Tightrope Walker

So it’s been a long couple of weeks.

TFCon was the 17-19th, so the week before and the week after I worked four ten hour shifts so I could get Friday through Monday free. I was pretty busy at work and at home, getting ready for my table. I managed to keep things on a pretty even keel throughout the convention (my repeated meltdowns due to stress on the way TO Canada notwithstanding) but when I saw my psychiatrist on the Tuesday I was back to work, I was a bit… manic.

SUPER manic.

I was talking about the whirlwind of events and I was speeding up, jumping from thought to thought, all over the place, and his eyes were getting wide.

“Are you feeling ok?” he finally asked, and that’s when I realized I was definitely not feeling ok. He suggested a raise in my mood stabilizer to help me balance back out, but I wanted to give it a day or two to see if I just settled on my own. I returned to work (because I was working tens) but ended up leaving early because I couldn’t slow down.

I generally don’t sleep well at conventions due to anxiety about the convention itself, plus I always struggle to sleep in unfamiliar places. I was on a pretty comfy futon and I’d remembered my sound machine, so I should’ve slept better, (and at least this year there wasn’t a jackhammer tearing up the sidewalk outside of my friend’s apartment first thing in the morning!) but enh. Overall I think I got about 20 hours of sleep between Thursday night and Monday night, which is not good for my mental state. When I got home on Tuesday, I went right to bed and slept for fifteen hours.

Wednesday night? Five.

By noon on Thursday I was such a disaster I called and asked for the increase in my Lamictal, because now I was rapid cycling; I was manic, exhausted, irritable, and of course, having suicidal thoughts, because those are always lurking around the proverbial corner, waiting to ambush me. Friday was tough, but I pushed through. I had my nephew over Saturday and he stayed the night, and Sunday morning I physically felt like crap because of course, I had to get sick on top of everything. I was feeling a little more sane, but still not great.

All week I’ve been emotionally and physically exhausted. I have a head cold that is slowly traveling south and I am pretty confident it will become bronchitis because I am never lucky enough to *just* get a cold, and I’m still all over the place emotionally. I feel like I’m walking a tightrope all the time, and I’m so anxious. I’m utterly convinced I’m going to be fired right now, and the suicidal thinking is always there in the background, always encouraging me to just give in and listen.

I am so, so glad it is almost the weekend. I just have to survive Friday and then maybe I can sleep for two days and recover a bit.

On mania.

For me, it starts with a feeling of heightened awareness, and twitchiness. I feel excited; my heart races, I start making plans for things I’m going to do and how I’m going to Change Everything And Be A New Person. My hands itch for something to do.

I felt that twitchy feeling after dropping my nephew off last night, so I went to Meijer on the way home to see if they had a copy of the Pacific Rim novelization. Not finding one, I then checked the craft section- which is directly across the aisle from the books. (I get stuck in this part of the store a lot.) I found some pretty medium-weight yarn that’s half wool, half acrylic, so it’s a bit softer than straight wool, and it was on clearance. I picked up all three balls available and a hook because god only knows where my crochet hooks are in my storage unit.

I channeled a lot of that nervous energy into learning how to do the ripple weave correctly. Thank you, youtube, for always having my back on tutorials, because I flat out cannot read crochet instructions. For example, this is what ripple weave looks like in instructions:

Chain a multiple of 16 stitches plus 2 stitches.
For a 40 inch wide afghan in worsted weight yarn, chain 130.
For a 55 inch wide afghan in worsted weight yarn, chain 178.
For a 41 inch wide afghan in sport weight/3-ply yarn, chain 178.

Row 1: Dc in 3rd ch from hook; dc in next 6 ch, 3 dc in next ch, dc in next 6 ch; *work 3 st dec in next 3 ch, dc in next 6 ch, 3 dc in next ch, dc in next 6 ch; Repeat from * across. End by working 2 st dec in last 2 ch. Ch 2 and turn.
Note: The valleys will probably be shallower than the peaks at this point. Work another row or two and they should even up.

