Related posts:

1. Torture and Time
2. Stop it! Shut up! It’s too ugly!
3. Fractured
4. Upswing: Just Keep Breathing
5. A Few Thoughts: Innocence, Sexuality, Feminism, Non-Rapists, Writing, and Comfort

That is, in the face of the deaths seemingly piling up around me lately, I’m okay.

In fact, my major stressor has become the fear that my late sense of peace will end.  Because if this ends, then I didn’t learn anything new.  And I’ll struggle to control myself—again.  Then, I’ll know the peace was really shock from Sang’s death.  Then, this is just another turn of the chemical tides.  It’s always—

I’m catastrophizing.  Realistically, it’s more likely the peace I feel is due to the overall peaceful environment I’ve constructed around me.  I have several inspiring relationships in my life.  I have a steady income and health insurance.  I have an able body and a highly capable mind.  True, I recently lost one of my best friends to what boils down to the limitations of science.  Just today I held back tears as I told a Sang story.  Yet, that I was able to exercise that much control surprises me.  My voice only broke a few times, and I had the foresight to lower my gaze to hide the rising tide hazing my vision.  It was a small step but a step forward nonetheless.

Publishing this post tonight is the biggest step of all, actually.  The worst thing a depressive can do is isolate.  So, I’m doing what anybody who’s had effective therapy treatment does: communicating.  Every word hurts, and every sentence feels like a small miracle I alone labored to create.  Even as I write these words, I’m wondering if I’ll have the courage to press the “Publish” button to my right.  If I do, it’ll be a big step out of grief and depression.  If I publish again tomorrow, I’ll have started myself on the long journey back to full mental and physical health.  Writing, my shameless monster, washes me of the guilt and self-disgust that’s too long kept my skin from breathing.  Publishing adds meaning to an otherwise masturbatory skill.

So, in a sense, I give myself meaning by publishing.

I’m sorry.  I’m either extremely focused or disturbingly absent-minded.  This post seems to drift between the two states.  I irresponsibly allowed the Clonazepam to run out in between psychiatric visits.  Though I did have the job of finding a new psychiatrist during that interim, I should have made the matter a higher priority than I did.  I—I’m whipping myself.

Not a new problem.  I know.

I’m trying to scream on paper, but I’m not talented enough to know how to do it.  So too simply put, nothing feels urgent anymore.  Yet, I’m full of all this quiet, distant tension.  Not quite dissociation, I’m compelled to enjoy it.  But I just don’t trust it to be good.  There’s an anxiety whispering from there.  It’s creeping up my throat, and I want to let it out.  If I let it out, maybe I’ll be able to take a deep enough breath.  I can stop this yawning.  I’m always so exhausted, lately.

I just have to press “Publish.”

Related posts:

1. Freewriting Panic Attack: Holding Myself Up Normal
2. Freewriting Panic Attack: Waking Nightmares
3. Freewriting Panic Attack: There’s Never Enough to Cry About
4. Freewriting Panic Attack: This Is As Close to Being Inside My Head As I Could Have Gotten You Through Words
5. Freewriting Panic Attack: The Building. Shaken. Up.

Doctors would never need to get involved—in my ideal world.  I wouldn’t have to take this medication.  I’d be normal.  Instead, a freak is what I feel like most days.

Most days, I can’t believe I have a job, a boyfriend, a cat, friends.  It all seems miraculous, like it has nothing to do with me.  In fact, it feels like all this has happened in spite of me.

I mean, think about everything this site talks about: the depression, the medication and self-medication, the emotional phenomena.  Who would keep that person employed?  And yet, I work for the biggest company in the industry.  Every day, I arrive at my job, open up Outlook, and think, as I wait for the server to download the emails, Oh, God, I’m going to get yelled out. The fear has made me religious about updating and answering my work email.  I’m always waiting for it: the revelation.

They’ll email me into the office one day and finally say it: “this is unacceptable.”  I’ll hear, “you’re unacceptable,” thank them for the opportunity to work with them, and quietly leave the company forever.  At that point, I’ll probably go into a deep depression before being carted off to a mental hospital.

Every morning, between the click of a little, orange desktop icon and the message that all emails have been downloaded from the server, I see this future.

On the meds, all of that still happens; the difference is how I feel about that vision.  Instead of assuming I’ll thereafter be carted off to a mental institution, I tell myself, “if that happens, and I get fired, I’ll figure something out.  I’m not alone in this world.  I have Sam and my family and my friends to support me emotionally while I look for a job.  And there’s always a job to do, right?”

In better economic times, that last statement wouldn’t be a question, but I’m not afraid anymore.  There’s always money to be made, somewhere, somehow, if I’m not too proud.  And in the US, what with Section 8, things would have to get abject for me not to be able to earn enough for Section 8 housing.

