Half A Glass

“No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.” — Helen Keller

Being positive isn't easy, but as the quote says, being negative won't do much for you. When I was younger, I was quite the optimist, even a bit pollyanna-ish, but sad and bad things happened, my life became much more difficult than I could easily manage, my positivity turned over into negativity, and all I saw were spilled glasses of milk everywhere I looked.

So I tried to at least be practical. Engineer-like practical: there is half a glass of liquid. Or my favorite: that glass is twice as big as it needs to be. But the pessimism remained.

Let's face it: life has kicked me in the face a lot. I don't need to re-enumerate how right now, but my childhood optimism could not stand up to it, and pulling optimism out of the Abyss takes time and concerted effort, as well as energy that I am generally in short supply of. (Yes, I ended the sentence with a preposition. Does that bother you? Did you understand the sentence? If you understood, then the sentence is linguistically just fine and report me to the grammar police if you don't like the way I structured it.)

My friend Julie has made it her job to work on my negativity, to banish it and to train me to be more positive. I appreciate her efforts more than I have articulated to her. (Thanks, Julie!) I am a tough case, I know, and sometimes I actively resist being positive. Why? Lots of reasons, I figure. The Devil you know. Resistance to change. And the one where, every time I started feeling positive and good and upbeat, it seemed some severe catastrophe occurred. Someone I loved died (and I have three very concrete examples of just that scenario). Something I wanted — love, a job, a stable life — fell completely apart. Wants and needs were denied. (Julie will disagree with me on the 'need' part here, but that varies according to belief systems.)

Whatever has occurred in my past, I want to let go of it. I want to learn to be more positive and less negative.  (Do I sound a bit too much like Wednesday in Addam's Family Values after she spent time in the Happy Shack? Don't worry about the oddly strained smile on my face, really! And no, I don't want to be perky.) I want to be realistic and give the good in life at least half a chance to show itself.

There are things I want to do in my life and I need hope and a belief that things will go they way I want, or at least in a good direction, if I want to accomplish them. 

So I'm working on my thinking. I've ordered the SOS Help For Emotions book, which I and Karen the Wonder Therapist will work our way through. Maybe you'll actually see me writing entirely positive posts on this blog on an almost daily basis. We'll see. After all, I can't just say "yes, of course!" when I don't have any evidence of it. Not yet. Sometimes, faith has to be learned. 

Now I have to go fill my glass, because pessimists and optimists can agree when a glass is entirely empty. 

My Thoughts Hurt Me

Some time back, a woman I know online wrote about her young daughter's newly discovered OCD and said that her daughter's thoughts hurt her. That's what obsessive thinking is like: your thoughts hurt you. They beat at you without stopping.

Most of my obsessive thoughts are divided between being abusive to myself ("Stupid! Ugly! Fat! Irresponsible!", things that mostly have never or rarely been said to me) and visualizing bad things happening (such as using a knife to cut vegetables and cutting my hand open, or standing near a ledge and falling over to my death ... things that have never happened to me). Even benign thoughts such as getting a song stuck in my head hurts; I most often get such "earworms" that are of sad songs, songs of lost love and loneliness. And having any song stuck in my mind on a continuous 24/7 loop (whenever I wake up, there it is) makes me want to drill holes in my head to let the demons out (thus the reason why some cultures still practice trepanning).

So Karen the Phenomenal Therapist and I are going back to working on cognitive therapy instead of the other therapies for the time being. As she put it, better to work on what currently has the greatest negative effect on me. And my negative thinking is almost literally killing me. After all, you have to talk yourself into suicide, and I almost did. 

There is no rational reason for me to consider myself so worthless and disgusting, but I frequently do and what you believe about yourself tends to become true. I have come to believe that I don't have integrity or follow-through, and that I will eventually disappoint people, especially people I work for, and they will eventually become unhappy with me. Ta da! It happened with someone at work who I was working for. The fact that this occurred due to "broken thinking" that led to a self-fulfilling prophecy is besides the fact, almost like a coincidence, in the way my mind considers it.

So yesterday I began wearing a couple of wide rubber bands on my wrists (representing two different issues) to remind me to think about what I'm thinking and feeling. What am I saying to myself? How do I feel when I do so? 

As we get into the book that Karen recommends, which I've ordered for myself, I'll learn how to fix my broken thinking so I won't always have to be on the lookout for it. But by then, I will have developed the habit of mindfulness, which is a good thing to develop. 

