Monday, April 19, 2010

Sacrifing at the Altar of Mental Health

Possibly TMI (too much information) about personal sexual matters. Read with caution.

This probably won't be your typical post, with a real point to it. Mostly just venting because I don't know what else to do. I fear that if I don't DO something, I'll just curl up in a ball and shut down. I don't want to shut down. But I don't really know what to do to help. And there really isn't an immediate crisis that needs tending to, more an internal personal crisis. So just bear with me as I vent. If you have constructive criticism or helpful advice, feel free to give it to me. If not, no worries, thanks for at least bearing witness to my cry to heaven.

I had a fiction teacher who told us that melodrama ended in a perfect bind where someone had to die for it to be resolved, where all the choices left to the protagonist were horrible ones, usually being suicide or murder. I guess I'm being overly melodramatic by comparing that to my situation, but I do feel like I'm in a double bind.

The lithium has saved my life and put me on an even keel. I cannot imagine going of this medication because I honestly don't want to return to being so imbalanced, to having to constantly right against manic suicidality, or the lovely hospital stays. BUT it has changed my personality and habits in ways that I do not like and can't see myself living with long-term. This is especially true in the case of my sex drive, sexual interests, and sexual response. So in addition to my ability to think quickly and in depth, which I've talked about before, I'm also sacrificing my sex life on the altar of 'mental health.'

My psychiatrist asked me to think of these changes in my mood, behavior, thought process, etc, as bringing me closer to normal, as showing me how un-normal my thinking was previously, before the lithium, so I might appreciate this new way of thinking. Sigh. That was before all the sex stuff really kicked me in the teeth. Without going into too much detail about the circumstances, TyRoy and I decided to indulge in some even-less-mainstream sexual adventures. Part of it was that we just never really took advantage of having each other this time, of having a crazy freaky sex partner who would be up for sexual adventures with other people and TyRoy will be transfered by his job in the next 6 months. For me, there was another part- I just hadn't been as interested in sex since I had started taking the lithium. I wasn't looking for outside sex partners, like on Craigslist or other personal's sites. I haven't been having solo flights, despite a pretty new 'jackrabbit'-type vibe. While TyRoy had known for about a year that I hadn't been as horny, I don't think he really realized the fully extent of the change in me, mostly because I don't often turn him down and I thoroughly enjoy it when we do have sex. Honestly, I think I was trying to deny the whole situation. But the adventure we sought out this past weekend meant I had to face it. Or...well, face it only to run away like a giant coward, while my issues chased after me, refusing to be ignored.

I don't like this person that I feel I've become now. I don't like this woman. When I was much younger, I recognized that I might not be the unattainable heartbreaking lady who existed in so many pop songs, but I could at least be that lover who pulled you into bed with passion and fire and a VERY open-mind. I wanted to try almost everything sexual. I've known for a long time that I many kinky interests. After finding Savage Love, I realized that I always wanted to try to be GGG (good, giving, and game) and that I wanted to try to create a continiously loving and sexual relationship with any and every long term partner. But this me doesn't have the same interest in actually having sex. I do think about sex all the time. I like learning about it still. It doesn't turn me off. But actually having sex, even with my hot stud of a not-boyfriend, is more like eating dinner at 6pm when you aren't exactly hungry. You do it because it's that time. It tastes great. And you feel much better after you're done, so you do it. But I don't want sex to be like that. I still want to seek out new sexual experiences. I mean, what is an open-mind about all these sexual things if you can't use it to actually DO something?

I also fear for my next sexual relationship. I don't think the sexual relationship with TyRoy has necessarily suffered but that is because he prefers initiating sex, so it's not as if alot has changed. But not all people are like that. Also, fairly, most men and women want their partner to initiate sex at least part of the time. They don't want to feel like they are always pushing themselves on their partner. They want to feel like their partner also wants them enough to get the action started. Goddess help me if I get with a person who is used to their partner being their aggressor. They'll be waiting forever and we'll never have sex.

Fuck, I just feel like things, possibilities just keep getting taken away from me. I'm in all these no-win situations. I know in my heart I'll almost always make the right decision, do the less selfish thing, but a little part of me doesn't want to. I want to run away. Every time I think about that, think about sharing that sentence with someone else, especially whenever I'd think about texting it to MP, I'd realize how 'teenager' that sounded. But maybe part of me is stuck back there. And I lack all the hallmarks of adulthood - degrees, career, children, ownership. But I do have that restlessness still. There are many times that I just wish I could start over, as if a new place and new life would erase history and mental illness. Well, life is longer than we think. Maybe I'll get to try it out yet.

