Dear Internet,
Morning, December 25th.
Everywhere on the Internet, everyone is filled with holiday cheer, about presents that were given, love that was received, and cheer for the entire world. My initial instinct was to respond to all those cheer filled posts with messages of hate and meanness. Instead, I closed out of Twitter/Facebook and started sobbing.
I feel like my world is crashing around me and I know this isn’t me, this is the Concerta speaking. If the trade off of focus and getting shit done is this mess of helplessness, crying, and thoughts that are beginning to border on the extreme, then I need to get off the drug.
TheHusband attempted to console me as my lower lip quivered and tears were streaming down my face. He wants me to vocalize, what we’ve come to call “The Sads,” but sometimes there is no reason for being sad, it just is. This past Saturday, I woke up with a plan to get shit done ™ and spent the day in my jim jams, in our dining room, cleaning out my multitude of an inbox (And for the record, I’m not even finished). The idea of seeing, talking, and interacting with anyone, even my husband, filled me with dread. By late afternoon, he coaxed me to play video games and eat a mediocre take-out we had delivered from a local Chinese restaurant. On Sunday, I did a 180 degree turn and felt mostly fine, as I did on Monday. On those days, showers were taken and long movies were seen. Now The Sads are back and there is nothing I can do but let it ride this out this time.
I never made it a secret that the holidays are terrible time of year for me, but since TheHusband and I got together four years ago, we’ve been trying hard to start new traditions by making ourselves happy and fuck convention. This year, beginning long before I started the drug experiment for my ADHD, I was giving no fucks about the holidays. I did not do a poll to solicit cards / send cards as I do every year, I did not bake cookies until the very last minute, and we didn’t get the tree up until the 23rd. Presents were bought at the very lasts of minutes and shipped as expensively as possible. Whether or not we celebrated seemed immaterial to me – it was just another goddamned day.
The three days of Ritalin, I was manic, but I was focused and I got shit done. As the mania started to subside, I felt something I had not felt in a very long time and that was hope. On the week I’ve been on Concerta, I’ve been up and down like a yo-yo, I don’t feel as laser in focus as I did on Ritalin (but there is much better focus), and I’ve broken down into uncontrollable sobs more than once. I found myself being way more surly than even remotely necessary to people, and everyone is a goddamned asshole – even the dog. When I sleep, I sleep for 8-10 hours (with or without Klonopin, doesn’t seem to matter).
The headaches have been a near constant all week, and they travel around my face. Sometimes I feel like my face is a mask about to be ripped off from the pressure behind it and other times, it’s concentrated in a temple or above the bridge of my nose. I’m cold all the time, even when sitting in the warmest room of the house, thermostat at 70, my hands are like ice and I am shivering. My appetite has diminished. I haven’t had caffeine for a week.
Concerta seems to amplify all the worst of what I was feeling without giving me a trade off in return.
Afternoon, December 25th.
TheHusband and I winged it on presents for the holidays this year. It’s hard to shop for someone when that person either doesn’t wants small things (TheHusband) or buys it themselves (me). As time was running short, I kept flip-flopping on how to celebrate. We want for nothing, and then, we want everything. My brother was slightly easier, he wanted gifts from the heart. So the cookies were made and a hat was knitted. A bottle of Hennessy and a few choice gift cards to round out his gift. He presented us with gift cards to a DIY place for TheHusband and a Coach bag for me. I feel like everyone wins in this scenario.
We flipped off tradition and TheHusband made Mexican, all from scratch. The only thing he didn’t do was take the cow, kill it, and process it. The cooking took all day, and we were finally able to eat in the early evening hours. My brother joined us, as did his girlfriend. Margaritas made the rounds (2 ounces Triple Sec, 6 ounces Tequila, can of limeade, and a few fistfuls of frozen ice. Blend until frothy), and we got good and tipsy. Or in TheHusband’s case, his teeth got tingly.
My mood stabilized a lot by the evening when presents were exchanged and alcohol had been drunk, but I was still feeling emotionally overwrought. Once the kitchen got a first pass through on cleaning, the dog had been walked, we were in bed early and I was asleep before midnight.
Morning, December 26th.
I was up early to take Jeeves in for his yearly oil change and detail, and home by 7:45AM. I’ve switched to decaf coffee because I can only apparently take so much herbal tea, and discovering I craved the coffee taste, not necessarily the buzz. I met up with Karen who was home for holidays at Wolfgang’s before heading back to the house. I was yawning through our mid-morning breakfast date, but I haven’t been feeling tired, just drained emotionally.
The rest of the day became a blur.
Early evening, December 26th.
The rest of our presents to the other showed up today and we were both most pleased. I have not left the house since coming home from breakfast this morning, TheHusband has not left at all. The impossible task of sorting out my digital life over took most of my day, as I continue to unsubscribe and delete accounts no longer used across the Internets. I feel like I’m always doing this housekeeping and it never seems to get any easier or lighter. It becomes one of those tasks that needs to be done, but I choose to do this instead of something else that has pressing value.
