Tag: Anxiety

Suck It Up, Buttercup!

I feel like I’m devolving into a puddle of goo.  I’m shaking, implosion seems eminent and sleep doesn’t help.  But then I’m not supposed to be sleeping….I’m supposed to be shopping, cleaning, organizing, learning, writing the ending of my finished novel (House of Dragons) and working on a general editing pass at my other one (Hearts of The Mothers) for NaNoWriMo instead of writing something novel.  All I feel capable of doing is sitting and trying to keep my heart from bounding out of my chest.

Okay, maybe I’m expecting too much from myself the first day of unemployment and I did want to take today easy, but then I feel like I’m about to have a heart attack, problems breathing, heart pounding etc.  So I checked my stress level, which I figured would be low because I am on my blood pressure pills but it read 86% which, in the meters terms, is extreme.  I checked my blood pressure and it was 131/76 with a heart rate of 86.  So I did what any off-cetnerly sane person would do….I took something from my anxiety collection and I’m hoping the weaker compound will do me okay.  I need to get back to putting that in my morning pills.  It’s not like I have to worry about falling asleep at my desk any more, but apparently I need them.

I think also the collapse of my schedule has something to do with it.  I need to start a new schedule and commit to it as if it were a work schedule.  It’s so hard to commit to something that doesn’t have a prod to go with the carrot, or in this case the carrot is the freedom to write not money. I need to get up, do whatever work I need to do around the house and then LEAVE home and follow my plan as outlined.  I realize that I need to put the plan in writing, work on a check off system and just keep moving forward as much as my body/mind/soul will allow me.  Not knuckling under their weight but using it as a counterbalance to propel me forward.  Which honestly sounds all pretty and easy….on the screen….but in the end I just need to suck it up and get it done.

The Bluffers Rebuff

I miss Sammy.  I miss the way she says ‘Hello’ in the morning, or says “By by” when I leave but mostly I miss knowing there is one living, breathing person* in the house that loves me unconditionally even when she bites me.

Mom and I have plastered over the dings in each others walls, though I didn’t hurl anything heavy, she took asserting my boundaries as a direct hit and then taking Sammy away so she wouldn’t breathe in her feathers as a killing blow.  Covering the wounds works like turning off the lights instead of doing the dishes….if you can’t see it, it never happened.  I was told that I was breaking a dying woman’s heart by taking Sammy to my sisters, but if Mom truly is allergic to her feathers then taking Sammy out of the house was the only recourse.  It’s not like I would allow her to live outside even if she could.  It is still seen as an intentional, malicious action against my mother, which was not my intent, and I tell her I don’t intend on having Sammy stay away forever.  I’ve ordered air filters/purifiers/cleaners for her room and the family room and once she can breathe okay I will bring Sammy home as a test.  Mom on the other hand feels she will never be able to be in the same room with her again.  It is her way of bluffing my bluff, to see who could last the longest without her.  Well, not to be too macabre or put too fine a point on it, I’m the one that can live longer without her.  That’s not why I’m not going to buckle to her will, or maybe it is, I dunno sometimes what is going on in my head.  In a lot of ways I’m still very angry at my mom for the way she treated me, talked to me, acted towards me, and yet knowing that it’s coming from a place of fear and her interpretation of everything as pain she doesn’t know (or want to know) any better.  I can’t change her, I can only change myself so she can no longer hurt me.  But she made me cry this weekend, and honestly that seems to be the worst thing that she could have done.  That was the start of her treating me better, she thinks she broke me.  What happened was I didn’t have all of my social meds for the day and I crumbled a little but she’s taking it as a victory.

To help me overcome my loneliness and the fun in watching her, I bought a wifi camera that will allow me to log into it and I can watch her all day if I wanted to.  I won’t, hopefully.  But when I’m at home and in my room I can put it on my 24″ monitor and it would be like she was in my room with me.  It just can’t get here fast enough!

*Sammy is a feathered person….and yes, I’m one of ‘those’ pet owners.

Honest Gratitude

I’m not alone, for the longest time I thought I was the only one in my peer group that was stuck inside the void.  Of course I had isolated myself to the point that I was the only one I saw mostly and honestly, I was ignoring me.  I shrunk away from all the love at church because I didn’t want them to know, but I knew they knew, and I was interpreting their love as pity.  I knew they knew because years ago for an essay in my genealogy class, Mom telling people to get sympathy for the heavy burden I am to her, and I’m pretty sure it’s written across my face most of the time.  But to face them, to accept their love, to say “I’m doing well” when they I was lying made me just want to stay home, so I did.

