Today is the final day of “Mental Health Awareness Month”

31 May 2014 1 Comment

by jes in Depression, Faith, Knee surgery, Life, My health, Panic Disorder Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

I’d written previously about how May was designated as the official “Mental Health Awareness Month” and how I felt that it should not be limited to just 31 days out of the year. I, of course, still feel that way. For those who have not been following my blog regularly, or have just started reading it recently, I’ll give a brief overview. I have two forms of depression: Borderline Personality Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder. I also suffer from panic attacks and anxiety. If you’d like to read more about any of these subjects, the NIMH website is a great place to start. It gives a detailed overview of the various types of depression, as well as a comprehensive explanation of what it all means.

Unfortunately, every person is different, and everyone’s presentation of mental illness and ability to cope will be different. I hide behind the walls I learned to put up after 6 years of drama school, and most people don’t realize I have any mental issues unless I intentionally share them. I’m trying to share them more now, to try to lessen the stigma of what it’s like to have mental illness. Most people think that the mentally ill are those homeless people who stagger around mumbling to themselves and panhandling. A great many of them are, but only because they haven’t had the opportunities I’ve had to seek help. I have had two excellent doctors who have helped me tremendously with finding the right course of medication that helps control my depression and allows me to live like a “normal” person most days.

I go through cycles where everything will be going great, and then some little thing will go wrong and I spiral down into depression. Lately, it’s been my knee issue. I feel like I’m taking two steps forward and one step back on a regular basis, except for those times when I’m only taking one step forward and two steps back. I deal with a lot of pain in my day to day life because of the bone spur in my C5 vertebra that is pressing against the nerves and causing a “migraine” that has been with me every single day since about April of 2006. Thankfully, I have an extremely high tolerance for pain, as I’m opiate resistant, so narcotics don’t help me at all.

At one point, I thought that I might be bi-polar, because I’d go through such intense mood swings, but I never truly hit mania and I never fit the other symptoms, according to my doctor. It’s just the regular cycle of depression. You start out okay, and then something triggers it and down the drain you go. Eventually, you fight your way back out of it and live normally for a while, and then you start the process all over again.

I don’t claim to be an expert on depression of any kind. I only know my own. I worry that my son will follow in my footsteps, so to speak, so I’m happy that he lives with his dad, who is a more stable individual. A person whom I consider to be a very good friend of mine wrote online today that she can’t take it anymore and felt completely unloved. I know it is the depression talking, and I sincerely hope that those who are (physically and mentally) closer to her can help her get through this. I know she is deserving of love, and I love her dearly, as do many of our friends. It’s so hard though, when the depression is lying to you and telling you you’re not good enough, or not pretty enough, or thin enough, or not deserving of love, because you are. Depression lies. It lies to you constantly and makes you doubt your own feelings until you don’t know if what you feel is true or if it’s just your illness making you feel that way.

Earlier this week I had a severe mental breakdown because I felt that my knee wasn’t getting any better and that I was going to have to live with yet another permanent pain in my life. I allowed myself to cry for a day and feel sorry for myself, and then I talked myself into believing that everything happens within its own time, and that I just have to be patient and let myself heal at whatever speed that is. I know I push myself too hard, and that’s one of my weaknesses. Unfortunately, pushing myself too hard on a newly operated knee can result in causing more damage than good, so I’ve had to go back to being a lazy lump with an ice pack  and elevation to try to get the swelling down, and to not walk any more than possible. I hate it though, because I’m not the type of person who can just sit around and do nothing all day. There’s only so much reading or crocheting I can do before I go batty.

 

“100 days of happiness” project, part 1

26 Apr 2014 Leave a comment

by jes in 100 Days of Happiness Tags: , ,

I’m not sure where I heard about this, but it was probably somewhere on the internet. The basic premise is that you write down one item each day that makes you happy. It doesn’t have to be anything big, it can be something small that just makes you happy. The one rule is that you can’t repeat any of your “happiness” items. At a minimum, list a one (or two or three) word response stating what made you happy, and then you can expound on the item. I’d like to see other people participate, because I’d like to see what makes other people happy. My expanded list will be here on my blog, but I’ll write a summary on my Facebook for those who don’t read my blog. If you are participating, use the hashtag #100DaysofHappiness so that other people can see your lists. I won’t be posting once a day, but gathering notes for each week so I can add them in batches.