Row 2: Skip first stitch; dc in next 7 dc, 3 dc in next dc, dc in next 6 dc; *work 3 st dec in next 3 stitches, dc in next 6 dc, 3 dc in next dc, dc in next 6 dc; Repeat from * across. End by working 2 st dec in last 2 dc. Ch 2 and turn.

Repeat Row 2 until afghan is desired length changing, colors as desired. If you are using more than one color of yarn, I suggest changing colors every 2 rows.

(from Handcrafting With Love: Easy Ripple Afghan- free crochet pattern

This is what it looks like when someone actually is showing you how to do it.

There is a very significant difference between the hieroglyphics up there and an online tutorial. This is probably why I know a grand total of two stitches by name, and a handful more just in “this is how I make a hat” and “this is how I make gloves.”

So it’s now 7:21, and I’ve not yet slept, and I’m tired now, after my meds, a cup of sleepytime tea, and a nighttime of crochet with very little to show for it that’s worth showing, but I am finally getting the hang of it and don’t have to refer back to the video every three stitches.

I’m getting more anxious about unemployment, though my mom seems to want me to apply for the federal extension, rather than going to work at Wendy’s, probably so I can continue to watch my nephew while my brother gets his life together, without me having a meltdown due to being overwhelmed. Given that I had him for two and a half days WITH help in the form of my ‘adopted’ sister coming over for the afternoons, and my mom taking over in the evenings for the most part, and still ended up manic afterwards? I don’t think trying to do that on top of pulling full time at Wendy’s is going to do anybody any favors.

I really need to ask mom, though, and have a serious conversation about it. We’ve still not managed to talk finances yet and it’s been three months.

I’ll be going to the cabin for part of next week, so that’ll be nice. I’m taking my ‘adopted’ sister with me, and various siblings will be popping in and out at the beginning of the week, and then we’ll leave my parents be for a few days to go do their own vacation stuff. I even volunteered to take the dog home with me when I leave so they will be really unburdened and able to go do what they want.

I still feel like a total failure, but I’m holding on. Now to get some sleep so maybe I’ll be thinking more clearly when I wake up. Hopefully I wake up at a reasonable time so I don’t sleep all day and get my sleep cycle messed up any further….

I can probably wring an entire week’s worth of posts out of this past weekend

So this weekend was my sister’s bridal shower. We actually had a bridal tea, and it was very cute overall. Mom broke out her antique hat collection (she has approximately seventy billion antique hats and I adopted a purple one) and we had tea and little sandwiches cut into hearts and all kinds of disgustingly adorable things. It really was cute, and my mom and stepsister who planned it seemed to have a lot of fun putting it together, though it was a lot of work. My sister and I drove up after she got off work on Friday, and due to the fact that my cat is still eating wet food only, I had to take her with, and she inevitably had issues in the car. My cat just doesn’t travel well in the afternoon as it interferes with her bathroom schedule and you can’t tell a cat to hurry up and go to the bathroom already because we’re leaving. I’m usually just trying to grab her and stuff her in her crate before she disappears under my bed where I’m guaranteed to be unable to retrieve her without resorting to bribery.

We got there late, and I was exhausted after staying up all day to reset my internal clock, so I actually managed to fall asleep at a fairly reasonable hour. The last time I remember looking at the clock it was 1:45. I then woke up at exactly 2:45, 3:45, 4:45, 5:45, and 6:45, before managing to stay asleep until 10:15, when someone called my stepdad and his ringtone woke me up. It was weird how I was waking up at exact 60-minute intervals. I got up and helped where I could, which was mostly “go to the store and buy the things we forgot” and I cut a frame out of foam core board for my sister and a guest to hold while I took their picture at the shower. (This turned out extremely cute, though I did break an exacto blade because of course I did.)

