To expound upon earlier thoughts...verbosely.

Ex post facto, as is so often the case, I'm thinking yesterday's post may have been made a bit rashly. By which of course I mean that yesterday I was basically freaking the f-k out and somehow had the misfortune of getting my fingers onto a keyboard, thereby spilling a noxious pile of disjointed, jumbled, frenetic words. Contrary to popular belief the best writing is made with a level head, not one stressed and emotionally charged.

My initial shock at the Drs' assessment of my case is still pretty much the same as ever. I still fail to understand how I need inpatient care; to some extent, I'm still questioning whether or not my level of health or illness requires something so extreme as intensive outpatient. Okay, that's a bit of a lie: I know I could do with some outpatient treatment. But inpatient still does seem over the top.

However, since yesterday's phone call with Drs Roberts and ...a woman whose name I forgot... the general consensus among friends and relations seems to be that inpatient care might not be such a bad thing for me.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this.

For the reasons I listed yesterday, I still believe myself to be in a fairly healthy place. Particularly when I compare myself today to myself two years ago (or even one year ago), today's self looks a world healthier than I was previously. Water and hundred calorie fasts are no longer a routine thing for me. For that matter, I haven't intentionally fasted in quite some time. My periods are regular, my fatigue has lessened; although labs haven't been run for me in well over a year my body feels like everything is working well. When I eat, I don't do well making sure my meals are healthy and ballanced and supplying all necessary nutrition, but neither are they comprised solely of high fiber vegetables and...more vegetables.

My question about what health should look like that proves I'm so far from it still stands. I'm beginning to ask myself if the main reason I think I'm healthy is that I'm comparing myself to a prior, sicker version of myself - not to a normal, healthy standard of existence. Granted, I'm much healthier than I used to be. My life is not in immediate danger from any starvation consequences. But does that mean that I'm to the standard of health that is the goal of recovery? If not, how far away am I really?

Following are my principal objections to the partial hospitalization program:

-FINANCES. Call me a jew if you will, but worries about finances are still the number one concern about this program.
-->Aside from the fact that the program itself will likely cost far more than EIOP, it will be an eleven hour a day, seven day a week commitment. This, simply and unavoidably, will not allow for me to work. Even if I were able to get my work to allow me to come in at 8 each night to help close, that would leave me with a potential for six hours sleep per night. Therapy is hard work in and of itself, even a one or two hour session once a week. Realistically, there is no way I'd be able to go from eleven hours of therapy to four hours of work to six hours of sleep to start over again.
-->Crystal and I work hard to meet the bills each month as it is. She's going to have a much tougher course load this semester, meaning she'll have to work less. If I'm completely out of work (or even on a greatly diminished schedule) there is no way we'd be able to make ends meet. (Although, as Crystal pointed out, our food budget will go down since the center'd be feeding me five times a day. Somehow this seems ironic.)

-Triggers. This may seem silly at first glance, but think about it this way... It's been a long time since I was fully immersed in my disorder, seeking out thin pics, thinking about eating and not eating constantly, obsessing about the possibility of breathing in calories or the calories contained in chapstick.
-->Visually, I'm afraid that being in an inpatient facility would present me with a whole lot of girls who are seriously ill. I'm not to a place yet where this seems unattractive to me - contrarily, it'd definitely make me extremely jealous.
-->Verbally, I know that many girls get some of their best tricks from staying inpatient for a while. I know that this does depend some on 'you get out what you put in', but that doesn't mean there won't be tons of conversation about how to tongue pills or wipe butter off on your slacks or slip food into sleeves/purse/shoes. Even if I'm seriously trying not to pay attention to this, it is probably going to be triggering to be surrounded by it.
-->PHP feels to me like I'd be re-devoting my life to my eating disorder. Crystal says this is stupid and she's probably right, but... Like I said, it's been a long time since I was thinking ED thoughts every second of the day and to jump into such a rigid, complete schedule of treatment feels like I'd be backsliding. Crystal pointed out that it'd be devoting twenty-four hours of my day to recovery thoughts, not anorexic ones, but in my head it doesn't feel that way.

-Perhaps most stupid of all my concerns, I'm terrified to go into the PHP program because I feel like I'd have absolutely no control over...anything. Myself, my time, my recovery. (When I told this to Crystal she shrieked, "EXACTLY!!!" But.. Meh.) I suppose some part of me feels like recovery is a way to teach me self control in a healthy way, and therefore I want to retain control over the recovery process. I feel like I'd be okay with three days a week because then most of my time would still be my own, like I'd have certain time devoted to therapy and the rest of the time devoted to whatever else I felt needed to be done.

Even the times I have been inpatient before, I never relinquished control. Granted, I was in a really worthless facility, but while inpatient I found ways to skip meals, self-injure, avoid any participation in group activities; hell, when I was finally fed up with inpatient I found a way to lie so completely and extensively that I got them to release me long before they should have.

I feel as though, historically speaking, every time I've let go and done as I was told by people who cared about me, it only made things worse. Why should I give up my life to total strangers?

Sigh.

So there's where things stand. I suppose nothing will really be known for certain until I talk to them again and then set up the actual intake exam. I'll be sure to keep you all posted.

Does... not... compute...

As I mentioned recently, I've gotten to a place that I'm seriously pursuing recovery. For myself, no one else, I want to be healthy and experience what life healthy looks like. To this end, I did some research into area treatment centers and finally contacted the Eating Disorders Center at Denver, since its programs seemed to offer best what I was looking for. Yesterday, I got my first call back from them. I spoke with one of the doctors over the phone, doing a basic clinical assessment thingy, then discussing the extended intensive outpatient program they offer.

My biggest concern was that they'd say I was too healthy for the program and should probably look into just weekly outpatient therapy or perhaps some of the group programs. After all, I've been maintaining pretty well, I eat on a daily basis, I don't really count calories at all anymore, and on and on and on. From my perspective (and historically speaking, given my case), I feel like I'm pretty much recovered. I just need help to get there all the way.

About an hour ago I had another call from them, this time a conference call between the assessment clinician and the EIOP program head. My initial response was a sinking, oh crap, feeling. They said they'd been discussing my case and given what Dr. Roberts and I had talked about yesterday, they didn't feel the EIOP program is going to be appropriate for me. Damnit. I knew that was going to happen. Crap.

What I didn't in a thousand years see coming was that they said the EIOP won't be enough for me.

They think I need to do the partial hospitalization program. Sdsogiherh?? Geh?? The program is seven days a week, eleven hours a day. I'm not sure how many weeks long it is.

How the hell do they think I need that level of care? Crystal agrees. Wtf?? I can't even get this to enter my schema. I really, honestly, truly, cannot understand what they are saying. I was sure I'd get turned away for being too healthy, not get told I needed partial inpatient!

Reasons I think I'm healthy:
-I've got a good fifteen, twenty pounds on my low weight. I've been maintaining this pretty well for the last year or so.
-I eat every day, usually twice, sometimes with a snack. When I'm hungry, I detect that, respond to it, and don't ignore it.
-I drink regular soda now. I drink 2% milk. I even eat red meat again! I eat butter, cheese, pasta, all those horrible horrible evils I wouldn't allow to enter my lips.
-I've even eaten McDonald's more than once in the past year. For the longest time I wouldn't even set foot on the premises of a McD's for fear that I'd somehow breathe in the calories. And now I've eaten it! Willingly!
-I eat Chipotle. On a regular basis. (And I always get extra sour cream on my burrito, and I like it!)
-I don't visit pro-ana trigger sites nearly as frequently as I used to. I'm no longer a member of the ana elitist comms. I'm not a member of any pro-ED comms, for that matter.
-Did I mention I eat pasta? And cheesecake? And butter? And that I can enjoy them?
-And that I don't calorie count? (Usually..)

