Journal Loop

It's time for me to get back to writing again. Yes, posting more often, but more importantly, writing for myself more often. I still have the journals I have actually finished--which takes me years, by the way--however, I seem to have lost the one I was writing in most recently. This has put a great damper on any efforts to start "journaling" again, as the mere thought of starting in another journal just feels so... wrong.

Yes, wrong. Like, morally wrong.

Yes, I know it's just a journal.

But I have this fear about leaving things unfinished.... so much so that I specifically enjoy finishing things (though you would never guess it by my bins and bags of half-done projects). As a kid I LOVED being the one to finish a carton of milk, or eat the last cucumber on the plate. [I didn't like finishing the cereal, though, with all the crumbs and sugar bits gunking up the milk...]  For other things, there wasn't enjoyment in finishing something so much as relief that it wasn't looping through my mind again and again anymore. (These things were more social, like needing to finish conversations or feel there was an "end" to a friendship)

The problem enters when I can't finish something-- when I can't find my journal, when I can't seem to find the words to finish the essay, when the calls or texts don't get returned, when I can't articulate the thoughts in my head enough to back up my desire to say "no" so I say "okay" instead--

When the fairly neutral thoughts streaming on repeat through my mind turn into a cacophony of what feels like thousands of voices, each one spewing emotion and demanding my action
to fix it,
get the answer,
finish it,
call them,
find my journal,
mend it,
fix it,
text them,
close it,
get an answer,
find the problem,
mend it,
find my journal,
call again,
find the solution,
figure out what I fucked up,
to get any answer at all,
TO. FIND. MY. DAMN. JOURNAL.

Demanding my action to find it, so I can write instead of squeezing so tight and hoping answers and closure pop out. Not the kind of writing I type out, hit "publish" and send out, refined. No, it's the kind of writing that consists of chicken scratch letters forming words I couldn't get out of my head fast enough, of pen tip pressed hard to page, burying the imprint of my psyche deep into the pages below. The kind of writing that forces me to acknowledge at my thoughts on the page and then turn it. The kind that showed me that eventually the cacophony subsides again, that I am strong enough to be okay alone with my thoughts, to ride out the storm.

It's time for me to get back to journaling again.... so finally, I have started a new one.

A Poem: "OCD Fingertips"

My thumb throbs
The heat from the tip
Just beside the nail
Where I peeled the skin
Bit by layer by thumbprint ring by
Exposed blood vessel
Pooling underneath thick layer
Tough skin, reddened
Still I dig, clippers under nails.
Here I've forgotten
What the digging nail searches for:
Uniform skin,
Throbbing heat,
Pulsing pain to pick up pen.
Or it is simply for that sensation?
thick on raw skin, tip to nail,
As I run thumb over thumb
For hours after.

Therapeutiversary

This winter marks my ten-year anniversary of starting therapy. My original intent was to write and post this before 2015 had ended, but true to form I have been procrastinating on it, stuck on its importance to me, on the importance of each word for what needs to be said. All of this is on top of the fact that I've been sitting on another post for ::cough:: over a year now--I got stuck on feeling like I had lost the point. I ultimately abandoned it so I could allow myself to move on to write this piece.

Ten years ago I didn't know I could do that--you know, move on from something. 

Ten years ago I didn't know thinking how I do (and more to the point, getting distressed from said thinking) wasn't typical, wasn't necessary...

Ten years ago I didn't know I had a choice, that I didn't have to live like this.

Ten years ago what I knew is that I had a phone number from my doctor, and a need to eat between class and play rehearsal. So as a friend drove me down the road to Wegmans for subs, I called:

     "Chemical Dependency or Mental Health?"

     "Mental Health."

My friend giggles, and apologizes.

     "Please hold."

 But I giggle too. I'm not offended, the words "Mental Health" felt foreign and surreal coming out of my mouth. I tell her it's okay, and she tells me it's going to be okay. The woman on the phone returns and continues taking my information, eventually giving me an intake appointment date a month an a half, almost two months out-- unless I had an emergency, of course, and then maybe I could go in sooner. I was admittedly disappointed the date was so far out, but as I hung up the phone and got food and talked with my friend about how shitty it felt to be 16 and making my own therapy appointment, I couldn't help but also feel hope. Finally, hope.