Sadly, that’s how my brain thinks.  I cover every eventuality; I think of every possible outcome.  I’m constantly searching for logic.  Before the meds, my fears seemed logical, too.  Reason looked suspicious.  ”But what if…?  What if…?” was my refrain.  It still is.  Only, I don’t doubt the logic of the reasonable answers, anymore.

So, I’m cured, right?  I’m calm.  I’m listening to logic.  I’m reasonable, for all intents and purposes, and I’m technically, arguably functioning, to say I have a job and a relationship.

Yet, it’s not all right.  I know better.  I don’t trust any of this.  Even as the pills alleviate my anxiety, they don’t cancel out the thoughts, only the feelings attached to them.  While this is nevertheless an arsenal against negativity—while I can see reality that much clearer while on these drugs—I still think awful things.

But I don’t think it gets easier than this.  This is the point doctors always tell me meds can take me to.  The rest is therapy, they say.

I didn’t think they were right about meds, and I didn’t think they were right about therapy, but with my cultural perceptions of medication thrown into doubt, their promises suddenly become that much more probable.

Then again, I’ve also been known to be too trusting.

Round and round I go.  How do I stop?

Related posts:

1. Self-Trust
2. I Want to Stop Writing About What Happened to Me.
3. The Sated Life
4. Am I Really In That Much Pain?
5. Freewriting: Obsessive Thoughts

I don’t destroy everything I touch.

It’s surprising how difficult that is to accept.  In essence, I’m suggesting I’m not as worthless as I once thought myself to be.  I might even be—gasp—trustworthy?  As I look at my Christmas tree and the little buddha statues beneath it, as I comfort my cat with coos, as I express myself here openly and without shame, as I dedicate my time and my patience to myself, I submit to the evidence: I’ve already reached the goal I set out years ago to reach.

I’m stuttering, very nearly afraid it might not be true.  But there the words are, located somewhere between my breath and my mind:

I’m at peace.

It’s happening more and more often.  I woke this morning to feelings of anxiety and uncertainty, but a few hours later, I feel so normal.  There’s a whisper of bad thoughts somewhere near my ear, but I’m not listening.  Every hour or so, my heart strikes an arhythmic note, palpitates, then settles.  But panic attacks, ladies and gentlemen?  Count them with me: one.

I could laugh or cry or both, but it doesn’t matter, because I know it’ll pass.  I’m in my own head—and, on this rare occasion, that doesn’t feel like a life sentence.

Related posts:

1. Freewriting Panic Attack: A Masturbatory Act, A Big Step
2. Waiting For the Winter
3. Freewriting: The Irony of Imposter Syndrome Is Trust Issues
4. Freewriting: Madness
5. Another Night.

So, why do I keep making lousy choices: getting into that stranger’s car, avoiding clear patterns of bad behavior?  I would tell any girl I saw acting like me that she was obviously suffering from some self-loathing, as well as self-destructive behavior that may or may not signify burgeoning suicidal tendencies.

I can’t deny, these are the actions of someone who is not happy.  But here, I have to make a note: I don’t think there’s something in my life making me unhappy.  I think it’s just my depression.

Of course, that could easily be avoidance of an issue in my life.

Gosh, I’m a fool.  My mind contradicts itself at every turn, doubts its every thought.  I can’t stop wondering, is it like this for everyone?

I told Sang and Sam that I thought my twitches are my strong physical reaction to my thoughts, that I often cringe away from my everyday occurrences.  They said, “That’s understandable—considering.”

I didn’t like that: “considering.”  I had wanted them to say, they too cringed away from their thoughts several times an hour.  I want to be normal and okay.

I’m a child.  I feel like nothing more than a silly child faking my way through the world.  Any day, someone will be irreversibly angry with me, and I won’t be able to do anything I’ve dreamed of doing.  Any day now, I’ll mess it all up for good.

I’m so frightened by the things going on inside my head, I sometimes don’t have the leftover feeling to fear the dangers outside myself.  That’s definitely not the whole answer to why I’ve been making such bad choices, but it’s undoubtedly a related truth worth reveling in.  I don’t recall having felt fear—having felt anything, really—when I accepted the stranger’s ride or when I consistently avoided thinking about the potential repercussions of my actions.

It leads me back to why am I making these choices?  Do I want to feel young again?  Is that what it is?  Do I need to feel alive and act as if these crazy things I do are okay because I’m afraid I’m missing my youth?  Is this the parentified child rebelling during the first days of her independence?

Are these the tame precursors of a condition or the rantings of a narcissist?  I’m struggling to figure out which possibility I can live with?

Related posts:

1. Baby Steps Suck
2. Torture and Time
3. Am I Really In That Much Pain?
4. Questions and Answers
5. A Little Less Afraid Now

My fears convince each other.  I’m exactly where I began: debating myself.  I just want an answer: what should I do?  No one can tell me.  They don’t seem to have the answer for themselves, but they aren’t sinking like I am.  They seem to have grasped onto self-denial.  I need an idea that’ll float better.  Or is self-denial really to be my saver?!  If it is, I have to wonder if I wouldn’t rather sink to the depths of this depression.

