 |
Houses Mental Wrestling with mental illness |
Quick Links to Daily Entries • Stressed for success • Back in the saddle • The cloud creeps in on little cat feet • We all need somebody • Depression from the inside • The memory of pain • Friends, lost to the cloud • "Wonderland" canceled • Maybe normal • Enter Celexa • "Wonderland" • Enter Lithium • Living in fear |
||||
| Houses Temporal | ||||||
| Houses Spiritual | ||||||
| Houses Fictional | ||||||
| Home | Links | About | Legalities | Contact | Sitemap | |
| Thursday, July 13, 2000 |
Stressed for success
So now I have vertigo. No big deal, as long as the floor doesn't decide to tip too far to any side while I'm walking on it. It's a gentle rocking sensation, rather soothing. Think hammock or boat on nearly still sea. It's very restful, really.
I can use the rest. It's been an eventful day.
Fact is, I thought I was dying earlier today. I'm not easy to scare, healthwise, except when I'm depressed, but I was scared this morning. My chest hurt bad. I was sweaty, clammy, and almost convinced I was dying. So, of course, I did nothing.
It's how I am, for better or for worse.
When it happened again, about an hour later, I admitted to weakness... to being scared. And my partner took me to the doctor.
Turns out I wasn't having a heart attack after all, which is good. What I was having, apparently, was a flare up of GERD too strong for my existing medication to handle. The doctor figured it's probably stress.
Stress? Me? Get outta town!
So I have stress-related gastric distress making me feel like I'm dying of heart failure, and then there's the vertigo, moving into day four now and going strong.
Y'know, I'm not a complainer. Never have been. So why am I doing it here? I think I don't like this. It smacks of whining.
I think I'll stop.
|
The Chariot
Because I could not stop for Death,
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
We passed the school where children played,
We paused before a house that seemed
Since then 'tis centuries; but each
|
||
| Wednesday, July 12, 2000 |
Back in the saddle
It's a different place for now, though.
A week ago yesterday, on the Fourth of July - my daughter's birthday - my dad died. The past week has been a blur.
Burying a parent is hard. Harder than I expected. But wandering around the now-empty house was even harder. My mother's been out of the house for about five years now, and it drained rapidly of life once she was gone. Still, there were the small tidynesses of my dad's life to keep the house alive. Now even those light touches are gone.
And my dad is gone. I still don't know quite what to feel about that. I've yet to have a day without at least one bout of tears. I brought three of his handkerchiefs home with me, and sometimes I sit and hold one to my face and cry. I know he'd chide me gently for wasting good tears on him, since he's better off now. But it's not him I'm crying for. It's for times lost and opportunities missed.
We had a good relationship. It was just difficult in some areas.
Now I'm back and I feel bad and am dizzy all the time, and I wonder if it's the medication getting weird on me. My cousin's wife, who's a nurse, was startled when I told her my daily regimen of meds. "And you still walk around?" she asked, disconcerted. I guess it's more than I realized.
I guess I've been worse off than I realized.
I know it went on for far too long.
Now it's just another thing to wonder about. How much role did the manic-depression play in the problems Dad and I had? I'll never know. But I can sure as shooting hate IT for all it's cost me.
|
|||
| Tuesday, June 15, 2000 |
The cloud creeps in on little cat feet
I’ve lost time again.
This is so frustrating. Everything was going well. I can’t remember the last time I felt as normal as I felt back in May. And then I was gone again, drifted gently away into the gray cloud once more - never seeing it coming, never getting a warning.
One week I was fine, alive and awake and glad to be in my skin, enjoying life. The next week I was content to spend hours at a time staring at the TV screen, barely seeing what was on it, lost gently in the cloud. You’d think I’d be able to see the change starting, but no. There’s no point at which I can say, “Hey, this feels like I’m slipping into a depression.” I never know it. I never see it until I’m inside and somebody outside points it out to me. Then it’s just a matter of waiting for the cloud to pass.
At least this wasn’t a black one. It was only a couple of weeks, give or take a few days, and I never reached despair or cutting or thoughts of suicide. It was just a couple of weeks lost to that draining lack of interest in anything at all. It was a gray one, a light gray one, not a black one. I hope I’ve seen the last of those.
