Day two of no running water. We are waiting on the county to fix it. It could take a while. I am not focusing on the inconvenience - drinking, cooking, washing dishes, flushing the toilet, bathing, a messy toddler - my mind has zeroed in on the real problem: I can't wash my hands.
The ritual is not the same. I always wash, use hand sanitizer, wash again, use the hand sanitizer again...for as long as I need to, depending on the anxiety of that day. For as often as I need to, depending on the anxiety of that day. It's a set plan; to veer off is to risk contamination, sin, death. That's just the way it works. I've come to accept it. I've come to accept the laughs, the stares, the questions. As long as it works, it's okay. I just wash as much and as long as I need to.
But not yesterday. Not today. Perhaps not for several more days.
Makeshift handwashings are not the same. I stuck my hands in partially boiling water this morning but it's just not the right ritual. Baby wipes, more hand sanitizer. It still doesn't feel right.
Tuesday, July 26, 2022
*The Cracks
The world, to me, is grouped into different categories when it comes to mental illness. Of course, it is the same with religion, politics, and any other Big Thing. We all have our own set of beliefs, and those beliefs are most often nurtured out of personal experience than from anything a book or the Authority on the matter can tell us. When it comes to mental illness, the very word screams "in your head!" I really hate the term, actually. I hate all the wisecracks about it, and I hate the shame it creates. Mental. Illness. What does it mean, really, to be mentally ill? Does anyone really know? The history of its treatment in centuries past is something right out of a horror movie. A lot has changed since then. But now, in 2014, a lot is still the same.
Some don't believe in mental illness.
I thought acceptance would be the end of it. Acceptance leads to treatment, and treatment leads to healing. Healing leads to being able to sweep it under the rug and never look back.
But it didn't work out that way. I know now that it rarely ever does.
I blamed the medication. I blamed the lack of it. I blamed myself.
Pieces of me. Who I was. Who I am. The in-between. Life breaks people in different ways, to varying degrees. One person may soar through with little more than a chip on the rim; another may end up with quite a few cracks; another will completely break down, their once whole tea cup diminished to a pile of rubble. And in all of these cases, the original shape can be restored, but the amount of time and effort to do so varies according to the damage. And even then, the seams will always show, and it will be easier to crack at the same places, sometimes to more and more irrepairable degrees. It will never be the same.
I will never be the same. I still look for that little girl. I see her face in my mind. I hear her thoughts. But she is ages apart from me. Hiding under a table in Sunday school. Already afraid of the voices she heard, the Shadowy men who visited her at night. She already knew to hide, to pretend, to try to forget. But they just kept coming. She never fit in at school. She never fit in with family. But she tried. She tried, despite the little chips here and there. She grew older and tried even harder. She married. She had two daughters. She tried oh so hard. But that storm just kept building. She prayed and she believed her prayers were heard, no matter how bad it got. But the cracks got bigger, and the pieces began to fall. And promises got broken. Promises to be a good wife, a flawless mother. She always wanted her children to know the joys of an unbroken home, never knowing she would be the one to do the breaking.
Bad choices were made. And in the midst of them, doctors made their claims. Bipolar disorder. Schizophrenia. Some other disorder. This one. That one. All of them. She knew she was supposed to feel relief from this new knowledge. To know what's wrong, that is the key that unlocks the door. Take this pill, they say. Take this one, and another and another. But some pills made the voices louder, and some made even her own voice stop. She stopped. And started. She blamed the diagnosis. She blamed the medication, and then the lack of it. She blamed herself.
I have tried to travel backwards instead of forward, as if to go back there in my mind could change something. I still seek out that little girl who grew up to be a mother who grew to leave her little girls in the rubble. I don't know whether to hit her or to hug her, I love and hate her so much. I have never shifted blame onto anyone else for the decisions I made. I know in my right mind I would have never made those choices, but I cannot say exactly why I was not in my right mind at the time. I still come unglued from time to time, those cracks ever widening, and I am no wiser than I was before except that the breakage is a little more familiar. The only thing in this world that makes me whole is my children, yet so many times I feel like I am much more of a child than they are. I hate that about me, and I hate how I try so hard and seem to always break down anyway. With or without medication. With or without God. With or without any inkling as to where this broken road is taking any of us.
