It's Supposed to be Better

When my diagnosis and it's severity was official I became obsessed with reading autobiographies and case studies of other human beings with severe mental illnesses. They ranged anywhere from schizophrenia to dissociative identity disorder and borderline personality disorder.

Maybe in reading about others' lives, I would find something familiar. A thread that wound from experiences to mental illness and I was strung along like so many other people.  I would piece myself together with their stories. I had always looked to others for clues on who and how I was, I could never trust my own feelings. I was a ghost, an empty place setting for someone expected but who never arrived.

I wish I could say it wasn't that dramatic. Like so many other times I felt as if I watched myself struggle to exist, struggle to resemble a human.

I learned to accept that I suffered from major depression and that I also had an eating disorder. I was a human being first, and ill last. I wanted to find others like me who woke every morning to a heavy heart and a never ending fog and yet they still went to work, performed unexceptionally, grocery shopped and completed other mundane tasks that had always made me feel so alone and tragic. Did they also shuffle around the grocery store struggling to make decisions and watching others' faces for any sign that they knew if you were rotting from the inside out? That my stomach had swallowed my lungs and my heart was too big.

I couldn't bare the grief so I stopped eating and started having a reason for the fog, my sadness, lack of energy and the terrifying things that were happening inside of me.

I was always so embarrassed to talk about mental illness or suicide with anyone. I was embarrassed that I had opinions that were based on experience and that experience made me less than a person. Despite excelling in academics, traveling the world and finding love in different faces I was always trying to make up for the fact that I have a pit inside myself. I was told for so long that I wasn't good enough, I wasn't different enough, I wasn't attractive enough, and generally that I wasn't enough of anything.

It was only after a year and a half of intense treatment that I could believe that I didn't have to try and compensate for all of my shortcomings. In fact, there was nothing wrong with me. The very foundation that I had lived on for most of my life was made of sand.

Something I didn't hear at the beginning of my treatment or therapy was that the sadness I felt was nothing compared to the grief I would have after coming to terms with my past. I mourned the loss of over a decade of punishing myself even after I had gotten away from it's beginnings. I had never been a child. I had never truly been happy or sure of myself.

Was it reasonable for me to be angry that no one protected me?

Dear ED

I was drowning, and now I'm learning how to swim.
It's a learning process and I shouldn't measure it all by my failures, what is, what isn't and what I lost.
My eating disorder ruined a lot of things, but I let it. I let it take charge because I was scared and didn't know what to do. Now that I'm in "recovery," I think often of how angry I am at what happend, and why it all happened. How I lost the last 10 years of my life to feeling inadequate and betraying myself. But it's not all anger.
I am thankful for my disorder, and it's role in my life. A lot of things would not have been possible, I got through some difficult and stressful times. And now I'm ready to say, "Thank you, thank you for what you've done and for being my voice when I thought I had none."

On Love and Loss

For the last month I have been crawling into bed, crawling into the space next to a man who won't be mine in that way much longer. It has been known, I made it known that there needed to be a change. It is still difficult. Almost like being caught mid breath in a nasty wave- because even though the moment has passed your nose still burns. Your eyes still sting, and that awful dizzying feeling where you are not stable and your surroundings are spinning just won't go away.
It's called heartbreak for a reason I guess. But that word doesn't seem to do it justice. It's a grief, a loss a death of a small home and family. He was my family. Over 2000 miles from my nearest kin- it was Him, he was my family and this place my home.
It is all spinning, and I feel the vertigo. And yes, my eyes sting. I cry in the shower, I cry on my walk to work. I ask all sorts of questions to no one in particular and I weep. I grieve.

2013

It's another year, a year that is filled with dreams and hopes and wishes. I hope 2013 is not like 2012. I hope it's not like 2011, 2010. I wish it wasn't going to be like 2008.
I want 2013 to be 2013, the year when new things happen. Not the same old drag of sadness weighing down my every movement. This year I want to work on being authentic, on expression and my relationships.
I want to be myself, no matter how difficult that may be for the people in my life.
I want to express myself, to start drawing and writing again. To take a dance class even though I've never really moved with purpose.
I want to nurture and strengthen relationships. I think it's time to start thinking about all the people I had to cut out of my life to focus on The Big Problem. To invite them all in, one at a time, slowly. Telling them small things, small changes and letting them provide their friendship in a loving and honest way.

