if i keep failing over and over. I’m sorry I’m pushy, demonstrative and aggressive. I’m sorry that I flip switches and push buttons on and off like a light and that I constantly ask why. I’m sorry I have this journal and that if you get involved with my that your life would be published online. I’m sorry for the exhibition streak and the wanderlust streak and the NEED TO ACHIEVE streak. I’m sorry I’m obsessive and compulsive and that I’m passionate. I’m sorry I don’t want to lay down and bare your babies right this minute and be your little haus frau. I’m sorry that the ideas that sounded good 5 years ago, 2 years ago, 1 year ago cause shudders down my spine.
Yes yes, men are shit, women are stupid whores and the world goes on. I’m sorry I don’t want to buy into that self-effacing bullshit and use walls to protect myself. I just keep trucking on, because you know, life is far too short to wear beige and play the games of walls and the whole “i don’t want to get hurt” bull. You never know till you try, and trust me, I keep trying and I suspect one of these days I might get it right.
I’m sorry for everything and anything.
When I was on the drugs, I was happy not to think these thoughts. I was happy that life was going in the direction it was going in and I was content on feeling nothing. Now I’m off the drugs and I feel everything. I cry during movies and when things happen. I daydream so much that i am beginning to hate taking showers or baths because I’m in there for hours thinking about everything and anything.
I just never saw the point of wasting your life on nothing when there is something. I’m tired of being the half-truth and the interim. when will it be my turn?
x0x0x0x
But how many corners do I have to turn?
How many times do I have to learn
All the love I have is in my mind?
thanks to sarah mclachlan, david gray, and of course the incomparable richard ashcroft and the lonly choir mp3 i happened to have.
cut-off point
I told someone 30 was my cut-off point. If I don’t accomplish a lot of what I want to do before I’m 30 — I’m gone. Now before you start going “Um, Lisa, that is SUCH a cry for help” and calling your local suicide hotline, don’t bother. 98% chance that I won’t off myself (I made a funny!). Anyone who has known me for years that these things pass with time and I’m never serious — however, I know that many of us feel, that from time to time, life isn’t worth living. And sometimes I’m happy that I made it through my first suicide attempt 10 years ago, and other times I wish I would have died. But that is neither here nor there. I’m just telling you how it is folks, that is why you are here.
I will make no illusions that I’m being serious. For a few days, i was dead serious. But, I have (and will always know) that this passes with time. Being bipolar manic/depressive isn’t cool kids. It sucks major ass. Lemme tell you.
But things are looking up. I’m removing myself from one situation and starting anew life. I’m really digging someone I’ve been digging for 6 months and he’s mein gott(g). I had to say it to taunt him.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, there is so much, that you as a general public are not aware of. So much lies behind me then what meets the eye. Some people are not comfortable with knowing THAT MUCH about me — others want to own my soul. I give what I can — when I can. I give to those I feel deserve it and when I feel they need to have it. It’s not a game — it’s my life.
i’ve always been strong — and I’ve always attempted to make some sort of peace within my life. I’ve always strived to be the VERY FUCKING BEST that I can be. And that threatens people — and it’s harmful to others. My megalomania can be daunting. Fuck, I just created a new IM name: LishaIsGod. heh. Cos, I am god. this is my fucking world and I’m letting you enjoy it. If you piss me off, nothing a little DENY won’t work magic on.
in which: lisa gets confused
I’ve been sitting here moving like a sloth today. In fact, if i moved any slower, I’d probably be dead. I’m paying homage to the slugs i saw last night when I was outside at midnight varnishing a chest to hold my linens in. i got these flash brilliant points of light when i was varnishing that i could turn this hobby of one into a project in case i left my job. which is on my mind, a lot, losing my job. it ranks up there with leaving, moving, and being sexy. some would say my train
of thought seems to range down the pretty shallow range. I’d say it’s pretty human.
i just watch a pretty dreadful movie, Kate and Leopold. If you haven’t seen it, I don’t recommend it and the only cute thing was Natasha Lyonne playing Meg Ryan’s admin assist and she gushing over bodice rippers. I love Natasha in just about everything she’s done, except But I’m a Cheerleader!, because that was simply crap. Art house films for the most part seem to be filled with subversive need to push the boundaries because they can not because it actually means something. Modern art does not speak to me, however I like Kandinsky. Go figure that one out.