TheHusband commented I seemed more stable today, and I agreed, except for the lingering headache that I try to forget and find I cannot. No crying jags, no yo-yo, but whatever focus this drug is supposed to give me is not here. I find myself all over the place today as I sort and clean and sort some more. Zero focus. Zero concentration. I have been known to metabolize drugs too fast for the effect to take over, so this is what may be happening, but I really do not know. Against TheHusband’s request, I’ll continue taking the drug until I see the medicating doctor on Friday so that I can come off the drug safely or ramp up to another dose or switch to something else. I do not see my therapist for another few weeks (holidays), and that seems so far and yet I know it’s not.
When I made the decision to document this experience, it was to provide an outlet for my own voice that often feels strangled, to give voice to those who cannot speak, and to have some tangible proof of what goes on inside my brain (drugged or not). I have very clear goals of things I want to do in the upcoming months, years, and I keep looking at crazed brain syndrome as hindering me in obtaining those goals. I honestly do not know how I made it this far without having some sort of breakdown. The prescribing doc talks about Concerta, Ritalin and like drugs like their snake oil, and I am still desperate to believe him. I need to believe him.
This is where the frustration comes in, knowing that I can have the ability to do certain things, find that that ability to be stunted in some way, and then as I reach out for relief, find that it is almost always out of grasp.
And that, perhaps, is what breaks my heart most of all.
x0x0,
Lisa
Tag: Mentally Healthy
Stars formed out of its sparks
Dear Internet,
Our plan to go up to the cabin on December 18 and come back on December 23 was curtailed by Draco. The area where the cabin is located was expected to get over a foot of snow within a 24 hour time frame starting on Saturday, but the storm warnings were moved back to Friday morning, then late Thrusday afternoon, to early (3AM) Thursday morning. We left to head back home Wednesday afternoon.
The plan was to go up, hauling items for the cabin, start doing the renovations that we could do, come back down to Grand Rapids before Christmas, and lastly, have a local to the cabin company come out and winterize it after December 25th. We got so far as getting up there, dumping items bought for the cabin, getting water, heat, electric, and Internet running, with TheHusband able to put in a new lock and then it was time to come home. I don’t know who was more upset about this prospect, him or I, but having just read that nearly a foot of snow has landed up there in two short days, I’m glad we came home.
The cabin has heat, Internet, stove, running water, and even a dishwasher, but there is no fridge nor do we have any home furnishings like dishware, pots, pans, or even silverware that would have gotten us through the storm. We did toy with the idea of gutting it out, but several days stuck 10 miles from nowhere, without a lot of supplies, would not have been the smartest idea we’ve had.
So we’re home and milling about kind of aimlessly. Draco’s effect in GR has been underwhelming as we planned for 3-6″ of the white stuff to land on us before late Friday night only to see that none of that appeared. We’ve organized our time off (two weeks for him, three weeks for me) on things we want to do, but with the threat of Draco and potentiality of more bad weather, we’ve been sitting tight until the weather stabilize.
I’ve had one cup of tea on Thursday, Barry’s Tea to be exact, since I went caffeine free on Monday afternoon. As perdicted by the prescribing doc, I would get massive headaches. The headaches have been low and steady and sometimes there is a break, other times not so much. I’ve loaded up on caffeine free tea at the house, thinking about making hot chocolate my new jam, and trying to navigate the world of drinks without doing my head in. I’ve been drinking lots of water, but everything feels like a light hum in my brain right now.
I believe the Concerta is working, but I’m not sure by how much. The insomnia that Ritalin gave me is not as severe on the Concerta, so I’ve been opting to not take Klonopin at night. But on the flip side, I’m now waking either in the middle of the night for no reason, or earlier in the morning than usual. In either case, I’m unable to get back to bed. Around all of this going on, TheHusband and I started ramping up some vitamin supplements which I may stop because right now I’m feeling like I’m trying to do too many things at once.
I feel like everything is going grey right now.
x0x0,
Lisa
The Best of Days
Dear Internet,
Happy Saturnalia.
I did not get to sleep last night until way after 2AM. Woke up, however, within minutes of the alarm going off at 6:45AM and did not feel like I could burrow under my covers for days. I actually felt alert for the first time in months (probably years). The first dose of the day went in at 7:55AM as I was heading out to see my therapist, the second dose at 8:25AM during my session and the final dose at 8:55AM as I was leaving.
I noticed the ramp up, which was affected by how concentrated my talking became during the session. I felt manic as I made my way towards work, and I was so focusedly intent by the time I got to work, my director wondered what the hell was going on. Of course, I told her because I can only see the positive side of these benefits as I go through it.
But the focus is not as crystaline as I want it to be. It’s like taking a picture in Instagram, and applying some g-d awful filter on it to make it distorted. You know that there is a sharp image under there, somewhere, but the fuzziness makes it hard to decipher. I know some people crave that fuzziness, for sometimes the world is ugly and the sharpness often hurts, but when I’ve been living in the fuzz for so long, and I know NOW that clarity can be reached, I am desperate to grab onto it.
I called my medicating doctor and walk him through my weekend. He opts to swap me off the Ritalin and to put me on Concerta, which is a time release instead of dosing up several times a day. He’s also suggested I get off caffeine.