I was excited because we were going to go see Iron Man 3 (which is AMAZEBALLS) after everything was over, and so we went to a 7:25 showing. This is a bit late for me to see an action movie in a theater, I’ve discovered. I got extremely overstimulated and was starting to amp up. We got home around 11:00, and I got on the computer to do some job stuff (and catch up on internet stuff.) My primary roleplay friend was out of town all week, so I hadn’t roleplayed in a while, and this is one of the ways I sort of burn off extra emotional energy. I also didn’t see my therapist last week due to being exhausted from not sleeping. So combining all of those factors, and I became quite elevated, heading towards mania. My parents’ internet crapped out around 2:00 AM and I realized I should go to bed anyway, but I was getting so manic I was physically shaking. I tried to go about things normally and went to bed, but as I realized I was getting manic, I started to panic, so then I couldn’t breathe. I went back downstairs and sat on the couch, wrapped in blankets, shivering and shaking and hallucinating that things were moving. It took three klonopin for me to get to the point where I could breathe regularly again, so I went to write mom a note, but once I started writing, I just had to get everything out of my head. I don’t really remember what I was writing, as I usually don’t really remember what happens when I’m manic. I remember having the sensation that my skin was crawling off and the shaking was really bad. I finished writing in every spare inch of the paper I was writing on and then going to bed. I stole one of the couch blankets that is soft like my Optimus blanket, which I left at home, and the three klonopin did their jobs and knocked me out. That was somewhere around five AM.

Mom came up around ten and asked if I got too overstimulated. I think I confirmed this but I was pretty out of it. I wanted to go to the shower, though, so I slept until one, when my sister woke me up. The shower was at two. I got dressed and wasn’t entirely confident about stairs or driving or really thinking. I went to get my “adopted” sister (I mentored her when I was in high school and she was in elementary, and she just became a member of the family after that) and led to a huge miscommunication because nobody heard me say I was going to go get her, so my stepsister was going to have her husband pick her up, and I took the van but they needed to put the food in it. My mom was very confused at why I was there with my adopted sister, and I said “I’m sorry, nobody communicated this to me,” to which she said “Well, you’re not really communicating right now at all.” Which was true, as I wasn’t. I didn’t start feeling very much like me until I’d had some food and some time to wake up. The shower went well, and we got everything packed up and headed back for Cincinnati by 5:30, which was pretty good considering the shower was over at 4:00 and we had a lot of food and decorations to pack up, along with my sister’s gifts.

The whole time, I could tell mom wanted to talk to me, but we were busy with the shower and then we had to leave quickly, as my sister had to work in the morning and wanted to get *some* sleep. Mom patted my arm when I was in the car and started to say something but got interrupted, so I think I need to have a conversation with her at some point today.

The cat, of course, had issues again on the way back down. I tried to pill her with benedryl, which seemed to help on the way up (after she was done having accidents) but I think she managed to spit it out this time. She was pretty noisy the whole time and had a couple accidents before we’d gotten too far. Maybe next time we just need to circle the block a few times and then we’ll be good, I don’t know.

My sister and I ended up talking about what happened at some point around Dayton, when she asked what she could do to help if she seems me getting manic. She said that she and mom had noticed that I was really talkative, and she said that when I was doing job stuff on the computer, I was “narrating everything,” which is a pretty apt description. I thought that maybe pointing it out to me, and suggesting I take a klonopin, might work, as the klonopin tends to calm me down fairly quickly and the external notice that I’m getting manic might help as well. Evidently my note really shook mom. I guess I wrote about my legs crawling away, and wrote “help me” a couple times. My sister and I talked about the ongoing miscommunications mom and I have about my illness. It hurts when I think about how if I had any other illness, for example, cancer, I know my mom would make herself the world’s leading expert on that illness, but she’s so scared of my bipolar disorder that she doesn’t want to accept it’s a reality for me. I either remind her of my father, or the prospect of me being disabled or something scares her. It scares me, too, but it’s my head and my life, so I cope the best I can every day. Some days are better coping days than others.