I have this thing about smells, always have. This weekend I went walking around the mall and was opening up bottles of cologne to sniff to see if i could find a new scene for myself. Foolish counter girls at the stores. Why is it that they assume that if you look like a bum you can’t buy anything? I could buy/sell their damn counter several times over. I did it a few weeks back before my birthday party when i bought out Clinique counter and the woman was amazed (and hooked me upon some free crap as well, which is a good thing considering how much i spent).
i wondered around and sniffed.
CK
—-
it was your smell
that’s all i could remember
laying
down on the sofa, on the
bed
closing my eyes and thinking
of
you
—–
tears
i do not write because i am depressed.
i am depressed because i do not write.
right now i’m on some hormonal in balance of some sort that i started silently crying in bed. but my crying started earlier today and there was a reason and i must share that story.
as it has become painfully aware, i have a quirky personality. not in a bad way, but as in irc, on-line and rl, i’m very sarcastic and have a dry sense of humour. this sense of humour does take some getting used to, but overall I’ve never had a problem with people being, well, upset by it. They may not get my sense of humour, which is fine, but, it generally does not offend.
as with many corps, we have many internal aliases that we use that splattercast various groups. i’m on quite a few myself, personally.email is an excellent technology tool — when it’s used. There are some discussion on the list sometimes but mostly it’s kept to work related items. which is fine.
we have been having some troubles with our internal software that we use on a daily basis. someone had emailed my local group and i had responded with comments of stale items not leaving after the items had been completed. i put this comment in a format of (complaint) (/complaint). It was meant in good faith. Now there is someone on my team whom has been working there exactly one week longer than myself. In recent events lately, this said person has taken it upon themselves to chastise me for saying, what they have felt was unnecessary things via email and it should never have been splattercasted. Now, if i was constantly emailing crap to the group that was totally non-work related, then yes i can agree. But this specific email was in response to something that was posted. His comments made no sense. But the kicker is, is that this person has been taken a special interest in me and emailing me anytime they feel my email is inappropriate. Keeping that in mind, i emailed this person back and gave the whole delete key speech and ended it if they felt they had a problem with me specifically they need to see our manager and/or they can set up a .procmail filter to send all my emails to dev/null seeing as, this is how they felt they were going.
They mail me back with a long speech about how i misconstrued them and how they were not going to set up filters for me etc etc and that they are not intentionally creating tensions with me because that was not their intent, etc et al. Well the thing is, they DID create tension because this brought up a whole can of worms. And I personally do not feel comfortable when people suddenly decide that i am a target. Am I over-reacting? No, i don’t think so. I pointed out the uselessness of several emails that have gone out lately and asked if this person was taken the time to write the senders of those emails the same kind of response. No, they said, they were not dealing with anyone else other than myself. So yes, i do feel singled out.
i started crying at my desk.
not blubbering tears but just silently going down my cheeks. i was working with a few telcos on several projects at the same time and was on the phone with them. I IM’d my boss (who is this persons boss as well) and she and i went to a conference room where i showed her the printed emails between me and said person and she agreed that the direction they took was unnecessary and the point they were driving across could have been worded better, which i agreed.
later on i found out that one of this person’s friends was killed earlier this week in a car crash.
while i could understand why this person could be edgy, this is not the first time this person has done this and certainly has been a multitude of times in recent memory.
I cried on my bosses shoulder.
I’ve been getting flack from some of my co-workers because I’ve been gone ‘so much’ lately. I don’t think many of them know just how late i stay on average as well as the after-hours work that i do. The problem that bothers me is that if there is an issue, my own manager would discuss this with me, certainly. I brought this up to my manager as well and she said she has not heard of any complaints from me at all — which is great. she also stated she knew how rough of situation that i had going on, mainly dealing with my mother and her problems. i had been sniffy eyed ever sense.
And of course i cannot let it go, because instead of a smart retort that i had written and postponed, i deleted it and moved on for the rest of the day. i’m nearly 30 years old and i still do not feel like i fit in. my work environment is much like that of high school, which in offices and buildings where the same people have worked together for an extraordinary amount of time, it’s bound to happen like that. but i always thought i was at least /liked/ by people. i never heard any relations that someone hated my guts or wanted to have me killed. but apparently, these people opinions matter far too much to me, enough so that i get this upset.
I just can’t win.