I prefer to look at things in a logical, rational manner. I like to be in charge of my behavior, in control of my emotions. But I don't always manage this as well as I would like. There are too many cracks, you see. On the whole days I pour my heart and soul into everything I do, and on the cracked days I watch it all leak on through and dissolve into thin air. It is a process. It is a test. And I hope I am passing. I keep doing the right things to the best of my ability in hope that some day that will be enough. The cracks get wider. But so does my resilience.
Some don't believe in mental illness.
I thought acceptance would be the end of it. Acceptance leads to treatment, and treatment leads to healing. Healing leads to being able to sweep it under the rug and never look back.
But it didn't work out that way. I know now that it rarely ever does.
I blamed the medication. I blamed the lack of it. I blamed myself.
Pieces of me. Who I was. Who I am. The in-between. Life breaks people in different ways, to varying degrees. One person may soar through with little more than a chip on the rim; another may end up with quite a few cracks; another will completely break down, their once whole tea cup diminished to a pile of rubble. And in all of these cases, the original shape can be restored, but the amount of time and effort to do so varies according to the damage. And even then, the seams will always show, and it will be easier to crack at the same places, sometimes to more and more irrepairable degrees. It will never be the same.
I will never be the same. I still look for that little girl. I see her face in my mind. I hear her thoughts. But she is ages apart from me. Hiding under a table in Sunday school. Already afraid of the voices she heard, the Shadowy men who visited her at night. She already knew to hide, to pretend, to try to forget. But they just kept coming. She never fit in at school. She never fit in with family. But she tried. She tried, despite the little chips here and there. She grew older and tried even harder. She married. She had two daughters. She tried oh so hard. But that storm just kept building. She prayed and she believed her prayers were heard, no matter how bad it got. But the cracks got bigger, and the pieces began to fall. And promises got broken. Promises to be a good wife, a flawless mother. She always wanted her children to know the joys of an unbroken home, never knowing she would be the one to do the breaking.
Bad choices were made. And in the midst of them, doctors made their claims. Bipolar disorder. Schizophrenia. Some other disorder. This one. That one. All of them. She knew she was supposed to feel relief from this new knowledge. To know what's wrong, that is the key that unlocks the door. Take this pill, they say. Take this one, and another and another. But some pills made the voices louder, and some made even her own voice stop. She stopped. And started. She blamed the diagnosis. She blamed the medication, and then the lack of it. She blamed herself.
I have tried to travel backwards instead of forward, as if to go back there in my mind could change something. I still seek out that little girl who grew up to be a mother who grew to leave her little girls in the rubble. I don't know whether to hit her or to hug her, I love and hate her so much. I have never shifted blame onto anyone else for the decisions I made. I know in my right mind I would have never made those choices, but I cannot say exactly why I was not in my right mind at the time. I still come unglued from time to time, those cracks ever widening, and I am no wiser than I was before except that the breakage is a little more familiar. The only thing in this world that makes me whole is my children, yet so many times I feel like I am much more of a child than they are. I hate that about me, and I hate how I try so hard and seem to always break down anyway. With or without medication. With or without God. With or without any inkling as to where this broken road is taking any of us.
I prefer to look at things in a logical, rational manner. I like to be in charge of my behavior, in control of my emotions. But I don't always manage this as well as I would like. There are too many cracks, you see. On the whole days I pour my heart and soul into everything I do, and on the cracked days I watch it all leak on through and dissolve into thin air. It is a process. It is a test. And I hope I am passing. I keep doing the right things to the best of my ability in hope that some day that will be enough. The cracks get wider. But so does my resilience.
Quotes
“Worse even than your maddening song, your silence.”
— Sylvia Plath
— Sylvia Plath
“You sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve."
-J.K. Rowling
“The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be” ~Marcel Pagnol
“The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be” ~Marcel Pagnol
― Kami Garcia
"Emotion turning back on itself, and not leading on to thought or action, is the element of madness." ~John Sterling
“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
― Maya Angelou
"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out."
-Robert Collier
-Maya Angelou
"I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back."
-Maya Angelou
"The universe has to move forward. Pain and loss, they define us as much as happiness or love. Whether it’s a world, or a relationship… Everything has its time. And everything ends."
~Sarah Jane Smith, Doctor Who
“The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”
― Thomas Paine
"There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors." ~Jim Morrison
"There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors." ~Jim Morrison
“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”
― John Wooden
― John Wooden
"It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do."