Day 1 — April 20 = Brunch! My sweet and wonderful friend made me mimosas and French toast for brunch, just because

Day 2 — April 21 = Goofing off. I spent a good hour just playing with them down on the floor and having fun while they jumped and chased after each other

Day 3 — April 22 = Cat adoption. It was my first ever chance to listen in on an Adoption Counselor call (a position I’m training for) and it was wonderful to hear how happy the applicant was when she was approved for her chosen kitty.

Day 4 — April 23 = Friends. I went and visited a friend after work, and had a lively discussion about costume design, cats, politics, and other random items (she’s quickly becoming a very close friend, which is surprising for a woman), and then I stopped by the PetCo that I semi-volunteer at and spent time with the center lead whom I hadn’t seen in a couple months because our schedules were so different.

Day 5 — April 24 = Tiggy. He is my unofficial therapy cat (although I’m working on getting him certified). He always knows when there is something wrong with me, and he cuddles with me and curls up on top of me to let me know he’s there for me.

Day 6 — April 25 = Rain! I love the rain; I always have. It started pouring down in buckets and I loved getting to listen to the sound of it as it freshened the air outside and washed away all the excess dirt and pollution.

Day 7 — April 26 = Clean car. After the heavy rain last night, my car has a layer of water all over it, which I can then dry off and I don’t have to waste water while still making my car look extra pretty and shiny.

Panic attacks are not fun

08 Apr 2014 Leave a comment

by jes in Depression, Life, My health, Panic Disorder Tags: , , , ,

I have Panic Disorder (in addition to Major Depressive Disorder), and most of the time, I’m able to control it through medication. Unfortunately, a few days ago, I hit the perfect storm of running out of Xanax just before my delivery was scheduled to be delivered by my mail pharmacy, only to go check the mail and realize that someone had pried open the box and stolen all the mail, including my medication. I went into a full-blown panic attack on Sunday, knowing that I had to suck it up and try to just get through it using willpower alone. Fortunately, my best friend understands my condition and asked me to call him, and stayed on the phone with me until I could breathe again.

I don’t know what other people’s panic attacks feel like, but when I’m having one I get super-overheated and start sweating profusely, my heart rate goes way up (from my normal resting pulse of 55 bpm to as high as 150 bpm) and I feel like I’m going to die of a heart attack. My senses shut down until my eyesight gets so blurry I can’t see, my hearing turns into a whooshing sound like I’m trying to hear underwater, and my head feels like I’m spinning in circles too fast and can’t get my bearings. On top of this, I start to hyperventilate and can’t speak in complete sentences without concentrating really hard.

It’s a horrible feeling. One moment you’re fine, and the next you feel like you’re going to die at any moment. My doctor and I have tried to figure out what my “triggers” are for many years, and I don’t seem to have any. I just get random attacks. Thankfully, I was able to explain the situation to my mail order pharmacy and they are going to expedite a replacement shipment to me, and my doctor ordered enough at my local pharmacy to get me through until the mail order comes in.

The biggest problem with mental illness is that those who don’t have it don’t understand that it’s not a choice. I can’t just decide to be happy or decide to not have a panic attack. That would be the same as trying to not be female or not have brown eyes. Yeah, I can mask the brown eyes with colored contacts, but beneath the contacts, my eyes will always be brown. Same with mental illness, I can mask the symptoms but the underlying disease is always there. Having depression and panic disorder is not anything I would wish upon anyone, much less myself. It’s extremely stigmatized still, and it’s hard to control.

If you know someone who has depression or some other mental illness, please don’t tell them to just be happy and it will all get better. Ask what you can do to help them out. Sometimes we just need a person to cry on until the worst of it passes. I’m okay today, for the most part. I can’t tell you how I’ll feel tomorrow. Each day is a surprise as to whether it’s going to be an easy day or a difficult one. Thankfully, I have some great friends who understand me and don’t make me feel like I’m some sort of freak.  Next, I need to get my family to understand it.