And yes, I was taking my meds faithfully all through this time. Maybe that’s what kept it relatively short and relatively mild.
Still. Damn. I lost two weeks, and it was the two weeks I had off from classes. The two weeks I had free, to do what I wanted to do - which included working on this website and responding to the email that’d piled up in the final weeks of classes - were grabbed by IT. Why couldn’t it have happened two weeks earlier? Or even now?
Eh.
I guess it’s what I get for encouraging other people to hold on through tough times. The vestigial Baptist in me gloats that it’s a punishment for my pride in thinking I had this thing whipped. Me? I just want to rail and bang on the walls at the exasperating unfairness of it, but I know it’d do no good. And it’s more or less over now anyway. So I might as well go forward.
I never have been able to wallow in unreasonable emotions. Suppose that’s why I resist therapy so hard? Hah.
So here I am, with my two-week break sacrificed on the altar of satellite TV, back in class as both teacher and student (basic algebra - ye gods), and nailbiting my way through a house purchase (termite guy, plumbing, appraisal guy, realtor, mortgage lender, title search, escrow... the list is endless), a vaguely discontented partner, a brilliant and growing up too fast child, a mother with late-stage Alzheimers, a father doing his best to die of non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and a dog that needs medicine twice a day. Like me.
But I seem to be coming out of the cloud, and all things considered, that’s a good thing.
|
|||
| Tuesday, May 23, 2000 |
We all need somebody
Nobody warns you about how hard it is to watch other people hurt and know there's nothing you can do to help.
A few years back, I watched a friend go through surgery and radiation and chemotherapy after a cancer diagnosis. Day to day, it was so hard to know my friend was in such pain, in such a bad place, and be unable to do anything significant to help.
Now, another friend is in a difficult emotional place, teetering along the catwalk above potential breakdown. And again, all I can do is watch and worry.
But then I think about times when I was at my worst, in those awful black cotton-numbed times of depression, and I know I must have been an equal worry for my friends, and my family. So I ask myself what helped when I was lost in the darkness?
Y'know what? The main thing that helped was just having people be there. Not physically present, necessarily, but as cards in the mail or emails or online gatherings to which I was invited. Just having people not forget that I exist: That's what helps the most.
I know I'm not great company. I know I must be no fun at all to be around. But it's important that friends not abandon me. It's when I'm the worst company that I most need companionship.
So I try to stay in touch with my friends. Sometimes it's just an email now and then, or a forwarded article I think might be interesting. Sometimes it's the lightest possible contact, but it is contact.
If you're reading this and you don't have a mood disorder yourself but you have a friend or family member who does, here's the best advice I can give for dealing with them: Just be there. Remind yourself that this doesn't have to be forever. Help them get help, if possible, then just be there, reminding them that you care.
It's all I know to do to help. But hey... It might just be enough.
|
|||
| Thursday, May 18, 2000 |
 Collage by JWC, 1999
|
this is how it is thin gray landscape gray light gray nothing mist thoughts like sheets of ash razor edges burrs tossed by invisible untouchable unfeelable wind
thoughts that terrify cut slice hurt
thoughts that won't go away hang on run around and around repeating
thoughts that fall apart break shatter melt
this is how it is in the gray world where all candles are short ones
from an energy flare short
gray world without end |
||
| Thursday, May 11, 2000 |
The memory of pain
Mental malajustment is a tiresome thing. I spent a year and a half in therapy once, and while it was inarguably useful in helping me ferret out some deep seeds of problems, it was also incredibly annoying.
I can only handle so much introspection.
Still, some is necessary, I suppose.
Today, I wonder if it's indeed true that controlling my ricocheting ups and downs is as simple as finding the right combination of medications. I feel so normal now. I get happy, I get sad, I get irritated, I get goofy... It's all good. I sleep at night and can get my work done in the day. I'm even starting to regain some creativity.
But I'm haunted by all these things I wrote in the past two months, and over the past five years. For that matter, I'm haunted by things I've written for the past thirty years, on and off. I read them and hurt for myself. The oddest part is that while I know I wrote them and I know the anguish and disconnection - and sometimes the exuberance and revelation - were real, I can't really remember how it felt. Not completely.
Maybe emotional pain is like any other pain, and you can never remember it as completely as it felt when it was happening.