My sister and I also talked about how I can talk with mom about the whole exercise thing, as both my mom and my sister were able to “cure” their depression with exercise and so mom thinks it really will fix something, at least. My problem is, I have serious issues with sweating. It makes me anxious and the feeling of my skin when I’ve been sweating freaks me out. It’s a texture thing. Also, when I get going too fast, I make myself manic, so rigorous exercise is hard to come back down from without spending some time in manic bizarro-world. My sister recommended I maybe tell that to mom, as she doesn’t know and it never really occurs to me to tell her these things. Now I’m trying to get it all written down so I can remember it all to tell her later. There were a lot of things we discussed. I took another klonopin in the car because I was starting to get anxious and babbly again, and then I got home and just… I’ve been on the computer for a while. I had to wash the cat first, and the sun’s come up and I need to go talk to the landlady.

My sister’s fiancee got the job near Cincinnati, so they’ll be staying, which made me really happy, but another part of my freak-out was over what will be happening to me. Am I going to find a job? Am I going to have to go on disability? Am I going to need to move back to Michigan and try to coexist with my parents? Am I even going to survive this? There’s a lot that’s up in the air and it’s all terrifying. I don’t know what to think but I do know that I’m terrified.

But it’s May now, and May’s going to be different, I just know it.

Quiet fears and what-ifs

I worry that, now that I’ve lost my job, my mom and stepdad will see me as even more incompetent than before. Their overall attitude about the disabled population is one of quiet disdain; ‘they should just go and get a job already because (random person A) can do it so why can’t they.’ I’ve worked since I was sixteen, and am nearly twenty-nine now. My stepdad has never been pleased with my progress for whatever reason (they might be his own and irrational, but I still have to deal with them in how he treats me) and now I’m afraid mom will join in.

What if I can’t get another job? What if unemployment doesn’t work out and I get turned down? What if I have to move back home? What if I do have to go on disability?

I just want to run away, hide under the blankets or inside a shell of mania, so the hurt won’t get to me.

The day my creativity died

(First off, my apologies for any rambling or bizarre incoherency in this post. I may have written it while under the influence of Nyquil.)

As a kid, I was obsessed with the written word. OBSESSED. I was reading at the high school level in second grade. I wrote constantly. Most of it wasn’t very good, but I did it. I practically lived and breathed fantasy and science fiction; I read whatever I could get my hands on. I remember just about salivating whenever we’d go to a library, which was frequently, as no matter the size of the stack of books I took home, they were done the next day and I wanted more. Working at the library was my dream job (which I actually applied for, but was turned down, as I was exhausted from working a close at Wendy’s the night before and it showed.) My best friend had a job at the library, and I was so jealous.

I can remember several times I would disappear from events to go read a new book. Once at my own birthday party. When I was in middle school, I was allowed to take a friend with me to the family’s cabin, but I became weirdly obsessive about it and didn’t talk to her in favor of reading the stacks of books I’d brought for the first half of the vacation, and forever weirded the relationship. I couldn’t figure out why I was so oddly angry about her being there, but looking back, I think it was feeling a loss of control and not knowing what to do about it, so I buried myself in books.

I’ve been writing a series of novels spanning a huge universe I created to escape my childhood and the hell that my mind was becoming, for most of my life. The earliest writings I have are from around seventh grade. The whole universe has evolved dramatically, and the characters constantly surprise me with little tidbits about themselves. Once upon a time, I could sit and write for hours, and I would take pages with me to class to edit because I would get so bored. (Most of my high school teachers found this more amusing than anything, as I sat there scribbling with my red pen. I still had straight A’s so it’s not like I wasn’t paying attention.)

Everything changed when I went to the hospital in college, and was prescribed a mood stabilizer for the first time. Lamictal. I’ve been on it almost eight years now, and it’s been eight years since I was able to sit down and really write like I used to. I realize now that most of my writing jags were hypomanic episodes, but when I get hypomanic these days I clean the bathroom until I pass out or do something bizarre that I don’t remember later.

College has a way of turning the most prolific reader away from books, and I fell victim to that as well. I still devour books when I sit down with one but I don’t crave them like I used to. I can sit and try to write but the words don’t flow as easily now, though the story’s still there, in my blood, pulsing beneath the surface. This blog is the closest thing I have to writing continually again, and my attempt to publish something M-F is making it easier to sit down and write, at least about myself.