There is something about my personality that people other love or hate — which is fine. But those who love it don’t necessarily love it all that much. especially when times like this when i feel like no one likes me at all. that i’m unpopular and i’m unloved. I’ve always known that my personality was a bit more direct than most people like, which is fine but when it comes down to even those i know who like me but only in specific situations, that hurts.
one of the things, my therapist and i, have been going over is basically breaking down the layers and seeing what is underneath. you don’t feel like you’re depressed, but for some reason i feel like since October that my whole world has shattered and gone to shit. i have zero interest in anything and zero energy even more so. i’m being swapped around on anti-depressants so much that i’m moody and temperamental. my mother and i have been growing closer because we are in the same boat. i don’t want to kill myself but yet i can’t stop asking the question ‘what is this life worth living for?’
shadow boxer
I slept for nearly 12 hours last night, but I had earned it. I had taken a five hour nap Sunday afternoon and had not gone to bed until after 4am Monday morning. I managed to function on a few hours of sleep and by going to work and was thankful that I had to leave at 2pm to go see Dr. B. for more drug follow up.
She’s changed my meds again so that I’m taking 25mg of Effexor and upping the Serzone to 375mg, which is not even close to being the actual medicated dose, which is 400 or 450, I forget which.
Last night I was sitting there thinking about my friends, both online and off, and their reaction to me. Except for a few emails from a few people who read my journal, everyone else just left me alone. I had not thought of whether or not this made me sad, more than I was disappointed. But I realized, that I really am a tough person to get to know, and it’s fucking hard as hell to approach a conversation with someone who just spent eternity on writing about suicidal thoughts and cutting themselves. How the fuck do you approach that?
You can’t. Even I know that.
But it’s hard though, because I feel like I have to start from point A to start learning social niceties again from the very beginning. Somewhere, back in my past, prior to puberty I would suppose, something changed in me and that brought forth everything that has happened. But I learned that even memories can be deceiving when talking to my mom about the petite mal seizure I had when I was 3, because for nearly 20 years, I thought it was grand mal, which makes a difference.
I always remember being scared, and I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t. I remember I always had to prove myself to someone or something, to say “Hey! I’m here! Hello!” and I don’t know why I did that. I remember, silly as it seems now, when I was living in Toronto that after going to the movies with my dad to see “Pump up the Volume” that I had stood at my window looking at the Toronto skyline and talking into a mini-recorder. I am too easily influenced and some would even say I was horribly naive.
But I suppose that is part of my charm.
When I was getting ready for work yesterday, I realized that I didn’t want to have a kid now because the state of my relationship or my age, but I didn’t want to have a kid now because of the state of my mental relationship with myself. I did not want to put my child through the BS I am going through simply because that to me would be cruel punishment and the cycle would start all over again. I couldn’t let that happen. I realized that my relationship with Paul wasn’t the problem but it proved to myself I had to be somewhere, inside of me, in a grounded place before I could move on to the next phase in my life. I cannot be angry that if it takes me forever and a day to finish school or if I’m 35 when I have my first kid. I just want to be secure in myself and financially before I bring a brat into this world.
Andrew said recently that out of those he knew, i was one of the few (including himself) that he could imagine not getting married or having a child. I suppose I did agree with him that the idea did seem ludicrous at the time, but, the thing is, I do want a child. I want a little girl, and genetically, if the patterns in the family keep on trucking, the first child I have will be a girl and there is an 80% chance that she’ll have brown hair and brown eyes, and basically look like me as I looked like my mother and my mother looked like my grandmother and so on and so forth. I have dreamed, for a very long time, that this child would not grow up in the kind of life I did and all my mistakes would be rendered negative simply by her birth. I almost feel, amusingly enough, that this child would be the second coming to me.
I’ve been at a crossroads for a few years now in my life and I’ve been coasting. I know this. But I did make a lot of changes by getting my ass out of Michigan and out of San Francisco and moving on with my life. Emotionally though, I feel like I’m still in the same place where I was when I had left Michigan nearly five years ago, but I know I have grown and it’s just in minute ways but I have grown. I do not feel almost 30. I look at successful women in their 40s and 50s and realize that I do have a long life ahead of me. I look at my mother as a supporter and a figure of hope because she did go through a lot of fucking shit and she’s still surviving (and even talking about dating again! woo!). But the ties that bind us also seem to gag us and I need to start taking small steps to make that work.