I don't want to become tedious here, so sometimes I hesitate to include these ramblings about matters of the mind and emotions. But somehow, deep down, I have to believe that maybe this can help somebody.
If you're reading this, and you're depressed or even manic and feel like you've lost touch with everything that makes life worth living and you can't even begin to see an end to it all, please hear this: Real life is still possible.
Don't give up.
Get help. Talk to somebody. Try medications until you find what works for you.
I've been as lost in the fog of despair as anybody I know. I've dragged myself through days out of nothing but a dogged determination to simply exist one more hour. Now I look back at that and weep, but now it's out of sadness, not despair.
Don't give up.
A clear and normal mind is possible again. You just have to be willing to ask for help.
|
|||
| Tuesday, April 25, 2000 |
Friends, lost to the cloud
I have friends. I know this. But I don't have as many friends as I might have, and I've decided It may be more to blame than I am.
I've always thought that I just wasn't a good friend. Surely I must be failing, somehow, and that's why my friends tended to eventually just drift away. Ultimately, I just wasn't good enough. That was my thinking. Maddening, how those warped lines of so-called logic can crawl into your mind and nest there, sending out slow poisons into your psyche.
The problem was never that I wasn't good enough. I like to think I'm a good friend, or can be. Loyal, patient, forgiving, tolerant, encouraging... I think I'm like that, anyway. When I'm myself. But when It wakes up and takes over, things change.
Through the years, I've lost a lot of friends because I stopped reaching out. I guess they thought I didn't care any more, that maybe I wasn't the person they'd thought I was. And I guess in a sense I wasn't. But when I withdrew, when I stopped reaching out... it wasn't by choice. It had come, and stolen my life from me.
Once It was gone, of course, I could see what had happened. Sometimes I tried to reach out again, but I couldn't really blame people for what they must have seen as abandonment. I couldn't really blame them for not wanting to trust me again.
Heck, I can't even ask them to trust me again, in good conscience. I never know when I might go under again, when It might suck all the life out of me. So I can't promise, even though I've got my meds settled, apparently, and am taking them faithfully.
So I sit here and look at the gentle wreckage of friendships past, and wish I could somehow communicate to all of them that I did really cherish them. I still do.
Suppose it's too late?
|
Not Waving but Drowning
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
Poor chap, he always loved larking
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
|
||
| Friday, April 21, 2000 |
"Wonderland" canceled
The normality, such as it is, continues. Do I dare trust it?
Decided to try Wonderland again last night and, surprise, it wasn't there. Turns out ABC canceled it after the second show. That's pretty annoying, because it was an attempt to try something new and different on television. How could network execs expect a show that different to find an audience - situated against ER, for pete's sake - in only two weeks? Makes me glad I've pretty much given up network television for the more adventurous programming of cable and direct TV.
|
Here's some reaction to the cancellation of Wonderland. | ||
| Wednesday, April 19, 2000 |
Maybe normal
Do I dare to even say it?
I've felt something almost ... normal... for the past two days. Headaches, yes. But inside my head?
It's scary.
It's scary to feel normal and not be quite sure what to make of it. I think this is normal. I don't feel sad, or down, or drained. I'm actually able to get some work done. I cleared out a month-old stack of papers from my work desk yesterday. But I don't feel hyper, either. I haven't taken up Swahili or country line dancing or drag-racing mechanics. In fact, yesterday when I got a little tired, I rested.
How did I ever get to the place where being able to simply rest when I'm tired would be a major accomplishment?
So here I am, maybe normal. I don't know. Truth is, I have no functional memory of normal. So I go forward day by day, and hope for the best. Maybe it's enough, to wake up without regret and be able to rest when I'm tired.
Maybe it's enough.
|
|||
| Thursday, April 13, 2000 |
Enter Celexa
Add another medication to the mix. "Better living through chemistry," my partner jokes, and I laugh along. But the truth is that I hate this. It's so frustrating to face the fact that I may have to take meds for the rest of my life.
The depression isn't easing, so now I'm on Celexa along with Lithium and Wellbutrin. It's been three days now, and I guess maybe I feel a little better. It's hard to say, any more.
Here's what I dream of: Waking up some morning glad to be alive and full of energy for doing things I honestly want to do. I want my energy back. I want my drive back. I want my enthusiasm back. I want my personality back.