May is “Mental Health Awareness Month”

21 Jan 2014 1 Comment

by jes in Depression, Life, My health Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I’ve never understood the reason for dedicating certain months to certain “causes” or “illnesses.” Shouldn’t we be a more vigilant and caring society where we are aware and understanding of others every day? I’ve gotten a lot of private messages from people lately who have lauded my openness regarding my mental issues. For many years, I was taught by action and word that depression is something that you have the choice to either have or not have. THIS IS NOT TRUE. True depression (not just sadness – everyone gets that occasionally) is an actual disease that is caused by an imbalance in your brain. Yes, trying to be cheerful may be of some help, but deep down inside, I know the depression is still there, and it’s fighting me to get back to the surface and cause more grief.

I am completely open and honest on this blog. I’m not out to change the world, but I do sincerely try to educate people on depression, and other anxiety disorders, because if no one talks about them, then no one thinks there’s a problem, and then no one works to find a cure or a solution. Burying your head in the sand is not going to help anything, except perhaps to give you a temporary reprieve.

Here are some facts about me, that may or may not come as a surprise to anyone with depression, as there are certainly “triggers” that can cause a mild problem to blow up into a huge, life-threatening situation.

In 1991, 19 days after my 16th birthday, I was raped. He was renting a room at my friend’s house, and I was spending the night over at her house when he attacked me sometime in the early hours of the morning. He told me that if I told anyone, he’d kill me. I believed him. At the time, I was living with my grandmother, and when I went home to her, I told her what happened. She took me to my pediatrician (whom I’ve always disliked, because he was very misogynistic and obsequious). He told me that it wasn’t rape because I knew the boy who did it, and I must have given him some indication that “I wanted it.” I believed him. He told me that I should never spread such lies around, because it could ruin the boy’s reputation. I believed him. I was just 16 years old. I didn’t know any better. There was no such thing as date rape back then.

Soon after that incident, I attempted suicide for the first time. I downed an entire bottle of Tylenol (because that’s what we had in the house) and chased it with a bottle of tequila. Bad combination, because it made me throw up and it obviously didn’t kill me. To this day, I cannot stand the smell of tequila.

That began my downward spiral into depression. You know you suck at life when you can’t even kill yourself properly. I started engaging in dangerous behaviors like driving fast (at that time, I think the fastest I ever went was 120, but cars just didn’t have the horsepower then that they do now) and shoplifting. Since I never got caught, I figured that my behavior wasn’t that bad.

In 1995, I got engaged (much too young) to a man who was several years older than me. We moved in together, preparatory to actually getting married. One day, I came home sick from work and found him in bed with a girl whom I thought was my best friend. Obviously, she wasn’t. I turned around and left and went to my mom’s house to sleep for a while. When I came home, he was gone, and so were his belongings, and I haven’t seen him since. I did eventually forgive her, and we did become friends again for an all-too-brief period of time before she passed away.

That was my first realization that I suck at relationships. I expect truth and honesty, and open communication if something is going wrong, and that just doesn’t happen – at least with the men I’ve dated. I’ve had a horrible history of dating “the wrong men.” I’ve dated men old enough to be my father, and 10 years younger than me, and everything in between. They all have the same thing in common: they are unable to commit. Somehow, subliminally, I always choose men that I know will not commit to me, because subliminally, I’m looking for someone like my father, who did not want to commit to me. I was the antithesis of a daddy’s girl. He would probably describe me more as daddy’s pain in the ass, entirely too much trouble to deal with, girl. When my parents separated, I was about 7* (yes, I know I’m jumping around) and for the first time in my life, my father chose me over my sister as the child he would list as his dependent on his taxes. I later figured out that it was because I was the younger child, and so he’d get the child tax break an extra two years than if he had chosen my sister. My father was always deserting me, either to spend time with my sister, or to go out on dates, or whatever he chose to do. When he wasn’t going out, he wanted to watch his TV shows and didn’t want to communicate with me at all. I don’t remember a single meaningful conversation with him that didn’t relate to cars in the first 13 years of my life. When he decided to marry his current wife, we all sat down together to have a “family meeting” and discuss the issues that we had, because our “family” was very warped by this time. One of the things I remember telling him was that I don’t ever remember him telling me that he loved me. He told my sister, and he told his wife to be, but he never said it to me. He said that I should just know, and it shouldn’t have to be said. Somehow, this is the type of man I kept finding and dating. Men who could not or would not love me, and would not commit to being even semi-permanent in my life.

