treatment

Marking Time

~ storm257 ~ 1 Comment

Another year. Today, like last year on this date, I reflect on where I have been and where I am now.

Last year, however, I was in California facing the real possibility that a person I love and admire would lose her life to cancer. It felt completely unfair, because disease does not care about fairness, and that piece of her experience, discussed in private moments, over tea and toast with Marmite, that part of us that wants there to be reason and rationale for the horrible things that occur, struck me then, and now, as the element of my own path with depression (oh, and life generally) with which I struggle.

Deep gratitude to my family, my partner, and most of all my friends, who have listened and helped me through the darkest moments, or the times when I was stuck in a loop of pointless thinking, unable to get out of my own way, unable to release worries that cannot serve me. Deep gratitude to my therapist, who has seen me through times when I could not articulate complete thoughts, through blind rage, tears that do not stop, and sees me now, as we move into a new place where I may actually find some understanding, not of my reactions to various things (we work on that all the damn time), but what is at the root.

What I know about myself is that I do believe there are reasons for most things in our lives. I don’t mean in a transcendent sense, though perhaps that too, but in that sense that we all have things we choose not to or cannot face, and those experiences, relationships, or memories, do impact how we live. Maybe you are someone for whom this does not apply, however, I’ve yet to meet someone with that much clarity or unity to their life. We’re all imperfect and life gives us some scary shit to bear. Leonard Cohen said it best, ” There is a crack, a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything), / That’s how the light gets in” I feel I am ready to look at those cracks a bit closer and maybe find where they begin.

This last year has held so much change and letting go. I am not living the life I thought I would be; I’ve had to accept that some things will not be. I have pushed boundaries for myself. I have been intolerant and patient. I have been angry and have felt my heart open in unexpected and welcome ways. I have faced moments when my mood has dictated my actions and others where I have exercised control. Most importantly, I have felt all of these things and faced my life with strength that I did not possess two years ago.

This is me today:

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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

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.

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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Fight or Flight

~ storm257 ~ Leave a comment

Living with depression is not like living. Moving through the day, finding reason to continue the actions that one intellectually understands are necessary to sustain life, becomes a chore. Being around people who require interaction, trying to make one’s self understood, or likable, or even human-seeming is exhausting. And if, like me, one is already given to isolating and solitary activities, it does not feel bad to retreat even further into those safe places. Except that being alone feels bad. Meaninglessness seems reasonable. Your own inability to function in the world like other people do does not seem a product of shitty brain chemistry, but a fact that becomes easier to accept as the grasp of depression pulls you in.

If you like me are fortunate to have people in your life who want to try and keep you out of the hole that depression makes so comforting you may also understand how frustrating it is to know you are irrational, but feel powerless to do anything about your own behaviour. Feeling that you no longer understand how you got all these loving people in your life in the first place is one of the scary realities of being depressed. For me, in the past few months, it has also been a major factor in my seeking mental health expertise.

I titled this post “Fight or Flight” because on Thursday, July 9th at 3:48pm I was admitted to a hospital, against my will, because the help I sought for depression took an unexpected turn. That’s mild, really. I spoke with a crisis worker who was both young and perhaps inexperienced and felt that my symptoms required “more intensive therapy than [our] program can offer.” Which meant being admitted to a psych ward for evaluation by a psychiatrist. This was not explicitly stated until I was already being transported to a hospital, where I had already stated I did NOT want to go. All of my possessions were taken from me. I was held for four hours before any sort of medical professional spoke with me. Long story short (and I intend to discuss details later, but not in this post), I was held for twelve hours, given ultimatums concerning treatment in an in-patient hospital, finally allowed to speak to an actual psychiatrist, and finally released (had to take a cab back to my car, which came out of my pocket) with a promise that I would seek intensive out-patient assistance.

I have never been more afraid than I was in that miserable, locked ward. I have never been angrier than I was to find that my attempts to take care of my mental health, which is not good, led me to a place where I felt not only worse, but punished for seeking assistance. I have never been more humbled than by the realization that this experience happens to people everyday who have limited access to mental health treatment. I am fortunate to not have had this be my first experience with the mental health infrastructure. Nor will it be my last.

I am on a path to fight. Feeling afraid, punished, and feeling my rights to have a voice in my treatment and therapy being infringed upon, pushed me into a place where I felt my only option is to fight. I want to be well. I have no illusions about the unlikelihood that I will ever be “cured”; there is a great deal of who I am depression has shaped and because of that I do not expected to live without depression. I do, however, want to get to a place where I can stay ahead of depression. I want to be able to care for myself again.

During the next two months I will be part of an out-patient program that will hopefully help me gain tools to better navigate the mental health system. On my own, I will be reading and reflecting on a bunch of writings about depression, my own experiences, and the recent trauma caused by the experience I just described. I want to put into the world what this felt like to me. Perhaps someone reading this will relate, or have insight.

This is me today:

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I am trying to find my way back to wanting to engage in my life. Many of you may be able to relate to that. Many may not. Either way, it is important that we talk about this experience. It is important for me. Thanks.