It's incredibly tiresome to wake up every day with no real motivation. The worst of it, though, is that with every day that passes it gets harder and harder to convince myself that I was ever different. I look at evidence of things I did - work, writing, art - and I know I did them, and I know that I felt something while doing them. But I don't remember it.
All I remember is being like this, drained of everything that matters. And I want to leave this place, and go back to the other place.
I don't think that's too much to ask.
|
Check here for more information on Celexa, a relatively new antidepressant. | ||
| Friday, April 7, 2000 |
"Wonderland"
Last night we watched the second episode of the new ABC series "Wonderland." Today, I've got mixed emotions about the whole thing.
For the record, I really like TV that goes beyond the predictable. I was an early fan of "Hill Street Blues" and "St. Elsewhere," back when they were cutting edge. I loved "Northern Exposure" and "Twin Peaks." I like TV that takes intellectual and emotional chances, not TV that attempts nothing more than ever-more-smirky adolescent sex pranks. That's not boundary challenging: That's just pathetic.
So I really wanted to like "Wonderland," which is a dramatic series shot in a sort of herky-jerky fake "reality" style and set in some kind of psychiatric emergency hospital. "ER" with mental patients. I really, truly wanted to like it.
And as it turns out, I do like some things about it very much. I like the sense of immediacy and the cinema verite feel of it. I really like the head doctor, whose name is eluding me at the moment but whom I'd take for a doctor in a heartbeat, not because of his looks but because of his calm, no-nonsense attitude.
Sure, it's exaggerated and probably inaccurate, but as a journalist who spent years cringing from every TV and movie depiction of journalism because they were so far from reality, I understand that it's not meant to be accurate. Accuracy, after all, is boring. Accuracy in journalism, for instance, might be weeks of boring board meetings, petty inter-office squabblings, and press release after press release. The kind of high-action, high-drama stories that make good entertainment come along maybe once or twice in a journalist's career. So while the overwhelming levels of violence and psychosis were most likely inaccurate, they were dramatic, and that's what TV is about.
At the end of the first episode, last week, I decided I liked it and wanted to see the next one.
Then came the intervening week, and I found "Wonderland" drifting across my mind now and then. And when it wandered, it always wandered with the same image: The stitched-up arm of a severely depressed man who had attempted suicide. Seriously.
After a while, it really started to bother me that that particular image kept coming back.
I'm not a pro, so forgive me if I get some of these terms not exactly right, but there's a thing called "suicidal ideation" (I think). It refers to the act of thinking about suicide. Not particularly planning it, or wanting to do it, but just thinking about it. Not to worry any of my friends, but I've had suicidal ideation for literally decades. I remember thinking about suicide as far back as early high school. It never occured to me that it was anything out of the ordinary. I figured everybody thought like that.
I know better now.
So the fact that I kept flashing on that suicide attempt really bothered me. Still, I watched again last night, because it was basically a bold show and I applaud that.
Some parts of last night's episode were outstanding. The elderly couple clearly wrestling with the onset of senile dementia was heartbreaking but oh so familiar. I've known elderly folks just like that, and seen families actually split over believing one over the other.
The married doctors wrestling with recovery from a violent act, and their assorted hallucinations/visions were... I dunno... uncalled for, in my opinion. I don't know what the show was trying to communicate through that whole thing, but it just made me queasy.
And then came the ending, and another apparent suicide, and I was left feeling sick. Sick and rattled and nauseated. And, yeah, a little scared.
Bottom line is, even though I initially resisted it on general principle, I can see why mental health professionals are basically up in arms over this show. The part of me that isn't mentally ill loved it, but wondered how accurate it was. It made me more unnerved by the mentally ill people I see wandering the streets here, sometimes. Do they have guns? Are they likely to start shooting, at random?
The part of me that is mentally ill was unnerved by it. Thanks at least largely in part to "Wonderland," suicide as an action has been on my mind more in the past eight days than in the previous year. No, I'm not thinking about doing it. No, I'm not planning it. This isn't a plea for help.
But I do resent the show for bringing me those two images, and implanting them in my mind so dramatically. I wonder how many other people, much closer to the edge than I am, saw that and are haunted, now, too.