What is health supposed to look like that I'm so far from it? I haven't been amennhorhaeic in a good year and a half, and even then my menses were only irregular, even when I was clinically emaciated. I don't exercise obsessively, I don't purge, I don't abuse laxatives anymore, I eat salad dressing... I cannot understand this. I seriously cannot get it to enter my head. I can't wrap my mind around it.

Am I really still so crazy?

Aside from that whole level of cognitive dissonance, let's just stop to look at some logistics right now.

HOW THE HELL AM I GOING TO AFFORD A PARTIAL HOSPITALIZATION PROGRAM.

I've talked to my family and my dad has said he will help pay for the EIOP, which is incredible and the only way I'd be able to afford to do that in the first place. And with that, I'd still be working full-time so that I could afford rent and loans and bills and crap. I wouldn't be able to work if I was in the hospital eleven hours a day! And I wouldn't be able to afford to live if I wasn't working!

I'm really in an effing pickle here, bitches. First, do I really need this? And second, if I do, how the hell can I pull it off?!?

Options

The reason for the persistent lack of blogging boils down to my freaking depression. To put it simply. Lately especially I've felt like a completely boring person whose words are all mundane, trite, repetitive, and generally not worth reading. This sort of sentiment plays very badly into the inspiring-Tina-to-write-ness.

I've thought, perhaps I should write about the medication situation. Perhaps I should blog about my frustration with the search for a therapist. Maybe about my worries for my little brother's mental health needs. Maybe about the flash in the pan interests I get every so often (see currently: transgender rights and queer theory). Certainly all of these could be turned into interesting topics. I could write about my 'plans' to tour Europe, or my literary ambitions, or even the obsessive knitting I've been doing lately. I could talk about new people at work and the latest restaurant drama/gossip. My life isn't boring.

The problem is that depression warps the most exciting events until they feel totally lifeless and dull. I'm in one of those episodes where on many occasions I feel nearly catatonic.

It doesn't help that when depressed I obsess over all the minor details in everything. Pertinent to this blog would be the way in which I analyze each entry and come to the conclusion that this blog has lost any sense of direction and is possibly beyond repair. I further pursue this train of thought to examine whether I should redirect it toward eating disorder related topics and current events which relate to the subject, or narrow it into a recovery journal encompassing any of the many things from which I'm trying to recover. Then I worry this would result in a journal blog, and I decide that I've had far, far too many of those since I first discovered the internet.

For now, I'm thinking the best decision might be to allow the blog to continue without a precise goal and hope that something congeals in time.

Shifting topics back to more recently visited waters, I'd like now to discuss the Abilify situation. To put it bluntly, I've stopped taking it. While on it I noticed absolutely no benefit; in fact, it seemed to be giving me more of an opposite effect. While I've not been suicidal in quite some time, while on Abilify my feelings of hopelessness increased significantly. I'm not sure if Abilify has any sort of extended release, but around six to nine hours after taking it I invariably experienced a major mood crash which left me surly and miserably depressed without any apparent triggers. The final kicker was that around the start of week three I started getting major nightmares which pretty much zapped my sleep of any value. I got some pretty ridiculous nightmares on Zoloft, and these reminded me a lot of them. (The fact that I almost never get nightmares normally but was experiencing them even during brief naps on Abilify was an indicator to me that the medication was causing them.)

So that's that.

I see the psychiatrist again on the 25th and am staking quite a few of my hopes on the appointment. Granted, I'm under no delusions thinking a trip to the doctor will cure everything ba-boom! but I'd still like to hope maybe some sort of progress will be made. The last time I saw her (and also the first time I met with this one, actually) we discussed the various medications I've been on and she basically said we may want to try trycyclics or even MAOIs if we can't find an effective alternative. MAOIs scare the crap out of me and, as such, I'm only going to try them if all other options have been exhausted... But honestly, to be reminded that there are still so many options yet untried is really encouraging to me. Watching so many SSRIs get scratched off the 'possibles' list is more of a depressant than whatever is causing the depression to begin with. Lol.

...I'm tired. I shouldn't blog tired. It makes me say inane things like 'lol'.

I'll end here, I suppose. Sleeeep. It sounds so nice.

So where do we go from here?

The more I've been thinking about it, the more I've come to the conclusion that it might be best for me to answer some common misconceptions about DID. It feels lame, but there ya go. It's sometimes hard to realize that most people really don't have a clue about what DID is, and those who do probably don't understand it at all beyond a confused sort of basic concept. I hate Q&As, though, so I'm going to kind of do this as a cohesive entry, just sort of answering unasked questions.

I'm not demon possessed. For one thing, my alters aren't tormentors - at least, no more than any people can be when they feel like being irritating, and that's only some of the time. They don't suggest that I do things, they don't make me miserable, they don't urge me to behave badly or whatever. One important thing to note, too, is that I don't perceive my alters as coming from somewhere else, some outside source - they're as much a part of my body and mind as I am, and have been for pretty much as long as I can remember. For me, being alone in my head, having only one set of thoughts, is as weird a concept as the idea of having more than one person is to you.

Also, to say that DID is a therapy-induced phenomena is just bullshit. Pardon my French, but there it is. If nothing else, I've known about my alters long before I had a term for what they were called, years and years before I ever started therapy or took a psychology course or in any way knew what DID even was. The best way I've thought to describe it is that when I talk to myself, my selves talk back. It's always been that way. I don't even have to be a part of the conversation; there have always been other people there chatting away. (Yes. It can be extremely distracting.) I guess it's like being in a chat room, to a certain extent.

I first remember being distinctly aware of alters when I was about thirteen. Still though, as with most people with DID, thirteen is about when I first start having any memories of my childhood... I know that the whole reason I started keeping a daily journal when I was eleven was because I was so freaked out that I often couldn't remember what had happened to me the day before. (This is called dissociative amnesia - the reason I don't have memories of some things is that other alters were 'fronting' and therefore are the ones who experienced the events. Those times when I've been blanked out and unaware of what was going on because someone else was fronting are called dissociative fugues.) It's incredibly interesting to look over some of my earliest journals, especially... There are several very distinct handwriting patterns, one for each person who was writing. We're not even all right-handed.

Contrary to media portrayals, very few multiples have just two personalities. I certainly don't. If you want to get technical and statistical, the average number you'll see in most authoritative sources is actually sixteen alters; or seventeen people, altogether. The main person is usually called the 'host'. We have all agreed that every single one of us HATES that term. It makes it sound like we're freaking parasites or something, perpetuating that idea that DID is demon possession. We've had a hard time thinking of some better term, though. We tossed around the idea of saying the 'original' for a while, but that's not accurate, either... Often the person who is out most in adult life was NOT the original person. We've loosely decided to call Tina the front-runner, but Crystal doesn't like that term and not everyone agrees... For lack of a better one, it works.

Everybody has a name. Probably you'll know most, maybe all of them, eventually... Some of us are really shy. Most are younger than Tina, a couple are older, a couple are the same age. Some get older as the body does, some don't; some have ages that fluctuate depending on the day and how they're feeling. Everybody picked their own names, but we kinda more just felt like they were supposed to be our names... They were just the names that felt most right. They fit best.