Right now, Dr. B. thinks (and I agree) that I need to work on inner self first before making any major changes in my life and I agree. Some of the stuff seems to work like taking classes online and putting together small goals but I cannot do everything at once nor should I be expected to. But I do have to prioritize and figure out which way to go first.
With that, I bid you a good morning and a happy day.
Lisa
drugco
It’s 3:15am Monday morning, and like all good boys and girls, I should be in bed sleeping. Instead, I stayed awake fretting over the slight idea that my electricity was going to be cut off tomorrow (it’s not) and the added fact that I had a five hour nap lasting until 8pm this evening also did not help.
I’m still struggling with the fact of the amount of drugs I’m taking on a daily basis. Dr. B. says we have to work on my issues one at a time and she’s adding bipolar/manic depressiveness or ADD/ADDH to the mix because apparently while both are similar, I also exhibit symptoms of ADD/ADDH but apparently some of the underlying issues with learning disorders also clearly show to be like bipolar as well. Like how Anthrax has “flu like symptoms.” Bad connotation but you get the point.
I remember, five or six years ago when our GP put me on Prozac and I woke up every morning with suicidal thoughts. Apparently, I am one of the very few that had that kind of side affect happen to them. I think Dr. B. mentioned that Lithium and it’s derivatives are the same way, but the point is to remember it’s the medication and not how you truly feel, which is also my strong point. I’m too fucking stubborn to die. I take my anger out in other obtuse ways, like chopping off my hair (I did mention that I used to pull my hair out in huge clumps when I was pissed back in the day, didn’t i?), dying my hair, getting pierced/tattooed and shopping. When I’m angry, I spend money. heh. Yet I still look at my bookshelf and think I don’t own enough books. I cleaned off my desk while I was getting bills together this morning and found a book I had purchased over a month ago and forgot about.
I keep straying from the point.
So about five or six years ago, GP puts me on Prozac and i felt like a zombie. I did not feel like “me,” i felt like someone who wasn’t me but was sharing my body. I did not know who that person was, but it was pissing me off. I did not feel the highs or the lows like I was used to and that angered me. I wanted to feel the highs and the lows, but that would require me to be off drugs and it seemed everyone wanted me to be on drugs.
It was then and there that I swore that I would use holistics, therapy or other ways to control the body chemistry and not use artificial means. But after having panic attack after panic attack for months in the summer of 2000 and feeling like you were dying will change that in you.
Dr. B. asked me why I was so defensive. heh. I spilled out words to her about growing up in my family and school and what i was like. I was always effing alone when I was growing up. That’s how i felt. I didn’t have many friends and I didn’t have very man confidences. There was me, my books and reading.
Paul was pretty adamant about me going on lithium because he said it was addictive and that he had family members who could not get off of the drug. I asked Dr. B. about it and she said that lithium was not addictive and that really, none of my meds were except klonopin. Even then, because while i have an addictive personality, I’m so afraid of being strung out on drugs or alcohol, I refuse to put myself in that situation. I hardly every drink — last time I had beer was on 9/11/2001 and prior to that was Paul’s 21st birthday. I cannot even remember the last time I did illicit drugs. It does nothing for me. Growing up in an alcoholic family will do that to you, either you become this almost fanatic about alcohol and drugs or you succumb and do it yourself. I choose not to succumb and kept my mouth away from alcoholic pleasures for quite a long time. I won’t say I don’t drink, as I’ve been known to imbibe in a few yummy alcohol laden treats a few times in my life, but I don’t use alcohol as a crutch. Never could get over some of the taste and the smell of whiskey always reminds me of my dad. I never could date anyone who liked drinking whiskey and coke, because that to me along with a few other smells reminds me too much of my father.
I’m still fucking angry at him dying on me. I’m still pissed at my mom. Dr. B. says that I need to let the hurt go and I was almost shouting “I want to! I JUST DO NOT KNOW HOW!”
I don’t know how.
Wish I did.
x0x0x
lisa
reverb
Those few hours between when I had ended my last entry and went to my shrinks were the longest in my life. Or so it felt. Once I had gotten into her office, I started bawling and I couldn’t stop. I had no idea what was wrong or what was wrong with me and why I could not stop crying.
What had partially happened medically is that I had started a new birth control pill called yasmin and had slowly started weaning myself off of Effexor. Dr. B. thinks it was a combination of the pill and the weaning of the Effexor that made me, um, lose control (if you want to call it that). She immediately gave me a low dose of Effexor and had me check back in with her Wednesday to do follow up.