The book is SOS Help for Emotions; Managing Anxiety, Anger & Depression by Lynn Clark, Ph.D, just in case you think it might be useful for you or someone you know. So far, it looks good. 

I hope we get through the book fairly quickly, because I see myself going nowhere good as long as I keep thinking the thoughts I currently think.

You Don't Say

Suicide. It's a shocking, frightening word. Say it and you will catch your listeners' attention, but not in a good way. Say it and you might lose something you value.

Suicide. My brother committed it and I seriously considered it as recently as last month. But even when writing about it or talking about it, I tend to use other words and phrases: end my life; took his own life; hurt myself; stop living. Even in the psych ward, the professionals would say "do you want to hurt/injure yourself or others?" Suicide is a bit beyond 'hurt/injure', don't you think?

Depression. This one is slightly okay. I can say "I was so depressed I couldn't stop crying" and that's non-threatening. Adding "I was looking for ways to kill myself" filters my listeners and readers: some immediately want to call me and make sure I'm alright and get together with me. They want to talk to me and listen to me talk and tell them how I got that depressed, how I'm going to keep from getting that depressed, and I'd damn-well better call them if I feel that depressed again. And let's go have lunch next week.

The other people freak out. I lost a freelance gig I loved (but it was beyond my abilities), the present opportunity to even work for them for free, and the trust of the friend who was also my supervisor (plus, I think he really freaked out); and I may have lost a second gig and friend; she hasn't written back so I don't know yet. But the lack of response doesn't look good. I really love that gig, too.

So unless you want to separate the wheat from the chaff in your life in a quick and unflinching manner, say 'depressed' but don't say 'suicide' or any euphemism for it. It's bad enough to be sad in our culture; contemplating ending your life is possibly the most offensive and disturbing thought you can introduce to some people. I suppose it should be disturbing, but telling someone "I thought of killing myself" shouldn't be a reason to be cast aside. Imagine — if enough people did that, a sad and suffering person could end up feeling all his pain was valid, and he could go ahead and end his life, commit his suicide, feeling he had made the right choice. Think about it. 

(Not me. I now have enough people threatening me with bodily and spiritual harm if I so much as seriously consider this unspeakable act. I have no desire to fail if I tried it, but even worse would be succeeding and spending several eternities being punished by the spirits of my friends and family!)

Paranoia Doesn't Mean I'm Not Right

Before I checked myself into the psych hospital at the tail edges of my little meltdown/nervous breakdown, I let a few people know so they wouldn't worry. Among the people I told was a man who I report to for my favorite part-time job, the man who talked me into this job. His email reply was short, but supportive.

I emailed him when I got out, mentioning how I'd not done well on the job before I went in and wondering what he wanted to do about that. He usually emails me or calls me a lot during a week just to keep me up to date and to keep in touch.

I've had one text message, basically the same as the one he sent before I went in. And that's it. According to another member of the team, this man who supported me seems to have the same phobia that another good friend of mine (same age cohort as the man with the job): a fear that people with "mental illness" are never as stable or dependable as "normal, healthy" people and as such should be avoided as employees. At least, that's my fear and my current perception of this situation. 

And this situation and these reactions, ladies, gentlemen, and others, are why I choose to make this blog as anonymous as is reasonable and why I have not told my more stable job about it. I'm paranoid, but not a complete idiot. Just a partial one with a lazy streak.

Back

Well, for those of you playing along at home, you may have picked up on "Quitter" that I wasn't only referring to Camp Fire Girls and Job's Daughters but about my life. Raise a hand if you caught the barely veiled references to suicide. Anyone?

If you don't know it yet, I brought that bit of prose to my therapist and, on her very strong urging, I checked myself into a psychiatric hospital for Thanksgiving. 

I was in there for a week. The first two days I spent most of my time in my room. I came out to the Day Room for meals and meds, I was examined by a physician, and I went to a couple of group sessions. While the group sessions were fine, they were nothing earth-shaking. The meds were supposed to be what I brought, but the pharmacy apparently would rather bend me over provide me with their meds rather than use what I brought and somehow everything got messed up and I was off my two primary meds for three days, and off one of them for another two after that! So I was experiencing weird withdrawal symptoms as well as being in a strange place both spatially and mentally. 

Quitter

My parents used to call me a quitter.

