Archive for the ‘Depression’ Category

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I love my therapist.

2011/04/29

So I went out last Friday. Like, OUT out. Out with friends, out to a show, and out some more after that. But I was worried, because I hadn’t been looking forward to it. Not at all. And, while the night turned into something supremely spectacular, I had trouble getting in the groove.

The next day, I was thrashed. Even though my sister was in town for the weekend, even though I’d just had this great night in the city, I couldn’t enjoy myself. I was kind of reminded of that Phish show last winter, where, despite all efforts, worrying about how I wasn’t having a good time totally spoiled my good time.

That Phish show turned out to be kind of a tipping point in my emotional life, and I spent the better part of two months trying to get back on the right side of the tracks. And so I worried – would this be the same? Would this be the beginning of the next slide down?

Then, astonishingly, I got sick. Honest to God, fever and chills, DayQuil-chugging sick.

And I was like, oh, so that was that, then.

My therapist often compares living through depression to being very sick (“sick” in the “traditional” sense, which seems more respectable, somehow), and taking that for what it is. She suggests treating the oncoming clouds as one would the first symptoms of the flu, and knowing, you know, here it comes, it’s gonna suck, but I’ll get through it. The challenge with that, for me, is to stop analyzing my emotions to the point where depression becomes an endgame instead of a passing virus, to where the clouds become fog that settles over my mind for months.

When I mentioned my flat-affected Phish show in session today, my therapist said to me, “If you went to that show with a really bad cold, would you have worried about how you weren’t having a good time? Would you have worried about that, and then thought ‘oh, this is my life, and it’s passing me by’, and ‘I can’t REMEMBER the last time I had fun’ and everything that comes with those types of thoughts?”

And I was like, woman, how are you reading my mind. HOWAREYOUREADINGMYMIND.

“You know, you WOULDN’T.” She said.

I was speechless.

Posted in best week ever, city livin', Depression, hangover heaven, hippie crap, phish | 4 Comments »

FML. Really. No, REALLY really.

2011/03/18

Imagine we’re on Facebook here.

Erinire A…

Just found out she has a health insurance deductible of $4,000. Good thing she’s not at all dependent on weekly therapy and expensive medication to keep her alive!

… Oh, wait.

Well, at least she’s incredibly wealthy, right?

… She’s not? Shit, OK, well…

At least she hasn’t racked up a lot of service charges, thinking she actually had REAL ACTUAL health insurance!

… oh, so you mean, she DID think she actually had real actual health insurance.

Alright… So then, um, at least she has that tax rebate coming back, huh?

Oh, she OWES.

Wait, what? FIVE GRAND? Get out of here, you can’t be serious.

You are serious. OK. Um…

So, then, like…

Yeah hey, know what, I have this, um, thing… around the corner, so… yeah. Gotta go. Sorry. Here’s my last Miller High Life.

… No, no really, take it. Least I can do, considering.

Oh, come on now, don’t start crying! Oh, man…

Shit.

Posted in Depression, insomnia, meds, money, personal hell, therapy, tiniest violin, work, worst week ever | 3 Comments »

Standards of Measurement

2011/03/05

I’ve been driving stick since 2003, when I bought a new Ford Focus with a manual transmission. Ford wanted it off the lot and I wanted a cheap car, so things worked out for everyone until it suddenly fell apart and I sued them. Whatever the case, I’ll never go back to driving automatic again. There’s something so visceral about a stickshift – downshifting into second at 40mph, balancing on an incline in first gear, peeling out at a stop light before the guy to your left even has his foot off the brake – it’s magic, I tell you. Magic.

Most of the time, I feel good about driving stick. Like, it makes me feel like some kind of a talented person. I’ve gotten very adept at parking on the hill outside our apartment, and hill-parking a stick is a skill not everybody has. I drive, and I feel confident. I drive, and I feel in control. I drive, and yes, I feel good about it.

My mood barometer used to swing against whether or not I would sing in my car. I used to decompress during college by taking 12-hour rides through the Adirondacks – I’d start out quiet, contemplative, but by the end I’d be belting out show tunes. If I wasn’t singing by the end of the drive, I knew something was really wrong.