(I mean, first they take my cheese, now my coffee — how is this to be BORN??)
I spent most of my day doing mindless tasks that were things that were not important but had to be done. There was a rhythm as I moved through these tasks and I found that once I just started, I could finish each small item and move on to the next.
There was no panic today, but mania came hard at around 3PM. I found myself all over the place, both in my head and on my work space. I was able to pull it back enough to finish what I had to finish before I left for winter break. The last thing sent, at 5:02PM, was the network topography map that was due today. What I found different is that I was not panicked, “THIS NEEDS TO BE DONE NOW,” but more of a “Okay, this needs to be done. I’m almost finished. A few more steps and then it will be complete.”
On my way to meet up with a girlfriend for dinner, I stopped by the medicating doctor’s office for my new script and found msyelf in heavy 5PM traffic. I opted to take a road I was pretty sure would put me in the right path rather than attempt to backtrack through my previous path. It was a struggle to keep driving, for even though I knew logically that road intersected with a known road that would take me to my final destination, slight panic kept bubbling under the surface. Do I keep going and be a few minutes late or do I turn around and be even later? Why was this so hard?
Dinner was lovely, as always, and I recounted to her a tl;dr version of the last few days. I felt my concentration and focus was still on par with the earlier ebbs, but I found myself flowing as well. Time was running out. The Concerta will hopefully stabilize this.
Dinner, then picked up my new script, then on the phone with a very interesting conversation in that I gave sex advice on various topics from how to choose a condom, to what type of protection was best for when the moment was right, and dispelling a few myths often perpetuated amongst the masses.
TheHusband, who has been on his vacation starting late last week, was resting when I arrived. And that’s when the panic flared in full force. For apparently there is a heavy blizzard conditions coming our way, which may not hit us for a few more days. We’re leaving to go up north tomorrow and that area will be hit worse then here in GR. And that’s when my brain started to fall apart. I could not make TheHusband understand my concern for my own brain was all over the place. I was not thinking, “Okay, we’ll go up and see how bad it is and come home before it hits.” I was thinking, “WE ARE GOING TO STARVE AND BE TRAPPED FOR DAYS IN A CABIN WITH NO FURNITURE.” I felt like the more I tried to bring myself down, mentally from that stat of flight, the more agitated I verbally got with TheHusband. Finally, things started to come together and we agreed on a reasonable plan: Check weather in the morning, adjust our time as needed.
The insomnia from the last few days, due to the Ritalin despite being taken early in the morning, found me asleep far afte 2AM (which used to be my favorite witching hour, and in many ways, it still is) and I woke up each day with only four – five hours of sleep. I started yawning during dinner and I find that I am tired, but my mind is back to being fixated on the possibly but not quite snowpocalypse of 2012. That no one is predicting except in my own head.
Caffeine is now gone from my diet since it competes with the same receptors as the drugs, which I’m fine with really. This morning I was up and at ’em and didn’t need coffee to clear the fuzz from my brain as I usually do. I”m moving the Klonopin dose from morning to night to help with the sleeping. When my damn ankle is finally healed (and that is another story), I am hoping exercise will be drug for the anxiety and the sleep. I want to be better and depending on drugs to keep me whole. (Except for the ADHD drugs. A++. Will use again.)
We have Internet up at the cabin and I hope to continue writing while I’m up there, but do not be alarmed if no posts are forthcoming until I get back, but I will be taking plenty of pictures.
(That is, if Abominable doesn’t get us first.)
x0x0,
Lisa
Live Blogging the Ritalin Experiment: Sunday
Dear Internet,
We shall begin this entry by noting the time I went to bed Saturday night: 2:23 AM.
—-
I woke up this morning at 9:26A, ON THE GO, with a list in my head of a million things I needed to do. After morning absolutions, I ended up in my office where I thought to do some work. I popped the first dose today sometime after 10:30A. In the last 30 minutes, I was all over the place on the Interwebs from reading my site stats, to creating an account on MetaFilter to answer a question, to finding that someone on Tumblr quotes me (and gave me attribution!).
I took the second dose sometime around 11:25AM because I lost track of time as I was talking to Jessica, Kristin, and O during the last hour. I’ve also been fielding questions about my dairy allergy on Facebook and researching something else that I’m now forgetting.
I am feeling manic.
It’s 11:55AM and dose three has been consumed. I have yet to eat breakfast and I can’t convince TheHusband to make me a spread (eggs, bacon, toast). He’s probably already eaten himself. I could head down and have left overs, which might not be a bad idea as I need to refill my coffee. I also need to take my 1/2 dose of Klonopin for the day as well as my vitamin supplements.
But now I’m thinking, “If I’m heading downstairs, I might as well start laundry and since I’m downstairs, vacuum the living the room.” And so it will go on that a single action “get food” has turned into a war campaign to get everything else done so that I don’t waste time. How is time being wasted? I could never really answer that question, I just know if I have time to do X and possibly Y, then I should do those things.
I’ve pulled up Evernote and Wunderlist to track ToDo items as they occur so I don’t start doing them this very minute. Items added, I’m now clicking aimlessly across the open tabs feeling as though I have forgotten something. I need to go eat.