Around this time, I attempted suicide for the second time. I tied a rope to the bar in my closet and tried to hang myself. I managed to suffocate myself to unconsciousness, but the rope broke, and I ended up falling back to the floor. Yeah, I have either really good luck or really bad luck.

After the fiance incident, I dated several other men who fit my profile. A couple of them were already married, some just had girlfriends, others weren’t looking for any kind of commitment, and then there were the abusers. Some were verbal abuse, and some knocked me around. One held a knife to me neck and told me he’d kill me just for the fun of it if I didn’t do exactly what he said. I tried going the Tylenol route again, but this time, I chased it with straight water instead of tequila. I ended up throwing up again instead of dying, and I’m sure I’ve done irreparable damage to my liver by now, even without heavy drinking.

By this time, the pediatrician that I hated had his practice taken over by a new, younger doctor who had more modern sensibilities and was open to listening to me. In 1998, I was diagnosed with Dysthymia, a chronic, low grade depression. I was prescribed an anti-depressant, and it worked for a while, and then a different one, and then a different one; each one working for a few months or a few years before I’d be back to suicidal again. By this time, I’d learned that trying to kill myself is obviously futile, so instead of actually attempting it, I’d just fantasize about it. I’d think of all the different ways I could do it, and what I’d need in order to accomplish it. I think if I had access  to a handgun at that point, I would have actually succeeded, finally.

After having my son, I suffered from Postpartum Depression, although I was unaware of it. My husband was not very good at helping me with anything. He didn’t clean, he didn’t cook, he very rarely took care of his son (and when he did, he called it babysitting, which pisses me off. You don’t BABYSIT your own child, you PARENT them.) And yet, he was constantly critical of everything I did. The house was never clean enough, I didn’t have dinner ready for him, etc. It didn’t matter that I was only getting 4-5 hours of sleep every 24 hour period. During my entire pregnancy and through the end of breastfeeding my son, I wasn’t allowed to take any of my anti-depressants, which didn’t help at all.

Skipping forward over several years and more of the same, I separated from my husband and he and our son moved to a different state, which made all of us happier. Around this time, I started getting really bad headaches. My doctor diagnosed them as migraines and put me on migraine medication. Just like with the anti-depressants, they’d work for a little while, and then the next time, they’d do absolutely nothing. It took 5 years to diagnose the reason for the severe headaches is a bone spur in my spine that’s slowly pinching off the nerves. Eventually, without my even trying, it’s going to likely kill me.

2012/2013 were terrible years for me. I once again got involved in a relationship that didn’t work out. Things seemed great in the beginning, even to the point where we moved in together. Unfortunately, it was the moving in that caused the undoing of our relationship. On the day we were scheduled to move, we ended up spending the entire day moving his belongings, and then had to return the rental truck. I ended up having to move my own belongings to the new place a few boxes at a time, whenever I had the ability, because he wouldn’t help. Then, I went up to Fresno for a friend’s wedding, and was coming home on New Year’s Eve. He knew I was coming home that day, and we had planned to go out and do “something” although that was never defined. I sped down from Fresno only to get a message from him when I was 20 minutes from home stating that he decided he was going to go hang out with his friends and he’d see me the next day. He pulled a similar stunt on my birthday  6 weeks later by refusing to ask for time off from work to spend any time with me. I didn’t even get a card or a “Happy birthday” from him. The closest I got was, “well, you knew that I close on Saturdays, so if you wanted me to be able to go, you should have planned on  Sunday instead (with him in full knowledge that I was starting a new job on Monday and didn’t want to go out partying the night before I started). After that, it all just fell apart. He decided he didn’t even want to sleep in the same room with me, so he took to sleeping on the couch in the living room. When it came time to move out, again, he moved all of his belongings and left me to take care of all my belongings by myself. I am pretty capable, so I did manage to move all of my stuff, a couple boxes at a time, to either storage  or to my mom’s house.