I don’t sing in the car so much anymore, and that’s OK, but the other day I caught myself not feeling proud to be a chick who drives stick. Sure enough, later on that evening I was besieged with raw panic after convincing myself I’d contracted a computer virus while downloading a YouTube video. I mean, this was some crazy shit, right, like, the world stopped making SENSE for about four hours. I slept through nightmares that night, and woke up with a migraine-level tension headache. I went to work, I did what I had to do, but it was like walking through a swamp with lead gloves on.

My new therapist is all into Zen as a means to alleviate this kind of episode. Diaphragmatic breathing and all that. If I tell you I spent 36 hours this week simply focusing on respiration, I would not be lying. If I told you it helped, that might be an exaggeration. In fact, drawing attention to my thoughts only made me realize how circuitous, haphazard, and cacophonous my thoughts really are. So, on some level, it actually made things worse.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. (that’s the Dhammapada, not me.)

Sometime yesterday afternoon, I was finally able to stop thinking. I was able to breathe. And I parked my car on the hill outside our apartment, pulled the e brake, and – almost – smiled. The cloud always lifts. Eventually.

Posted in aberrant behavior, city livin', Depression, life story | 1 Comment »

Barking at shadows

2011/02/15

It’s tough, because I know when things are right and I know when things are wrong. I can feel when things start *thinking* about heading wrong. I can taste it in the wind. I know it before it’s there, like how you can feel a thunderstorm. But I’m helpless.

I didn’t associate it with the Abilify withdrawal, not immediately, and I still don’t know if I do, but there’s an undercurrent of terror that runs through every breath. This faceless, nameless, panic that has no root and has no salve. I remember this, I remember from before, and I’m troubled that it hasn’t gone away. Even after all the changes.

But am getting by it, getting through it, carrying on. You know.

All is well until it isn’t, and, after that, it is again.

Posted in charming neurosis, Depression, meds, personal hell, progress? | 3 Comments »

I can’t figure out how to feel about this.

2011/01/11

“You know this is gonna be pricey, right?” asked the cashier at CVS this evening.

Oh, I knew alright. Last time I filled my Effexor it took an eighty-dollar bite out of my wallet, and this time I was also refilling my Abilify – my only nongeneric. I smiled and nodded, ready for whatever.

“Five hundred and fifteen dollars.” she said.

OK, I wasn’t ready for that.

Needless to say, I did not complete the purchase. I mean, that’s ridiculous. That’s like, half my rent. That’s like, more than I spend on groceries. And, point blank, I don’t HAVE five hundred dollars. Not even close.

So welcome to Crazy again, I guess.

“Buckle your seatbelts, ha ha,” said B!, when I told him the good news. That was going to be the title of this post. Then I remembered how terrible I’m about to feel in about three or four days, and I decided it wasn’t a funny joke.

Posted in Depression, manifesto, meds, money, personal hell | 4 Comments »

Life, certainly, does not imitate art. If you could call it that, which I certainly wouldn’t.

2011/01/09

So I’m reading this book, “The Last Time I Was Me”. It was a Christmas gift from my mom, and chronicles the life of a woman who is plunging headfirst into a nervous breakdown. I mean, it’s nothing if not topical. So she has this public freakout, takes off in her car, and spends the next month or so staying at a bed & breakfast getting shithouse wasted every night until she finally wakes up and realizes there’s more to life than alcohol. She buys a house, buys herself nice shoes, falls in love with her boss, ya da da da. And, I mean, I’m liking reading this book because it’s pretty overtly chick-lit, but I don’t really appreciate the nervous breakdown aspect. I felt the same way about Eat, Pray, Love.

Like, this is all cool, everyone has hard times, everyone has nervous breakdowns, but like, what are the rest of us supposed to take from this story? Just after MY nervous breakdown, I found out the true state of our finances, and let me tell you, there were no pretty shoes in my future. No soul-searching trips to Italy, no sir. In fact, it could be argued that I didn’t even have the funds for community-class yoga at Baptiste. Nope, my breakdown landed with me dead broke, unemployed, conscripted to twice-weekly group therapy sessions and a shrink that couldn’t remember my husband’s name. Where was MY guru, huh, Elizabeth Gilbert?

I’m not saying I had it hard. I know there’s a lot out there that had it worse than me. But let’s hear about some of THOSE stories for a change! REAL stories! I want to read about someone NORMAL who’s struggling with a lifetime of pain and regret – someone who CAN’T run away to France and meet Jean-Pierre the lovelorn painter because she can BARELY MAKE THE MINIMUM PAYMENTS ON HER CREDIT CARD! Give me THOSE stories. Then maybe I’ll feel better.