So I don't know if I'll be watching "Wonderland" again, as much as I enjoyed it as entertainment. I guess it depends on what I spend the next week thinking about.
|
Want to check out some opinions on "Wonderland"? These links at about.com's Bipolar Disorder forum are good. | ||
| Wednesday, April 5, 2000 |
I've had the worst craving for Pepsi, for the last week or so. Preferably Pepsi, but Coke or Dr Pepper will do. Just something caramel-colored, caffeinated, carbonated and cold. Which is weird, because although I like sodas as much as the next person, I don't recall ever craving "Pepsi," precisely, quite this bad.
Maybe I've discovered a new oddball side effect of lithium, to go along with my endless thirst.
|
References don't mention cola cravings, exactly. Oh, well. Here's some details on lithium, for those in a mood to know. | ||
| Tuesday, March 28, 2000 |
Enter Lithium
As of yesterday, I'm back in new drug land.
I've finally been put on lithium, after a very small and very controlled meltdown in the therapist's office yesterday. Wellbutrin in the morning to get me
through the day; lithium at night to make sure I sleep and to start levelling out my brain chemicals. At least that's what she said.
I told her I'd do anything. Try anything. Be obedient. Because the truth is, I just can't go on like this. It's too damn draining, cycling all the way up and down every couple of months. So. Lithium. She says it's not dangerous like it used to be. Heck, I can even still drink coffee every morning. So and so. I forge ahead into the chemical future.
It was a relief, really, to have an expert confirm what I've suspected as the problem. I haven't been right since the summer of '97, not really. What's been
roughly a five-year mood cycle for most of my life, beginning in the early '70s, has just devolved into total chaos since early '97. The downward spiral that
started in the late fall of '96 and finally hit rock bottom in the summer of '97 was the worst of the worst. But treating it with antidepressants alone - which was
what we did - was a mistake. But who knew, right?
Who knew? My counselor, my doctor and I were just feeling our way into this whole thing, and I'd presented with classic major depression. The obvious solution was
antidepressants. Which worked. Tripped me right over into a mania that was excellent. All the Artist's Way awesomeness, and all that therapy work, joining a gym and starting a workout program, even getting a book written... It was all part of that mania.
But even in that, I was starting to have downs more often. And I botched it all up when we moved across country. So basically, the therapist pointed out, I've been rapid cycling for two years now. And fairly intense rapid cycling, at that, with a full up-down cycle about every three months and minor highs and lows within that
cycle.
God's truth? I'm about at the end of my rope. And I told her that, yesterday. It's reached the point where I'm ever scared of my relatively sane periods, because
I don't know if I can trust them. I can't live like this, not for the rest of my life.
She pointed out to me yesterday another of those "duh" things that are so obvious once somebody tells you but that you never see on your own... that the manias are driving the depression. Every depression happens hard on the heels of a manic phase. That's been the pattern forever. So treating the depression has just exacerbated it every time. In a way, my reluctance to continue taking medication has actually helped. Because I'd stop
taking the antidepressants as soon as I reasonably could.
Anyway, the new counselor's deal is that before we can do anything with the depressions, we've got to get the manias calmed down. Once those are evened off - calmness without sedation, she said; peacefulness with energy - then we can start working on controlling the downs. The downs are more dangerous, but they shouldn't happen as
often if I can get rid of the manias that drive them.
So I'm hanging on to that like a mantra: Calmness without sedation; energy without exhaustion. And onward and upward, right?
Today I feel okay. Not particularly good, not
particularly bad, but okay. Not foggy. Helluva thing when that's a step forward.
|
|||
| Thursday, March 23, 2000 |
Living in fear
I've got an appointment with a new doctor on Monday. Or psychologist. Or something. I'm a little hazy on what exactly this person is, but she was highly recommended and sounded competent on the phone.
I feel so sane today. I just feel... normal. It would be wonderful, if I weren't sitting here in the middle of an apparently calm and normal life looking back at three weeks that were just taken from me.