The alters DON'T all have specific 'jobs'. Nobody's specifically the angry alter, the sad alter, the dangerous alter, the sex alter. Yes, some could sort of be classed into things... But no more than you, based on your personality, could be classified an angry person or a happy person or a playful person. You're not always happy all the time and it isn't your JOB to be happy. Make sense?

Sometimes, when the system is having a really really hard time functioning because of depression or whatever, we do have specific alters with specific tasks. They come and go, though, and don't have names. They're not full-fledged people, just jobs. That's all they exist for - somebody to make sure the laundry gets done or the bills get paid or whatever, like robots. They're called fragments, or splinter personalities: we just call them frags. Like I said, though, they don't always exist. In an ideal world, we're able to function well enough that we can be responsible for our own things. When times get really tough, though, they are certainly helpful. Wouldn't everybody like a robot who always made sure the dishes got done? :-P

The reason DID is still a disorder is that it can be pretty damned hard to get everyone to cooperate and function well together. You've seen reality TV shows, where a bunch of people get tossed into a house, told to live together, share common goals, whatever... Imagine they were all tossed into the same body. And that they all had some sort of psychological disorder before that happened.

In particular, DID can be dangerous when one or more alters are suicidal. One of ours in particular has had lots of serious bouts of suicidality. She understands that killing herself kills everybody, but when she is really depressed she tends to be convinced that it would be something of a mercy killing. That even though not all the alters want to die, they'd still be better off in the long run if they did. Similarly, when one of the non-recovery oriented anorexic alters wants to fast, or an alter wants to cut, or one of the young ones gets frightened and hides somewhere without warning, that can put everyone in jeopardy.

Some people believe the goal of therapy should be integration; all alters merging into one cohesive person. We solidly disagree. To us, that feels like murder. A lot of multiples feel that way about integration... Why sacrifice the lives of beautiful and unique people because some cultural idea of normal says there should only be one mind in one brain? Having more than one person in a body is not necessarily harmful. Often, it can be beneficial. Our goal in therapy is to have a working, cooperating sort of family system.

I think that's about all for now? It seems like we're running out of things to say, so I guess it'll have to do. If you haven't yet, I encourage you to look at some of the links we posted... They really are good. The Significant Other's Guide is helpful for anyone who knows an alter, not just SOs.

Status overview

Well, at long last, we have internet in the apartment. Hooray! Commence celebrating!

Essentially what happened is that the modem arrived Monday but, when we tried to set it up, it quickly became apparent that the little plastic bundle of wires and microchips was completely worthless. (When all lights stand solid red it's never a good sign.) I called Qwest and scheduled for a technician to come over today, on the first day off I've had in a week. Quickly, painlessly, in the course of half an hour, a new modem was slipped in and set up and now all is well.

Otherwise, there's little to report from Colorado. I've been working close to constantly and fighting off a cold/sinus infection/thing with about as much of a respite. Today being the first day I've had off since last Saturday, I plan on parking my ass on the couch with South Park, movies, what-have-you, trying to find something to eat in the bare-bones kitchen, and otherwise resting and allowing my respiratory system to heal. Ideally I should be picking up shifts and trying to bulk up my hours and income, but at the moment I think healing needs to take priority to allow for the rest.

Money, money, money. Cursed money. It feels as though we live in a perpetually broke state of existence though, in reality, it's probably not as bad as it seems. Granted, things are tight. Nevertheless, we are meeting our bills, paying for our groceries, and even affording some nice perk now and then (see also: internet access). Funds will undoubtedly be getting tighter as we come upon the hurdles of Crystal's books for the semester and the newly acquired doctor's bills...

I saw a doctor last week and now have prescriptions for both Effexor and Welbutrin. Started on the Effexor starter pack several days ago - as such, have yet to see any effects or benefits, really. Plan on starting the Wellbutrin after reaching a maintenance dosage for the Effexor so as to pre-empt any conflict between the two while upping the levels. I figure that if there will be negative side effects from one or both, it'd be best to watch them one at a time so I know which medication is causing the detriment.

In addition to the prescriptions, I got a couple of referrals. I suppose I'll be honest about what the one is for: my breasts have lumps.

Dr. Schimke gave me a referral for a women's health clinic to do an ultrasound... There's a large one in the left breast which I noticed about a month ago, and a smaller one in the right, about the size of a marble. They vary in size depending on the day (and, I'm guessing, my cycle) and are also very tender - the doctor thinks they are cystic. Still, though, she's referred me out to a specialist to have them checked out and make sure there's nothing seriously wrong. I'm trying not to grow alarmed. As she said, I'm twenty years old, relatively healthy, there's not a history of breast cancer in my family... Everything ought to be fine... The appointment is September 4th, and I'll let you know as soon as I know anything else.

I'll also update you on the therapist situation as soon as I've met with her... When I called Aurora Mental Health, they told me it would likely be forty-five to sixty days before I received a call back to schedule an intake. Instead, they called me two days later. I've got an intake scheduled on September 5th. I'm rather apprehensive about it, as the therapist they've got me slated to see doesn't have the specialties I'm looking for, exactly. She's experienced in trauma and dissociative disorders but not eating disorders... Still, though, she's been in practice for many many years so I'm sure she's come across them before. Her main areas of expertise are couples counseling and drug/alcohol addiction - I'm really not sure how d.ds and trauma counseling fit in there. We'll see.

With that little overview complete, I'm off to rest more and read more. I finally finished Atlas Shrugged last week and started on Les Miserables. I'm already three hundred pages in to the unabridged version, surprising no one more than myself. Who would have thought I'd charge through Les Mis with such voracity? It's comforting at least to read great works when I'm out of school... I feel less lazy and ignorant.

I wish all of you the best as you start back in to school for the fall. Remember to take care of yourselves in the midst of the chaos.

Reflections on self-injury

Sigh... After an eight AM meeting, I opened this morning... And now, coming on briefly after I got off, Crystal closes tonight. So no baby all day. Makes me sad.

Feelings of instability have increased markedly lately. My feelings about eating (if not quite my habits themselves) have begun to improve, but the depression and anxiety hang around as they always have. It's been about four or five months since I last cut and the urges are strong again. They never really go away.

I don't talk about my cutting much. I guess that it's something which feels like it's always been with me and still feels more like a friend and companion than a bad coping mechanism or dangerous, destructive habit. It's one of those things which therapy has yet to talk me out of. So far most, if not all, of my previous therapists have wanted me to go to an inpatient facility to tackle the issue.

I've always argued around aggressive treatment/inpatient as primarily a matter of affordability (after all, right now I can't even afford therapy in and of itself) and secondarily as a Not Really Major Issue. Somehow the infrequency of my indulgence makes me think it's less of a problem. (Isn't it?) Things have never been so bad that I'd cut multiple times a day (well, not usually) and as a general course have been once every few weeks at most. Over the past year and a half or so, once every few months. That's not a big deal. Right?

Of course... There is the porning. Like I used to food-porn with anorexia, I cut-porn now. Most recently, the scenes in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with Professor Umbridge's wicked little quill have provided both a trigger and feelings of satisfaction, at least to some degree. The internet teems with triggers and 'porn'. The imagination fills in where my physical actions continue to refrain. While physically I may not have cut for months, I guess you could say I'm a total porn addict. A few times a day, maybe. Constant daydreaming, sometimes.