5PM. As I had expected, I asked TheHusband to take laundry down to the basement for me to start (going up and downstairs is still cautious thing for me to do, so when something large has to be carried, I ask him to do it). After he throws the laundry in, he heads to make himself a bowl of cereal, for I was wrong, he has not eaten. I heat up leftovers, he eats his cereal, and we start having a discussion on something benign which ends up in a four hour philosophical discussion about hunter/gathers vs agrarian communities that meanders towards the argument of what demonstrates equal rights.
The discussion leaves me exhausted but I’m thrilled to find that during the verbal sparring, my brain does not feel muddled or confused. I can articulate my points, I can speak eloquently, I’m able to recall something from two sentences ago to build a rebuttal or to agree. I do not feel like I am gasping at air to make a point, and more importantly, I do not feel like I am stupid. I can hold an intellectually stimulating conversation and it is glorious.
I get angry, however, because while the exercise above was something that I want to be able to do, I am angry at myself for not setting boundaries on my time. Every single instance I’ve read of someone on Ritalin all note the same thing: How drastically short the drug lasts. Today is better than yesterday, but that could be for any number of reasons such as time when I started the doses and my own hormones playing havoc.
What I desperately wanted for that time was to do the things I had planned on doing, the sublime capability of being able to start a task and finish it in a manner that does not look like it came out of a Picasso painting. I should have said something to him, and I didn’t, and that is something I need to learn how to do.
8PM. Lindsay has come and gone for she is housesitting this week while we go up north. When she called, right after TheHusband and I have finished our discussion, I was able to make clear my boundaries which she understood. That seemed so easy, something I could never do before. She came, we hugged, we talked, and she left without me feeling like I had to entertain her for hours. Dinner was consumed, laundry was finished and put away.
I still have loads of things to do tonight, and it’s getting late, but I do not feel like the world is going to end like I usually do when my brain starts to feel this way. I still feel focused but I am finding the focus comes and goes, as the drug wanes in and out. I found myself not as eloquent when talking with Lindsay as I was talking to TheHusband, shortly after the last dose was taken. Words trip out of my brain and out of my mouth, but two days in and I can see that there is some hope. TheHusband notices a difference today from yesterday.
Brendan said that a big problem he had with Ritalin was the headaches, something echoed by many others. There was also discussion about the lack of creativity, that some thought was too high of price to pay for taking the drug. For me, I’ve never known to not have a headache of some kind, where my brain was fuzzy and struggling to even do a simple task made me feel Herculean. I can take the headaches. And so far, I dont’ find the argument about loss of creativity true with me, if anything, this will be the push me to the other side. I have always been an idea person, but when I can take an idea and bring it to fruition, I can only imagine the joy of being able to do that. I’ve never been able to do that.
I’m aware I’m possibly romanticizing a drug and that for the benefits, there may be some tradeoffs. But if the relief of finding out that after all these years, if a good chunk of my problems/issues/whatever that were often just dismissed as being a personality quirk or that I didn’t try hard enough or that I was incapable of doing the job, to find that there is a solution, even a minor one?
To me, the freedom to be able to express what is in my world is the biggest freedom I could ever be given. I’m holding on and never letting go.
x0x0,
Lisa
Live blogging the Ritalin experiment: Saturday
Dear Internet,
I woke up this morning, excited like a kid on a day before a big event. Today, my world is/was going to change! Today, I start taking Ritalin.
The prescribing doctor laid out how the dosage was to work: First dose at $time, then up it by another dose every 1/2 hour until I’ve taken up to three pills. He promised, well suggested, the world will get more focused. Things will start to collate and I would be better able to function as the world becomes clearer.
After the morning absolutions, I popped the first dose with water and went down to make coffee and get breakfast. I felt the same as I always have – head fuzzy. Things unfocused. Sometimes this clears up after the first few cups of coffee, others this is how my brain feels all day.
Second dose happens at 9:45AM. I feel some focusing happening, not a lot, but some. Distractions don’t seem to be as prevalent but I still feel like I’m doing a million things at once, even if that million of things is writing an email, talking on IRC, talking on IM, talking on Twitter, and reading Facebook. An email to someone is left unsent after a few moments. I wonder to the bathroom and start applying varying shades of lipgloss/lipsticks that I had recently purchased (a few of them were on my desk, which prompted the wander). I spend a few moments working on my lips and realize I have to go back to the office to finish documenting this experiment. And send the email that was left in draft form, though it is ready to go before I wandered off. As I settle back in the my office, a discussion between TheHusband and I pop up about how to use a gift card we got from his parents for the holidays. We shop on Amazon and I place the order.
It’s now 10:15. I pop the third dose.
Is the drug working? As I write this, I feel focused on writing this even though I see the IRC chat window scroll to the left of my screen, I know there are messages waiting for me on Twitter, and a few other distractions are looming.
My brain still feels fuzzy and I have a very low headache, barely noticeable in the front. This could be a reaction to the drug.