Someday I’ll be able to write again, but there’s just this… fog there, that refuses to lift. I know a lot of people find that fog disturbing and quit taking their medication to get the hypomania and mania back, because damn those feel good, but as I spend most of my time too depressed to function, I guess it’s worth it to me.

I can still create. I can still write, I can still create things with my hands, it just takes longer, and is harder to sit down and start than it ever was. Even after eight years it’s still hard, though my dosage has increased over that time.

I do miss those bursts of creativity and inspiration, though.

On triggering, and avoiding it

Oh, triggers. (I’m sure I’ve done a post about this before, so my apologies for any repetition.) In the crisis plans we do at work, there is a section on triggers. I wish I had my work laptop with me so I could copy down the list, but I actually managed to find it on about.com; it’s the external trigger list here:

Kinds of Triggers

Triggers can fall into two categories: Internal Triggers and External Triggers. Internal triggers are things that you feel or experience inside your body. Internal triggers include thoughts or memories, emotions, and bodily sensations (for example, your heart racing). External triggers are situations, people, or places that you might encounter throughout your day (or things that happen outside your body). Listed below are some common internal and external triggers.

Internal Triggers
Anger
Anxiety
Sadness
Memories
Feeling lonely
Feeling abandoned
Frustration
Feeling out of control
Feeling vulnerable
Racing heart beat
Pain
Muscle tension

External Triggers
An argument (both my own, or seeing/hearing someone else’s)
Seeing a news article that reminds you of your traumatic event
Watching a movie or television show that reminds you of your traumatic event
Seeing a car accident
Certain smells or tastes (I added tastes, as that’s on the list from work I’m referring to)
The end of a relationship
An anniversary
Holidays
A specific place
Seeing someone who reminds you of a person connected to your traumatic event

about.com, PTSD Triggers- coping with PTSD Triggers

Emphasis mine, on my own personal triggers. Dear lord, but there are a lot of them! Other triggers include: too much caffeine; insufficient or poor sleep; getting overwhelmed or overstimulated, particularly in a high-stress or noisy environment; changes- positive or negative, I don’t cope well with either; being around drunk people- my friends can drink but once they cross the drunkenness threshold, I don’t deal well; certain textures or types of fabric. I know that one’s weird, but it was HUGE when I was a kid.

We had a day-long training on Friday about motivational interviewing, which is a clinical technique to help clients open up more to us about whatever their issue is. We had a lot of role-plays in the afternoon, and one of them triggered me particularly badly. The clinician leading the training is one of our alcohol and drug counselors, and the AoD program makes up a huge chunk of our agency, so obviously there’d be alcohol and drug references. During one of the break out groups we were having trouble coming up with an example of a five-year plan from a client, and I joked: “I have a plan to quit crack. I’ll use for 4.5 years and then quit.” Clearly I’m fine with references to drugs, mostly because I have no personal experience with drug use in myself or my family. Alcohol, on the other hand…

One of the last scenarios we used was an individual whose family and/or work was having problems with the individual’s use of alcohol, and fear of the person using it while on psychiatric medication, but the individual didn’t see it as a problem. One of the gentlemen in our group was the alcoholic client, and his excuses were so much like my father’s and then my stepdad’s that I simply couldn’t cope with it. I got up, uncomfortable, and left the room for the rest of that roleplay. This wasn’t the first time I’ve been triggered at a training, but I handled it a LOT better. I didn’t end up sobbing in the bathroom this time; I went into the hallway, found a chair, and did some deep breathing and meditation to figure out what it was that was bothering me, and address it in myself.