• After a year or so of Campfire Girls, I didn't go back. It wasn't any fun and I have some very bad memories of it.
• I was in Honor Choir in 5th grade and I quit it to play softball. Because our lives revolved around my brother's sports, I thought I'd get some of the attention if I played a sport. (There is a whole, ugly story around this, but now isn't the time.) I wish I hadn't done this. I'd have been happier in Choir. But I was only 10 or 11.
• In 6th grade, I joined Girl Scouts. After about five months, all we had done were a handful of crafts. We didn't go anywhere or do anything. I had joined with two other girls, and they were also bored and unhappy. They made me the spokesman to tell the leader we were quitting. She cried. I was 11. My folk began calling me a quitter to my face.
• I was forced to join Job's Daughters when I was in 7th grade. Didn't want to, but the family had promised my dying grandfather (and given several things, I certainly felt no compulsion to follow that promise). I stayed for a year and a half before being able to leave it. My parents again accused me of quitting, of never being able to stick with a thing.

Not Enough

Today was my mother's birthday. She would have been 72.

I'm doing particularly badly today, but have been doing generally badly for weeks. I've done virtually nothing on one of my jobs; I'm sure they are just so glad they asked me to do it.

I'm so miserable and I don't know what to do about it that I'm not already doing. I think it wouldn't be a bad thing to be dead on almost a daily basis. I hurt and there is nothing that gives me any reason to think I'm going to become appreciably better. I have no family. What friends I do have are really just friends: none of them will ever come to visit me here or make me truly part of their family. And I haven't made any constant friends since I moved here. Given my experience, that's likely to remain the case.

Anyone who's reading this is already thinking "oh you should have hope" and "you don't really mean that" and "you don't know that's the case" and all that other optimistic stuff. And I wouldn't be able to convince such people — even if I bothered trying — that I have done and thought and felt all the hopeful, positive, productive things anyone has ever told me about, asked me about, or that I've read about or even thought of independently and none of it has worked.  But nobody ever believes me about that anyway. Just call me Cassandra.

11.11.11 — Welcome to My Party

Depending on who you listen to, today's binary date brings either great evil (Zombiepocalypse anybody?) or great good (The Rapture, if you are of a specific belief system; The Rapture, if you are the rest of us). All I know is that I have fallen many steps backward in my journey out of the Abyss. As I told a friend last night, I'm just a goopy, weepy mess right now. Kind of like a puddle in the Abyss. A goopy puddle. And this is my Great Big Goddamn Pity-Party.

I'm stressed about all the stuff I still haven't done, especially the Estate bills so we can close out and I can get my damned money (you would think that would motivate me; maybe I procrastinate so the others won't get theirs?), and the manager/coordinator job, which I haven't done much at all with. I feel guilty and I beat myself up over it. And no, the apartment is no better ... it's worse. It's almost a year since it's been entirely clean. Almost a year since the carpet (which is not entirely visible) was vacuumed. I'm afraid to look under some of this stuff — I know there will be dead (please oh please oh please no) bugs under it, or in it.

Getting fatter, not getting stronger. Eating junk with lots of sugar, something I have such an addiction to that I seem powerless in the face of it. If I have sugar, then that's all I want. It's overwhelming and compelling. I'm not walking, nor am I exercising. At my age, I need to change this. I need to be as strong and flexible and mobile as I can be; there is no one to take care of me in my old age.

I feel lonely, in that "I have no family" sort of way. No family, no partner, not even any friends who love me enough to invite me to be with them during xmas or New Year's. Except my BFF, but if the others don't seem that interested, there's no point in flying all that way. And feeling unloved. My BFF and his whatever-she-is are nice enough, but exceptionally dysfunctional (pot? kettle?) that it's sometimes uncomfortable to be with them. And BFF and I have minefields galore. And I have no friends here who are so close that they will spend significant (if any) time with me, much less holidays. I love my online friends, but that's what they are: online.

I need to touch and be touched. I desperately need to be held; I have had little of that since Mom died. I need it for comfort and to fill a physical need that connects me, to the ground, and to other people. I feel so inexpressibly alone.

All of which leads me to the goopy, weepy mess. Fat & flappy? Check. Self-pitying? Check. Weepy? Check. Sliding backward, erasing months of progress? Double-check.