But here is what I have noticed – while writing this, I have just been writing and only correcting spelling as I go (easy when it has squiggle lines underneath to denote the eror). Usually when I write, I have to preview the entry a million times before it is published so that the entry is just so. This is why it takes so damn long for me to write an entry here, and why that often seems looming and difficult, because of all the extra work I think I need to put into it. This is also explains why when I sit down and write a short story, a book, whatever, I can’t just write. I have to do all the same steps I do for writing online and in the case of my fiction, I then just let it go because my frustation overtakes everything else.
It’s now 45 minutes since the last dose. I got five orders yesterday from my Etsy store that I need to ship today. I got most of the prep work done last night. Now if I can sit here and complete all five orders with minor interruptions then that would be a good way to see if the drug is working. Earlier this week when I had a large order, it took me six hours from prep work to taping up boxes to finish since I got distracted every 10 minutes.
It’s now 8PM.
I did not finish the five orders as planned. The first order, from start to finish, took 45 minutes but I was interjecting quality time on IRC while I worked. The second order took 20 minutes to finish from the start, and that includes the three minutes used to braid my husband’s very long hair. The third order, which had two balls for stuffing and packing, ALSO took 25 minutes. By the time I finished those orders, took a shower, roused TheHusband and drove to the post office, we arrived within minutes of it closing. I still have two orders left to fill and those now get shipped on Monday.
The rest of day, shopping to prep for heading up to the cabin for a week, became a mix of patience and high anxiety. TheHusband said I was all over the place, mentally AND driving (which scared the beejeezus out of him). I felt somewhat focused and laid out in my head what I needed to do (I need to go to USPS, I need to go to UPS, I need to go to Hobby Lobby, and so forth) and the follow through of what I needed at each location. But TheHusband says different. Whose opinion matters here? His or mine? Is the drug working here or has it waned? Is this how I am normally? How do I know?
Is the influence of my period affecting my emotions here?
We finished our shopping around 4PM and headed to a late lunch/early dinner, where I quizzed TheHusband on my moods and behaviors. How are was I doing? What was I doing? Can you clarify that? Was that worse or better than before? See his responses above, he thought I was more scattered and flighty than usual. He’s worried – is this the new me? We run a few more errands before heading home. At World Market, we have a conversation that turns into a rather loud argument. I call him fucking dick in the middle of the store and stomp out.
What’s the argument about? His concern about the Etsy store is taking away the time I could be writing. Am I even making a profit? Is this even worth it? Look, I say, when I started this two years ago I was without a job and it was a good idea because there is a market for it. I made a $1000 dollars the first time around, and about 30% of that was probably profit after costs and my payment to myself. Because the first year I undercut myself, the second year I raised the prices a few more dollars to what the market would bear, did a few craft shows, and did phenomenal. People love my balls.
But this year, I was laid up for a good chunk of the year and my mobility has been off and yes, I haven’t been feeling it on doing the store this holiday season because I was still feeling so worn out from the surgery and the recovery has been exhausting. So, this year I put stock in my inventory and made the store live the week of Thanksgiving. As the last minute shoppers hurry, hurry, hurry to get their orders filled, come Monday the 18th, i’ll shutter down until January where I hope to reopen to a bang.
Maybe.
The thing is, I don’t know. The stuffing of the balls is a seasonal thing. To TheHusband, he feels like I’m sucking up all this time doing the Etsy store when I could be writing. And somehow this comes out when we’re standing in front of the pillow display at World Market (currently 40% off).
As we drive home, a lot more words are said. Some were thrown, in the heat of the moment, and I started crying so hard and my lower lip was quivering so badly, I had to pull off into a nearby parking lot, lest I do something stupid and get us in an accident. Writing, writing, writing – all he wants to do is talk about my writing. We go back and forth for awhile, and my brain just feels like one huge fuzzball. He asks me what I’m thinking and I tell him, “Orange, purple, goat.” Because that is how I sometimes feel. He looks at me and he is sorry for the things he’s said, and I’m sorry for the things I’ve said. Orange, purple, goat is what he thinks I should be writing, but sometimes it’s even hard to get those out somewhere where they can be seen. (He thinks I should not give a fuck about writing to a screen because it has no feelings, which is true. But the jumbling of the world when I write is what is the hold up it is NOT for the lack of ideas.)
It is now nearly midnight, and I cannot explain to you what happened in the last four hours since I’ve started writing this. Cookies were eaten, the dog was walked, some chores were done. Was I here? Sometimes, but not fully. That is what it is ALWAYS like inside of my hand. I screamed at him tonight the problem is that the things here, tapping my forehead, cannot come out through my fingers anymore, waving my hands. It’s not like when I was a young adult and I could write stream of consciousness for hours. In the ways I was extreme on somethings then, I’m moderate now and vice versa.
Yes, okay, perhaps the drugs did work, the dose may be too low, but I think it did work. I cannot focus no, and haven’t been able to for a few hours, and everything is all over the place. On paper, on my desk, on my computer screen.
Orange, purple, goat. Tomorrow we try again.
x0x0,
Lisa
Maiden guarding the bridge over the river Gjoll (Hello, Ritalin)
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
She who sits foremost
Dear Internet,
When I wrote The Summer Tale on my 40th birthday, the intention was to to write more, write raw, write honest of my feelings. Work out the discord, work out the pain, figure how to move forward from that spot, harness it, channel it, make it work for me.