My mom seems to think the lithium is some kind of miracle in my life. Maybe it is. But I still don't have a job and I still disappear into sleep for 12-48 hours at a time every week or two. I asked TyRoy, point blank, if he prefered how I was before the lithium or how I am now with the lack of sexual adventure. After only a few seconds of thought, he answered that he prefered me now, lacking in sexual adventure, but no longer prone to show up at his house at 10 pm after I'd been threatening suicide all night. I do see his point. But there's always a "BUT..." for me.

Is it wrong that I wonder how it might have been decades, centuries ago, before psychiatric drugs? I guess I'm thinking of the romanticized lives of artists, though, while they may have lived 'romantic' lives, they often lived lives of poverty, just like everyone else of their day who suffered from a mental illness and was unable to work and/or self-medicated with alcohol.

I don't think I've gotten any further in my thinking but at least I did something and now I'm closer to tired. Thanks for listening.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know that sometimes you feel overwhelmed and always looking for an answer. I don't always have good advice but I can relate Adriene. I feel that we both are in the same place. I have been out of work and am now because of the kidney stones. I worry that the short term disability will be denied and I'll get fired. Then all my medication will be changed because I will have no insurance.
I understand no sexual drive. I have had the drive before. But understand the daily task of marking a check by the sex column. It feels like a chore sometimes. I would like to start over but don't have the will power because I wouldn't have anyone to fall back on if I fail...which I am good at. I really understand what you are going thru. I live with my parents and my pride is very hurt by that. I hate looking in the face of people when I tell them where I live. Their expressions are priceless. Well I know this probably didn't help if just to let you know that I am listening and I love you as a great friend.


Kelly

Anna Delia said...

I might not be the unattainable heartbreaking lady who existed in so many pop songs, but I could at least be that lover who pulled you into bed with passion and fire and a VERY open-mind.

What I'm hearing is-- and i'm paraphrasing your words here-- you're trying to compensate for a lack of allure by being willing, to the point of freaky. It's a theory, but i'm not convinced that it's sound. I guess my concern is that you're compensating for what you see as a flawed character trait by making up a new one, which you hope is stronger. But the principle flaw remains.

I just feel like things, possibilities just keep getting taken away from me.

This one just isn't sound. You're equating [all] things and possibilities with sexual adventure. But there's so much many more activities and hobbies to get turned on to. This bit, and a lot of the overall rest of this post, point towards a fixation, a dependency. Which is why i started with the reefer reference. Even though it was pretty easy, really, to get off the weed (i can quite whenever i want), the use-pattern still looks like addiction. It's a fine fucking line and i'm no saint. But i guess what i'm trying to get at is that, regardless of any sort of definition of normal, there's healthy interest and then there's all-consuming attention.

I still don't have a job and I still disappear into sleep for 12-48 hours at a time every week or two.

How long have you been struggling with depression, with 'manic suicidality'? Then, how long have you been on the lithium? Change takes time. Someone once said to me they thought that the breakup from a dear relationship would take 3 times the length of the relationship itself. It might seem slow to you, but it probably will take a damn long time. It's like financial planning: make small changes slowly. Set goals and reward yourself. But don't expect to wake up one day and everything is roses and the credits roll.

Is it wrong that I wonder how it might have been decades, centuries ago, before psychiatric drugs?

No, it's not wrong and i wonder the same thing a lot. But i think i know the answer. When homesteaders 200 years ago had a tooth-ache, they just fucking lived with disabling pain. Or they pulled all their teeth and went around with wood in their mouths for the rest of their lives. Mental conditions were a lot flipping worse, too. 'Loony' bins and electroshock-- loss of identity and human rights were pretty standard.

Or, if you want to get tribal, you get town-fools and (if you're lucky) shamens. Community intervention would be the best outcome. But what do we have for community today? In modern industrial society, we're left with the nuclear family and then the workplace. The first isn't big enough to absorb the hit, and the second doesn't permit it to occur. So we use drugs. Without digressing to further, we live in a modern, technological society. We use the cars and TV and fiber-optic internet. Part and parcel with that is the medical response system.

And finally, out of order:

I do think about sex all the time. I like learning about it still.

Use that persistent drive in a different way, then. Become a writer for Savage Love, or start your own sex blog! Kick up the learning about it and return by writing about it and don't even worry about not actually caring about doing it.