Here's the thing, though. Technically, I'm not harming anyone by this. Beyond that, I'm not sure how to stop it. Beyond that, I'm definitely not sure I WANT to stop.

I never 'gave up' cutting as a personal resolution or a decision to recover, heal, overcome. I never have wanted to stop. (This was another reason I argued against inpatient: most places, unless you're a serious medical harm to yourself/others, require that you sign a contract certifying you're entering the program of your own initiative and with a strong desire to recover.) I suppose it's a sign that my thoughts in this area are still ruefully unhealthy or something, but no one's ever managed to convince me either of how cutting hurts me or how I'd be better off without it.

The reasons I've physically stopped are simple: other people. Namely, Crystal, my little brother, and total strangers who see my body and look horrified. Were I completely alone and able to ignore others better, I'd probably continue to self-injure on a weekly or daily basis.

I don't know how to deal with the sense of loss. I don't know how to cope with the feelings of self-hatred, anxiety, loneliness, emptiness, self-loathing, inadequacy, helplessness, mania - even just boredom. These are all some of the things which drive me to self-injury, physical or imaginary. When I'm not self-injuring regularly I feel a loss of identity and a lack of completion. Something is MISSING. I grieve for it in a way usually reserved for close loved ones. In the same way that I get confused about who I am if not an anorectic, I don't know who I am if not a cutter. (God, how BDSM does that sound?)

There's a hotline that I've often been referred to and never called - 1-800-DONT-CUT. It's supposed to be really good; I've read much of the book written by the people who started the line and they actually run the only inpatient program I've so much as considered for self-injury. (The reason I've never called is that when I'm to the point that I want to actually self-harm, I don't want anyone to talk me out of it, deter me, or break my mood.) Lately I've been wanting to call them just to talk about this in lieu of a therapist: how do I face the sense of emptiness that comes without cutting?

I wonder a lot if this is a normal feeling. More and more the Powers That Be are looking down on calling self-injury an addiction, opting instead for a more learned behavior, benefits/rewards approach, but I still feel like 'addiction' may be the best term. After all, don't recovering alcoholics, smokers, drug addicts reference this feeling of confusion, lack of direction, etc? (Hell, isn't that part of what AA and its higher power teaching is about? Just redirect that passion!) I don't know. It's one of those areas that I'm left aware both of my personal lack of knowledge and the communal lack of understanding in this area.

Therapists have given me dozens of worksheets and thought pattern charts and you-name-its to fill in, to understand the thoughts and emotions that drive my urge to self-injure. These charts often backfire and, instead of helping me to break it down and understand my feelings, lead me to think that I'm either too damn crazy for a chart or just plain have a glitch in the system. I've got so many filled out charts with reasons ranging from the classic 'anger at' whomever to things the docs can't understand (or accept as truthful) like boredom, feeling 'too' happy, feeling distractible, and missing someone.

Several docs have been adamant that all my urges are simple: anger turned inward. ...even though anger is rarely a motivating feeling.

Several tell me it's frustrated sexual energy, or sexual fear, or sexual something. (Freud is aliiiive!)

Others still insist I just want attention. (After all, I gave up a long time ago on trying to hide all the damn scars where most cutters will still opt for long sleeves no matter the weather.)

In the end, I often have to wonder if anyone truly has a solid understanding of self-injury, its triggers and motivators. Maybe that's why it's so hard to want to give up: if no one can help me understand what it is and how it works in the first place, how can they convince me it's an altogether 'bad' thing?

------

In other news, August 1st my new insurance kicks in. I stopped seeing Shelley about a month ago and have been (again) out of therapy since then. I've been unmedicated since February due to the whole insurance cut-off fiasco. All improvement, stagnation, or backsliding has been the result of lack of any sort of treatment whatsoever beyond the self-nurture I've learned to give myself.

I have the number for another therapist with whom I'm supposed to call and set up an intake... She has a lot of extensive, varied experience and works with an organization which seems to have really good policies toward medication... So I guess that once August rolls around we'll see what's what with that.

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?

A Bizarre Turn of Events

After a few hours thought and cross-referencing, I've decided that this is indeed legitimate and, as such, warrants an entry. On first encountering this bit of celeb gossip on a friend's livejournal page I really didn't believe this thing was true. It's just so out there, so ridiculous and offensive and insane that I didn't think it could possibly be anything but spiteful, manufactured, grab-for-attention rumours.

And then... I found it referenced on MSNBC. Gossip rags and celeb tabloids I can overlook. MSNBC on the other hand is a pretty reliable source.

Apparently, Ms Nicole Richie threw a Memorial Day party over the weekend. Her e-mail invite to friends somehow got leaked to the press and is now causing a big stir... Reason being?

My fellow Americans its that time of year
To celebrate our country by drinking massive amounts of beer
Let's stand together as one, live the American dream
Take shots, pass out, & wake up with our pants ripped open at the seems
Let's glorify this day in your sluttiest tops and your tightest pair of tsubi jeans
Even though we have no f----g clue what Memorial Day really means!!

There will be a scale at the front door. No girls over 100 pounds allowed in. Start starving yourself now. See you all then!!!

Can you see why I thought this fake?

Part of the reason I've hesitated so many hours before writing this is that I have no idea how to respond to it. It's just so bizarrely over-the-top offensive. Just... Damn. Her rep (and she herself, in interviews) claims it was a joke, that she's 'not a serious person' and people shouldn't take her as such. At the same time, her friend Mischa Barton collapsed at the party and had to be hospitalized (apparently from a bad mix of antibiotics and too much liquor...? That's what they're claiming, anyway). A psychologist from one of the tabloids theorized it's her way of acting out; a big giant f you! to recovery.

This whole thing just sickens me. How to respond to something so obscene? Nicole Richie is to recovery what Mel Gibson is to racial tolerance, it would seem.... God. Maybe after I've slept on this I'll have something more helpful to say but right now I'm left looking for answers as much as the next person.

Thoughts on this? Anyone? They would be greatly appreciated.

Sources:
Monsters And Critics
MSNBC
EntertainmentWise

Scares and scars

Short entry, just some thoughts for the day... Thirty-two hours worked since Wednesday, putting in more tomorrow.

At the intake Tuesday, new therapist Shelley saw my scars and said that I was a keloid healer. Back when I was big into getting new piercings, keloids were a phobia of mine, so I didn't believe her when she told me my scars were keloids.... After some research today, I've determined they are indeed NOT keloids. For one thing, it's incredibly rare for white people to get keloids; fifteen to one ratio black/hispanic to white/asian/other. Also, keloids are more tumorous in appearance - my scars are just raised, red, and uglay.

Conclusion: they have healed abnormally, but are call hypertrophic scars, not keloid. The biggest reason this is a comfort is that hypertrophic scars reduce in time. Keloids get bigger. Also, h. scars are much more treatable than keloids; because the latter get bigger over time, removing them will just cause an even larger keloid to grow in more than half the cases.

For comparison, keloids vs. hypertrophic, this proved quite the useful link. DO NOT GO THERE if scars will trigger you! Please, please know and respect your limits.

In other news, my scars hurt today. They're like my trick leg... Any change in the weather makes them prickly and painful.

In other news.... Sleep. That is all.

Is this really what passes for a blog these days?