The more I think about triggers, the more I realize I have different triggers that lead to different symptoms. I have PTSD/anxiety triggers, mania triggers, depression triggers… I’m working really hard on identifying and coping with the mania and depression triggers (too much caffeine, regular sleep cycle, eating in an intuitive, healthy way, trying to increase how much exercise I get, etc) but I’m not entirely sure how to address the PTSD/anxiety triggers. The downstairs neighbor’s yelling has been mostly covered up by the addition of a white noise machine in my bedroom on top of the fan I already use, which drowns out most of it and keeps any sudden outbursts from waking me up (at least not as often.)

From the same article listed above:

Identifying Your Triggers

Try to think of when your PTSD symptoms usually come up. Ask yourself the following questions to identify your triggers: What types of situations are you in? What is happening around you? What kind of emotions are you feeling? What thoughts are you experiencing? What does your body feel like? Get out a sheet of paper and write down as many internal and external triggers as you can.

Coping with Triggers

Now, the best way of coping with triggers is to avoid them altogether. However, this is almost impossible to do. Why? Well, you cannot really avoid your thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations. Much of these are out of our control. In regard to external triggers, we can take some steps to manage our environment (for example, not going to certain places that we know will trigger us), but we cannot control everything that happens to us. For example, you might inadvertently come into contact with a news story or conversation that reminds you of your traumatic event.

Because we often cannot avoid triggers, it is important to learn ways of coping with triggers. Effective, healthy coping strategies for lessening the impact of triggers include:

Mindfulness
Relaxation
Self-soothing
Grounding
Expressive writing
Social support
Deep breathing

The more strategies you have available to you, the better off you will be in managing your triggers. In addition, the more coping strategies you have, the more likely you will be able to prevent the development of unhealthy coping strategies, such as alcohol and drug use.

Further, simply being more aware of your triggers can be beneficial. As a result of this increased awareness, your emotional reactions may begin to feel more understandable, valid, predictable, and less out of control. This can definitely positively impact your mood and overall well-being.

Some Final Important Information About Triggers

Although it is important to increase your awareness of your triggers, doing so can cause some distress. Some people might actually become triggered by trying to identify their triggers. Therefore, before you take steps to identify your triggers, make sure you have a safety plan in place in case you experience some distress.

I included all the embedded links from the article, because they’re all very valid techniques. I know the relaxation and mindfulness, as well as meditation, which isn’t mentioned in the article, helped me not to have a complete breakdown (not feeling like I was being bullied helped, too; this was a far more innocent trigger than at the last all-day training I mentioned before.) Learning how to cope when triggered is good, but man, I’d like to figure out how to not be triggered in the first place.

My heart hurts.

The more I ruminate on it, the worse I feel, and the more my depression decides to beat me upside the head with lies and self-hatred.

From my Livejournal, January 28th, 2013:

Even after bracing myself, and preparing myself for at least a week for that inevitable conversation, it still hurts deeply. The more I think about it, the more I realize that it honestly was more him than me.

I was giving all I could; I tried to go out as often as he wanted, but it made me hypomanic and anxious. He stopped inviting me along and seethed that I wasn’t going. Twice we talked about that; he assumed I wouldn’t want to go, so just didn’t ask, and I reminded him that I don’t *always* say no.

He said that the way to get to know him, was to go out and hang out as often as possible. I can’t do that. Between being an introvert, having bipolar disorder, and having PTSD with plenty of anxiety to go with it, I have to be very choosy about where I spend my energy, to keep as even a keel as possible. I have to create buffer days between activities, when nothing is expected of me and I can unwind. I said I would try to be able to go out more than once a week, but that wasn’t enough. He asked me, “What’s so bad about being overstimulated?” and did not seem to feel it was really that big a deal when I ended up manic, blacking out doing something weird, and off work for three days to recover.

He took my not wanting to go out, as not wanting to be with him, but he hated nights in, saying that wasn’t how we would get to know each other. He wanted me to go with him and his sister and her fiance most nights to someplace weird, and noisy and crowded, and couldn’t understand why that made me horribly uncomfortable. He was so upset when, due to a pharmacy/doctor miscommunication, I ran out of klonopin before the trip we’d scheduled for the Tennessee renfaire, and had to back out because I was out of medication that I would desperately need in a weird place with weird people and no escape plan. He tried everything to convince me to go, while I sobbed helplessly, already in the throes of a panic attack, and out of medication to treat it.

