emotions

Is it me?

~ storm257 ~ 1 Comment

It has been a year since I sat on the couch (most of the day, everyday), a pattern broken only by  the arrival of a mental health worker coming to make sure that, while I waited to be assigned a therapist, I didn’t harm myself.

It has been a year since I felt too shattered to be humiliated by the acquiescence of this ritual; the surrender in waiting for something that I was only receiving now because I had been deemed too sick to be left to my own devices, but not quite sick enough for an in-patient program. I had tried to avoid being in that place, where I was not advocating for myself because I no longer saw the value in that fight. I had tried and not succeeded for many months. For better or worse, these daily check-ins with my Diversions counselor were moving me toward something I was not able to do on my own. The value of this is not lost to me.

In this year I have worked to let go of many things. I have fought my way out from the hole where depression put me. I have battled against the snares and dark seduction of believing I would lose.

In this year, I have accepted, sometimes bitterly, that medication does help, that I am more productive, that I do not feel paralyzed as I did. I have accepted that many of my feelings of powerlessness and alienation are directly related to my “mood” and not my character.

This latter part is a daily struggle.

I ask myself, “Is it me?” I search my memory for a time when there was something definitive, when I truly knew what I wanted, what I am capable of, could answer questions about desires and dreams. I’ve lost a good deal of memory over the years. Sometimes it is hard to recall who I once was, before I felt like this. Sometimes it is difficult to believe I every felt another way. So that’s the me part.

Today my therapist asked me if I think perhaps that I feel so lost, so incapable of finding purpose, something I want to do with myself, not because this is always who I’ve been but due to depression. It is hard to know, if there is a line, where that line can be drawn.

I know because I have had this conversation with other people who suffer depression that this is a common question. There are many of us who try to find the place where we begin, authentically, and where disease ends. Sometimes it is impossibly unclear. Sometimes it feels that there is no separation.

I don’t have any answers. I can only look at where I am today and know that this is a better place than where I was last year. Being here is better, and I have brought myself here.

Try to celebrate the small victories when possible. This is me today: FullSizeRender(11).jpg

Reminder: Love

~ storm257 ~ 1 Comment

I have been trying to put pen to paper since I learned the hard truth of what is happening in your life right now. When I picture you it is always your kindness I recall first, and your beautiful smile, and what a good friend you were to me almost twenty years ago when we first met. You were brave then, and like me, growing braver, as you learned to manage and release the things which had made it necessary to be brave, early in life.

So I know that you are brave now and I know that you are strong. But when you are not, please know that you are always loved — and within that love — you are brave and strong when you cannot be.

Life gives us reminders sometimes, with difficulty and heartache, which help us to see that there is more to be thankful for, in drawing breath, in shedding tears, in grief and love, because we are given another opportunity. The chance to feel again, and more.

Depression takes away the awe that these momentary reminders inspire by removing the variation, robbing one of the grief or gratitude, greying the love and dulling the joys.

A year ago, had I received news of a friend’s battle with cancer, I don’t know that I would have been able to feel everything that I feel now. I am not sure I would have been able to rise out of the dark void depression created, to feel fear, and shock, and deep gratitude for the community we have cultivated these last two decades.

The fact that I can feel now, and that these feelings come in waves and are true, and hard, makes this living I am doing very precious. I will take this welling and difficulty all day long.

The Wait

~ storm257 ~ 1 Comment

I have an appointment tomorrow with a psychiatrist. It has been several years since I last accepted that medication is necessary for me to function, but I am again in a place where I face this choice. It doesn’t feel like a choice.

Sometimes I try to remember what it was like, what I was like, before depression. I try to recall how I coped with emotions, related to those I love, faced stress, felt love. Part of what I know is that depression would like to believe there never was a time before now. Sometimes, I succumb to this possibility. What is the point really of looking back? Depression denies me access to many of the tools that I know can help me, even when I know exactly where and what they are.

Yesterday, I was with my family, whom I love and trust. I sat among them and felt millions of layers removed, like transparent walls erected to keep me unable to touch them, to receive the love they offer, to ask for anything at all. It is infuriating and demoralizing to be unable to feel balanced, to always feel incomplete, defeated, incapable of normal emotional responses. I don’t want to be like this. I really don’t.

So tomorrow, I’ll try again to find a way to help my brain. I’ll hope for some relief. I’ll hope my appointment isn’t cancelled (again – the major downside of being on Medicaid is there are very few psychiatrists and many people seeking assistance). And perhaps, sometime soon, I won’t feel the distance, but will be able to traverse what is now hard and far.