I’ve been going back to church, and I’m hoping to make it a life-long habit from here on out.  I’ve been listening to the topics of conversation, the messages between the topics and I’ve found that a lot of people that appear so happy, as if they have everything they want/need/desire are getting sucked in, stuck in the void that I’ve been in.  The insidious nature of the void is that it is a palpable darkness that your eyes are for all intensive purposes blind.  No one calls out encouragement while they’re in there because no one wants to be found or helped or comforted because we don’t deserve it.  Or, so’s my experience.  The darkness can be a blinding light to some, a red ethereal heat, or a frigid cold that burns to the touch but it is our own hell.  The trouble with having your own personal hell is that no one can help you decorate it because they can’t see it.  But they want to do something to “brighten” things up to help you.  People brighten up your hell just by being there, not by making you explain and explain and explain how things are working inside your head only for them to look at you and honestly say “I don’t get it.  Why can’t you just make up your mind to get over it?”  For me, when someone would say that, I’d want to scream and throw things at them…preferable food that stains or smells bad.

This time around, hopefully my last time around, I’ve been honest.  I’ve been truthful with people when a question is asked that I am capable to answer from my experience.  I can’t address their experiences directly because I don’t know them.  It’s like having someone explain how salt tastes to them without using the word salty.  It can be done, but it’s really hard to know the words you need to describe it.  By being honest about my depression, I’m hoping to rip the mask off the face of depression and stare at my own face and not be ashamed, to abolish the stigma from you, your family, your friends and those that just think you should get over it.  Knowing you aren’t alone, even though your experience is unique, the concept of depression is ubiquitous is a comfort to some, a sympathetic pain to other and a reality the world needs to accept, understand and get over their issues about it.

To be honest, I’m so grateful for this depression, this time around.  (yes, that’s probably the meds talking).  What I’m grateful for is the opportunity I’ve gotten to stitch the tear, rebuild the destroyed and fix the broken so I don’t end up here again.  I’m not sure that I won’t.  I’m still very easily sent of kilter if something happens or my plans are upset in any way, but I balance out faster, I gather my strength and I push forward.  Honesty and gratitude seem to be working hand-in-hand for me.  I think I need to stop using this site as a pity party on ePaper and start using it to be grateful, honest and helpful for others.  It’s just figuring out how to do that and making the time for it and not using it as a way to hide from the issues I’m dealing with

Stay tuned, boys and girls, it looks like things are going to change (for the good, I hope)…….

Prayer: The Hearts Sincere Desire

I’ve been praying again, at least making an honest effort.  I still forget that I’m praying sometimes and let my mind wander but I pull it back as quickly as I can, apologize to my Father in Heaven and push forward.  It seems odd that prayer is so hard for me.  That it was nothing before but “Please, Father, get me through today.” (And He did) But because of my meager efforts I’m no longer extremely anxious about taking the forward steps I need to into the haze of uncertainty because I know He will prepare a path for me even if all I can see it one step at a time.

It’s so hard to describe the sensation of this for me.  I’ve always known there was a higher power (mine is God/Heavenly Father/Elohim) for as long as I can remember.  At one point I wanted to be cloistered away as a nun;  a life of service and reflection apparently appeals to the writers heart.  However, I chose the secular world and now my realities are 1) my job is ending 2) my education to be a phlebotomist is a joke in the industry 3) I’ve not stuck anyone in years and 4)it’s going to pay less (especially a non-union job) than the pittance I’m making now. (I’m not even going to go into the lack of writing, lack of journaling and lack of any creativity in my life right now).  My mind races and then collapses from exhaustion.  I think R.E.M. said it best:

It’s the end of the world as we know it

And I feel fine

I’ve never been able to really make plans for my future because I’ve always had the concept hard wired into my mind “Live now for tomorrow we die”.  So now, I pray about it, when the anxiety, fear and general loathing of change overtakes me and then a calm comes and the gentle words of peace and comfort scatter the emotions like cockroaches in the light and I feel fine.