-Jane Austen
"There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself." ~John Gregory Brown
"There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself." ~John Gregory Brown
"I ought not to doubt the steadiness of your affection, yet such is the inconsistency of real love, that it is always awake to suspicion, however unreasonable; always requiring new assurances from the object of its interest, and thus it is, that I always feel revived, as by a new conviction, when your words tell me I am dear to you; and, wanting these, I relapse into doubt, and too often into despondency."
Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho
Depression has found me, and it's making me feel very insecure and unlovable. I keep telling myself it's just the depression, these feelings aren't grounded in fact, but I still have this huge fear of losing the love of the people I care about, namely my husband and my children. I already have one daughter that refuses to acknowledge my existence, and that hirts me more than I let on to anyone. If one person I love so much can stop loving me in return, who's to say another won't, and another?
Poem Fragments From a Dream
And into the dawn I toss my caresMy heart only translates what isn't there.
Into the dark I wander
I only see what isn't there
West winds toss my hair and freeze my lipsIm reborn without a care
My thoughts turn gray
Made of wrong or write
Black and white
Into winter I toss my love
Do or die, do or die
Tongue and feathers without a cue
I took the pen and slowly I drew
Peel back the layers of frost and termite
Fold my fingers around a pen
And write the words I heard in the night
Saturday, March 26, 2022
Lonely
I've been drinking and I just feel lonely. There's no one to talk to. Blah.
I've been so so as far as moods go. Right now I'm feeling a little depressed. And alone.
Saturday, February 19, 2022
Rage
Earlier today I had a moment of rage and punched a container of laundry pods repeatedly until the container split open on all sides. My hand hurts now.
Nonstop stress/anxiety, rapid cycling. I just want to go to bed and sleep so I don't have to deal with it anymore.
Psychiatry appointment Tuesday. Can't come soon enough.
My husband has been having a hard time mentally as well. His appointment is Monday.
Friday, February 04, 2022
Sugar
I'm having a really hard time with anxiety and depression. Lots of crying and yelling at the kids and feeling so stressed that I'm on the verge of fainting. I finally got back on track with my eating but I think the sugar withdrawal may be why my anxiety is so bad. Hopefully I will feel better soon.
It seems like every time I see my psychiatrist I'm doing fine, but in between visits I have the worst symptoms. I'm scheduled to see him the 22nd of this month so we'll see if I can make it that long. Maybe a couple more days and I'll adjust to the new eating habits.
I still haven't started exercising again. I set out to do it every day but then I don't because of my back and foot pain. I know if I could get back on it I would feel better. I ordered two new workout videos so when they arrive I'll at least have something new to do.
I am soooo behind on housework. I've neglected a lot of stuff since I had COVID. I still don't feel 100% since I had it, plus the depression. I feel so lazy. I'm having trouble functioning and I can't seem to MAKE myself do anything even though I know it would make me feel better to accomplish something. I don't know why I do this to myself.
Monday, January 31, 2022
Fragile
I feel so fragile tonight, and so alone. I know God is with me, and that is a tremendous comfort, but I wish I could reach out to my husband and be able to tell him how I'm feeling. The truth is, I don't really know why I'm feeling so bad. My anxiety has been really bad the past two days, but I've been trying my best. Tonight my BIL unintentionally hurt my feelings by telling me he didn't like what I cooked for supper. He was nice about it, but it still hurt since I've been trying to cook healthy stuff for him since he found out he has heart disease. I'm trying, but it just doesn't seem to be good enough. Trying to fix HIM something heart healthy while at the same time having something my mom likes that she can chew and swallow is hard. I made chili tonight with ground chicken instead of beef and we all liked it...except my BIL. I just can't seem to make everyone happy at the same time. It upsets me and kind of makes me mad too because they take for granted how hard I'm trying. I just want to throw my hands up and say screw all of you! But of course I can't do that.
My COVID symptoms seemed to have disappeared again but depression has taken its place and I don't know which is worse. I just want a bottle of wine and a good cry and a great big hug from my husband. Is that too much to ask?
Tomorrow I'm supposed to try again with my diet. I don't want to fail again. I've GOT to get this right! I'm heavier than ever and I feel awful. I feel like such a failure, but I know I need to get out of my head and just keep to the rules of healthy eating and exercise. Why is it so hard for me?
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