The world is just too damn rich and deep to get hung up on one obsession. Turn what you're becoming into a new passion, create a hobby, and maybe-- with the grace of the good-- it will return with what should be long-term goals anyway: 'degrees, career, children, ownership'. In the meantime, set short-term goals (sleep schedules and savings accounts, say, or whatever else is meaningful to you). Reward yourself when you meet them, but don't punish yourself for missing them-- just extend the deadlines a little.

Anna Delia said...

Well, dear, it sounds like you're really hurting on this transition and so considering backing off of it. It also sounds as though this is more than you've ever opened up. But i feel strongly on this one, so i'm going to return with as much honesty. And it will be easiest if i can take this piece by piece, quoting as i go.

BUT it has changed my personality and habits in ways that I do not like and can't see myself living with long-term. This is especially true in the case of my sex drive, sexual interests, and sexual response. So in addition to my ability to think quickly and in depth, which I've talked about before, I'm also sacrificing my sex life on the altar of 'mental health.'

You may know that i used to puff the reefer a fair amount (ok, a lot). One thing i noticed when i stopped for a few days was that it vividly affected my sexual interests. Not just the drive, but the manner and types of interests. Coming off herb changed my interests and even changed some of my relationships, as a result.

But it also changed other things about my mental state. For a time, it was hard to tell (and to some extent, i still wonder about long-term effects). But what's clear is, when i revisit that interest (as many will do tomorrow...), my mind responds quite differently to it. Paranoia and something possibly even like schizophrenia sets in, thankfully temporarily. So i tend to question the old habits, is all.

My psychiatrist asked me to think of these changes in my mood, behavior, thought process, etc, as bringing me closer to normal, as showing me how un-normal my thinking was previously, before the lithium, so I might appreciate this new way of thinking.

Just for the record, though, there's no fucking normal. This is really off-topic (i'm responding to your concerns, as your direct friend), but yeah, there's no such thing as 'normal'.

[Continued on the next comment.]

Ava said...

From my friend MorriC, posted to other social networking site:
It seems to me that ever since you started Lithium you've been leery about how it's changed you. Looking back at older posts on that blog you've always mentioned the lack of sex drive as compared to before, you've mentioned how you felt slowed down like you couldn't produce creative thought as well anymore (although that one has happened to me ... See Morewithout medication- maybe its just part of the aging process), and of course- the weight gain and inability to loose weight on lithium. Objectively, I think I have to agree with most outside points of view that it has to be better to be stabilized mood-wise, but i also see your point and HATE when the doc or whomever told you that "well this is what being normal is like" basically.. FUCK normal! lol. But n o really, no one is "normal" and even though I take interest in Psychology I have always hated Psych's views of "normal" because it usually equated more to "sedated and calm". And I can see that that is how you feel- sedated, held back, not yourself, etc. So that is NO GOOD in my book.
Here's the thing, if you go off Lithium you may loose relationships and friendships because some people can't handle the crazy, especially after seeing you "normalized" BUT in the end YOU have to live with yourself. So you gotta do what you feel is right, what will make YOU happy. And I know you know this, and I know its not much advice, but I thought I would share my two-cent view.

Ava said...

Ok, well, let's try to answer the comments to far. Thank you all, by the way, for all your thoughtful help.

For Kelly- I'm not sure if I came off clearly but sex isn't quite a chore so much it's kinda like how a person might go out every Saturday with their friends more just because they always do it than because you have a passionate desire to do it. But either way, it isn't like it used to be. But I definately am scared that I just won't even want to date after TyRoy leaves because all that dating bullshit just seems like drudgery with no pay off.

To Anna - Shit, I don't know where to start. Let's see, I've been dealing with the depression for... well, kinda my whole life. After I started getting mental health help, I realized that a great deal of my thinking was because of the depression, that being 5 want making a drawing of an angel with the words that I wanted to die so I could be with the angels, that being 12 and wanting to kill myself and crying all night for no real reason, weren't anybodies' idea of normal thinking. The depression got worse around 12, then worse again around 18, which is when I started cutting and seriously planning suicide. Then it was in the last maybe 3 years or so that I have been even worse and kinda transitioned into bipolar from simple depression. Before the last hospitalization, before I started the lithium in Oct 2008, I was definately in a manic phase while also manically pursuing attempts to kill myself. Nothing has changed with the medication recently, same I've been on for about a year and a half. And, as MorriC pointed out, I've been weirded out by how I've changed since I've been on the medication, but I've just gotten it into my head that my sex life and interests REALLY have changed and it upsets me. When I said I've lost things, it's that I've lost alot of the passion and fire I had for life before, I feel like I've lost a great deal of my creativity, my mind isn't as fast as it used to be, I feel like I don't really FEEL my emotions a great deal of the time, SO this is just one more thing on that long list of things that have changed because of the meds and I really don't like it. Also, because of my life situation right now, there are some things I can't do while still fulfilling my duty to my family, so there's even less.