November came around, and for some reason, all of a sudden, the depression came back like a major slap in the face. I went back to see my doctor, and he said that I’ve now progressed to Major Depressive Disorder.

* I’ve actually blocked out most of what happened in my life for several years, and haven’t been able to get those memories back, because they are too painful for me to face, still. What’s the difference? With the Dysthymia, I was always just a little “bummed.” All of a sudden, I hit this wall where it took all of my energy just to get through a day without crying, and as soon as I got home from work I’d crawl into my bed and cry myself to sleep and stay there. Some nights I never got up at all, until I had to go to work. On my days off, I’d stay in bed all day, sleeping or reading, and trying to ignore the outside world. My doctor gave me a new prescription to see if it would help me, and it has. I still have days when I start crying for no reason, or don’t have the energy to get out of bed. I’d binge eat. Some days I wouldn’t eat anything at all, and other days I’d gorge myself until I felt I couldn’t move.

This is probably more information than you’ve ever wanted or needed to know about me, but this is who I am. I have depression. I have panic disorder. I have mental illness. Not just in the month of May. This is a battle I fight every single day. I know I’m not alone. I’m tired of the misconceptions surrounding depression. “Just be happy” is not an option. I am a generally happy person on the outside. You just can’t see the cracked container on the inside that I’m desperately trying to hold together. I have attempted suicide 4 times, and thought about it at least 400 other times. I’m no longer at the point where I want to kill myself, there are certainly plenty of times when I want to die. This is what depression looks like from my perspective.

Chaos Theory, aka The Butterfly Effect

18 Sep 2013 1 Comment

by jes in Uncategorized Tags: , , ,

Over the past several months, I have had a slow progressive spiral down towards serious depression. I know that I am prone to depression, so I do whatever I can to avoid it. It’s not a fun place to be. Sometimes, sheer will is the only thing that gets me through the day. The past two weeks have been especially hard on me. I have known for 26 years that my left knee is bum. A combination of patella-femoral syndrome and arthritis, so I’ve spent roughly 68% of my life favoring that leg because of the pain and stiffness. Finally, things came to a head and on Saturday, the 7th, my right knee decided that it’s had enough and it collapsed beneath me. The bright spot in this event is that it happened when I was walking up the stairs on my way into work, so I do have worker’s comp helping me out, but it’s a slow, bureaucratic filled process, and my knee is not getting better on its own, as far as I can tell. I’m waiting for approval to get physical therapy, which hopefully would make everything all better again. Unfortunately, it appears that it is either a severely sprained or torn lateral meniscus, so PT probably won’t do a whole lot, but I can’t do anything else until I get past this next step. That’s not really what this post is about. That was just a mini-vent, because I’m in pain, and being in pain for long periods of time is a known contributor to depression.

On to the real statement of this post.

I have made a lot of mistakes in my life. I’m sure I’m not alone. I accept that they are my mistakes, and I have to deal with the fallout from the choices I make in life, including mistakes. I’ve come to the conclusion that every single bad choice I have made in my life is because I have chosen to put the needs and/or desires of someone else before my own wants/needs. There is a reason why flight attendants always tell you to put on your own oxygen mask first, before helping other people. If you are helping other people before helping yourself, they are going to benefit – which is a good thing – but you are going to suffer for it – which is a bad thing. Being the type of person who tries to please others whenever possible, I forget that sometimes I need to make decisions based on what is going to be best for me, first. I know that sounds a bit selfish, but I still think it’s true. The only major decision I’ve ever made in my life where I put my own needs first was when I packed up my life and moved from California to North Carolina. I knew I was unhappy, and that I needed to do something drastic before I became one of those people you see on TLC or MTV reality shows. Living in the Carolinas – both North and South – are some of the happiest years in my life, barring a few bad events. Again, those bad events happened because I put someone else’s needs before my own.

I’m alive, but I’m not living my life. Everything I do is because I’m trying to make someone else happy. Somewhere, along the line, I subconsciously decided that my own happiness was not as important. That’s just plain stupid. I deserve to be happy, but I know that in order to get that back, I need to start evaluating every aspect of my life and deciding which things I’m doing because they are beneficial to my well-being, or if I’m doing it because I think that it’s the expected thing to do to make someone else happier or to make their life easier.