Thoughts (which Karen the Therapist would tell me I should address with Cognitive Therapeutic thoughts, but I just don't feel up to it, or even deserving of it):

• If no one else cares enough to take care of me, why should I care enough?
• I'm going to disappoint everyone eventually; might as well get it over with.
• I'm going to live my life alone. I'm going to end my life alone. So what's the point of it? I'm not suicidal, but some days the thought of slurping down the entire bottle of one of my meds seems attractive.
• Maybe some people are right and mental and emotional problems only get worse as we get older — never better. That would suggest that I am engaged in a futile waste of energy.
• I cannot have the man I love. I have seen him less than 5 times this year. It's not entirely rational, but I feel unloveable and always second-best. Hell, the guy I lived with for a few years even chose computer games and video recordings over me. Given my experience — decades of it — I have to conclude that men just don't want me particularly. They don't value me particularly. It's all written in invisible neon lights over my head.

Well, that should provide a selection of what I'm thinking and feeling. I'm a mess. I'm weepy. And I am gloopy — disgusting and flabby and disturbingly sticky.

I don't like myself. I don't like my life. I want out. But I don't see any way to like myself or get a life I like, so I'm stuck. I don't see anything — possible — that I want or that is more satisfying that what I have.

If you are still reading, then thank you for attending my pity party. Time to go now. I feel another cry coming on.

I am a Mystery

So said my therapist today. It takes awhile for a therapist and client to get to know each other, and for the therapist to discover important things about the client. I have a history of surprising or dumbfounding my therapists.

All of this stuff — the being barely functional, the depression, the anxiety, the paralysis — she thought was just since Mom died. Some things are so old-hat to me that I don't think to mention them, or else I think I already have.

Today's session was fairly free-ranging due to my unfocused and sedated mind. (My psych bumped me up to 4 mg of Lorazepam a day, which can be taken singly or in combination not to exceed two, and rather than diminishing my anxiety, it's just sedating me, which kind of increases my anxiety.) I led Karen the Wonder Therapist all over the place.

Eventually, I got stuck talking about my ex. This is the guy I moved in with and lived with for three years. This is the guy I wanted, and fully expected, to marry and have children with. This is the guy who so diminished and battered me verbally and emotionally that I think he broke something important inside me. This is the issue that Karen thinks may be more important to explore than the sexual abuse. And when we got to where I said I felt as if something had been broken inside me from my relationship with him, she thought for a moment and then said, "You are a Mystery." She had just discovered that my dysfunctions didn't start with Mom's dying. She perceived more of the big picture that is me.

I kind of like being a Mystery (yes, the capital M matters), but I'd rather be a Mystery for something more cool than my mental and emotional dysfunctions.

Current homework: attack the estate bills in small increments, earning computer privileges. Karen is one savvy therapist.

Pecked to Death By Chickens

A good friend of mine has a plaque on one of the walls of her house that says "Having children is like being pecked to death by chickens." (The sign hasn't seemed to have done any lasting harm to her children.) They all understood the concept: they had chickens.

Readers of this blog have some idea of how my life has gone in the past year and some. I haven't blogged much in the last couple of months, what with dealing with the estate, having surgery, finding work that is low-paying but gratifying (and anxiety-producing), and now getting a fairly solid respiratory infection that may have also endangered or even ended another work situation before it started. In fact, it feels a lot like being pecked to death by chickens, Universe-style.

I'm just trying to make progress. All I want is a life of health, financial stability, and the chance to pursue my happiness and my dreams. Given all my fortunate advantages — white, from a middle-class family, well-educated, and highly experienced in my field of endeavor — getting the life I want shouldn't be so hard. But every time I think I have my feet under me, things beyond my control knock them out from under me again: Mom, overwhelming grief and depression, unemployment, emergency surgery for god's sake!, illness, and timing.

Good things have happened: friends have helped and supported me in some places, I found a great therapist (and a mediocre psychiatric nurse), I got the one project. I know that life is hard. I also know that life was simpler and easier for my parents; it wasn't a painful struggle. We were all very happy and content (until my dad died and our lives completely fell apart, but that's a separate story). I just think that continually having to try and shovel myself out of a hole full of mud is harder than it needs to be. Add to that the continuous and uneven peck-peck-peck of my life's disasters — small and large — prevents me from making progress. And it wears me out completely.

You'll notice I haven't given up. I keep trying through some, potentially foolish, belief that I can grasp that life I want, one where I can withstand the difficulties because I have enough of the good to cushion my falls. Or maybe I keep on because, really, what else is there to do?

Only keep trying to dig myself out of the mud and avoid the damned chickens at the same time.

I'm not that fond of chicken.