So basically, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am to move to Canada once Crystal graduates. More on that later, I guess...

It's been incredibly difficult to think what to write. Despite having days off and an overactive mind, I can't seem to focus any of these thought trains into a chiseled sort of entry or, for that matter, any form of writing longer than a disjointed paragraph. Additionally, as I've tried to consider topics worth discussion, I've been painfully aware that most of what's on my mind is depression-related and depression at my level is excruciatingly boring. Friends often challenge me to write a book and I can't seem to convince them how any book I could poop out now would be little better than Dr Zhivago right now. The depressive's mind, by nature, ruminates on topics like a cow that ate a bag of mulch and gravel. Endlessly. And often with indigestion. Depression is an endlessly churning sack of monochromatic muck.

Even exciting events can be turned dull when viewed through the depressive lens. I could tell you about the hail we received or Amber's graduation last night or how we almost got killed after a booksigning in Denver a few days ago. All these things, in the appropriately caffeinated fingers of a witty person, could be turned into side-splitting or riveting anecdotes. At the moment I'm more likely to say, "Yeah, we went to see Barbarah Kingsolver talk a couple nights ago and there was this big thunderstorm and then we walked home in the pouring rain and got chased by a raving drunk who was packing heat." (Granted, that one may be kinda interesting REGARDLESS of the bare bones explanation.)

Side note about the experience in Denver: I am about fifty times more frightened of downtown Denver than I EVER was of Washington, DC. I was less afraid walking home alone in DC than I was walking three blocks to a LightRail station with Crystal and Jody the other night. Because damn. People can officially give up on trying to convince me to look for an apartment downtown.

I ought to write about how pants that should be too small are baggy, about how depression kills my appetite kills my motivation kills my giving-a-shit. I should write about how my new therapist broke up with me after two sessions and I'm back looking for a new one again. I should write about the fact that I'm working six of seven days this week.

Sooo many topics to cover! So many books to write and bills to pay and t'shirts to make/send and apartments to look at and the rest and the rest!

Instead, I watch Michael Moore films while crocheting doilies and getting ready to leave for work, and when I DO finally get myself to open ze laptop and attempt ze entry, it looks like THIS.

Mental illness is ridiculously frustrating.

Recovered? Functioning? Surviving?

You know, I wish that my depression was caused by my eating disorder and that developing a healthy relationship with food would heal the depression, too. In many cases, depression is a sort of side effect or symptom of an eating disorder... In my case, the more I look at it, the more I feel like it's either the other way around or they're just unrelated for the most part. Perhaps two illnesses which, while caused by different things, happen to have certain overlapping symptoms. (Probably the most likely scenario.)

Earlier today I was looking over some of my old journals, particularly the one I started while on a week-long stint in the hospital following a series of suicidal acts. For one thing, it was a little depressing to be reminded how much better my writing is during periods of hypomania than straight up depression but that's neither here nor there... It's always heartbreaking to me to read my old journals and see how completely dominated they are by calorie counts, weigh-ins, and self-abuse of all kinds. All I talked about was loneliness, jealousy, constant attacks against everything which makes me human and female and a teenager.

....Train of thought is completely derailing, goddamnit. Frasier's on, my stomach is full, my feet and legs are sore from standing all day, my eyelids are droopy, and I've got t'shirts and debt on the brain. I'm terrified I've ruined Crystal's and my life and we'll end up living in a shack in West Virginia we've built ourselves out of cardboard and cinderblocks surviving off doritos and coke and hamburger helper. I can't keep thinking about all this f-ing debt or I'm going to bring on a panic attack. Like, now. God...

My mental health is so much better, in some ways. I eat, more or less regularly, I don't actively focus on restricting, I function, I hold a job (for which I haven't even called out on account of mental breakdown since I started in January!), I pay the bills on time, I make t'shirts and e-mail and blog and help support others, I even have sort of made a couple friends at work. And yet... "function" may be the key word for my current status.

I've been going through days with a lot of depersonalization lately. Just kinda going it minute by minute and trying to make sure I get done what I need to do. Even when I've had the opportunity to do fun things, when I've been getting honors and recognition, when I've been spending time on dates with my girlfriend, I haven't been all there. I've felt incredibly fatigued all the time and that not-quite-sick-but-still-kinda-crappy meh-ness almost non stop. I've wondered if it's a flare up of the mono I had a couple years ago but now am starting to think maybe it's just depression. (Where does depression hurt? Everywhere. Cymbalta...)

Let's hope that the CU Denver counselling center decides to call me back at some point in the near future. And that I can last without meds until I get Cheesecake Factory health insurance in July. Meeeeehhhh.

See? Still alive!

Damn. I guess it HAS been a long time since I've updated.

Really, there's no good excuse for it. In fact, there is no excuse for it, period. I just haven't felt like it. And I haven't done it. I've laid around on my arse whenever I'm not at work and have had absolutely no motivation toward doing anything. The things on my mind have been subjects I choose not to discuss in my blog for various personal reasons that may remain no matter how public my life goes.

SO. Crystal suggests I write an entry on the character Maris from Frasier. Since moving here I've become kind of addicted to this show and even find Maris amusing. If you've read this blog for very long then you'll know I take issue with the way eating disorders are depicted in pretty much all sorts of television and movies and other forms of media. I hate it when they're made fun or light of and especially when people with them are mocked. But for some reason, Maris is really really funny.

If you don't watch Frasier, the whole premise of the show is about being all pretentious and psychiatric and although it's really Freudian a lot of the time it's still pretty damn funny. Maris is the wife (later, ex-wife) of one of the main characters, Niles Crane, and is a pretty serious anorexic. You never actually see her throughout the whole run of the show. For a succinct explanation, I go to Wikipedia. "Maris is described as an exceptionally insecure, petty, domineering and generally unpleasant woman, selfish and obsessed with social standing. She is described as being extremely thin and rarely eats, consuming only tiny morsels of food when she does. Frasier compares her to a bag of flour: "bleached, 100% fat-free and best kept in an air-tight container". Frasier also once sarcastically referred to Maris as "ounces of fun". She is intensely neurotic and suffers from a wide array of medical conditions and phobias."

Maybe I laugh too lightly, but, again, I think that the jokes made about her are really funny. Some of them come really close to home, but in general I think it's good to be able to look at some of the ways anorectics think and be able to laugh. Honestly, sometimes if I can step back and think logically about things, some of the ways that I think are just plain ludicrous. (That's not to say I can get away from them easily, but seriously, to be terrified to walk past a McDonald's because I think I'll somehow breathe in the calories...It's just funny!)

Well, since beyond that I really don't much feel like updating (or thinking, or writing, hence updating) I'm going to leave you with some of my favorite quotes. So tell me. Funny? Offensive? Or just plain unremarkable? Provide me your answers. Go.

Niles: Just remember that she can't have shellfish... poultry, red meat, staturated fats, nitrates, wheat, starch, sulfates, MSG or herring. Did I say nuts?
Frasier: Oh, I think that's implied.

Frasier: Where's Maris?
Niles: Well, we were just getting ready to leave the house when Maris caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror--

Niles, on the phone: Calm down, dear, calm down. Listen. Take a left, then the second right, then a left again. Okay. Okay, goodbye, sweetheart. (Hangs up)
Frasier: Maris got lost again?
Niles: Yes, she wandered into the kitchen by mistake. I had to talk her back to the living room.