Remodel

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I’ve been seeing my new therapist for several weeks and today faced uncomfortable truths, which I find difficult to write about articulately.

A student of mine wrote an essay this last week in which she narrated her personal experience with bullying and the trauma caused by these abuses. I too was victim to bullies as a child – both the physical “school yard” variety and the menace that is middle school cliques, whose psychological torment seems to be almost exclusively the tool of girls in early adolescence. While cyber-bullying has created a new sphere of isolation for victims and a grander stage for hateful, damaging abuse, the impact for the victims is much the same. Those who survive relentless teasing, rumors, threats, or actual physical attacks, are left with years, if not a lifetime of insecurities and a severely limited capacity for trust.

I am thankful in many ways to have grown up before social media existed. I cannot image the difficulties young people now face when negotiating this, seemingly unavoidable, omnipresence in their lives. My bullies were necessarily limited by the confines of school buildings and adjacent playgrounds.

However, something in the voice of my student – the urgency leading her to share her story – spoke to a part of me I have long sought to, perhaps not forget, but certainly silence.

The truth is the girl who survived daily abuse at the hands of other young girls, from third grade through middle school, has lived within me, jealously guarding my fragile self-identity, while I have grown and strengthened my resolve to never need the approval, or trust the apparent approval of others. I have built my life carefully, nurtured trust slowly with a few, long-term friends, whom I love with an unquestionable ferocity. I give to these few all that I can and there is nothing dishonest in these relationships.

When it comes to matters of my own needs and, more to the point, my own ideas of what I deserve – my own value – I am not so resolved.

We all have places where our edges are sharp and ragged. Within each of us there are wells of shadow, places we know exist. Sometimes we move toward the vastness to lean in, but more often we stay away. One of my wells holds my younger self: who feigned illness to avoid attending school; who got in fights with other outsiders to try and disassociate with otherness; who wanted so desperately to be left alone to continue to be strange, thoughtful and anonymous. The well she inhabits has also filled with abilities I know I should have: vulnerability and self-love, the resolve to trust that those who love me truly see me and the person that they see, can be allowed to be vulnerable and understand that she is worthy of this love.

You see, it is one thing to know that you can love another. It is entirely more complex to understand, with all the splintering and holes, the shadows and protections, the walling off and silencing of experience, that the person I AM – all of it – is worthy of being loved.

How do we become this complex? Years of constructing – careful design in some ways – self-preservation resulting in varied forms of harm and misdirection. But, ultimately we are the architect and can discover where we need remodeling – an opening of space – windows – a library – to fill in a well.

This path will lead me somewhere. This is me today:

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Stretch

~ storm257 ~ 1 Comment

One of the hardest obstacles for me to overcome when depressed is two-fold. I like solitude and quiet and therefore I choose to spend a lot of time alone. This is true for me all of the time, but it becomes tricky when I am not well.

Depression plays games with self-esteem and self-regard. It wants you to stay “safe” inside your own thoughts. Within this place is is easier to convince you that not only do you lack interest in doing anything, but really in actual fact – you are not capable.

The rational part of you calls bullshit. However, if, like me, you slip into the place where isolation feels less overwhelming and you spend increasingly more time listening to depression – these ideas can take hold.

This is the two-fold problem. Depression not only robs you of your desire to engage, to do what you know is healthier for you, it also can be very convincing about your lack of ability to do things you know you can accomplish. It is not just that you lack motivation, but more disturbingly, that you are beginning to believe you also lack capability.

Fear can take over and fear is really powerful.

It has been nearly four weeks since I was involuntarily hospitalized for depression. Today I received a “check-in” phone call from the hospital making sure I have followed up with the crisis diversion program.

I was pissed initially to be receiving a follow-up phone call so long after that horrible experience, but a few hours later, I find I feel grateful. In under four weeks I have found comfort in the weekly meetings I have with a social worker; they are engaged in helping me to take steps I could not handle on my own. I will meet a therapist later this week who will hopefully work with me toward deeper, meaningful coping and uncovering truths I have not examined fully.

I attended a book club on Sunday where I only knew one person. This is way outside of my comfort zone, for those of you who couldn’t guess, and it was nice to be with kind strangers. This is the first time in many years I have chosen to try something that makes me uncomfortable. Admitting this is also kind of a big deal.

I have also been approached to teach some Freshman level English courses at a nearby community college this Fall. Last Fall, before I started to collapse, I applied for lots of different work. Thankfully, some of that energy has panned out.