I tried so hard to keep the lines of communication open but he kept shutting them down. I tried to have a weekly date night but if I didn’t push, he didn’t initiate anything, wouldn’t call me, wouldn’t ever pick a place to go. Plans always fell apart; last weekend, he blew me off four times, each time with a different excuse. My phone’s battery died, my sister showed up unexpectedly to go get pizza and we ended up at a bar playing trivia games all night, you didn’t tell me when I could come over.

He really didn’t know what to do with depressed me, or anxious me. He really liked manic me, and normal me, but depressed me scared the shit out of him. He didn’t check on me to make sure I was ok, he didn’t answer my calls the few times I reached out to him for support, he once blew off my “I’m suicidal and scared” for bingo with his sister.

It really all boils down to selfishness and immaturity. I was trying, but I can’t move too far from my equilibrium for my health’s sake. He couldn’t compromise his fun, for my health, and didn’t understand why he would need to.

I am back to the “I’m a burden” stage I’d kicked for a little while. My life is never going to be “normal” and I have accepted that, and want to kick ass anyway. NAMI featured an article in the New York Times called “Successful and Schizophrenic” about a person with schizophrenia going on to be seventeen flavors of awesome with like, three doctorates. I know it can be done. I want to work, and be successful, and live comfortably, and maybe get married someday.

One of my friends called me when she saw my distress on Facebook, wanting to know if I was ok. I’ve been texting her for a while, as it’s been getting worse as the night progresses. I said, “I just…. hurt. Like the Cymbalta commercial. Everything hurts outside, and I am numb inside; I keep coming back around to the fact that I was rejected because of my mental illness. I will always be someone’s burden and it hurts so much. Especially given how prejudiced my parents are to people on disability, so I would have nowhere to go.” Her response was, “That’s why you have friends, honey. You’re not a burden to them. :)”

I burst into tears. Sometimes I forget or am too afraid to reach out, assuming that it will drive yet another person away, so I suffer in silence. I’ve been texting this friend and my sister tonight, and it helps to reach out, and let other people know how much pain I’m in. My sister wants me to go get some sleep and she will come over tomorrow and we will bake chocolate chip cookies- or just eat the dough- together, and it’s nice to know I have that support.

Amicable

I’ve seen this coming for a long time, pretty much since my breakdown over the summer. Actually, before that, when I had to back out of a trip at the last minute because I ran out of klonopin and my refill didn’t arrive in time to go. Ever since, my boyfriend had been holding me at arm’s length, seemingly unsure of what to do. We’d stop communicating, he started assuming I’d always say no so he wouldn’t invite me out, I’d be hurt when I found out he’d gone out and didn’t invite me. So Sunday night, we finally talked it through and decided to call it quits. We care about each other, but we can’t make each other happy.

He just has no concept of mental illness, no framework for it. He’s never had a loved one with a mental illness. He wanted me to go out every night or at least most of them, and all of my explanations for why that can’t work historically have failed. No amount of explaining appears to really make sense to him; no matter how I tell him that I need to remain as stable as possible and avoid overstimulation so my mood doesn’t fluctuate wildly, he just doesn’t really get it. I can’t go out more often, and be able to maintain my stability and employment in particular. He can’t be happy with that, so it was time to let go.

We’ve decided just to be friends, and for once, I actually meant it. I think we’ll be happier as friends. Hell, we even said “I love you” as we ended the conversation.

It’s going to be more quiet, but less stressful… I like less stressful. Too many things to juggle, with a boyfriend.

It’s amazing how much better getting some crafting in, makes me feel

So on the days last week I was out (I want to say Tuesday and Wednesday,) I did some crafting, and that helped me get through Thursday and Friday. Most notably, I made memory wire Transformer character bracelets that have been selling like MAD. I’ve got requests, I’ve sold several before they’ve officially been listed by talking about them on Facebook… it’s been awesome. Nothing quite like making something and then SELLING it, within an hour of listing it for sale! So that’s been a huge boost to the ego, and the pocketbook. It led to a little bit of mania Friday night but I made myself take a nap, which helped me calm down.