Daphne: You know, when I was younger, I dreamed of being a ballerina meself.Niles: So did Maris. The poor thing could never get her weight up enough.
(I love that one... It makes me laugh and cringe at the same time.)

Niles: Yes, Maris, I'm sure. No, no, you can't gain weight from a glucose I.V. No, no, my little worrywart, there's no such thing as a Nutrasweet drip.
(And this. Because honestly, if you've ever been on an IV, has that not been the biggest worry of all time? Even if it was just saline...)

Niles: It's time I braved the dark streets and got back to my Maris. I just hope it isn't like the lightning storm last month. The only way I could coax her out from under the bed was by tying a Prozac to the end of a string.
(Hehehe. Crystal drew a cartoon of herself trying to lure me off the floor that way... Made me laugh.)

Niles: Maybe it wouldn't hurt to look into getting some of her eggs frozen.
Frasier: I suspect they're only a few degrees away from that now.

Niles: Poor Maris, she's so worried - she hasn't had much hospital experience, except for the usual childhood things - tonsils, adenoids, force-feeding.

Niles: My wife Maris has all our servants down at your campaign headquarters licking envelopes. She'd do it herself, but the poor thing can't produce saliva.

Niles: She's pushed me around long enough. Metaphorically of course. In reality she can hardly push at all. Like that terrible afternoon last spring she spent trapped in the revolving doors at Bergdorf's!

Niles: Yes, Maris and I have taken to giving each other gag gifts. I gave her a cookbook.

Roz, peeking through the keyhole: I see her coat on a hat rack.
Frasier: Look closer. Is the hat rack moving?
Roz, horrified: Oh my God!!

Niles: I've never seen her look so seductive. She wore a clingy gown, crimson lipstick, even earrings, which she tends to avoid as they make her head droop...

Frasier: Maris never let you cook for her.
Niles: That's true. The closest I ever got was restocking the pills in her bedside Lazy Susan.

Frasier: It's hard to believe that's the same woman who once sprained her wrist from having too much dip on a cracker.

...Haha, well, now even if you like the quotes you've no reason to watch the show, eh? I've given you some of the best. Well, in any case, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Zip. Nada. Zilch.

I have felt completely worthless the last few days, when it comes to writing, advocacy, awareness, and any other productive sort of thing I ought to be doing. It's hard to explain what's wrong, what's bothering me, why I can't seem to manage to do...anything... F-k depression, yo.

I need to get back into therapy and have been thinking about it quite constantly. Problem is, I do not want to be in therapy. Screw therapy. I hate therapy. It's one of those things that makes you feel worse before you get better and it seems that no matter how much time I spend working through issues it isn't enough. Bi-weekly, once a week, twice a week, twice a week with two different therapists, psychiatrists, medications, group, inpatient, intensive outpatient, I'm so sick of all of it.

Which thing is finally going to help me, let alone cure me? I'm in a new place now, do I have to start all over trying to find a new treatment team, setting up all those support systems and networks of trust all over again? (And please, for the love of god, DO NOT start in on me with any crap about finding a church. I did that. Long time. It caused most of this, don't tell me that now will be different, now they'll make it all better.)

The most twisted thing is that I am beter in many ways than I have been in years. Even if I still regularly self-injure, sometimes can't get out of bed, am dropping weight again like...something you drop quickly... Well, point is, despite it all I'm still holding a steady job. I'm still in a relationship and we're still in love. I'm at least surviving. I haven't tried to kill myself (or done anything seriously dangerous) in over a year.

It's a record! Yay!

Gah.

And as Crystal points out, I've basically already written this entry. Probably five dozen times.

Depression is so damn boring.

Musings, sundry and disconnected

SIIIIIIIiiiiiigggghhhhh. If I never have to shop for a car again I think I'll be happy. (Except, that's totally a lie. Whichever car we end up finding will no doubt be so gnarly that I'll want a new(er) one as soon as can possibly be afforded.) I hate car shopping. Really, really hate it.

This rapid-cycling depression and hypomania is making life completely impossible and incomprehensibly exhausting. I'm either too hyper and unab le to focus to get anything done or too lethargic and unable to lift my head off the pillow to do anything. The past week or more I've been doing well to make it to work and last my shift without a breakdown, let alone contemplate updates.

Speaking of, I was thinking about this yesterday: DC Cheesecake Factory was remarkably patient with me. I never got fired, never even got a write up, yet I was probably right up there for the Most Unstable Employee award. I suppose consistent competence was my greatest selling point or something, whothehell knows.

Sunday morning I nearly didn't make my bus because dragging myself out of bed and into my work clothes was such a completely overwhelming task. Eventually I'd pulled on my uniform and just sat on the edge of the bed crying, staring at my untied shoes, thinking simultaneously how impossibly difficult and pointless it would be to tie them. But, somehow, I still managed. (And literally all day long almost every friend I have there found some way to tell me I "look[ed] like sh*t", which made me feel a whole lot better.) I still got to work on time and made it through the shift intact without screwing anything up severely.

This anecdote actually brings up two points: first, I'm actually quite a bit more stable than I used to be, despite the fact that it feels quite the contrary. Secondarily, it's evidence to the whole DC-was-more-tolerant point... There were several times at that restaurant where I had to call out because of severe depression/anxiety/whatever, faking the physical only to a small extent since I was so depressed I truly felt sick. Beyond that, however, they had to deal with me disappearing mid-shift now and then, emerging from the coat closet or walk-in freezer after a while, all tear-stained, for no discernible reason. A couple times I came in for my shift begging everyone in sight to pick up for me so that I could go home because either I couldn't stop crying or just couldn't stand the thought of six, seven, eight hours with a plastered fake smile, ingratiating myself to people for their money.

And, of course, there were the couple of shifts that I simply could not go onto the floor because I could not stop sobbing. Including one memorable night that they were already short people and refused to send me home, instead telling me to go to the bathroom and try to pull myself together. I called Crystal, panicking and completely distraught for (as is my bent) no discernible reason, who dropped what she was doing and came running to work as quickly as she could. I'm sure I was completely pissing the managers off since I was...wow, how to describe it? totally unhinged? and they couldn't understand why. All they wanted was a reason but no one had died, I hadn't broken up with my girlfriend, wasn't getting kicked out of school, nothing. I think the explanation I gave was a nothing-everything-I DON'T KNOOOW!!! sort of thing, which didn't seem to cut it.

In the end they really had no choice but to send me home. (I think they gave me like two hours to try to pull it together, though, but it was no use.)

And yet, they didn't fire me. If anything, they undeniably handled me with kid gloves for a few weeks after that; they immediately cut back my hours, no further questions asked, and did all they could to help me through it.

I really don't think this location would be so understanding.

Although, an interesting thought connects to all this: had they fired me for an emotional breakdown, could I have sued? :-P I wonder where psychiatric illness falls on the legal end of things...

...arright, I'm all written out, I think. Don't you just love how my entries sort of fizzle instead of conclude these days? Le sigh.

...Okay, actually, I have NO CLUE how to end this. So I'm just going to let it drop... Crystal suggests saying

THE END

On Suicides and Faking It

Although this has been several days in the brewing it’s hard to determine how to begin an entry with this particular subject… The reason it’s been so on my mind is that, aside from the fact that depression makes you think of it, one of the girls whose blogs I follow seems to be preparing her own internet death.