On Wednesday I felt a bit more in control of myself when I went to see her, more composed and more willing to talk. She prescribed a lithium derivative (600mgs) so that my daily pill intake is now:
- 1 birth control pill
- 1 37.5mg of Effexor
- 2 150mg of Serzone
- 2 300mg of lithobid
- 1 multivitamin
I stare at all the pills in my hand and just wonder what the fuck I’ve done to get this far in life. A shelf in one of the kitchen cabinets looks like a pharmacy as I keep all my meds and vitamins (and for some reason, a bottle of hair dye — can you NOT see the irony with that one?) with half open bottles of various prescriptions I’ve had over the last few years. The good drugs, such as klonopin, are kept in my purse for ’emergancies’. The fucked up thing with klonopin is that when I was having panic attacks left and right last week, I popped the full pill and it didn’t seem to do anything. Which was odd because in the past, 1/4 of the pill was fine. That bothered me.
Even with all the goddamn drugs I’m on, I’m STILL having panic attacks. Had one today when I was playing video games with Alisha and my heart started racing (160bpm — I counted) and I excused myself to the bathroom. When I had gotten an EKG back in January, the on-call doctor had shown me a few tricks to slow my heart rate down, and one of the tricks is to ‘push down’ like you are taking a shit, which I was doing er well attempting while I was sitting down next to Alisha but I just excused myself and went to the bathroom any ways. I had this feeling my face looked like I was constipated. I went into the bathroom, and did the exercise for a few moments and my heart rate slowed down to less than half of what it was. I don’t think Alisha ever knew.
about a girl
i was crying this morning while i was making coffee.
Considering that i had scratched and punched Paul on Saturday, that is somewhat of an improvement.
let me backtrack:
For the last few weeks, mentally, something had not been going right inside my head. I started coming home from work, eating dinner and almost promptly going to bed. Stuff like school, writing, NaNoWriMo, my journal, etc all went out the window. I felt like I was being dragged down into this cesspit of despair but nothing externally had changed. Paul and i were still, well Paul and I, my mother still hadn’t gotten her SSI yet and I was still supporting her and everything else gosh darn remained the same.
But then stupid little incidents started setting me off. Customers who were dumber than a box of rocks (nothing new, however, I seemed to be taking a new path on how to deal with them which wasn’t good), people on mailing lists I would blow up on and use this foul language that bothered even me. The woman who ran me off the side of the road on Saturday, every little slight against me sent me into this fury that pissed me off so much I was shaking physically. I was/am spinning out of control and I do not know how to stop it.
On Saturday, I was sitting at my computer all nonchalant like when Paul asked me to fix the printer. He was prepping the list for us to go shopping for Thanksgiving dinner and I just blew up at him. My movement was so fluid, that I had no time to think or to react. I got up, and started punching and scratching Paul. I threatened to stab him with something. All the while he is looking at me like “What the fuck are you doing?” I started screaming at him about why couldn’t he fix the printer himself and i tried to force open said printer when he started yelling at me I was doing it all wrong. Once I got the printer opened, I took the color cartridge out of its place and shook it all over him, leaving drops of blue and red ink on his white T-shirt. I just did not give a flying fuck. At some point, I went and laid down, to help calm down, and that did not seem to help either. All I kept thinking about was sliding a knife down my arm vertically and just fucking ending it all. Fuck you, fuck the world, fuck my mother and my family, fuck work and most especially fuck Paul.
But I didn’t grab a knife, I just laid down and slept for a few hours hoping that the monsters would go away.
They of course, did not.
Sunday morning, I woke up after a few hours of sleep and went to the massage therapist. All the work my chiropractor had done on me for the last year had gone to hell in a handbasket as all the pain i started suffering came rushing back within the last month or so. I can’t sleep, I’m angsty and i feel like stabbing someone. really. Charisma (yes, really, that is her name) started working on me and i felt myself tense up and eventually relax. By the time I had left her an hour later, my body was like rubber. However, later on that day, I was back to being pent up, angsty, angry Lisa. Nothing was working. Not massage, not going to the chiropractor, not drugs, not relaxing, nothing. zip. nada.