I’m 38 years old, and I’m having a mid-life crisis. Unfortunately, unless we’re using a very, very loose interpretation of “mid-life” (as in, it’s happening at some point between being born and dying), I’m well past the mid-point in my life expectancy. The worst part of always trying to make other people happy is when it doesn’t work, and then both you and that other person are unhappy. I have said ad nauseum that I want to get out of California, because this state is sucking away at whatever happiness I have left. So, it’s time to play with some butterflies, and set some changes in motion that are going to make me a happier person. I’m tired of hiding my unhappiness, and the fact that I’m always in pain, and that I feel like no one cares about me. I know that last part is the depression talking to me, but it’s a very convincing whisper repeated in my brain endlessly. I want to be happy. I’m scared of doing anything that is going to make someone else unhappy, but I can’t keep living that way. From now on,  I promise myself that every choice I make will consider whether I am doing it to make myself happy or to make someone else happy. If the answer is that it only makes the other person happy, it’s just too bad for that person. I need to start focusing on myself. It’s time to write down my list of goals, and get back on track to finding my way back to happiness.

After much consideration…

05 Sep 2012 Leave a comment

by jes in My health Tags:

I have gone ahead and applied for disability. My reasoning is that the worst thing that can happen is that they turn me down. I’m even guessing that that will be the outcome. After all, how debilitating can a headache be? The worst part of it is that no one can comprehend just how much my head hurts. It’s like having a migraine that hasn’t left for over 2 years. Even before it decided to take up permanent residence, it’s been lurking in the background since 2006, when I started getting “migraines” about once or twice a month. That’s over 6 years of constant pain. Constant pain brings on depression. I’m not optimistic about my chances of being approved for disability. I’m being realistic here. Not to bring politics into the discussion, but I really don’t see the government wanting to pay out for a relatively minor ailment (even though the pain is enough to make me black out at times) when there is a huge budget deficit and “real” disabilities.

Invisible disabilities

04 Sep 2012 Leave a comment

by jes in My health Tags: , ,

You know how sometimes when you’re in a parking lot, you see some “jerk” pull into the handicap parking space, hang up their nice blue placard that denotes that they are handicapped and then stroll into the store, seemingly without any type of condition that would constitute a disability? Certain friends of mine gripe about this all the time, and I try to explain to them that not all disabilities are visible.

It’s true, there are probably a good number of people who are working the system and taking advantage of a loophole in the disability system to allow them the up-close parking as well as financial aid if they are unable to work, but many others – myself included – are also disabled, with no outwardly visible signs.

To start, I have extreme arthritis in both my knees, along with bursitis in my right hip, a pinched disc in my lumbar region, and that silly little headache thing. Now, normally, one wouldn’t consider a headache to be a disability, but mine certainly qualifies. If you’ve ever had a migraine, you know the intense pain and suffering it can cause. If you are lucky enough to have never experienced one, ask a friend who has. Once you’ve grasped how much it absolutely sucks, imagine that this headache has been going fairly non-stop for over five years. In the beginning, there were brief lulls where the headache was either completely gone, or low enough that I didn’t feel it at all. As time goes by, it’s getting worse and worse. I’ve reached the point where I can’t look up for more than a few seconds at a time (which kinda sucks when your boyfriend is taller than you and you have to look up to kiss him). Any type of loud noise – especially high pitched sounds like whistling or computer beeping, for example – increase the headache exponentially.

Now of course, you can’t see a headache, or arthritis, or bursitis, so when I complain about being handicapped, I frequently get shot down. I’ve contemplated applying for disability, because my health is dropping so quickly that I don’t honestly know how much longer I’ll be able to work in a productive manner. I don’t want to be a drag on society though, and rely on government handouts, even though I know I’ve been paying into disability for as long as I’ve been working, so it’s really kind of my money anyway. It’s a tough decision, and one I’ve been battling for the past six months or so. At some point, I’m going to have to make up my mind. Is the blow to my pride worth the ability to not end each day in agonizing pain? How much longer do I have before the pain becomes so unbearable that it no longer becomes a choice?