(Actually) Numb (this time.)

I am shocked that my most recent post is almost a month ago.  It only felt like a couple days.

Life has been good lately.  I no longer feel very sad about quitting my job.  My life is practically stress-free, I no longer have to wake up at the butt-crack of dawn, and the numbness has faded a bit.

It's not even that my life is stress-free but now that I eliminated so much of it...I can actually handle things.

A lot of my battle with my mind and being on the medication is the decision between pain/sadness vs. numbness.  For those who enjoy the quote, "I'd rather feel pain than nothing at all."  Well...you must not be in enough pain.  Being so sad that it hurts is an awful way to live.  Some days I can hardly breathe, it hurts so bad.  Losing so many people...and then losing the only thing I thought I'd always have...well, there's not much to be hopeful for.

Now I know that there are hundreds of thousands of things that I should be grateful for.  Running water, CLEAN running water, a roof, warm clothes, a car, family, an able body... it's not that I'm ungrateful for it but just because I am not living in 3rd world conditions is not enough to "snap" me out of the pain.

The only "cure" that I have found to be lasting is a pill.  I hate pills.  I hate taking ibuprofen!  And here I am, all dosed up so that I no longer feel the anxiety and pain.  And on most days, I don't.  But I don't feel anything at all.  I don't feel love.  I don't feel happiness.  I can feel a warm touch, but it doesn't give me a warm, fuzzy feeling.  I do not enjoy things, I just do them because I know that at some point, I have enjoyed them.

Now my problem is-I just don't know which way to live.  Is it better to be in pain but be able to feel positive emotions on occasion...or be numb from it all?

Numb.

Music is wonderful isn't it?

Life has changed so much since the last entry.  I really don't even know how to feel.  I'm on higher medication and will likely increase it again.  Alexander and I are still dating, although there have been some moments where I've questioned if that is the best for us.  As he struggles with the problems in his family, I struggle with myself.  My mind.

Sometimes I really wish I didn't have to think so deeply about things all the time.  I struggle to ever take something at face value.  I know that it helps me see through a lot of things people say, but at the same time the constant questioning of why someone said what they did, what are they trying to get out of me, what's in it for them...it gets tiring.

I just quit my job today.  You would think, after the hell they had put me through, that I would feel relieved.  The strongest emotion I've been able to figure out I have is sadness.  I just adored all but 1 person in that hospital.  And of course, she had to be the one who gets to boss me around.  I have never quit a job I have loved [and hated] so much.  I found out later today that she was planning on firing me tomorrow.  Most people would be relieved that quit at the right time, but I'm infuriated that someone would claim to have a good reason to fire me.

I wish I had the chance to write more.  The title of this entry doesn't even make sense.  Write more soon [hopefully]!

Oy Vey

Things with Alexander have been getting pretty heated, and not in a good way.  We've been nitpicking at each other constantly the last week and none of it has been of any importance.  We finally actually yelled at each other tonight, which is a first [at least on his end of it, I have probably yelled before] to the point that I was embarrassed my roommate was home and could hear it.  I'm even embarrassed to admit it.

I don't know why exactly we fought tonight.  After several months of dealing with his constant arguing, I shut down on him.  I thought that eventually he would realize his infinite arguing just pushed me away but so far, it hasn't clicked.  I now react the same way as I did with the slew of bad boyfriends before him or my father by just saying, "you're right. I'm wrong."  Naturally

--interrupted. finish later--

Medicated Me

Wow.  That's really all I can say.  Life has changed quite a bit in the last month or so since I've really written in here.  I finally caved and called to see the "Behavioral Medicine" services offered by my school.  For being devoted to helping people, they really throw you through some loops to get to where you want to go.  I had to go through an inital appointment where I get asked a million and two questions by who I'm pretty sure is some grad student who seemed more concerned about performing her job correctly than anything else.  Then she set me up with an appointment for a medical doctor as well as a psych-ologist/therapist/iatrist, or whatever.  

Well, the doctors appointment went all right.  I took almost the entire hour to give my history of troubles, diagnoses, and medications.  I finished with enough time for the doctor to clarify a couple things I mentioned and write me a prescription.  Yes, prescription.  I caved.  For years I've held out on any sort of medicating "solution."  I hated being on them before.  Yes, they helped.  Yes, I handled things better.  But was I really myself?  No.  I was Medicated Me.

Yet here we are, roughly four years from then and I have allowed myself to be back to popping pills [though safely now].  It was great that I was treated as an adult, in a non-judgemental situation, and to top it off, by a very soft spoken man.  Back when I had my last psychiatrist, he treated me like I was mute and retarded.  Now, I don't like used those words in that way but that is how I felt.  I did not feel mentally disabled.  I felt retarded.  Handicapped.  Helpless.  He did not value my opinion in my own life and dictated when and how much medication I would be taking.  I'd like to stab the professors that allowed him to graduate into his field of business.

Moving on.  I left the appointment feeling relieved.  Nervous about my medication, yes, but I finally took a step to asking for help, something that has literally taken me years to vocalize.

Now don't you be thinking this will all be positive, happy-happy-joy-joy.

There was still one more appointment I had to make.


The therapist.


I'd just like to start by saying it was one of my biggest pet peeves to arrive for an appointment at a specified time and then have to wait for the other person.  Don't make me adapt my schedule to you and then leave me in the waiting room-you will not be dealing with my pleasant side!