That hasn’t happened.
A recent Friday night, I was working on an old lady craft1 when it came to me this would always be my life. Home. Alone. Doing something that required aloneness. And then I began to panic and then cry.
Shortly after, my thoughts have turned to flight: Divorce TheHusband, quit my job, and then ride the rails. Everything we’ve been working on, dreaming for, saving up for gone in a blink of an eye. Everything good in my life, I want to leave.
Flight.
I have no idea where I’d go, no idea what I’d do, no idea on cash. I’d leave everything behind, even my beloved dog.
Here is what I said to Kristin earlier today (it echoes what I verbally told TheHusband earlier this morning):
I haven’t been (using my anxiety drugs)
It’s like living in my head in exhausting
I have no motivation or desire for antyhing
I feel like this is it and there is no hope
…
I haven’t finished a book, listened to a song, or done anything that used to make me happy
I won’t even create something because I feel like what’s the point?
…
I just feel like I’m missing out on a life
that I don’t know yet
…
Getting tired of lving in my head
it’s not working anymore if it ever did
And I feel like anytime I try and figure thigns out the depression cockblocks me moving on
…
LIke with school, the hope was “Well one day I’ll have a good job and pay for things”
and then with Justin it was, “one day we’ll build a life”
I can’t deal with the day to day it seems
…
So everything that I dreamt about or hoped for came true so now what is THE POINT
…
I feel crippled.
So since i feel crippled, what’s the point. What’s the point, then might as well read the g-d intenet.
…
I’ve become quite the self-shamer
I’m not a good writer, why bother. I’m not/would not be a good mother, why bother trying to get pregnant. I’m not a good librarian, why bother trying to work it out.
That kind of thing.
The ellipses represent Kristin’s comments/questions and I’ve left the content in all of its grammatically erred ways. I don’t feel anxious, I just feel consistently sad. My heart feels heavy and all I can think about is flight. I need to leave, need to go, don’t know where, just fly.
During my convalescence this summer, I got really angry at a lot of my local friends for forgetting me. Some relationships were strained, some were broken, some have been repaired. But now, as we delve deeper into fall, the lack of social contact is noticeable, but now it is not because I have been forgotten by friends, it is because I am not reaching out. For the brieftest of moments, I make plans in my head of things to do: Join a club, learn a new language, take up a new hobby that requires me to interact with people other than my husband and I feel too paralyzed to move. Why should I head to X meeting when they probably won’t like me anyway. I sound like an asshole, so might as well save the effort and sit home. It’s too late to call/text X person, so why bother?
And of course it moves on: Why start a book when it probably will suck? Why listen to music when it’s all trite and dumb. Why do anything when it’s already all been done before?
In June I said,
I don’t have a desire to kill myself but I don’t feel like there is any hope. It seems that I’ve presented myself with a conundrum. Perhaps I am my own unreliable narrative for the second I had written the above, I knew it to be a lie: I want this to go away and I want to be happy.
When I can’t listen to a song, read a book by a beloved writer, enjoy a movie, or even want to see the world beyond my door, this is obviously something I cannot easily fix on my own.
I kept the business card of the therapist who worked with me after TheEx and I broke up, and I found it a few months ago. It’s been sitting in a letter holder on my desk, taunting me to call, as I bargained with myself every day to make the call but only if I felt if things were too drastic. But that is the funny thing about depression, it’s slow, wavering hold over you like a snake coiling itself up your body. You almost always don’t notice how depressed you really are until it’s almost too late.
I called him this morning and left a message. A small sense of relief? Yes. A small ray of hope.
Fight. Not flight.
TTFN,
Lisa
1. Cross-stitching.
Thruster, Mover, Inciter
Dear Internet,
It’s a beautiful afternoon here at Throbbing Manor and I plan on taking full advantage of it before the cold eventually sets in. Since I’ve spent most of the summer, okay all of the summer, cooped up in the house, the desire to be outside sometimes borders on desperation.
TheHusband and I got into one of our many fake fights this morning because I’ve not been after the doctor’s and physical therapist’s rules to the letter. When he pointed out this was the exact same behavior as my mother1, I decided if there was any good time to change it would be now. I’ve been monitoring my behaviors all summer to figure out routines which would not only work on my days off from the library, but also I could easily modify as I move from working part to full time.
The big time suck, of course, is social networking. You cannot just login and read Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr or whatever your vice is and get off (figuratively and literally) in a short amount of time. There is some stickiness to this wicket as many of my friends are only on X network and often, that may be the ONLY way to communicate with them. Social networking is also part of what I do for the library, so I need to be up to date with what is happening in those worlds, so it’s a lot harder to just kiss off social networks or even specific services.
Ultimately, I think the real motivation of what’s keeping me on these networks is I want people to read what I write. I want my words to connect, resonate, laugh, and perhaps give others courage (or fear depending on what it is I’m writing about) so that at the very least, we do not always feel so damned alone. I find it hugely interesting with all of these tools to connect us, so many of those that I’m acquainted with often still feel like they are all alone. This may not happen all the time, sure, but even I have found while I may have over 300 friends on Facebook, but when TheHusband had seizures in the spring of 2011 and I rushed him to the hospital, I had no one to call locally for comfort. I not only want to be big in Japan, but I want a more locally fulfilled life.
