It is quiet
I thought there would be noise
thoughts strum on my heart in battle song
between the hollow parts and the echo
I have been broken
I have done the breaking too
It is soundless
fearful
knowing
Tuesday, July 26, 2022
I made a decision a long time ago to at least try to accomplish a blessing out of suffering. I am nothing special, and there are many who have endured a lot more than I have, but what I have experienced should not be a solitary battle. For a long time I thought it was, then I realized, through others who shared their story with me, that I am not alone. So that is part of my purpose, I believe. I can't fix it for anyone, but I can let them know they aren't alone. So I try to be open and honest about mental illness, and about all the wrong actions that occurred due to my struggle with it. I won't pretend to know what some things are like for you, or for anyone else. But the things I know, I will share. Maybe that way, our burdens don't seem so lonely :)
You are great with people, but whether that interaction energizes or exhausts you depends. All interaction exhausts me. I love my family, but it's tiring to be ON all the time with no downtime to recoop. I get lonely, but not because I am alone. I get lonely because I feel so vastly misunderstood and ignored and unimportant. I often feel less lonely by myself than with people. I don't even connect with animals. I think there's something broken in me
Give me a good book or a page to write on and I am home. Give me a good song and I am home. But put me in a crowd of people, and I am lost with no compass.
Give me a good book or a page to write on and I am home. Give me a good song and I am home. But put me in a crowd of people, and I am lost with no compass.
Sometimes it's hard to breathe, to adjust, to matter. I hear voices from the past in hues I've never known. I try to make sense of it all. And it's no use. No use.
I miss Daddy. I miss so many people, dead and alive. I miss who I used to be, and I miss who I want to be. I feel like I'm tethering in between, so close and yet so far away. I wish I could make sense of that as well.
I drink a lot. Not to get drunk, not to feel numb, but to remember. There are parts of me and my life floating here and there and I just want to make them stay, just a little bit longer. All I feel is grief, sober or not. But to make those lovely parts stay just so, that is what I want most of all.
I choose God when I have nothing left. I choose God when I have plenty. I choose God, but I also choose little human ways to deal with the pain. I'm not altogether centered. The intentions are pure, but the faith is failing. I choose to keep on when I feel like giving up. This is something at least.
I try to be a good mother, but I fail. I love so hard and so deep, and yet it doesn't transform into the right actions. I give too little, when all I want is to give everything I have. Why is this so hard for me?
I miss that little part of childhood when things were simple. I was loved by parents, by pets, by little childhood friends. And then I got older, and all those things seemed more complex and conditional. Why does this still make me cry?
I miss Daddy. I miss so many people, dead and alive. I miss who I used to be, and I miss who I want to be. I feel like I'm tethering in between, so close and yet so far away. I wish I could make sense of that as well.
I drink a lot. Not to get drunk, not to feel numb, but to remember. There are parts of me and my life floating here and there and I just want to make them stay, just a little bit longer. All I feel is grief, sober or not. But to make those lovely parts stay just so, that is what I want most of all.
I choose God when I have nothing left. I choose God when I have plenty. I choose God, but I also choose little human ways to deal with the pain. I'm not altogether centered. The intentions are pure, but the faith is failing. I choose to keep on when I feel like giving up. This is something at least.
I try to be a good mother, but I fail. I love so hard and so deep, and yet it doesn't transform into the right actions. I give too little, when all I want is to give everything I have. Why is this so hard for me?
I miss that little part of childhood when things were simple. I was loved by parents, by pets, by little childhood friends. And then I got older, and all those things seemed more complex and conditional. Why does this still make me cry?
*Stuck
The mentally ill are given a raw deal. On top of what we are experiencing inside our minds, we are mocked and feared by society, and most often left to fend for ourselves on our own. I suppose the rich have a few more options, but as someone with a low income, I have been dismissed by my doctor due to my treatment resistent illness and I have no where else to go. I'm really stuck: I am unable to work due to my illness, but I have no insurance (I was deemed too poor for the new health insurance) so no medication and no doctor. This means I cannot get accepted for disability (not that I wanted it, but I had finally reached the realization that I am not getting any better on my own, and at least the disability and insurance that comes along with it could potentially get me back on my feet so I could eventually start working again). I am blessed because I am not homeless but if something happened to my fiance I would be. There's no one else to help me. We have tried really hard to prevent my reentrance into the hospital; I've been to the state hospital and I would honestly rather die than go back, it was THAT bad. Conversely, I have been to a nicer hospital that actually helped me, but without insurance or any other means to pay, that is out of the question. So I do what I can to get by, with the constant fear that one day that trying won't be enough...then what?
*OCD
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.
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.
*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?
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