I don't remember my first therapy session nearly as much as I remember that phone call, and that counselor retired several months later anyways. However, from that office came my psychiatrist for the next nine years. 2015 was a year of intense transition for me, one of much loss but ultimately of much gain as well. Both the losses and gains have sent me reeling, both mentally and physically, worse than I've been in a long time. If you do the math you can see my mental health treatment was one of those transitions. It wasn't until I faced having to find a new one that I realized how much of a repore had finally been established between my therapist and I. For a long time now I have been one of the lucky ones who looks forward to each session (aside from the usual anxieties about obligations, of course) because I truly get something out of it. However, I remember when I didn't get so much out of it because I didn't put as much in. I know I praise the benefits of therapy up and down all day long, but I feel the need to take the opportunity to say you still have to put some effort in, and it takes time. It's still working on yourself, and you still have to, at some point, make the choice to open up to the person you're sitting across from if you want it to be effective. It took a relationship in which the guy, who did not himself necessarily "believe" in therapy, came in to all of my therapy sessions for me to value having the open, non-judgmental, third-party forum to get perspective from. The first session after that relationship ended I literally asked myself what the fuck I had left to hide anymore, and have never looked back...

...So it's been a rough transition, from a professional who's known me since high school to one who knows nothing about me at all. My treatment is also now taking the form of psychiatrist for medications and someone separate for therapy. I was lucky enough to be referred to a new psychiatrist who seems to work well for me, which has opened the door for a new leg of this mental health journey-- I am now seeing a psychologist with OCD as an area of expertise for therapy. This first appointment I remember much more clearly (I'd hope so, since it was only a few weeks ago...). After several months of insurance hiccups and phone tag, I had finally made it and was nervous as hell. I've had more therapy intake appointments I care to admit (for specific kinds of therapy over the years), and this one wasn't a whole lot different... until he starting asking about my obsessions and compulsions. My mind went rather blank at the question--what if all the things I had listed in my head as obsessions or compulsions weren't really? No one wants to go to the doctor in excruciating pain only to be told to go home, there's nothing wrong with you. I did the best I could to spit out a few items of "what I do" and we moved on to more background. What was different was watching him notice all the little things I do that I couldn't seem to say, things people often take months to pick up on. We discussed the type of therapy he does for OCD and an initial plan of action. I left his office to find it unusually warm for December--a sunny Tuesday afternoon--and as the sun hit my face I finally felt it again--a glimmer of hope. I'm ten years in, and I'm going to be okay.

Bed Time

It's 9:45pm, and I know I should be heading to bed. This is a nightly argument with myself. I have narcolepsy. Well, the current official diagnosis is ideopathic hypersomnolence. I take an anti-depressant, which suppresses REM sleep (in addition to its other effects). The nature of one's REM sleep is one of the ways narcolepsy is detected and diagnosed, so for insurance purposes it can't be called "narcolepsy" if you're taking something that effects it. Last time I fully went off meds it took a month and a half so that I didn't have to feel incredibly sick.

------

9:06pm and I just took a pizza out of the oven... the previous half of the post actually ended in sleep, ironically. To pick up where I left off, I need to get a certain amount of sleep each night for the meds that treat the narcolepsy to actually work and help me be awake. Granted, I have not actually figured out what that amount is, but so far it seems that I need to be in bed, lights out, pillow to head, by 10pm if I have to work the next morning. I turn down requests to hang out to make this happen, but the truth is it rarely does. Half the time I'm not even doing anything important, urgent, or productive-- I'm playing mahjong, or doing a crossword puzzle, or repeatedly checking Facebook. I'll sit there, doing whatever I'm doing, and think "I should really go to bed. Mmm, maybe after one more game..."

It's the same story in the morning. I hit "snooze" so many times I lose count-- but seriously, I've snoozed my alarm for an hour... on multiple occasions. I'll consciously sit up, contemplate the time and if I'm waking up for this alarm, decide no, and snooze it again. I'm not actually sure what makes me decide whether I get up or not. When I ultimately get up, it's because I have absolutely run out of time--if I don't get up right then, I'll be late, or more than late. Some of it is feeling sleepy still, regardless of what time I go to bed. Sometimes I'm have super weird dreams that will continue and resolve themselves if I snooze enough times. Other times... I just really don't understand the struggle. I recall having a series of thoughts, ending in a decision about waking up, but in the morning I can't remember what the deciding factor is. The feeling is that there was something wrong about the minutes-- "no, it needs to be 6:20... no, 6:30, 6:35... maybe 6:38... It could just be me making rationalizations for going back to sleep. Even so, it really feels like I'm missing an explanation there, especially with the amount of anxiety I can feel about both going to bed and waking up.