And I do realize (NOW) that, for various reasons, I've always interacted with the world in a sexual way, when it was possible. And sex plays a huge role in how I see myself. With that gone or changed, I have to re-evaluate who I am. Since I'm already doing that in regards to not being creative or smart anymore, it's disconcerting and frankly I don't like it right now. Yes, I'm being childish.

And I know I should just get some fucking hobbies. And I do have hobbies. And I have tried to adjust what I expect out of myself and life. And I REALLY try to be mroe social, hang with my little group of friends, do stuff with them that I've never done before. But sex isn't something you can just give up for the rest of your life. It is, to me at least, an important and integral part of a relationship. I've felt firsthand how difficult it is when people in a relationship do not agree on how often, or even how to, have sex. But, for most of my life at least, I've felt sexual, wanted sex, so I really thought I could be that woman who's sex drive didn't drop or disappear off after a couple years with my partner. Now it looks like it won't be there to start with.

Sadly, I guess there's a part of me that wants just one person to give me the ok to go off the meds so I can be a fiery sexual dynamo again. Though I know that no one who saw me when I was suicidal would say that. Lol. Ok, that's all for now. Thanks again everyone.

TyRoy Washington said...

This is TyRoy
You know there is so much that I love about our humble narrator. She is honest in all respects. And I didn’t know or realize the true war that is happening with her sexuality. I knew something was up but I didn’t know it is to this extent.
I pushed the situation that happen on Saturday. But I was hoping that the initial interaction prior to the action would evoke more excitement. I was not trying to experiment with the humble narrator, so it was not like that. This is something that we have both expressed interest in so I was trying to help the situation along. I truly only thought I was being helpful but the result was not something I predicted or even saw coming.
But in the end and only with hindsight, It really only seemed to evoke trepidation, nervousness and I think possibly fear which I wasn’t expecting. One, I probably did too much “Supermaning” of the situation. I figured if I was there, everything would be OK. I would be her safety net. Two, I should have realized that her nervousness never went away and that was a big deal.
I think what throws me off the most is your continued interest in sex and sexually related topics. I revel in being your primary lover right now. But I am concerned that you have no future prospect. To use a sports term, there is no one in the on deck circle waiting to take my spot. Or maybe better, there is no second chair to my first chair.
And I fear that you will end up with someone who is not worthy of you. Worse someone who isn’t as in control of himself. Someone who is basically a moron. Not that you would stay with an abuser but I don’t want to see you abused at all.
As far as the drugs they are not drugs but meds. You have prescription. You are under a doctor’s care not going to a dealer. Sorry, I know this is stepping on toes about some of the other comments but this is not just something you can stop. Your doctor will help you with them.
I do agree that there are going to be changes with them. But you feeling a low libido seems like something they can manage better. I would hope not with more drugs. Hopefully with a different dosage. Hopefully they can cut some meds back? I am not a doctor but hopefully discussing with the doctor will help.
Same with weight. But you will also have to do more exercise with that, brass tacks. I don’t see any doctor saying otherwise. I am not talking about an hour of Tae Bo. I am talking about walking those dogs for first a mile. Then a mile and half and more every time. I know it is hard. But maybe you just walk the little dog alone since the big dog is skittish and the old dog would not make it. Also, I know it is easier to say and harder to do.
I also agree that there is no normal. I am far from the normal, typical or statically person in my profession. And I am just talking demographically. Let’s not even dip a toe into the ideologically.
Of course, I do worry about the late night suicidal calls. Those were not fun but necessary for me to be there for you. I was glad to be there but worry about the future when I am not a car ride away. And I would rather they not happen. Actually, most of all, I would rather you not feel that way at all. Which is the current situation.
OK, I think I am out of bad advice. I hope that the other commenter did not and if you did take offense, I made these comments for our humble narrator. I hope that they help but I am not an expert.
Always the best,
TyRoy