Though I’m still anxious about a lot of things:

  • Mom’s ultimate destination and getting her ready, getting me ready, fear of walking in on her and finding her when I’m alone
  • Money lasting to the end of the month and not being able to buy stuff with my own money
  • Getting money together for my nephews wedding (This is new one, he’s going on a cruise and we’re all invited)
  • Job ending
  • Job searching
  • Being trapped forever with Mom
  • Never getting my eating under control and never being able to eat Golden Mega Stuff Oreos again
  • Dying before I have a chance to live
  • Being around people
  • Dealing with my family and the anger it stirs up in me and the fear of not being able to control it around them

That’s just off the top of my head, the things that I can pick out when it’s spinning.  Though I know everything in my heart will be okay, the chemicals in my brain still won’t settle down and leave me in peace.  I’m hoping to replace my emergency anti-anxiety pills and the half one I take every day, with meditation and prayer.  It is my sincerest desire to be trusting and rest in the Lords embrace and know everything will be okay.  Though my heart is starting to trust my head is still overly paranoid and distrusting of everyone and everything, both physical and spiritual.  It’s not the end of the world, just a change, and I will be fine.  Prayer needs to be my bridge from this life to the next, I can feel that in my heart to be true and I need to be more persistent in following the whispers of hope and orient myself to the feeling of warmth and comfort the Spirit provides when I follow my heart.

Om. Om. O My!

I started meditation. But not guided meditation like before. The woman’s once soothing dulcet tones were starting to annoy me. So I decided to go the more Old School traditional. So I chant…….

Om Mani Padme Hum

Yes it feels silly some times but trying to remember the sounds takes a lot of my mental concentration. Each syllable has a meaning. For example Om means generosity or hum means wisdom. I say this to myself when I need to take a pause or when I have a pause and instead of doing I chant. I can’t say that it’s miraculously cured me, dang it, but I felt the hum of wisdom this morning while I was stuck in traffic already irritatingly late to work.

I guess what it basically boils down to is I’m scared. I’m scared that I won’t be able to handle the extra load of taking classes, that I’ll drive off the twisty-windy road and plummet to my death because my eye lids were too heavy to keep open during the coming and going to class. More likely than not it will prove too much for me and I’ll have to withdraw from class and take an F or incomplete and have to start all over again. Wisdom stepped in and calmed my mind and simply said:

“Not trying is guaranteed failure. Trying and failing is practice for the time you try and achieve.”

So I’m now trying to decide which is better. Going to a semester long class close to the ocean or two quarter classes close to home. I guess I need to keep Om Mani Padme Hum spinning along with my brain until something flys out at me.

What do you think I should do?

Wanting Vs. Doing Vs. Needing

I want……….

  • to go back to school to spiff up my phlebotomy credentials (long story)
  • to write at night and on weekends
  • to have a clean and neat room, with my bed made and laundry done
  • to go on hikes on weekends and maybe learn to Glamp from time to time
  • to make jewelry for gifts and for myself….maybe even to sell
  •  to keep working a full time job so I can have a full time pay

Vs.

I’m doing……….

  • 8hrs a day on a less than taxing job but still need to take a nap in my car
  • I’m registering for school but will have to do it in person instead of online, terrified I’ll sleep through it or fail
  • I clean my room by turning off the light and turning on the TV
  • I get out of bed late on weekends and then require a few naps to get through the day
  • The thought of pulling out and putting away all my jewelry making stuff is exhausting in itself
  • Honestly, I don’t know how I’ve been able to keep a full time job.

Okay, I’m tired right now. I really have no reason to be, other than I stayed up too late last night. But when I’m in these moods I wonder if I will ever be able to have a normal life, if I’ve ever had a normal life. My Mom is insistent that I just need to “push through” and “fight back” and basically “get over it” and I will be fine. Sometimes I think she’s right, very rarely, and I try and spin myself back out of control. I think I need a routine…a “doing” and slowly build from there. I keep changing this idea of what my day should look like beyond going to work, going home, going to bed, getting up and going to work, going home, going to bed.

Right now I’m thinking that Mediation is the direction I should be going in. Of course I can’t do that until I have a space cleaned in my room, which means I need to work in my room, which means I need to do my laundry and find a meditation pillow and make hand knotted-silk strung beads and a tassel for meditation……See how the wanting and the doing are always dancing?

I need to……….

  • JUST meditate

    • I don’t need a clean room to do it
    • I don’t need my laundry clean to do it
    • I don’t need a special pillow to do it
    • I don’t need specially strung beads to do it (yet, I want them because it means shopping and creating)

The only thing I need to do is make time. Or in my case take time.  And take comfort in the hope that the needful will allow for the mental space for doing the wanting.

The End is Nigh….or not.