It's a scary thing to look back at yourself and not recognize that person. Or... recognize, but not be able to understand. I remember, vaguely, how it felt. I remember some of the things I thought, anyway. I remember thinking there were things I should probably do, or say, or be. But nothing happens, under the cloud. Thoughts come and go, but there's no volition, no motivating power. I read an email and think "I should respond to that" and know I should, but I just don't. I look at a mess in the sink and think I should clean that, and mean to do it, but I don't. I don't do anything. It takes every shred of energy and impetus in my body to go to my job, focus grimly enough to get through the day, then go home and sink into TV until it turns to crap, then sink into an online world and stay there until nobody's left to talk to.
And there I am, at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. or 5 a.m., thinking I should go to sleep. But that doesn't happen either. It's damn scary when you can't even work up enough energy to go to sleep.
That's what it's like, under the cloud.
I used to love the opposite end of the swing, because I was so full of life, energy, plans, enthusiasm. It was fun to start a dozen art and craft projects, work with friends on writing projects, take on extra work on the job. I never had any problem handling it all. I could do anything. And if I spent too much money, well, that's what plastic's for. And if I never slept, well, that's just more time to get things done. Tons of things.
The upswing takes me up close to god, too. I understand so many things about life, the universe, the nature of humankind, the nature of the spiritual world. I can see the connections between all things. I can use the Force, Luke.
Now, that scares me, too.
Self-awareness is a hard thing. Now that I've learned the name of my monster, and studied its ways, I can see how it's used me again and again through the years. Letting me take on anything and everything while I'm on top of the world. Another household project? Sure! Another class? Sure! Another writing group? Sure! Pile it on! I love it! I can do it!
And then it drops me, wham, under the cloud. All those things I was doing, I suddenly can't do. All those people are let down. All those things go undone. Junk piles up. My world turns to stone, to gray foggy dismal nothingness and I can't even stand myself. I certainly can't understand how anybody else could stand me.
Now, when I'm sane, like I am today, I find I'm almost as scared of the top of the swing as of the bottom. So I find myself living in fear in this narrow strip of sanity, afraid to go up, afraid to go down. Afraid.
I miss me. I really do.
|
|||
| Monday, March 20, 2000 |
During the weekend, the fog lifted. It's that, as much as anything, that I hate about this sickness. The fog lifted with a vengeance, and in two days time I'd cleaned up all the household mess of the past month, redecorated the living room, started constructing a tabletop fountain, started a silly velvet art craft project, started a new crocheted throw, graded five sets of papers (of the nine that had stacked up over three weeks), and stayed up most of the night three nights in a row.
Welcome to mood disorders.
I didn't even notice it. My partner pointed out to me late Saturday that I'd started at least four new projects in one day. I thought that was cool. Sunday morning we played a rousing game of Star Wars Monopoly, and I had a blast... joking, laughing, cutting up.
It's as terrifying, in its way, as the cloud. Up on the top end, the air is so crisp and clear, my energy is boundless, and I can see forever... do anything... and never miss a beat.
I'm swinging far more rapidly now than I ever have, and it's got me unnerved. I think maybe it's time to try to see a real doctor again. Somebody who maybe can help.
|
|||
| Thursday, March 16, 2000 |
I am mad, in the clinical sense, so this is a journal of madness. The technical name is bipolar disorder, but I prefer the old-fashioned term manic-depressive. It's so much more accurate, so much more evocative of the extreme nature of what a case of botched-up brain chemicals can do for you. The advice to writers has always been "Write what you know." This is what I know: writing, teaching, partnering and parenting, and living with the frustration of never knowing where my mind will go.
Every human shares the same basic drives. We all want to be heard, maybe to be understood, maybe to be remembered. That's in my mind as I start this. Maybe it might help somebody. Maybe even me.
|
Here's one of the best sites I've found about bipolar disorder. It isn't the most in-depth or the most elaborate, but it's non-threatening, easy to read and has excellent links to more detailed information if you want or need it. Thanks, Joy. | ||
| Wednesday, March 15, 2000 |
Today my mind is deadened, mothballed. In storage. Novocaine brain. Dead and buried. Nothing matters. Nothing. I can't remember ever feeling alive. Please don't let this last forever.
|
|||
| Tuesday, March 14, 2000 |
My head hurts so bad I wish my eyes and ears could explode just to relieve the pressure.
|
3/24: In retrospect, that was probably a reaction to an increase in my dosage of Wellbutrin SR. I'd gone up to 300mg/day about five days earlier, and had headaches constantly. | ||