Posted in cliterari, Depression, money | 3 Comments »

Then and now

2011/01/07

Things I could handle just fine in January 2010:

- being unemployed

- asking my husband for a divorce

- moving in with my parents

- giving up my kitchen

- getting dressed

 

Things I could not handle just fine in January 2011:

- working

- a friendly phone call from said husband

- my apartment

- cooking chicken

- getting dressed

Thank God my shrink OK’ed the restart of Abilify, otherwise I’d probably be cowering half-naked under the bedsheets, spatula in one hand and a cookbook in the other, trying to figure out what to do with that pound and a half of chicken breast in the fridge.

OK, maybe I still don’t know what to do with that pound and a half of chicken breast, but at least I’m not weeping about it.

Posted in cookin', Depression, matrimony, meds, moving home | 1 Comment »

Chemical slave

2011/01/06

And here I am feeling better already. Not like, “ready to go out and throw a birthday party” better, but not “counting the minutes till I can go back to bed” bad, either. I’m somewhere in the lower middle. And for that I am thankful.

I have appointments with three therapists next week, because if this has taught me one thing, it’s that I really ought to have a therapist, and I see my psychopharm, who will generously furnish me with a fresh bottle of Abilify, on Wednesday. If my Effexor is costing $80 to fill, I can only imagine how they’ll screw me on this non-generic. Blue Cross of California, you can go suck a nut.

Cordially,
Erin

 

Posted in Depression, meds | Leave a Comment »

The Crash

2011/01/05

So my taper has not gone well. I stopped my Abilify last Monday, and, after strapping on a happy face for the better part of a week, I finally cracked. I arrived home from work last night in tears, and B!’s concern only served to propel me into hysterics. I pulled off my boots, took two Trazodone, and collapsed, fully clothed, into bed, where I remained for the next fifteen hours.

What happened? Nothing happened. That’s the trouble. It’s just that FEELING, the feeling that makes higher-level thinking an impossibility, the feeling that makes communication obsolete. “What’s wrong?” B! asked, helpless, while he gently rubbed my back. I couldn’t have told him anything, I was crying too hard, but it was everything rolled into one. Every mistake I’d ever made (I’m unemployable), every undone end of my life (I’m a wreck), every extra pound on my body (I’m fat), but most of all it was the fact that, once again, I was in bed sobbing at 7pm, unable to find anything at all worth living for, convinced that the world would be just as good without me in it. I felt like a failure.

Like, I’ve been on here talking about “my recovery” and “my struggle” like it all meant something, like health was some sort of pinnacle I’d reached by sheer force of will. And now to find that 5mg of Abilify was all that separated healthy rational me from unhinged unstable me. It made me feel so weak, so useless, so small. It had nothing to do with me at all, this last year of happiness. It was just the drugs.

I just got off the phone with my shrink, who told me, by all means, go back on the Abilify, so I guess I should be better again in no time. But in the interim, I’m left here with my wandering thoughts, wondering, once again, if all this is worth it, if I’m really that strong. Because I can’t do it again. I just absolutely cannot.

Posted in Depression, meds, money | 2 Comments »

Lifting, lightly.

2011/01/02

I’m happy to report that things are on a upswing, or seem to be, based on my thought patterns over the last day or so. No more death spiral, no more visceral self-loathing, and I even had this feeling yesterday that life was… nice. I spent New Year’s in the company of good friends, spent the next day cooking, baking, and playing Beatles Rock Band start to finish, and I’m taking today to pick up and relax a bit. Or try to. It doesn’t come naturally for me.

The worst thing about my particular brand of mental illness is that these spells just seem to descend out of nowhere, and all of a sudden I’m right back to the week before the Bin, wondering if I have the strength to make it through another moment of such agony. There’s no early warning signs, no blinking yellow light, just zero to pitch-black Crazy in as much time as it takes to fry an egg. I don’t get it, but that’s how it is. And it makes me wonder – is Normal a reprieve from Depressed, or is Depressed a detour on the road to Normal?

I’m just glad to be back in the fresh air, for however long it lasts.

 

Posted in Depression | 1 Comment »

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