My current thinking is that I'm really just not a morning person. I seem to be more functional starting a little later in the morning, and that continues thru until later at night. If I didn't need to wake up so early (for me), I could stay up later, until when I felt ready for sleep, and still have my meds work in the morning. This hypothesis could be totally off base. I already have an idea of what else could be adding to the situation, but that's for after I've thought it out a bit more.

On "Serotonin Rebound"

(written June 6/11-- I procrastinated on the first post so much that I alread have a second!)

I've been back on my meds for a day and a half. The rebound feelings/side effects are gone, but I don't feel back to normal. I feel... scattered, sensual, and shadowy. I have motivation to do things, some things, but it's not a perky, upbeat motivation. I want to draw or create... something. I want to clean (a little). I want to watch something "dark," something I can empathize with and feel deep to my core.

I feel sexual, but I'm not sure I would act on it if given the opportunity. I'm somehow nervous to be alone right now, but not for a specific reason. It's not a situation where I'd call up a friend and say "I want to cut right now. I need to say it out loud so I don't do it." However, before I started taking Cymbalta, this would be when I'd start calling/texting everyone I could, searching for some way to not be alone. If I had potential plans but didn't hear from the person, I would obsessively call the him or her. I would call every hour... every 30 minutes.... every 15-- however long I could manage to make myself wait between calls. (I do apologize to those who were on the receiving end of this!) Usually nothing came of the calling. I'd wait, compulsively playing crossword puzzles, JT's Blocks, solitaire, minesweeper, anything to keep me waiting a minute longer.

Phone call. I have friends. I have friends who understand and have been here. What timing ^_^

Oh hey, a beginning!

I remember my mom sitting on the edge of the futon that served as my bed in that little alcove of a room. As she spoke I lay there, thinking about what to say next in the conversation, debating whether to say anything at all. I let her walk away…

“Mom, I think I’m depressed”

And she rushed back with that look, “Oh, honey”

We talked, kind of. We talked, but I didn’t feel understood. I didn’t feel like now it was going to get better. I felt, still, that it would be a bad idea to go down to the kitchen, with the chef’s knife in the dish drying rack. I hadn’t been a particularly impulsive kid up until then, but the urges of impulse had begun. “what if I just starting talking, right now?” “what would happen if I walked out of the class in the middle of the lesson?’ “what if I just picked up this knife and . . .” I called it my fear of one moment of irrationality, but I felt it all the time, living fearful of many successive moments of having, and taking, the opportunity to… end it, re-roll the dice, cause the pain, loosen control.

I didn’t indulge in any of those one-moments, not yet. What I did do that day, looking back, was start to learn the principle of “nothing changes until something changes.” While it seemed that my mom had quickly forgotten that conversation, something still changed. I changed. I decided—something members of my family are certainly not known for—that the darkness was worth fighting, that it was time to leave the solitude of my head, that it was time to say something.

 

 This may seem like an odd way to start off a blog. I mean—I don’t know you like that, I haven’t properly introduced myself, and already I’m talking about my adolescent suicidal tendencies.

The fact of the matter is that I’m not secretive or shy about my past, especially not about what I have mentally struggled through to get where I am, alive, today. I may talk about it too much and too willingly, depending on your perspective. I’ve gotten to the place where I don’t actually care about that. I’m not sharing for attention, sympathy, or even to be besties with anyone. I share for understanding, for connection, but more importantly for that small chance that someone will read/hear/overhear and feel themselves understood. Along the way I found sometimes all I needed was one anecdote, just one example of someone feeling the way I did and making it through to keep me going a little longer. And that sometimes when you’re breaking down, “a little longer” is all you need.

I’ve felt compelled to write through this process/journey/life with (a couple) mental health disorders, along with a sleep disorder that affects me like a mental health one. I’ve finally stopped procrastinating on it….