What's a Beautiful Morning?

I don't wake up looking forward to the mornings.

I did when I was a child. I loved life and I loved being alive. As I got older that changed, bit by bit. Was my cousin in the house? Then it might be a day where he would so something I didn't want to do. Was it a school day? By the end of elementary school, every day was a day to be tormented and made to feel like less than dirt. And then, after Daddy died, well, there were many days when it seemed like there was no reason to get up because he wasn't turning my light on and saying "Good morning!" And with the pain and the distance within our little family, well, there was nothing to look forward to.

There were times in between, when I looked forward to my days. I loved college. But then my little brother killed himself and that brought me to many years of "why bother because it goes to hell."

"I like living myself --- not just beng happy and enjoying myself and having  a good time. I mean living, --- waking up and feeling, all over me, that I'm here --- tickling all over."

Agatha Christie, A Murder Is Announced

Ray Bradbury remarked that he woke up like a rocket, all at once, bounding downstairs with life and joy at starting a new day, to spend four hours writing.

As I've grown older, I have be come less and less interested in starting a new day, less and less interested in going to sleep because when I wake I'll have to start a new day. I exist, and I don't enjoy it. There is so much I could and can do with my time, but I waste it away, trying to avoid my own life, my own experiences, to avoid that I don't wake up "tickling all over" or like a rocket.

A life of verve and vibrancy: I had it. I lost it. I want it back.

Pretty Well

People tell me that I'm doing pretty well right now as I'm dealing with a number of difficult tasks. It stops me each time someone says that because I'm not even thinking about how well I'm doing. I'm not thinking about how what I'm doing even has an emotional context — I'm simply doing what I need to do. That's what it seems like to me.

But when someone tells me I'm doing pretty well, or that I'm doing great, a small alarm goes off inside my mind. Why wouldn't I be doing well? Is there something I don't know? Because I am not paying attention to the larger picture. I'm looking at each discrete task and achieving it, or figuring out how to achieve it. I completely forget why I have to remove things from the house, why I have to arrange for movers, why I have the vague feeling that each day here is one more closer to my very last.

What this all means is that the emotional context will come crashing down on me all at once and swamp me. I can accept that. I hope it waits until I'm home again.

A More Civilized Pace — Please!

Change. I know life is full of it, but I do remember when the changes in my life were more leisurely, when they weren't falling over each other in their eagerness to meet me, when they weren't pulling me along at rocket-speed and dangling me behind them like a toy on a tether.

I complain about everything, right? But my life seems to be on a bullet-train of change. I'm half a century old: change should slow down! Just let me catch my breath, at least. And how about balancing things out with some positive changes, such as financial independence (or at least security), and love and friendship (close on a geographic scale, please)?

I'm not a jet-setter. I'm not an adrenaline-junkie (but there are a couple of things I wouldn't mind trying again). I may walk briskly, but I also like to "stroll about, lookin' at the shops."* I love spending long, slow hours with friends and family, telling stories and laughing, taking long and scenic drives, playing games, and watching children play. I love spending time with someone special, curled up at opposite ends of the couch, and reading news articles, comics, and book passages to each other. I like to savor.

Mind you, I'm not only slow. I enjoy fast-paced movies and books. I love to watch MythBusters and the more explosions the better! I like fast rides and short lines. There's nothing like running and laughing with children until everyone collapses with exhaustion and giggles.

My social life at home is too slow: it's dead. With no work, my days drag. If I weren't paralyzed with fear over my impending complete brokeness, I could at least write. On the other hand, there have been jobs, Mom's cancer and death and all the many months of follow-up to that (that are speeding up now), and changes in my social life that brought it to death, freelance gigs, meeting people professionally — it's cocaine one one side and pot on the other, but not balanced and neither healthy nor fun.

Do you know what I want? 

1. Financial independence, or at least financial security, so I don't worry all the time, expending my energy fruitlessly.
2. Friends with whom I spend time with frequently.
3. Enough to do without it being too much. If I work for pay, then less than 40 hours a week and little or no commute: why spend my life on things that don't add to it? If I don't need to work for pay, then enough volunteer work and activities to keep me interested and interesting but that leaves me with plenty of time and energy to spend in other ways.
4. Someone special to spend that time with on the couch.
5. Two cats.
6. An office and studio that is full of light and comfort and that inspires creativity. In fact, an entire house like that. My house.