With that being said, I received a lot of outpouring of support across the networks as of late over this morning’s entry and others. While I may not have responded to all of those who have written, I did want to publicly let everyone who has reached out to me to let them know how much I appreciate and adore everything you have said and given me.
This space, here, is my safe space. While I am grateful for those who have reached out to me and tell me they are there for me, please understand if I do not immediately take you up on your offer. I use this space to work out what I’m feeling, but attempting to express those thoughts does not always work vocally or in an area I cannot control. Each piece takes me hours to write so to vomit emotionally on a person is lot more complex then it is here. Also understand that I have a difficult time discussing my feelings with TheHusband and I live with him.
With that all being said, I still encourage people to comment, whether via the comment option at the bottom of the posts, via email, or on any of the social networks I am. I want to know that you’re alive and listening.
By the by, Wedensday the Pug and I were chased out of the backyard this afternoon by an indignant squirrel who kept yelling at us, for over a half an hour, from the tree tops. At first I thought it was several squirrels fighting, only when I looked up in the trees, I saw one squirrel running up and down the branches, squawking, but no other squirrels were (that I could see) in the vicinity. The squirrel made a point to jump lower and lower, keeping its gaze on the dog which is when I figured the squirrel must of thought Wednesday was intruding and it wanted to protect its space. Fair enough. I took Wednesday in and as soon as we were in the garage, the squawking immediately stopped. My office looks out onto the back area and I have yet to hear a single peep for the rest of the afternoon.
There is a metaphor in there somewhere, I just know it.
TTFN,
Lisa
1. He was commenting on how mother has been hospitalized and then placed in a physical rehabilitation center for nearly four months each time, two years in a row. Both of these incidents stemmed from her own negligence of her body, meaning that as someone who is a brittle brittle brittle, has congestive heart failure, and severe arthritis to the point that she’s had joint replacement surgery, she takes terrible care of her health. The doctor’s have told her repeatedly that all of this could be circumvented if she stopped eating like crap, exercised, and was more proactive.
Precious or costly things
Dear Internet,
I often feel like a spectator to my own train wreck of a life.
After years in the making, my mother and I broke up on Sunday. I spent much of the afternoon and night writing about it, only to find that I could not wrap my brain, and apparently my fingers, around the whole episode. Thousands of words were written and thousands were tossed aside.1 Instead of the world lifting from my shoulders, I felt the guilt that often hides in the shadows and was now dancing around my peripheral heart with glee. My heart itself felt like it was tightening so hard that I could not breathe.
The cumulation of our break-up, for me, was the realization she may have lied to me about something very big. After getting over the initial shock of, “Why in thee fuck have I not thought of this sooner?”, I felt my entire world crumble and I was instantly emotionally drained
Her potential lie has two consequences:
- If what she told me was indeed a lie, then she not only poisoned me with her hatred against my father, but she ruined my relationship with him; whom I’ll never get a chance to make-up with since he’s been dead 12 years.
- If what she told me was not a lie, then why did she never protect me, ever, from that danger?
What started down this road of holy fuckery was putting the connections together after her birthday lunch earlier in the day. She and I were buffered by TheHusband and my brother, ensuring that we barely spoke a word throughout the entire strained meal. After, I spent the better part of the afternoon obsessing over how thin our links had become to the other in the last year; with TheHusband wondering loudly, and quite rightly, why I had not broken the connection long ago. I steadfastly believed, until the very second I did not, I could not be that girl. I could not, no matter how horrid our relationship was, give up on her as a daughter. I did not want to be filled with regret after she was dead for missed chances and opportunities for maternal connection. I was barely on speaking terms with my father when he died and it has haunted me for over a decade on everything I may have potentially lost with him and I did not want to go through with that with her.
I’ve never known a time when she said anything even remotely kind about him. As I got older, I started piercing together some of the mistruths she had told in relation to him and of course to me, and rationalized it was all due to, at various times of her life, depression, being bi-polar, or general bitchiness about her divorce from him. But whatever reason she may have had for what she said, in this particular instance, could only come from pure evil and I could not rationale away what she did any other way.
When that connection was made, that I knew she had lied to me in the past and that this one event that shaped much of my teenage years and beyond could also potentially be a lie, the bond between us was finally broken.
Just so we’re clear, there was a long period of time in my ’20s when she and I did not speak. However, since the death of my father in 2000, I have tried desperately in vein to work things out with her. And in the years since then, anytime I’ve tried to tell her or even just to discuss my thoughts and feelings about our relationship (good or bad), it usually boils down to she either telling me if she hurt my feelings, she didn’t mean it and she’s sorry or that I’m insanely jealous of my brother (because it is always about him) or she claims she never said whatever it is I’m supposing telling her she said. There is no real discussion, catharsis, emotional break throughs or fuck, even understanding.
In the very near future, I will be removing myself from her legal documents and transferring that over to my brother. I will be canceling and/or removing her from any accounts or services she may use through me.