So the lady finally comes out of her office to get me and lead me down the hallway.  Hold on though, there's not one person, there's two.  The older lady introduces herself as Blah Blah and the younger girl as Blahh, a graduate student.  No one told me there would be a grad student sitting in on my first therapy session in years.  Now I'm angry.


I struggle to focus as I realize the lady has been talking this whole time.  She wants me to retell the ENTIRE story I just told two days ago to my medical doctor.  Great.  I proceed, attempting to go through it as fast as possible seeing as I had just practiced it.  I didn't even feel like I was talking about me.  I was just talking about the synopsis of some fucked up book.  I felt like Mus musculus, the little white mice used in experiments all the time.  I was just a prop for some grad student to get her degree and end up just like that d-bag I dealt with years before.  


I danced in and out of listening to what the therapist was saying but zeroed in when she asked, "How come you never thought about committing suicide?"  Umm, what?


My heart began racing.  Don't tell them.  Don't tell them.  They're required to report it.  She can break your trust, and she will!

I quickly mumbled over the story of Kurt and how from him I realized the effect it has on your family.  Very true.  I just neglected to mention when I learned that in comparison to the rest of my own mistakes.  


That hour could not go by fast enough.  I was rescheduled another appointment for the week after and whisked out of there, furious that I had to sit there and get stared at.  I didn't want to be a method for learning.  I was there to get my own help and feeling like the puppy in the window was not the way to "cure" me of anything.


I fought and fought over the next couple days what to do and I finally caved and called to cancel my appointment.  The lady on the phone offered to help reschedule it and I told her I had to find out my work schedule before knowing when I came in.  I hung up and felt a wave of relief.  I was too angry to talk to anyone there.  It wasn't fair what the threw me in to and I wasn't about to go through another hour of Mus musculus.

Untitled, Unfinished

The thing about depressions, well, at least for me, is that it makes you think or remember things in different ways. Like, my first therapist, she had those thin, pursed lips.  And after that whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth, everytime I see pursed lips again, I think of her and have this automatic dislike for the new pursed-lip person I have met. 

My anxiety has been getting really bad in the last couple weeks.  In hindsight bias, I can say that the summer before I moved out here, I spiraled down from multiple heartbreaks and then was working on building myself up with the inspiration of Martin.  But when he died in November, it all came crashing down.  Then meeting Jake, well, it was the false sense of security happiness.  Deep down, I'm sure I was still a mess, but being with him made me unrealistically happy.  Most of my friends had told me at one point or another they had never seen me laugh or smile as much as when I was with him.  So to say that he shattered my heart again, well in reality, I guess he just peeled off the bandaid that was barely holding all the pieces back together.  So again, it was an immediate drop back to where I was.  I missed Martin worse and hated where I was even more.

Eventually I worked on picking myself back up.  About a ten months after Martin's death, I was so depressed that I swear I did not even smile for a week.  So I tried again, to think about how Reuben felt and how Martin would want me to feel.  I thought about him saying "Don't be sad, Troubles"  and tried to, rather than break down at the thought of his voice, to instead to kind of go with it and live for him, as I had told myself so long ago I would for Kurt.  And I started to.  The anniversary of his death I felt happier than I had in months, which confused me why I would.  For so long I fought back and forth to just get completely annhilated on the day, or well, to not.  Knowing Martin's feelings towards alchohol and drug use, I knew that it would be blatant disrespect to him and tried [and even succeeded!] to fight off the weaker of the two choices.

That lasted about a week.  And then she was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  And my world came crashing down.  Since then, I have cried at least five days a week.  Sometimes it will be just a tear or two, and other days I'll sob for hours.  But the tears I held back for so many years have just been flying out more than I would ever think imaginable.  Since this summer, and more specifically, since the new job, I have felt my anxiety skyrocket through the roof.

Every time I think "this is the worst it's been" I have a slight recovery, crash again, and then think the same thing about the current low.  So I have been now I have been working towards specifying my feelings more so that I understand me.  What seems at face value a simple task has become quite daunting.

I again feel alone.  And that no one cares.  But these are just my typical emotions.  Now, I have the overwhelming anxiety that has been most noticeable with the crying.  I cried at work this week and last week.  I cried during my exam today.  I have never experienced such an inability to hold back tears!  It is so frustrating that I have become so weak, I am incapable of hiding it.   For at least ten years, I have practiced being able to hide most of my emotions [aside from fleeting happiness or anger] and at this point can pride myself in the ability to appear so calm and collected while chaos reigns inside.  This however, has also prevented me from getting help or continuing help because of the habitual ongoing of seeming so well put together, even during something like a therapy session where the psychologist wants your raw emotions.

...[tbcont]

Need to Sleep More, Think Less

I think the scariest part about being with Alexander is that I'm actually starting to want to fall in love with him.

It's like I'm addicted to getting my heart broken.

Oopsies.

You remember that little note I wrote about Al and said how he knows things without me needing to tell him? Well I guess he forgot because he is in the doghouse right now.

I spent all day today crying and all night last night crying and all I wanted was a hug from Al. I didn't need him to listen to my woes, I just wanted his arms around me but of course when I'm having a bad night, he also decides to blow me off.

Yeah. Oops.

It's just one of those weekends where if one things going wrong...they're all gonna go wrong. Lucky me.