The problem—and this is where my psychiatrists and I have always differed until now—is I want do more than just survive, but I need help.  When I’m not on these drugs, I’m passionate and alive.  I make lousy choices, but at least I feel powerful.  I float.  I have fun.

For a time, I have fun.  An irony of being on medication for me, the reality of mania: I feel my best when I’m completely unmedicated—not even on Lexapro.  During those med-free days, I didn’t want anything to ease me.  I was indulging my mania, letting it kill me with anorexia and burn out.  My body had me pumped so full of adrenaline and seratonin, I was literally naturally high. I was doing so much, I would often break into a run to be late to the next responsibility on the list that day.  I had no time to do anything more than lie.  I seemed to be lying my way through my days, waiting, screaming silently, for someone to notice.

I felt myself crashing even as many told me I appeared to them to be a happy floater.  What they were actually seeing was my attempt to run from the screams inside my head.  I would dance ecstatically until I would literally near collapse.  I would feel myself dying inside.  I’d excuse myself to the bathroom, dry heave, and return to the bar and my acquaintances: sad, scared girls and horny boy-men laughing hysterically over lies.  I often danced by myself, leaving my friends to their devices, so some strange man could grope me and make me feel wanted.  I was a smart girl who did dumb things to distract myself from the insanity happening in my brain.  My bed became my enemy.  Sleep has never been the same.  My body aches and my head hurts from the deprivation.  It drives me to tears sometimes.  More often, it drives people away.  No one wants to be around a sad girl.

—Oh!  I guess I am in that much pain.

Related posts:

1. The Sated Life
2. Torture and Time
3. Waiting For the Winter
4. Help Me.
5. Freewriting Panic Attack: Waking Nightmares

I’ve always been sick.  For as long as I can remember, I’ve had to go to doctors several times a year, hospitals, specialists.  Mine has been a life of sanitation and medication.

I’ve been chronically nauseous since before I knew there was a word for it.  I remember Maggie taught me the word so I could tell it to my school nurse whenever necessary.

I also suffer from chronic bronchitis, which means I get it several times a year.

I have twisted ankles.

I get migraines several times a week.

I have a knee that pops out of place all the time, and I never even played a sport!

I suffer from back spasms all day, every day.  I can’t remember the last time nothing hurt.

I can’t even remember.  I’d laugh, if it wasn’t so sad.  My neurotic need to write everything down is the only thing keeping me functional because I literally cannot remember most of the things that happen to me in a day.

These are just some of the symptoms medication seems unable to address.  I hope that once the anxiety is completely gone, the psychosomatic symptoms will go with it.  But I think of Sam’s compulsion to crack his neck, even though it hurts him to do so.  His 30 mg of Lexapro steady him somewhat, but they aren’t a cure-all.

So, once I’m over this upper respiratory infection, I’ll go to the organic grocers and to the gym.  Despite the psychopharmaceuticals overflowing from my medicine box, I maintain my preference for homeopathic remedies—another belief I had to throw away early on in the fight against this monster in my head.

I want to submit to this crying spell, but I’m not going to.  I can do that: dissociate at will.  That’s not something to be proud of, but it’s what I’ve got right now.  I’m looping like a sound effect what Sam yelled at me from the kitchen Saturday morning.  Amidst another conversation about something, he shouts from the kitchen, “Depression is anger turned inward.”

The idea is so widely accepted, it’s become cliché, but this was the first time I was really considering it in terms of my own life.  I’ve heard the phrase a million times, read it a million times that, and I’ve participated in debates about the idea.  Yet, when he said it yesterday, I suddenly considered, “if that’s true, at whom am I angry?  If I’m not angry at the Andys and I’m not angry at myself, who is left?

For a few moments on Friday night, my anger turned on Sang, but my fear of expressing true anger made the outburst ridiculous.  Sang and Sam laughed.  I pouted; I shouted, “I mean it!”  I might as well have stomped my foot, because the effect was that I looked like a child throwing a tantrum.  I was a six year old girl again, frustrated I couldn’t stop my parents’ abuses.

—Fuck.  I was a sad kid.  It’s the one command I heard again and again from strangers’ mouths: smile!  Pocarisa, my aunt called me.  My family encouraged the use of the nickname.  Rarelylaughs.  No one ever gets why I tell that story, as if to prove its point.

—Shit.  These are the words of a depressive.  I don’t know what’s going through my head right now.