While I know I may be revisiting this again and again in the future to work out feelings, she no longer exists in my world.
TTFN,
Lisa
1. The baby was not quite thrown out with the bathwater just yet. I have been using, daily, Day One for all of my personal journaling needs. Since I have it on all my devices and machines, it syncs seamlessly with iTunes and Dropbox. The tossed aside content was added as Sunday’s journal entry and will probably remain there until I feel braver discussing it publicly.
The Summer Tale
Dear Internet,
Yesterday as I was leaving work, someone started calling after me I was walking away from the entrance of the library. As I walking and digging in my bag for my phone, it took me a few seconds to realize that someone was yelling my name. When I looked behind me, I saw a woman limping towards me and who, after my confirmation that I was who she was looking for, she began telling me she had lived at Throbbing Manor for nearly 25 years and is currently battling the bank to get repossession of the house. Taken slightly back (How do you talk to a crazy person?), we had a stilted conversation about the gardens, then she had this off-centered laugh about our battle with the ivy, and that she had also met my mother-in-law last year when TheHusband and mother-in-law were working in the gardens during the MIL’s visit. When I could think no more to say, I walked away from her with a twitchy smile on my lips and a what the fuck just happened in my heart.
Today is my 40th birthday.
I’m in my home office, still in my PJs at 1:30 3 in the afternoon. Wednesday is snoring on her pillow under the window fan. I have both windows open, the blinds are pulled down as far as they will go before they go over the lip of the opened window frame, shrouding the room in semi-darkness.
I am severely depressed.
This isn’t “JESUS FUCK, I’M 40!” depressed or even, “Christ. I’m fat” depressed or even a million things that would make us sad and blue on a daily basis. This is different. Far different. This is enveloping not only my heart, but my entire being, it’s physical as well as mental. When I walk, I feel like I’m moving in half-solidified Jello. When I am still, my skin feels like it’s being pushed on at all of its pores. I feel like I am of single mind and two bodies at once: one physical and one epheremal. I watch myself during the motions, a panel of Lisa judges on how well we passed (8.5! Work on your backflip, girl.) through the motion.
Even at my worst stages of BPD, even at the stages of when things were so bad that I felt like there was no way out, there was almost always some small thread of hope that would keep me from being incredibly stupid.
I don’t have that now. At least, not in the same form as before. I don’t have a desire to kill myself but I don’t feel like there is any hope. It seems that I’ve presented myself with a conundrum. Perhaps I am my own unreliable narrative for the second I had written the above, I knew it to be a lie: I want this to go away and I want to be happy.
On paper, everything looks great: I have a great husband, a lovely house, an awesome job. I have old and new friends who are incredible and supportive. I have a brother whose relationship I’m beginning to depend on and materialistically, I want for nothing. For the first time in over a decade, I do not need to calculate the price of an item down to a per hour working cost. But something is not right in Denmark, as all I want to do is do nothing and feel nothing. I just ate a bar of my favorite chocolate. It tasted good, because something tells me this is what I knew to be my favorite bar of chocolate, but it does not make me happy to have eaten it or treat it with joy or even acknowledge that it is good chocolate. It was a bar a chocolate, so I ate it. It’s boiled down to being that simple.
Food is not consumed because it tastes good but consumed because I know it is there for me to eat it. I drink to hydrate, not to enjoy. I watch television to block out hours, not to enrich. (Except for True Blood, because well, that’s True Blood.) I used to read 10-15 books a month, I have finished two books in the last six. When I read the news, of any kind, I have the same emotion for war pieces as I do for saving kittens from a tree. I can’t tell you the last time I felt sexy. Or when the last time I laughed because I was overjoyed. While I never particularly thought of myself as being vain, I did take care of my appearance and even that is slipping. When I do something that should fall into being beautiful, I find that I’ve placed a mask on my body instead. I’m miming what you think I should be doing because that is socially what people know Lisa to do so that is what I’ll do.
So far, over 50 people have wished me a happy birthday on my Facebook wall but I’m crying because no one has sent me a physical card, because I feel that if they really did care, they would spend the few bucks for the card and the stamp. Then I beat myself up over that bit of hypocritical wants since when is the last time I randomly bought someone a card and sent it (i.e. never). Again, a lie: Today’s post revealed a quick written post from my mother who jotted that she was far too young to have a 40 year old daughter.
I am told by people they care about me (see earlier remark about new and old friends being supportive), but I feel like they are just telling me this to soothe their own souls, even when they are being sincere and true. I have stopped engaging with most people locally because I do not know how to be a friend to them anymore as I don’t know how to react anymore to someone loving me, even platonically. When my husband says he loves me, my first reaction is that I feel like he loves me because it’s habit not because he genuinely does. Then I start to cry because I know that bit about my husband is a lie and I feel like an awful human being for even thinking this to be true. And if there is anyone in this world who loves me pure and true, it’s TheHusband.
I am an emotional mess of contradictions and fallacies, and I’m barely keeping my head above water. You were good to me years ago Internet for working things out (and cheaper then therapy). I hope you don’t mind me coming to you again.
x0x0,
Lisa