The diaphanous veil between the living and the dead is getting thinner.  I can feel my father closer, my brother.  They are waiting.  I can’t really say this to my family because we’ve been saying “Mom won’t make the next XYZ” for the last 24 years. It’s gotten to the point where we won’t believe it until we see it.  And who knows how long a person can.

I want her to have a good end of life, but I don’t know how to bring that about.  She has a DNR, C. will make the final judgment if we need to turn off her machines and pacemaker. (there will be mighty discussions between the three of us girls before hand, it’s not just hers alone)  Her cremation is paid for, our plan to have a boat take us out to the Golden Gate Bridge or beyond to allow her to travel the way she never could in mortality.   I guess now it’s just a matter of all the family to make amends with their own soul and forgive grandma/great grandma and let her go being loved.  She wasn’t trying to hurt us, not consciously anyway.  She wanted what was best for us, even if what she wanted was skewed towards what she needed more, but truly is that her fault?  She relied on the way she was raised, and the pain she experienced on our side of the conversation must have been worse as she believes she wasn’t loved or wanted.  Mom wanted us, she loved us to the best of her ability and with the few tools she was given, and isn’t that all what we can do?  Holding someone to a standard you hold yourself to is just as unfair, lacking compassion and sincerely extremely selfish to the point of narcissism.  True narcissism isn’t something you choose, it’s not like fat where you can go on a diet and emerge a shadow of what you used to be….Narcissists don’t believe the need help or to change, the rest of the world should.  I wish I could take this understanding, acceptance and love and share this enlightenment I’ve been given to my family but I can’t, and even if I can will they have the frame of reference of the months past to understand it with.  Or the desire to truly forgive her and let her go?
The depression and the tentacle like grip the other accessory ailments has robbed me of the ability to feel a lot of feelings.  Well all feelings except anger.  With the containment and proper placement of that merciless flame  the other emotions are coming to the surface and I can say something I never thought I would be able to say.  I love my mother.  I started this journey hating her and silently planning her funeral like a mother plans her daughters wedding.  My biggest fear was that I would hum “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” in my pew at her funeral, now I’m not afraid to loose her, or my reaction to it, but mostly that I will be unable to take care of myself without her to remind me to eat, to wake me up when I fall asleep on the couch, to guilt me into cleaning up the house. (I know, I’m a grown up, for heaven sakes, I should be be doing that for myself already).
This feeling of love for my mother and the spiritual lifting I’ve had over the last several weeks makes me wonder if that’s why I am able to feel the veil so close.  The only thing you really take with you is your knowledge and your love.  Love you give is the silken strands that weave your body for the next life and the love you receive is the decoration.  Or so is my belief.
(I’m not saying my Mom is in the throws of dying, she’s not.  I do know her body is starting to give up and betray her in ways she never thought it could.  I’m just saying there are people waiting for her and I can feel their presence.  It could happen today (better not it’s my birthday and her sister already died on my birthday) or it could happen next week/month/year/decade etc.  My nephew J has a saying “At the end of time there will be Dick Clark (rip), Grandma and cockroaches.”  There are days when I look into her eyes and see the steel will to live and I actually start to believe that he isn’t far from wrong.)

The Waiting Is The Hard Part

I have a vacation coming up.  Not really a vacation the way you think of it.  Both of my jobs don’t have any kind of paid time off per se, but even if I don’t get paid for one, not having to have to do it would be a vacation, and that’s what I’m looking at.  Mom is going to go to Baltimore to visit P with my sister C for TEN WHOLE DAYS including two weekends.  The waiting is driving me insane.  Though the Wellbutrin is doing me good, the stress of both jobs in general is sucking the serotonin right off my brain.  I believe it’s referred to as burn out, but I can hold on….I can hold on…..I can hold on….until Thursday of this week.  I go to work, Mom is at home, I come home and Mom is gone.  I can go to bed when I want, I don’t have to watch TV if I don’t want, and I can read, do crafts, play with Sammy, do anything I want for ten whole days.  Even if I do nothing.  