Related posts:

1. Torture and Time
2. Freewriting Panic Attack: Waking Nightmares
3. Freewriting: Obsessive Thoughts
4. Another Night.
5. Rape Porn : Sexual Trauma and My Sexuality

I’m so excited, I just wrote that sentence without a pause of thought.  I’ve had psychiatrists put me on antipsychotics because they didn’t know what to do with me.  In contrast, this woman sat down with me for an hour, looked me in the face the whole time, asked about details of my life without even glancing at her notes.  She isn’t the type to say anything without being able to back it up.

As far as I’m concerned, she’s already proved herself.  I’ve been energetic, even-tempered, and focused for days now, even as I struggle with what might be bronchitis.  When my boss sent me home today because I was obviously feeling seriously sick, I thought for a second, is she upset with me?  Does she hate me?  Is this a sign of something more? But those thoughts were quickly replaced with logic.  I knew the company president had encouraged anyone coughing or ill, and I was clearly both, to work from home.

But last week, that same occurrence would have devastated me for days, if not weeks.

So when Dr. Rivera tells me she can help me live this life without the pain and suffering I’ve been enduring, I listen.  I’ve witnessed the progress firsthand.

I don’t know how long it will last, but she says it’ll only get better from here.  If she’s lying, I won’t be upset.  It’s an impossible task.  If she’s not, and she’s successful for an extended period of time–=all I ask—I won’t know how to repay her.

I know, however, that the more likely scenario, is that I will eventually become accustomed to this dose of the medications, or I will become immune to the effects of the drugs.  It seems inevitable.

Yet I don’t care.  I feel peaceful even when I’m stressed.  I feel so good, I’m giddy.  I think I’ll start dating women again, start expanding my thoughts through reading.  And I’m going to go the city next weekend no matter what.  I’ll figure out the night’s events when I get there.  I just want to discover and play.

I want to enjoy it all.  I want to have fun.  I want to feel my age.  I think this is what satiation feels like.

It’s just another uphill trek toward mania.  You’re going to get out of control again.

Quiet.

Related posts:

1. Am I Really In That Much Pain?
2. Another Night.
3. Freewriting: Madness
4. Torture and Time
5. Freewriting Panic Attack: Waking Nightmares

And now, I’m really proud of the work I’ve done.  I have a warm apartment, honorable friends, a sweet kitten, a job, and a boyfriend who would do anything for me.

I’m giddy with excitement.  Those words above are not a depressive’s in the throws of it.  Could it be, I’m getting better?  I mean, I feel better.  I’m interested in going out, and I’m once more vocalizing my needs to Sam.  The winter’s coming, but I’m not minding that today.  I’m not minding anything.  Things feel good.  The world feels right.  I want to cry, and for once, it’s not out of grief.  I feel the desire to celebrate.

A little voice whispers, don’t trust it.  Today, I’m not listening.  The days are passing, and I’m maintaining stability.  I have to trust it, trust myself, trust my doctors.  This time might be different.

Related posts:

1. Freewriting: The Irony of Imposter Syndrome Is Trust Issues
2. Waiting For the Winter
3. Self-Trust
4. I Want to Stop Writing About What Happened to Me.
5. Self-Awareness and Friendship

What process does stop?

Does the pain inside my head and chest ever stop?  Will it?  If the past is my future, I’m pessimistic.

But that’s the whole point of self-awareness, isn’t it?  To understand the past—to remember and tell it—so as not to repeat it.  I fight every day to be less ignorant, more open-minded.  And yet my highs don’t last, and my lows keep coming back.  And the fear is constant.  Would I be less afraid if I turned to denial and self-ignorance?  If I would be calmer, I’m not sure it’s worth the price.

I’m lucky right now.  Today, again, wasn’t a bad day.  I didn’t feel anxious in any significant way; I just tapped my heel some, nothing obscene or troubling as sometimes happens.  The Clonzepam is still causing some drowsiness, but I’m fighting it.  I’ve become active in my own life again.  I exercised yesterday, and I’ve been eating.  I haven’t smoked, either.

I’m glad I’m seeing my psychiatrist tomorrow, so I can discuss all this with her.  I particularly need to address how the early nightfall, exacerbated by Daylight Savings Time, may affect me in the coming months.  I didn’t see the sun at all today.  I have no doubt the following months will bring many different kinds of hells.

Sam would say I’m being dramatic.  I’m not.  I’m sure you know the pain if you’re a depressive, the perfect tortures your head invents and makes you suffer as the days go on.  Every breath is a burden.  Every approaching second bleaches your face and drains your energy with the mere prospect of more pain.  Every event proves you’re a parasite or—worse—a bad person.  God!  How do we make it, we depressives and bipolars and the rest of the suffering lot?!

…I wish I could trust this high to stay, but I’ve been here before.  To me, that’s the worst part: I can’t trust myself.

Related posts:

1. Am I Really In That Much Pain?
2. Torture and Time
3. Another Night.
4. Freewriting Panic Attack: Waking Nightmares
5. Help Me.