Idle hands...

It's odd how days off actually seem to be what kill me a little.

Working thirty-five to forty hours a week exhausts me on every level, but conversely it gives me a reason to get out of bed in the morning, shower, dress nicely, and generally pull myself together. I've lately had a bad habit (tongue in cheek on that 'habit' part) of dissociating somewhat throughout the work day... I'm the dead-end job zombie on so many levels. Is it better to go through a series of depersonalized days, but to get through them nonetheless, or to be like I was in DC and fall apart all the time at work? I'm starting to think the reason I never was promoted to a trainer position was that they couldn't trust my emotional stability... God knows how many times they had to send me home because I couldn't stop sobbing.

When I've got a day off, though, it tends to be bad news. Work keeps me busy, work keeps me distracted. More importantly perhaps, it keeps me talking to people and smiling a lot (even if the smiles are fake - fake it 'til you make it?). Days like today, I'm bogged down with household chores and domestic errands, like three hours at the DMV and hundred-dollar grocery trips. By the end of a 'day off' I'm more tired and emotional than a work day. More prone to sobbing and manic cleaning sprees as a method to hopefully ward off self-injury.

I play with my keettens and try to channel the emotional tension/energy into art projects, but more often than not I get frustrated with the whole affair and stare hopelessly at a blank page for hours. I try to read, but internal chaos can be unbelievably distracting. It's like being on a poorly fitting medication; the words jump on the page, lines blur and buzz, my eyes read and reread and generally can't stay focused for sh-t.

Being alone while Crystal's at work is especially bad. I talk to myself, I talk to myselves, I talk to the kittens, I talk to the walls. I fall silent when I feel especially crazy. The silence hems me in and makes me feel crazier. I turn on the TV for company and get angry at the characters for always saying the same things, never varying, never wavering or blinking if I scream at them. (Film characters are quite pretentious that way, it seems. Worst of all, if you watch the same movie twice, you'll notice no one ever does anything new, not so much as a sigh or a sneeze. ) So I turn off the TV and am again stuck with that god-awful silence....

Come August first my new insurance kicks in. God help the man who stands in the way of me and a psychiatrist... First thing I'm going to do is get on some meds.

Don't get me wrong, I still think medication tends to be overprescribed. From what I've seen, too many people are on it who don't need it, and the stigma surrounding medication because of that means that too many people who legitimately need it are afraid to take it. Our system is completely f-kd up. I want to slap every media guru who's referenced happy pills and made derogatory comments about crazy people, therapists, Freudian psychology, psych meds, and on and on and on. All this stigma and negative stereotyping doesn't make our lives any easier. It's hard enough to get onto medication because of personal fears; external derision helps nothing.

....Can you tell I'm a little out of focus tonight?

That's why I need medication... To calm the racing thoughts just a little, temper the moods, ease the rumination, soothe the reason-less hurt. Medication really does exist for a REASON. It really is meant to help, not stupefy or control or drug you happy. It doesn't work that way, for one thing. Medication isn't going to cure me in the slightest. It's just going to help calm me enough that I'll be able to get a more solid start on recovery.

The allure of the crazy

We're getting down to the wire on moving day. Eek! Packing, moving, planning for moving, and of course working around moving are all busily taking up my time and thoughts. I've taken several days off this week, for which I feel rather guilty, but at the same time recognize as a necessity. I've needed the time to pack and get done other things which I've been putting off (for instance, going to get our car registered. Which I'm supposed to be doing now...).

My mental health status or lackthereof hasn't been helping in this whole process. Possibly the difficulties are being caused by the extreme stress of relocating coupled with the stress of Crystal narrowing things down in the job hunt. More probably it's related to that and other life factors like a lack of badly needed medication, unstable therapy situation, and family stressors. I've been trying to spend as much time as possible outside since even though I was never diagnosed as Seasonal Affective and don't really believe I am, I HAVE noticed an undeniable improvement in my mood and mentality when I spend lots of time in the sun. (Similarly, my moods start to decline most sharply when the sun goes down or a storm comes in.) Nonetheless, things have still sucked a lot.

The breakdown I mentioned in the last entry has been the worst of the 'episodes', at least. I also choose not to write about it, just leave it at 'bad'... It involved me raging in a way quite uncharacteristic and taking out a lot of the distressed agression on those closest to me and most undeserving. Crystal and I agreed that the file is going to be sealed and I think that it's absolutely the best decision. Or maybe I just want to save face.

Every night has held with it some mini bout of shoe-staring. Last night I about lost it because Crystal and I were in bed snuggling, the covers got messed up, and she wouldn't let me fix them (as a way to try to help me through some of the more dominant compulsions I face). Instead of achieving the hoped for result of me realizing that rumpled covers really were not that big a deal and would not ruin my life it sent me into some mild hysterics. More than once Crystal's had to drive back to work after dropping me off because I couldn't function on my break because of anxiety and depression.