I know it doesn’t sound like much of a difference since I’m still doing 8 hrs a day at a job, but my life has been very hectic (thanks to the Wellbutrin!! Yea):

  • Job
  • Mom
  • Church
  • OA
  • Work out
  • Mom
  • Sammy (who has been seriously neglected in all of this)
  • Writing (mostly poetry about Grace and my Steps…the Steps poetry will be posted here eventually)

(Yes, I know I put Mom twice.  There is the doing with Mom and doing for Mom, two different jobs in my mind)

And then I keep reminding myself of what I need to do:

  • Meditation
  • Planning my meals
  • Cooking for myself
  • More exercise
  • Laundry
  • Cleaning
  • Sammy
  • Writing/Editing my books
  • Journaling

Well, I say I need meditating, I have found a form of meditation.  It’s called 750 Words.  It’s a site where you can just let your consciousness stream out all over the page and be done with it.  Basically clearing all the detritus off the brain from the day and dreams before and just get it out in preparation for the day ahead.  I’ve found it good for dumping anger, for working out personalities in my books, especially when they keep asserting themselves during the day when I’m trying to focus on other things.  I copy and paste blogs and poems into it because I consider that to be part of that kind of writing.  And I work on the concepts behind my blog posts as well.  The cool thing is no one but me can see them.  I can write all sorts of nonsense, I don’t have to spell correctly, I can swear if I’m inclined to without fear of offending…not that I fear offending but I’m trying not to take the simple way out.  It keeps my head from spinning and spinning and spinning and I’m able to focus more on specifics.  It’s a cool idea, a really cool site, and so helpful for me.

It’s still doesn’t abate the anxiety of the wait…..

Putting the Coo-Coo Back In The Clock

So, yea, that’s what I’ve been doing in my long absence.   It came to my attention that the chemical assistance I have relied on was failing me.  Not totally, I was better.  Really better.  I didn’t want to kill myself, or anyone else.  My work situation had improved, I wan no longer banging my head on a brick wall trying to do two different jobs, one with continually shifting rules so nothing was cut and dry.  I was surviving, and I thought surviving was enough to be well.  I couldn’t write, I couldn’t think to do anything beyond work and sleep.  Mostly focusing on sleep…sleeping and eating.  If I could combine the two I would have been in heaven.  I lost my ability to pray beyond “Heavenly Father, please just get me through,”  And He did.  But nothing more.

Finally I broke.  I realized what I needed to do was to get more drugs.  Yes. I know, I am a walking pharmacy with the anti-depression, anti-anxiety, diabetes, high blood pressure, vitamins and workout supplements.  Yes, I said workout supplements.  I’ll get to that in another blog.  I made an appointment to see my psychiatrist because he holds the prescription pad and talked to him about supplementing my already full pill sorter.  He gave me Wellbutrin…the generic form of it anyway.  All I’ve got to say is Dopamine is the fountain of youth for me.  Whoever thought up that drug is a demegod, he/she should win the nobel prize in medicine.   There are some things I’ve needed to adjust because of the side effects….like taking it at 5:00am or earlier every day, even the weekend.  I had to up my fiber intake because though I’m moving, other aspects of my life really isn’t.  But obviously, the side effects are NOTHING compared to the benefits of the drug.  I truly am, right now, a perfect billboard for the axiom:

Better living through pharmacology.

So, is the coo-coo completely back in the clock?  Does it still threaten to escape?  Of course, but at least now I have the energy to chase the little bugger back to where it needs to be.

I did want to point out it has been three years this month that I started this blog. I truly did not want this process to take so long. Looking back now I realize how even if I wanted to “fix me” quickly the very nature of depression makes it difficult to move quickly for anything. Especially if it requires me to get out of bed. I can finally say, though, comfortably, I am out of the void and starting to get traction away from the gravitational forces that keep wanting to hold me down.

Friendly Words of Wisdom

A dear friend and fellow blogger (www.unabridgedgirl.com) Mckenzie has been going through a lot.  Lupus is the darkest and a loving supportive husband as the brightest extremes in her life.  One blog she wrote talked about how a friend of hers that made a rude comment.  In the end she made a list of things to remember in the Hard Moments.  I stole them to remember myself and share:

Here are some things I have learned.

1. When you face a hardship you learn a lot about the true nature of friends, family, and people.

2. Things can always get worse.

3. It is okay to smile, even when you feel like frowning.

4. It is extremely easy to get caught up in one’s own woes and difficulties. Basically, get over yourself. It is easier said than done, but real gratitude for those around you goes a long way.

5. Crying is okay.

6. Laughing is even better.

7. Give yourself permission to be angry.

8. Give yourself permission to forgive.

9. Rest.

10. Let your loved one rest, too.

11. It isn’t all about you.

12. Take a walk.

13. Don’t be afraid to voice your appreciation.

14. Be still.

15. And never, ever give up.