I’ve never thought of myself as a cutter and have prided myself on being ‘too smart’ to follow through with cutting myself or attempting suicide, but, I’m telling you, the idea felt warm and safe in my head Saturday and this morning, the fact that all this frustration and anger came welling to the top, I’m this close to wanting to hurt myself. I’m literally hanging on by a thread.
in over a year of being with my therapist, not once can i honestly say that i wanted to hurt myself until recently. Oh, i had bouts when on new drugs that the idea seemed to be golden, but, i rationally knew it was the drugs not how i felt consciously. My family, genetically, seems to dispel drugs like there is no tomorrow. My mother had been on various anti-whatevers for the last year and she would get to the point where she would be okay, she would be almost maniac but not quiet and then BOOM, she would fall. With me, it is almost the same. Prozac, paxil, Effexor, zolotf, now Serzone all seem to have the same effects one me — fine for awhile, then the drug does not work anymore. I’m tired of feeling out of control and like my life is spinning 180 degrees. I fought so fucking hard to not be where I was five years ago only to find that it seems worthless. I feel worthless and I feel like my life is not worth it.
My eyes are welling up with tears again, like they have been for the last few weeks or so. Everything, everything is setting me off. I feel so fucking helpless, because i AM seeing a therapist, i AM taking anti-whatever drugs, i AM going to a chiropractor, i AM seeing a massage therapist. NOTHING IS WORKING. I’m so fucking pissed because I’m doing all the ‘right’ things, and yet i feel I’m back where i started over a year ago. That fuels my anger even more and i want to hurt myself or someone around me.
I just got done making breakfast as I decided it was in the best interest that I not go in today. I’m lucky, in that, half my department is fucking loony toons and that they know my history that I can call in ‘sick’ and tell them really why i was ‘sick’.
I sat there chopping up onions and green peppers thinking I can make this omelette (which, I of course burn) and the thought of slicing my skin is still there. I watch the omelette burn and I have this special omelette pan in which when I flipped it over, a plastic part of the pan starts burning stinking up my kitchen. I toss the whole mess into a regular frying pan and end up making scrambled eggs with potatoes, onions, and green peppers.
My life could be described just like that: it’s a mess so i transfer it over to something else. I’m tired, oh so tired of fighting to stay alive. I keep myself in check all these years, busting my ass to do the right things, and to make up for all the things i feel I’ve done to slight people and myself and I can not catch up. I just can’t do it anymore.
For a long time, I wanted to be crazy, like really crazy , mental hospital crazy, but my mom’s experience this summer showed that what i saw in movies and what was real were wildly different things. I still want to be crazy, I feel worthless enough because I cannot accomplish anything feasible. Everything feels like this huge burden that I cannot even begin to touch.
You’re a child, and you are told from day one that you are special and worthwhile and bright and gifted. You are told you can do anything you want, that the world is your oyster and you cannot fail at anything.
Then the chemistry changes and at the age of nine you are seeing a therapist because “you’ve been a bad girl,” and your mother keeps yelling at you how everything is your fault, and you are grounded not for days or weeks but for months and years. You run and escape into books and feel paranoid. You feel like everyone is out to get you and you can’t understand why at the age of 9,10,11 why you don’t have friends like other people have friends. You’ve spent so much of your young life being grounded that you miss out on birthday parties and events with other kids. You don’t have friends. The people who say there are your friends only use you because you are stupid enough or naive enough to think they like you. But they don’t, not really. Kids are cruel creatures.
So you grow up, your family moves, and you start a new school where no one knows you. You think that you can be anything you want to be, but your attempts at making friends is feeble and you spend most of your lunch periods reading or writing, always alone. Your 13. Your body changes and you suddenly develop breasts and lose some of the baby fat, and suddenly guys want to date you. You still feel like this insecure be-speckled person you were when you were nine and 10. Fat, worthless, pointless. You don’t know what changed but now people want to be your friend, but they are they wrong type of friends. They are the ‘bad kids’, but you don’t care because someone finally pays attention to you and you feel happy because now you have ‘friends’, and that’s all you wanted. Everything becomes this big blur as you enter high school and everyone leaves you alone because they either don’t know you or assume you are a transferring senior when really you’re just a 5’10 150lb freshman. You still think you were so fat. Then you go on the special school trip where your class of AP students travel to Kentucky. You get lured into and locked into a cabin with the swim team where they get this bright idea to gang rape you. You fight and claw and run screaming into the bathroom and a friend saves you. But no one is told. Not the parents, not the guardians, no one. You sit through the going away party glaring at the boys who had tried to harm you and they act nothing is going on. Back to school, everything changes and suddenly rumors are spreading and the same boys who grabbed you are leering at you and making comments. Kids are so cruel, they didn’t mean it.