My thoughts have lately focused a good bit on trying to understand the somehow 'romantic' lure of mental illness. Why my brain reasons that crazy people are more interesting, more likeable than normals even though I've got personal and objective reason to contradict that... Mental illness is boring. Shoe staring is boring. Breakdowns and neurotic fits are frustrating and hard to deal with; they don't make you a more interesting, alluring, mysterious person. They make those near you pull their hair out and wish to be less in love so they could just walk away and leave you to sort it out on your own. Starvation turns you into something ugly and inhuman, not enviable and elegant. I've never been able to understand why the starved brain thinks its body graceful when it's anything but. What's the appeal of bruised everything and fainting spells? What is it about mental illness that I'm so afraid to lose?

There's a big difference between eccentricities and neuroses. Eccentric, yes, maybe can be alluring. But hell, I've got eccentric in lethally excessive doses. What I've got is more along the wide-eyed, silent, slack-jawed, back-away-slowly-from-the-crazy-lady lines. I've met eccentric people, I've met people way more unballanced than I with bents toward the psychotic and hallucinatory. I fall somewhere in the middle, I guess, possibly a little closer toward the extreme end. Doesn't mean I haven't still had awful days, the days where you don't shower for weeks on end, can't remember how to dress yourself properly, can't manage the bare minimum required for human communication. (You know, the days where people stare because you break down crying when trying to order your Starbucks. That sort of thing.) ...Or, as evidenced by this post, can't manage the linear thought necessary for blogging.

Why does this somehow feel desirable to me? When in the midst of it, it's hell. I know this. I can't trust my mind to be logical, I can't trust my senses to give me honest assessments instead of deceptions. And yet, somehow, there's still some element that feels like a game. Like it's not an illness to be cured but a...something, to be conquered and tamed and used. This crazyness, for all its torture and isolation and inescapability, is more familiar to me than anything close to 'health' and 'normalcy'.

I've somehow got these wild ideas that 'health' will turn my crazy manic thinking sprees into a brown and grey Kamazots world. That I'll lose the multi-colored Dr Seuss-ness to utilitarianism. That to be able to trust what my senses tell me about the world will mean that I get really boring reviews. It's that fear that medication will cause me to be numbed instead of better.

NONE OF THIS MAKES ANY SENSE.

I've got enough logic left to know this. I know that when I'm healthier my emotions are slightly more tamed, I'm able to have friends, communicate with people, hold a job successfully, and even work toward a better place in therapy instead of just struggling with damage control. I know that medication does not numb me out but does make things like rumpled covers less catastrophic, decisions like which movie to rent manageable and not life-altering. Medication makes my laugh easier and my tears have reason before flowing.

So then of course, the big question is: if I know all this, why am I still so afraid?

No. No, it really makes no sense. Don't try to understand.

Oh sigh. I've had two full days completley at my disposal, no requirements, all the time in the world to update, and I've had absolutely no energy or mental willpower. Hell, I haven't even done much cleaning to speak of, and that's normally my first objective for every free day on the schedule. I don't know what's to fault for this lethargy and, unfortunately, attempts to force myself out of it have thus far failed.

I wanted to put a clip from last night's South Park in here but unfortunately the Internet Police have really cracked down on pirated copyright material, quite significantly spoiling all my fun. For the run down, last night Cartman was his usual little bastardly self and through a complicated run of events got Butters' parents convinced he was gay. And he got sent to de-gayification camp. And it was awesome. Tag line for the camp? 'You can pray the gay away!'

Every couple minutes at gay camp you'd hear a gunshot as another camper killed himself.

I love it when South Park gets bitchy and preachy.

...I've been a real snark today, I'm sorry. I don't know what it is or where it's come from anymore than I can put a tag on this laziness. Probably the two are related as whenever I feel unproductive it leads to feelings of worthlessness which in turn make me rude and cat scratchy toward all near me.

There are many things happening around the homestead which are relevant toward my blog theme and which I'd like to discuss but wouldn't be fair to the members of the household to do so. The old personal space line must be respected inasmuch as I'd go apeshit for someone to write such things about me.

Have I mentioned lately that I can't maintain a train of thought long enough to finish a sentence today...

GOD.

This is the best I can squeeze out. My brain hurts. I need to make dinner because I'm losing weight again even though I don't mean to. But perhaps I do on some level. That's the gnarly thing about recovery; I feel ugly and skinny but ugly and fat at the same time. I'm hungry and food porn a lot these days but the thought of eating makes me nauseous. I'm indecisive about any and all food-related decisions. Food, food, food, godamn food.

I'm constantly stressing about cars, medication, psychiatric treatment, taxes, cars, finances, cars, food, work, writing, everything. Maybe the external lethargy is a Girl, Interrupted type example of velocity vs. viscosity... I need to be back on the mood stabilizers I hate so much and can't afford, anyway. Maybe I need to try a different prescription.

MANIA CAN ANYONE SAY MANIC EPISODE I'M LOSING IIITTTTT.

In other news, Siri! I got your package and I loved it. Listened to the CD first thing and it was awesome. I'll make you a mix and write you a letter the moment my thoughts can slow to match the speed of my handwriting.