Work went well on Friday, despite my fears; I talked to my supervisor and admitted being sort of scared of our supervision time (which she had to reschedule with me for Tuesday) and her response was, “Why? I don’t have anything in particular to talk to you about, we have a meeting every morning.”

It’s amazing how much of a relief that was, to know that there’s no more passive-aggressive control freak nonsense going on. Our team feels happier; most of us went out to lunch together Friday and it felt good, that we weren’t going to be scolded upon return for taking too long. Hell, my new supervisor wasn’t even THERE by afternoon, she’d had to go elsewhere.

I am behind on paperwork and I brought my computer home to try and poke at it tomorrow, which I have off. I’m pretty sure I’ll just end up lazing around, beading, napping, and ignoring it, but it’s the thought that counts. I wanted to get more done Friday but there was a wrench thrown in my schedule and then I got distracted. Gotta focus more, but my sound machine is now at home, so I need to break out the headphones and the white noise websites I’ve found so I can get things accomplished. Especially with only having three functional days next week- we have a mandatory day-long training Friday.

Maybe I’ll force myself to work for an hour or two tomorrow anyway. It can’t hurt.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-chaaanges!

I know, Tuesday post, WEIRD. I just had to get some catharsis before my brain implodes.

I’ve got a new supervisor at work. She’s the much-beloved supervisor of another team, switching to take over ACT, so I know her, but she’s very no-nonsense and doesn’t sugarcoat ANYTHING EVER. (I was trying to be diplomatic and said “She can be… abrasive.” My coworker retorted “like a cheese grater.” I think it’s fairly apt.) I do like her and I’m excited about the changes for the better, and hopefully dramatically improved morale, which should help me stabilize a bit.

But oh, how hard it is for me to cope with changes, good, bad or indifferent. So after announcing a bunch of changes during team this morning (and getting screwed out of the crisis phone this week which was AWESOME, I didn’t need to pay any bills anyway…) I ended up crying in a coworker’s office midday after having a delightful little panic attack, and then when out in the field, a client completely freaked out on me. For the record? Lunging at me and screaming “FUCK YOU I’M NOT YELLING AT YOU” is, in fact, yelling at me, and makes me question my safety. I have never thrown someone out of my car that fast in my life. He was so angry it wasn’t completely stopped yet as he got out, but as he a) is bigger than me, b) was pissed off, and c) has a couple domestic violence and assaults on his record, there was no way in hell I was staying in the confines of a Ford Focus with him for longer than .2 seconds. I went into my fight-or-flight mode, which is flight and numbness, and managed to finish the day, though I was shaky. I reported what happened to my supervisor and teammates, and went home at 4:40, exactly eight hours after I arrived. I cried the whole way home and if it weren’t for cartoons on the internet, I would’ve cried all night. As it is, I’m only crying now, as more of the distress from earlier comes back.

I’m just so tired of fighting. I’ve spent more of my life medicated than not, I’ve been symptomatic for at least 23 years by my last count (I remember symptoms going back to about age five) and no matter how hard I try, what I do, how I cope, I continue to stumble. I’ve been in a recurring downswing for a steady six months. I have a few good days and then BAM. I’ve changed meds, I’ve changed habits, I’ve changed sleeping patterns, I’ve done EVERYTHING RIGHT and it just isn’t enough. With a chronic illness, it’s never going to be enough; the shoe will always drop, the floor will always fall out from under me, the depression will always come back. Frankly, I’m surprised I’ve almost lived to 29, considering how miserable I’ve been oh, forever. Is life worth living for those few shining moments here and there, when the rest of the time I hate myself? Is it worth living isolated, unable to do much during the week to avoid getting manic and missing work, and unable to do too much in a day over the weekend or I’ll be emotionally exhausted for days? Is this really worth it?

I’m so tired.