You start getting older, 14, 15 and things remain the same. You now feel like two people instead of one. One who doesn’t give a fuck and the one who does. She (me/i/her) still hangs out with the ‘bad kids’ and the other half goes and starts studying for the LSAT. The two worlds cannot reconcile themselves and the fighting at home becomes worse and your mother keeps taking you to separate therapists where you confess just what an awful child you are. You start a new habit of breaking things. You get angry and start breaking anything made of china or glass. Your friends get used to it and you laugh it off and your mother gets angry for breaking all the dish ware in the house. You had as a child taken a point of where you used to sew your fingers together with needle and thread, through the upper layers of your skin. You would sew and sew and then rip it out gingerly and start over again. You used to pull huge clumps of hair out. At 16,17 and 18, nothing has changed. You lose your virginity to someone you don’t love only to have him dump you four days later for a whore. You sleep with whoever and you don’t care, thinking your this badass who can deal with it and you know they are jerks and won’t call you again. You spend a lot of time hiding under your desk when on the phone, as if the wrath of your family is just that bad, but your family consists of a younger brother and a mother and how can it be so bad?
Anyone who was seriously into you, and I mean seriously into you, leaves because they can’t deal with the mania and the depression that follows. Sometimes you forget to eat and when you do eat, you gain weight. Except now you are cycling, between the mania and the depression. You move again and again with your mother and move to Toronto when your 18, only to find that the lessons you had learned as a child are still with you. You come back having only made a few friends, didn’t leave the house and nothing changed for you. It was still the same.
Then it cycles faster.
And as you get older, you notice that the so-called ‘adults’ you are supposed to be, still have the same tenacity as the children you knew. No one is interested in being ‘real’ or friends with you, they would rather lie, cheat and steal. Instead of hair pulling or sewing, you cry and don’t leave your room for days. Friends call and want to go out, and you have panic attacks thinking about leaving the house. Then a few days later everything is ‘fine’ and you pretend nothing happens.
Your world has become disjointed and you tell yourself you’ll pull out of this bullshit and move on. But you can’t reconcile the differences between reality and fantasy. Reality is much too fucking painful to deal with. Either that or your sense of reality is too fucking painful. You don’t see happiness or warmth in anything, it’s all gray and dark and dismal.
Memories keep shooting up to the forefront and you still cry. You cry when your mother left you with cast up to your thigh on the Christmas you were 22 and your 16 year old brother was with you to help you use the port-a-potty because you could not walk the 50′ to the bathroom. Your brother helps you up the stairs and you really bathe for the first time in a week and your next door neighbors come over on Christmas day and help you hobble over to their house for dinner. THEN the police show up at your door because your father is worried you were being mistreated (22, no phone in the house, no food and your mother and her husband are gone for the holidays). The following Christmas your mother gives you a bottle of washer fluid for your car, and you sit there crying. Your brother and you start a tradition where you go to blockbuster and grab burger king for dinner. You hate Christmas and all the fake cheer that is associated with it.
Now you are 29. Next year you’ll be 30. All through the years you’ve kept a pretty good handle on the monsters. You’ve kept them at bay and worked to not let them interfere with your life on day to day basis, but you know that is a lie of sorts. If you really kept them at bay, you would not be suffering this pseudo-breakdown you are today. You feel embarrassed and guilty for bringing it up, and the non-stop headaches you have lately does not dissipate with bringing all this information forward.
Part of you, a good chunk of you, has given up. It’s easier to automate your life and work on that than to work on what’s really bothering you, but even you don’t know what’s bothering you anymore. Everything seems so trivial and of a lesser extent than when you make it real. But if there were true, there would be no fucking reason why you would be fucking crying at Harry Potter or any other movie that shows some sort of goodness to the heart.
The other part of you, albeit seemingly feeling small and unimportant is hanging on for dear life. Sheer will is keeping you together as your body is trained to handle certain things, but, sheer will is losing out fairly quickly. Rationally you know that you won’t necessarily do anything to harm yourself, but that is fast running low against the monster that wants to hurt you.
The irony of the saying “god only gives you what you can handle” which has been drilled in your head since your Catholic school days is fast losing its hilarity.
———–
I’ve got a 3:30pm appointment today with my shrink.
x0x0x
lisa