I know life is full of change, and that you cannot control all of it, or even most of it. I know change comes at all speeds, but lately I've felt exhausted by it. I want some good change in my life, and for my vehicle of change to move a bit slower. I don't need to ride in a stealth bomber.

*Moody Blues, Days of Future Passed

Fine. Be That Way.

Yet again, no help is offered from Life. "You are so strong!" "Look at how much you've done!" "See? You have already done it!" Sigh.

Maybe from your perspective, but not so much from mine. I can see how much more there is to do. And I'm TIRED!!!! So I want a little help. (Yo, Universe! A little help?)

I don't want to recreate the wheel. If there are established ways that work in my situation, that help to develop more positive mental states that last, then it seems to me that following those paths would be efficacious. This is not necessarily a time when "go the way less travelled" or "go your own way" or thinking outside the box is the good option.

Fix now, creative later.

===

Much later ...

I've spent the evening with my neighbors on the south side of the house. They rock. I haven't had any alcohol for awhile due to my previous psych saying "no no" due to the medications I'm on (other medical folks have been less stringent), and they gave me some wine. Then some more wine. Then dinner. Then, when it was just me and her (because he was asleep on the couch in front of the TV), homemade kahlua and cream over ice. Mmm. And lots of talking about Mom and grief and Mom's choices about the estate and about their family and about my special friend (because they were a couple I shared the potential with back when it started) and all kinds of stuff. I haven't been tipsy in quite awhile. If I can, I'm going to join them for their 7:30 am walk. If not tomorrow, then definitely the following morning. Tomorrow I may not manage it. I am feeling pretty darned good.

Anyway, I got plenty of validation about being alone and trying to do things alone and it being difficult and nothing about being all positive. I liked it. I know other people are trying to be helpful, but it is also very helpful for someone to say "yes, you are alone. yes, it is hard. I hear you and my heart goes out to you. Have some more wine."

I had a great time.  Now I'm tipsy. And tired. I'll write tomorrow when I can function mentally.

A Cry for Help in the Darkness

Anger, resentment, discontent, desire, scarcity: these feelings fill my mind and my heart far more than any positive emotions. I tried very hard to develop more positivity in my thoughts and was doing pretty well, I thought. 

Slowly, stealthily, the positive thoughts and constructs leaked out of my mind and the dark, negative thoughts slid in. I didn't even notice, the dark ones feel so familiar. I feel consumed by the unfairness of life, grief, and loss. There's a positivity-sized hole in my mind: how do I stop it so I can keep my mind balanced and positive? After all, a friend spent an entire week writing about positivity in response to my desire for validation for my less-than-positive reality.

My mind is not a happy place to reside in. I cruise my usual blogs, but comment seldom because the useful- and/or positive-comment area of my brain is empty. All around me, fairies are falling to the ground and kittens are crying. I can feel my hair and my clothing turning black. What's the music Emo kids listen to these days?

When my mind is filled with sadness and despair, my body hurts. One of the joys of fibro, but it's also a side-effect of depression. My sleep is affected and pretty much everything sucks, thus completing the feedback loop that says the Universe is a dark and dreadful place.

It's like a prison. I want out.

It seems I am always saying — and asking for — help. This case falls under a request for help doing or learning to do something. I want a coach to help me regain my positive frame of mind, my reality-tinged optimism of former days. A coach who is sensitive to what I've gone through, the validation I need, and who won't go all perky and chipper on me. But I expect that, as usual, I will be left to do this all alone. Again. I honestly think this makes the process go much more slowly, leaving me depressed and and full of darkness for much longer. I can't see how this helps me. But then, it's not the Universe's place to be helpful or play fair. The Universe is just what it is. 

But maybe the force and energy that is Life will help me out a little. Something, someone, please give me some help here.

Something Else Tonight

No actual post. I'm doing my homework tonight and tomorrow morning. I'm at the point in the story where Mom dies, so that's going to kind of take up all I have to give for now.

Body Battle

My body and I are in a struggle right now. It's not life or death, it's more like which lane to drive in. Kinda.

Basically, I don't feel much like eating. If it's a popsicle or some ice cream, I'd eat it, but I don't feel like going out and getting food. I have salad stuff, bread, butter PB, eggs. I'm out of milk and berries. So I do have food, but it's food that doesn't spark any craving or interest in me. Part of me knows I should eat something, for many reasons, such as not throwing my body into famine mode. But my body isn't particularly sending me any hunger messages and I'm just not interested. It's been a very long time since I've had this response to stress and anxiety. It beats eating a half-gallon of ice cream in one sitting! (I did that after my cat died.)