I know that to accuse someone of getting ready to fake their death is an enormous, outrageous, melodramatically serious thing. However, I do know what I’m talking about: I’ve dealt with it multiple times in the past. I’ve thought that I’d lost close friends four times in the past only to find out later that they faked it. I don’t have a clue how many other cases I’ve heard of in which the heartbreaking loss of someone loved and admired turned out only days later to have been completely fabricated.

A suicide attempt is not something to shrug off lightly as a grab for attention. In fact, that misconception is among the top three falsely held beliefs about mental illness that drive me absolutely batshit, right up there with eating disorders are vanity and depression is ungratefulness, etc. Similarly, I think that to say faking one’s suicide is purely for attention is also a grave misstatement. At the same time, though, in all the cases I’ve observed I do feel that attention is a large part of it.

Even for suicide attempts the attention thing usually has at least some role, although I don’t feel it’s in the intentional, manipulative way people typically believe. Any attempt, serious or not, is desperation to get relief and find some sort of comfort. In many cases the comfort sought may well be the element one gets when hospitalized – being completely taken care of, getting a break from school and bills and all the crap contributing most heavily to the depression that led to it in the first place.

For many people caught in a suicidal depression the thought of committing oneself is a lot scarier than the idea of dying. As such, if a mild attempt can serve the same purpose without the humiliation of checking into a mental ward, it seems quite a bit more desirable. Additionally, it lends a twisted feeling of legitimacy since you have concrete evidence proving the depression and need for care.

…This is unlikely to make any sense to anyone who hasn’t felt what I’m trying to explain. That’s the totally sucky thing about mental illness: it isn’t logical and it’s impossible to explain logically to someone who isn’t already crazy.

In any case, what I’m trying to explain is that depression makes you feel completely horrible, hopeless, and helpless. If it hasn’t quite gotten to the point that one seriously, one-hundred-percent, for sure wants to die, a half-hearted attempt shows the world how bad it really is inside and hands over that helplessness to someone else to deal with so that you can have a few minutes to breathe and heal. That, in my opinion, is the attention-grabbing aspect of suicide attempts. It seems selfish to all looking on from the outside but to the depressive it’s the only last-ditch effort that makes any sense. Again, don’t forget that depression is anything but logical.

Returning to the concept of faked deaths.

This… I don’t fully understand. I have theories but I’ve never faked my own suicide, only gone with the real attempts... (Which is more f-ed up? God knows.) In all the years I’ve spent online making friends, having feuds, falling in love, suffering explosive fights, I’ve known dozens of people and grown close to many of them. Because most of the circles I’ve frequented in the past have been eating disorder and mental illness related, close friends have gone in and out of hospitals, inpatient facilities, outpatient treatment centers, disappeared without warning, called me on the phone, sent letters, etc, etc.

Two of those friends killed themselves. One died when she was fourteen and I was sixteen. She just disappeared from the internet and I didn’t even know for sure that she had died until recently, when her mom e-mailed me after reading the article about my t’shirt project and asked if I’d ever known her daughter Jade. The other was not a close friend, but a close friend of a close friend… Her parents found her in her car in a coma a few days after she’d gone missing to us in the online world. She died later of liver failure.

::sighs:: I’m sorry for all the cheer here.

The reason I’m bringing those memories up is that in order to talk about faked suicide with the gravity it warrants, you’ve got to understand the reason it causes so much terror and pain. Because it isn’t always fake. It tears us apart because maybe we’ve lost people in the past and maybe we’re afraid of losing you, too.

The thing that angers me so much about faked suicide is that, while I’m almost sure it isn’t malicious and I am sure there’s just as much hurt going on as in a real attempt, the very nature of it is such that the faker gets to sit back and watch everything going on while they’re supposedly in the ICU, judging all of our reactions, trying to see who’s going to miss them most and who “really cares”. It’s just completely… I don’t even know what word I’m trying to find. Low. Dirty. Under-handed. To lead all your closest friends on, convince them you’re dying or dead, just because you want to see who your ‘true’ friends are…? It seems totally sickening to me.

The hardest part about it is that when you’re in the position of watching the drama unfold it’s almost impossible to call the person out. You’re emotionally shredded, scared half to death yourself, and the thought of falsely accusing your friend of doing this to you is beyond reason.

Right now, the blogger I initially mentioned has supposedly just come out of a coma, her kidneys failing from years of anorexia, now in an intensive inpatient unit. Her neighbor is supposedly the one updating her journal to keep all her friends informed of the situation is her neighbor who, without explanation or apparent reason, suddenly has the keys to her house and all her credit cards and everything. The whole situation is completely impossible to make sense of…

I don’t want to go into all the details there. If she really is as sick and close to death as the writer claims, I don’t want to talk badly of my friend. If she isn’t, it’d be almost as bad to write a vitriolic expose and thereby risk pushing all the buttons needed to make the theoretical situation a real one.

That’s why fake suicide sucks so horribly. There’s no easy way to handle it one way or the other. It’s a full and complete double bind, catch 22, rock-and-a-hard-place suckfest.

Melissa, I hope you’re okay.

Reply to a reader

An interesting comment was left here yesterday... It was anonymous, no e-mail, no name, so in order to reply to it I'm going to do so here. Readers, should you feel I'm out of line or agree with the commenter or have something to say about this whole business, please chime in. Feedback rules.

I've been following your blog for a while now, and here's a thought: instead of trying to find someone or something (modern society, religion, Hollywood, etc.) to take the blame for those entrapped in an ED, why not invest your energy into helping others like you did when you started your t-shirt project?

...Maybe I'm not making myself clear or perhaps you're misunderstanding me, but I don't think I EVER said society, religion, media, or any other entity was responsible for the eating disorder epidemic. In fact, if I've misstated myself in such a gruesomely inaccurate way I owe everyone who may ever have read this blog an enormous apology.

Eating disorders are in NO WAY the fault of an outside source. Eating disorders are a mental illness. That means that something at some point in time went wrong inside my (for instance) brain, causing me to distort the way I perceive myself mentally and physically. Additionally, that switch made it so that the standards I hold for beauty, health, perfection, and self-worth are warped into a nasty misrepresentation of reality. Normal people don't look at a drastically underweight model and think, wow! she's gorgeous! I should starve myself so I can look like her! No. There has to already be something wrong with that person's thinking to cause looking at someone emaciated to seem desirable.

Instead of looking in the mirror and seeing someone underweight, tired, but otherwise still acceptable and beautiful in the eyes of god and others, my mind takes all those features and twists them around into something disgusting. Either I see someone emaciated and sallow like a holocaust caricature, hair stringy and face a mask of dark hollows and ugliness, or I see someone puffy and jiggly and gluttonous whom I loathe for what I perceive to be greed and a total lack of self-control. For the first person, I hate her for abusing her body and being a hypocrite.

I cannot look in the mirror and see myself as others see me. I cannot think about myself and be proud of my achievements or my strides toward health without being overwhelmed by the thousand little things for which I hate myself.

That is what an eating disorder is. It's why it's called a disorder - the natural order of my thinking about my self and my body somehow got thrown out of whack. There is no logic driving an eating disorder. I'm not driven by a desire to look like a media image or modern societal pressures or a religious motivation for punishment. The reason I do discuss those things so frequently is that they DO have a part to play in EDs. Plus, I keep this blog as much for informative purposes as helping others. In fact, it helps and comforts me to see advances being made culturally and hear others comment on media and religion in a way that challenges ideals I might hold toward them.