I am grateful for the follow-up call because it led to this reflection. I can see quite clearly that the work I am now engaging is beginning to fight against the powerful forces which have kept me afraid, second-guessing my abilities and doubting that I can rise above to once again find meaning in my life. There are days I still let doubts in, but I am growing stronger, taking the small steps toward wellness.

This is me today:

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Joy

~ storm257 ~ 1 Comment

It is harsh and unsettling to speak these words:

“It has been twenty years since I felt something I would describe as joy.”

But today, I found myself saying this to the crisis diversion social worker who comes to meet with me once a week. Right now, I have days where I can go through the motions, accomplish small goals that I set for myself, be engaged, and not think too deeply about the emotions I cannot feel. Today, I had to face a truth that I have tried to examine before, but been too afraid to uncover. In various ways, throughout my adult life, my mental health has been in a state that does not allow me to experience feelings which others can attain. When I am unwell, I find myself returning to a very specific moment, when I was 17. It wasn’t something profound, or life-changing, but something incredibly simple:

When I was 17 I lived on a farm for six months. One morning I got up and went for a run along a forest path. I don’t run, but this felt right. After a short time, I lay down under a large cedar tree and fell asleep. When I awoke, looking up into the branches of that great tree, I felt a mixture of wonder and awe, which was both pure and simple, and the definition of joy.

I was present when my eldest niece was born and I felt great love and pride in my sister’s strength. I pulled off a surprise wedding anniversary party for my parents’ 35th and felt the happiness this brought to my family and was proud. I’ve walked a thousand trails and climbed dozens of mountains, loved many people, earned degrees and have been rewarded for my hard work, but all without being able to get back to that feeling under the cedar tree.

This is why therapy can be helpful. I want to try and talk my way back to this place. I want to be able to look again at my younger self and perhaps this time uncover what is still unknowable for me.

There are so many components to depression. We know that brain chemistry and trauma are part of the equation for some people, but I think the examination of experiences before trauma are also important. There may be keys to helping ourselves that have less to do with what we do after we become survivors and more to do with what we already knew before trauma made us forget. I know that’s vague. I have a lot of work to do. Stay with me.

This is me today:

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Stepping Back

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I spent the last week with my family in a Girl Scout camp in central Maine. There was rain and mosquitoes, laughter and tears, warmth and comforts only found with the people one can count on not to judge too harshly, because they know, my silence and my inability to explain well the deep and constant weight of emptiness depression creates.

I found myself alone in a canoe Friday morning with my little dog, tears streaming down my face because the grey stillness of early morning Maine perfections – the calm water, the unbearable green treeline, the unearthly, pure air breathed into my lungs – did not bring me joy. Or more to the point, joy was there, but I could not experience the emotion which I have had in abundance so many time before because I am still here behind this wall. I see, I smell, I taste the same things I have hundreds of times, but just now, they are out of reach.

It isn’t easy to articulate this gulf. It isn’t pleasant to stand at this place and to know there are things to feel just beyond my grasp. However, the knowledge that I can remember feeling joy and awe, while causing discomfort, also moves me to want the path back to be again within reach.

I held my infant nephew many times this past week and was comforted by his simple love. His responses to smiling faces, to sweet voices, gentle touch, inspire me to take the small steps back to finding a place where simplicity can begin to bridge the void.

This is me on Friday:

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Feat

~ storm257 ~ 3 Comments

Some mornings I wake up and everything within me is full of rage. I am humiliated by my life – I am not in command of anything. Every action taken by those around me feels like an affront or an assault.

I don’t have the switch that some people seem to, which says: “This is out of your control.” “Let it go.” “Don’t take everything so personally.”

When one has emotions that are out of proportion to action – which I do pretty much all the time – those rational parts of the brain which respond to normal or even less than normal, but not actually directly harmful actions or behaviours, are not able to help me to see that I am angrier than I should be. That anger makes me feel ashamed of myself because I cannot let it go.

Everything when one is where I am currently feels bad. Everything feels intentional. The smallest slight, which for someone with a healthy brain may only trigger irritation, can throw me into a tailspin that I will obsess about for hours or days.

This is not better than feeling nothing. It is exhausting and embarrassing and eventually leads me back to the relative safety of feeling nothing. Because between the two, choosing the lack of emotion feels less bad.

This inability to regulate emotional response and the recovery it takes to finally let go – by retreating to the meaningless place where none of this matters is not good. This is the cycle of most of my days. Like many people with depression, I feel better as the day moves on. Which is helpful today, when I meet with a psychiatrist for the first time since I was hospitalized this afternoon.

Imagine if most of your days begin this way. This is me today:

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