My mind is suggesting things like going out and getting some fast food, including a dessert. It might slide past my "I don't feel like eating" stance and it should definitely bump my body out of feelings of famine. But I'd need to keep giving it sufficient calories to keep that state going.

I've lost a little weight, but part of it is a loss of muscle mass because I'm so sedentary. When I go off to deal with the Estate next week, there will be plenty of exercise involved. Packing and unpacking boxes, lifting and putting down. And there are hills and a beach just made for walking on. Perhaps if I'm moving around I will feel hungry.

I haven't yet decided what to do tonight. I don't think the dark chocolate with chili bar has sufficient calories and I can only eat a square or two at a time anyway, which is why I bought it. I'm giving more thought to driving to some fast food place, maybe Wendy's because they have a pretty good fish sandwich and I could get by without ever going to a McDonald's again. I haven't eaten beef in well over a year, so having a hamburger would just give me a stomach ache. And I don't want to go out to eat; tonight I'm not up to doing so alone.

If only I weren't so bored by Chik fil A — they are the closest fast food place. Their real milk shakes and their lemon pie are awesome, but the food just makes me yawn now.

I can put together a basic salad — nothing special — but there aren't many calories in that. And my mind-body thing is saying "ho hum". I could hard-boil a couple of eggs — my body isn't saying no to that. But it still isn't high in calories.

I think there is a very real business niche for dessert delivery. I would pay more to have ice cream or cake delivered to me in the evening so I don't have to get dressed and go out and get it myself. 

Still I sit here, battling with my body about whether or not to eat something and if so what. At least I'm losing some of that extra weight I put on!

Value-Added Sleep

Sleep is good for you — we all know that. People have different needs for sleep and vastly varying sleep schedules.  Some folks nap and some don't.

And some of us sleep away the majority of a day without planning to do so. Today I felt immensely tired at 1:30, so I set my alarm for 3:00 (2 alarms, actually). I don't remember turning them off. I woke up just before 7pm, just before another alarm went off. 

I certainly didn't accomplish anything to day. Nor did I work up an appetite. I had a piece of buttered toast and two popsicles for dinner. And didn't get to the store for milk and berries.

I don't take regular naps. If I lay down, I'm going to sleep for at least an hour, usually two. If I sleep longer, well there's a reason. The reason right now is most likely being worn out from severe anxiety, and/or avoiding my life. There isn't much I can do right now about significant aspects of my life, so sleeping through some of it makes a certain emotional sense, if nothing else. Certainly it doesn't help my life. But I don't have the ability to help my life significantly right now, which is just not at all a nice place to be. Thus the sleep.

I'm up to taking an entire milligram of Ativan 3 times a day. It helps me reduce the anxiety (I don't grind my teeth and my shoulders can actually drop down away from my ears), but it also makes me sleepy at that level. I might try for 3/4 of a mg. Half just isn't doing it right now.

I'm half looking forward to working on the pre-sale work next week and the following. If I get involved and focused enough, I can refrain from thinking about all the crap that is making me so crazy and fearful. I can't do anything about any of it, so I might as well avoid it by doing something else.

But I need to stop sleeping during the day.  It really doesn't allow me to do things that will decrease my anxiety. Doing activities to avoid anxiety (even unconsciously), which raises it. Really effective.

Sometimes

Ya know, sometimes it's just not possible to be positive. And sometimes I want to be negative, or at least not-positive. This has been an ungodly shitty year, the latest in a life punctuated by unexpected and tragic losses and other traumas. (I am the poster child for fibromyalgia, which is thought to develop as a result of one major physical or emotional trauma, or repeated ones. I'm in on all counts.) Sometimes I need to acknowledge the shit.

I need to acknowledge that my life sucks right now and that the non-sucky part is still somewhere past the horizon and that it's quite possible that my life is going to suck even more in the very near future unless a series of miracles occur.

To me, being positive in the face of these things or, even worse, about these things is like saying they don't matter or they aren't real. It's unrealistic and irrational. Bad stuff must be acknowledged. Pain and fear and the very real possibly of going stone broke — even having spent my jars of coins on food — is right before my eyes. I can see it. That's not being pessimistic, that's being rational.

Acknowledging the bad doesn't give it extra power. I think that ignoring it gives it power; the power to overwhelm you because you were so busy positively ignoring it that all the realistic things you might have done you didn't.