Unfortunately, this year has not started on a high note. I love a man and he loves me and it is difficult. Loving isn't the difficult part, I guess the living is more so. Living and Loving have presented a myriad of problems. At the beginning we worked together on our Life, the hierachy ever changing. Then it slowly evolved into a state of two different lives, two different sentient beings with different needs, purposes and values. As much as I would like to be One, I know it's necessary to leave room to breathe. Leave room to love and miss. What happens in January will not set the tone for the year, it is only January. It is one month. It is not my life, it is not a blueprint, it is not fate.

Introspection

I was left with homework last week after a check-in at the nutritionists'. What do I want? Do I want to be healthy, or even recovered.
I still cringe at the word, I can't imagine ever feeling 100% okay with myself; or conversely 100% okay with my not 100% self. In other words, accepting imperfection. It's been a difficult year, I have said it more than once. I'm not sure when this year is supposed to end.
I live in Seattle, and as much as I may romanticize the weather, it gets lonely. The grey sky, the constant mist all contribute to this loneliness.
I'm in love. I love a man and he loves me back. We endure the Seattle winter (9 months of RAIN) together and have for quite some time. When I was young and idealistic I thought Seattle was just what I needed: liberal, moody, and cool. I think I wanted to be all those things, mostly the last as I was already the first two.
Instead I found out that I was anything but cool, that trying too hard and for so long was going to wear my heart and my body out and that I needed help. I needed someone to care for me in a way of which I was incapable.
Plato suggested that we were created of a whole unit, split in two like a sliced egg. Each searching for it's other half and even once they are paired- still searching, but not sure for what. Maybe we have more than one other part, maybe it takes more than two to be a whole. Well at least it does for me.

Proofing and Cooking

I have been baking and cooking. I bake whole wheat bread. I roast pumpkins and turn them into pies. I make vegetable soup for the Boss (the partner) with my own vegetable broth as base. I preserve to enjoy later.
When I spoke to my psychiatrist last week she asked me what I had been doing with my time since I left the outpatient treatment program. I told her I've been baking bread. Embarassed, I quickly added that it's kind of weird.
She interrupted me, "That's not weird at all."
Yesterday when I served up a slice of pie to a dear friend of mine she asked, "Why the baking? Why now?"
In the past I never had food on hand. I never filled my refrigerator. I never made more than one serving. I never had left overs and I definitely never made pies. It was lonely and I was lonely. I was always afraid of opening a new package, of making more than I needed. What if I ate it all? Isn't it a waste if I make it, only eat a portion and leave the rest to spoil in the back of the fridge?
Now I am sharing my food. Enjoying food. I am not so lonely, and definitely not alone.

On Depression

The first time I ever talked to a medical professional about my Depression was sophomore year of college. It was spring and I was so exhausted, unhappy, emotional and worse- I didn't know why. I was trying to explain how little I was sleeping and eating and the Dr. interrupted me with a question: "Do you get weepy like this often?"
Of course. So i got out of there with a prescription, and some hope. It didn't stay long and it was another four years before I tried medication again.
Here I am a medicated full year after an insurmountable episode and I'm feeling sad. SAD. Sad. I can't even begin to express the frustration of trying different medications, tweaking one or two, calling my psychiatrist for worsening symptoms and having to tell my boyfriend that my medication was changing again. It could be for the worse or the better, but it's in the hope of Better.
Everything I do is in the hope that someday I will feel whole, that this new sad feeling isn't a set back, isn't foreshadowing another difficult year and it's because I wake up when it's dark outside and it's dark when I leave work. I haven't adjusted well to the equinox.
Now I have a light therapy lamp, a bump in my meds and another small piece of hope.