While those things in NO WAY cause EDs, they undeniably contribute.
--> TV, magazines, etc, provide an abundance of visual triggers as they put underweight women forth as a positive examples of beauty and achievement.
--> Society embraces those images and translates the messages into something that, to an eating disordered mind, sounds like, "Unless you are emaciated, you are a failure and everyone hates you."
--> Religion - specifically the Christian religion - messes with our heads because there is so much emphasis on human failings and the need to put to death pride and sin. For someone who already hates him/herself and feels they are the completely worthless scum, this can literally cause suicidality. It can lead to forms of self-injury as a way to punish the self for any minor transgression. Eating disorders became the most rampant in any era and culture but our current one in the middle ages when Christianity took over Europe, because to starve oneself showed such great self-discipline and commitment to the faith. Oh! To love god so much that one didn't need to eat! Do you have ANY idea how many saints got their sainthood by starving to death??
...Breathe. Breathing. Okay. Point being. Religion is a HUGE contributing factor in many, many cases. It's why you hear of so many girls coming down with these disorders who are daughters of pastors and religious families, good, stable family, middle-class Americans. Religion.

Also, one more thing on that. Crystal pointed out that I need to balance this, because Christianity is not all bad. My experiences may have been, which is why I am so ranty about it, but many women also are helped by religion, even rescued by it. Many religious communities embrace women suffering from EDs and help them, encourage them, comfort them. They are understanding and nurturing and the wonderful safety that sufferers need.

The reason I tend to be so strongly negative toward Christianity is that I come from a background which was catalyst and even direct encouragement for many of my issues. I suffered too many years of being told panic disorder was my fault, depression was my fault, and anorexia was my vanity. Except not that nicely. I experienced nothing but pain at the hands of Christians who thought they were helping and, as such, am really bitter toward the religion. I don't claim to be any kind of expert on this subject. I just speak from personal experience.

Returning to main point: Being able to live and function healthfully as a member of society as it stands means that I, and others with EDs, have to learn to reallign our thinking toward these pressures so we can cope with them despite our messed up brains.

You are undeniably correct when you say our society is screwed up it's perspective on beauty (thin is in), but please don't throw the baby out of the bath water.

...I love the misstatement of that colloquialism. Otherwise, I think I covered this above.

A few screwed up people shouldn't be considered representative of the majority.

Agreed. Most assuredly agreed. But I still don't see what that has to do with any of the points I've been trying to make... I haven't made any attacks on celebrities or Christians (yes, I attack many dogmatic standards. That is DIFFERENT.) or teachers or whomever. I'm attacking what is already spoken of in a general, amorphous sense: beliefs and standards. It has little or nothing to do with "a few screwed up people".

I'm sure there are probably one or two whacko's at your place of business (Cheesecake Factory?), but it would be quite unjust to label you and your co-workers as whacko's based on the character of just a few.

Not to go into this much, but... You could probably label us all crazy, actually.

That's MY rant and I'm sticking to it. Now, go forth and do something good for yourself and for someone else today!

Well, you may not like it, but I feel that I just did something good for myself and others here. Sorry.

As a final note, I'd like to point out that this blog was not started with any mission statement saying it was going to be just encouragement for fellow sufferers. My goal has been as much to educate as to help - the t'shirts are information, not just personal statement.

And aside from that? It's also my journal in many ways. I write about what I'm thinking about. When I'm going through rough spells, it's not as cheery. When I'm pissed off it reflects that.

Yes, I want to help other girls. They are on my heart twenty-four hours a day. I start crying multiple times throughout the day when I see some girl walk by with a scar from an NG tube or dark hollows under her cheekbones or sores around her mouth. It tears me apart. I want more than anything to just take all that pain away from them, even onto myself if I could.

Speaking honestly about eating disorders, how they feel, what they do, and why they're happening, seems to me like a help for those girls. EDs are extraordinarily shameful and surrounded by stigma and misperceptions. Few people know any more about EDs than what they see on the news or the skinny girls they run into now and then. Education is helpful because if you actually know facts about what this is and what causes it you know better how to help and encourage.

Empowerment is help. Putting to death misperceptions is help. Education is help.

There are more ways for me to help girls with eating disorders than just a little note of encouragement every day. I'm trying to do all that I can, however I can, and will keep on doing so as long as I'm able.

Still alive and still taking her meds

It's been pointed out that I haven't spent much time talking about eating disorders here lately... I know that I have, and that in doing so I've really kinda been skirting my original purpose for this blog. Really... No good reasons or excuses.

I guess that with how things have been going lately I've been rather distracted from any of my life purposes beyond those basic survival instinct dealies. Additionally, internet access has gotten sketchy again (sigh...screw you, Amber) so I'm not as up-to-date on information like I used to be, or at least used to try to be. I don't want Novare to fall by the wayside but at the same time, right now it looks like trying to keep on keeping on has to be my main focus.

...You know, I really don't have much of a life to write about at present.

When I'm not working I hang around the house all day like a lonesome, whiny puppy dog impatiently awaiting the people's return. I watch CNN and LOGO and sometimes a movie or two. Read Borges and crochet, write in my journal and draw. Stare at walls a lot. Dismally ponder the lonely depths of despair. Things like that. ^.^ I need to be rich and have good insurance so that I can be on the appropriate medications at the appropriate dosages at the appropriate times. Instead of, you know, being all depressed now, needing them, and weaning myself off them because I can't afford them.

By the way? I'd just like to say one thing about medication and depression, or medication and mental illness in general. I don't care how many times you've heard this from how many sob cases or doctors you think are quacks, but mental illness is legitimate illness. True, maybe it isn't caused by an identifiable pathogen. Neither is diabetes, Lupus, cancer, arthritis, Lou Gehrig's disease, asthma, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, and on and on and on. That doesn't make those diseases any less legitimate in your mind, does it?

The body falls apart in a myriad of different ways. Sometimes bodies are born with deformities and genetic defects which cause significant impairments to a person's quality of life. Men and women suffer from infertility, yet we see it appropriate to treat that. We see treatment as being appropriate for headaches, for allergies, unwanted zits, astigmatism, fatigue, insomnia. Almost all things physical which can be naturally impaired are deemed in need of treatment. (I won't go into details, but, Viagra?) So why is it that people continue to hold on to outdated beliefs about the treatment of mental illness??

...Taking a moment to breathe, here...

I'm not saying stop your asthma treatment or throw out your eyeglasses, because I see those treatments as being appropriate and necessary! In fact, I find treating your depression, panic disorder, schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, etc, etc, as being just as vital as treating any other physical ailment. If anything, treating them may be more vital than many physical ailments. It's a lot easier to live through those zits or live through that obnoxious hay fever than to survive suicidal depression or manic psychosis.

Yes, the first course of action in treating many mental illnesses should be talk therapy (or religious therapy, whatever you want). Just like the first response for a mild headache should be sucking it up. However, if things get out of hand and the person can barely make it out of bed anymore because the world feels too heavy and their thoughts too dismal, maybe medication should be legitimately prescribed.

And maybe, the person taking that medication needs it. Maybe they're not just taking some drug each day like popping happy pills.

Hell, if it was that simple, I'd say screw Welbutrin and give me some weed. Chances are it'd be cheaper and have less long-term damage on my liver.

(Says Crystal in awesomely witty postscript: "So Bush, you have a choice: legalize pot or provide universal health care.")