Sometimes, when I'm trying to be all bright and hopeful and positive, I'm really on the edge of tears.

This has been my life. This is my life. If things entirely out of your control repeat in your life, is that a lesson? If so, mine appears to be that life is about pain and helplessness that slowly whittle you down to nothing over time.

I guess the main thing I'm trying to say is this: sometimes being positive and pushing the bad stuff aside invalidates the very reality of the bad stuff and the pain that has been happening and that is happening right now. And just because something good happens or I have a good day does not negate everything else that continues to be Not Good in my life. I've been doing all that I am able to do, from when all I could do is crawl out of bed in the morning and back into it in the evening until now when I can wash my breakfast dishes as well. I have not been capable of looking for a job in an organized or energetic or even useful manner if at all, so no money is coming in. All the affirmations and visualizations in the world have not brought me money through other means (bequests, lottery tickets, philanthropy, whatever). Reality says that if I don't become stone broke in the next 6 weeks, then I'm going to miss it by only a hair and that missing it might as well be luck.

So, this being positive thing. Don't take it to extremes. Doing so feels disrespectful and invalidating. I rather need some validation now and then throughout this terribly shitty time. I need some now. Just because I can manage a smile doesn't mean I'm not in hell.

The Art of Focusing

As was obvious from last night's post, I am feeling overwhelmed and not at all like I'm "handling" anything. I feel my greatest accomplishments are a) not dying, and b) not screaming. The only reason I wasn't hyperventilating today was because of one of my cute little quirks I have when I'm tense: I was holding my breath.

I'm one of those people with a noisy mind. Music, musings, conversations, commentary — it's all going on in my mind all the time. My mind is rarely quiet. It's quieter when I write, but then there is frequently my "talking" as I write and there are other things in my mind that may or may not make it onto the screen (or the paper, if I'm going low-tech). One thing I've noticed is that the more anxious I feel, the greater the noise in my mind. It's like the noises are faster and more shrill, winding up like the "hamster-wheel" meltdowns I've experienced in the past. There's a correlation, but I'd say that the increased anxiety probably causes the more agitated noise rather than the other way around.

The noise and anxiety and near panic were almost making me sick today. I have a lot of stress places on my body, and my stomach is one of them. During times of extreme stress and extreme physical and mental tightness, I've actually lost a great deal of weight, even when there wasn't much to lose. I have high hopes for this phase, because I'm sure as hell not hungry and when I do eat, the food ends up feeling like a solid lump in my stomach. Add to this some exercise due to the work I've got to do back at my mom's house and I should drop a good 10 pounds easily in two weeks. If I had a scale to measure myself on today, I'd do it, but I'll have to wait until I get to the house.

The noises in my mind today seemed to be ratcheting my anxiety higher, like a positive feedback loop, and I was quickly working up from panic to screaming, so I tried some mindfulness and meditative techniques to see if they helped. I focused very precisely on exactly what I was doing. I allowed myself to hear the sounds around me, such as the refrigerator compressor or the table fan. I felt my clothing on my body and focused on my cup of tea as I carried it to the couch and as I sipped it. If a bit of song slipped into my mind, I tightened my focus, listened for sounds around me and outside. 

This level of focus exhausted me. I don't have the discipline or the skill to maintain it for very long, so my quiet moments were short and choppy. But they were there. And when I was that focused, paying that much attention to what I was doing, I wasn't aware of anything other than what I was doing: I wasn't aware of panic and anxiety and hamsters and wanting to puke. 

So there are very good reasons to practice this kind of focus. Maybe doing so will save my sanity, what there is of it. If it keeps me from puking or screaming, that's a win right there! I think the anxiety/panic connects to the hamster-wheel meltdown — they are all part of the same craziness. If paying attention in an aware way calms the craziness pieces, it's worth taking the time to practice. And it will take time and energy because my mind just is not able to focus for that long. It's very hard work.

Of course, I'm likely to forget how focusing helped me today. Maybe having it written down here will help me remember, because I have a tendency to forget things that benefit me, or things I like to do, or things that will get me to where I want to be. Makes me want a personal secretary who, while telling me what appointments I have to attend and what phone calls I must make, will remind me to pay attention and to go for a walk and who'll make sure I have salads for dinner, too.

I know, I know. Post-Its. Lots less expensive than a personal secretary but they probably won't go out and get me lunch.