Conversations With Myself: All You Have to Do Right Now

It'll be ok. You can do this. All we have to do is make is make this last stop at Walmart. You have to get the last of the things for lunches this week and we must get litter for the cats. Then you can start crying. You don't even have to get all the way home. 

I know that you don't really know what is going on. Maybe it is a bit of depression. Maybe it's some heavy ass pms. Maybe you're just super fucking tired. But it's ok. It's ok that you're feeling whatever you're feeling. And when we get home, you can do whatever pampering you want to do, or you can go to bed, or you can cry until you can't cry anymore. But you have to get this done.  

I know you are strong enough to do, all on your own. This is how we'll get through this. Just us. I just need you to keep doing the musts. We'll work on the rest as we go along. Until there's someone else to do these things for, it's just us and we have to be as strong as we would be if we were being strong for a Master or Daddy. I know you can do this. Just get through Walmart. That's all I'm asking you to do. 

Alone

First part was written Friday 9/5/14

It's amazing how easily people will ignore when you are crying.  It doesn't matter how large or small the group, people will still chose to ignore when there are tears in your eyes. Or rolling down your face. 

You're all alone.

I cry alot for a person. Alot. Alot alot. It often gets ignored.

The second greatest gift I got from being with Ginger and the Professor was that I had to decide to take on my share, and maybe even a little bit more, if I wanted to be with them. I had always been in relationships where, at least at some point, my partner was gonna be able to shoulder the financial burdens, so I could let the crazy debilitate me if I wanted to and the bills would be paid. (I'm not particularly proud of that and it isn't fair, but it is honest.) But in this particular relationship, I was gonna have to keep my shit together to a certain extent and pull my weight. Once I decided to do that, even when I wasn't with them in that way anymore, and I was once again back to just having me to answer to, me who would be out on the street, I still kept that mindset.

But even more than that, I realized I was on my own. When I was with them, I was on my own to make enough to contribute. But also, they were already a couple. Maybe it was me that never fully let go enough to be three together. Maybe they are just too solitarily paired to be three. Either way, I was always still a bit on the outside. It had been my biggest fear going into the relationship and, self-fulfilling prophecy or not, I stayed a bit on the outside and I'm alone now. Looking around my apartment last night, my cute, safe, comfy, little hobbit hole, it hit me again how alone I was. That if I was gonna do this, I was gonna have to do this alone. The Professor and I might be lovers and/or play partners and I'll still be close friends with both of them. My folks will help out with money when needed or practical things when possible.  TyRoy helped me move. Moneypenny listens to me. But in the day to day, I am on my own. No Daddy or Master or boyfriend or girlfriend. Just me. 

Addendum written just before posting:

The day after I wrote this, I told the Professor about my very bad night and all these feelings I had about being alone. I hope that I was able to convey that I wasn't trying to make him feel bad or make him do anything, just that I was explaining to him how I felt. I've since had two realizations about this. 

First, doing this myself also has an upside, namely that it is ME that is doing this, that I can be proud of what I'm doing and what I've done, and that it is my fuck-ups that only effect me. 

Second, I'm not actually doing this alone, because I have the help and support of those people I listed, and then some, but I still feel alone. Maybe I'm always going to feel alone. While the point I was making was about it feels much more alone to be doing this without a partner, while many things might be easier if I had a partner to do this with, someone all in with me 24/7, maybe I would still feel alone on some level. 

Loose Associative Links

"I've been thinking about a problem." Moneypenny and I are sitting in his living room, while I'm on my visit to larger Midwest City from Smaller Midwest City. "If you are working from a many worlds theory, where everyone's life is their own world, then you basically create your own world. What do you think people would do differently if they realized that they created their own world?"  I wasn't sure if this was a poke at how I had been feeling all weekend, so mired in the lack of a clearly, overwhelmingly good decision that I feel unable to make any, or was coming from his own place of wanting to make a better life for himself. Either way, it still put me on the defensive and I went on a five minute rant about how no matter what changes in life or attitude people may make there would still be things in their life that they couldn't change and that would still suck anyway. Then I felt guilty for not being able to add anything to his conversation. I ended up leaving an hour earlier than I might have originally because I couldn't stand to sit there anymore as I fought both being angry and wanting to cry.

These kinds of thought experiments used to be fun for me. Even when I couldn't completely understand or envision them, the seemingly kooky ideas that pop up in quantum mechanics always blew me away and I loved thinking about the possibilities they presented. When I was studying Buddhism and how we create our own realities, I could easily get carried away in those possibilities as well, the ability to unravel so much of the suffering that we have created in our own lives. Stone-cold sober, he and I could have the kind of conversations that people are only supposed to be able to have when they are on some sort of mind-altering substance.

But in recent years, I've drifted further and further away from those kinds of discussions and, on the drive home, I was plagued by the question of why. I used to love those kinds of thought experiments, would come up with at least half of the places we would start on my own. Now it rubs me the wrong way to even things of them. I'm trying to work out why. I'm going to try to arrange my thoughts as best as I can, but I'm not sure how good of a job I'll do, so bare with me.

I think part of it is that with the stuff that has happened in my life, it has felt less important. Who cares about the possibilities of the multi-verse or unravelling the cycles of suffering in our lives when we're caring for ill and/or dying family members? Or even when we are just trying to get by, paycheck to paycheck? When you're spending all your time trying to figure out how to pay the next bills or how to afford to move out or you'd be able to someday go to school to be able to get a better job so you don't have to worry as much about paying the bills, you don't have as much, if any, room in your head for thinking about more esoteric things. Or at least I don't. We had all these conversations when I was 21 and in college. Yes, I only had a part-time job and I had to think about my schoolwork and being able to pay bills, but there were much fewer of them and I was convinced that soon I would have a decent enough job that I wouldn't have to worry as much about paying bills. I was convinced that my near future looked brighter so it wasn't as much of a chore to worry about the bills then. Now I'm 32 and I'm hitting this wall where my future doesn't look any brighter, where my best case scenario is having a future that is this same shade and not a shade darker. As much as I might want to, I just don't have it in me to give a shit about that stuff any more.

But I think that a big part of it is the crazy. I read this article last week from the Atlantic's website that was about the link between creativity and mental illness. Near the end of the article, she writes about talking to another colleague about creativity and schizophrenia (emphasis is mine): "Heston and I discussed whether some particularly creative people owe their gifts to a subclinical variant of schizophrenia that loosens their associative links sufficiently to enhance their creativity but not enough to make them mentally ill." Her end conclusion in the article is : "Some people see things others cannot, and they are right, and we call them creative geniuses. Some people see things others cannot, and they are wrong, and we call them mentally ill. And some people, like John Nash, are both." This really hit home with me. Now, I do not have schizophrenia, or a family history of it, nor have I ever been a creative genius, but I do think that the ways in which I think of things that many others might not come from a different way of associating things. But I think that that much of this is tied to letting the crazy drive the train more. Now that I am not letting her drive the train as much, the less I have that. It is not as bad as I had hoped that it would be when I first started down this road of improving my mental health, but it is there and it is enough of a difference that i notice it. I also have to deal with the long-term side effects of psychiatric medications. My memory has never been the same after I took lithium. Being on a mood-stabilizing medication that wards against the brain chemically induced suicidality as well as bringing up the low parts of the low side and down the up side of the ups means that I don't have those periods of creative hyper-energy anymore. (You know, mania.) As we speak, I'm also having weird things happen which I'm not sure are mental illness or medication related (or neither), like spacing out and losing time, and increased light sensitivity and black floating spots in my vision occasionally. But if you take this and add it up what you get is less memory to cull from, less energy to make associations, and a quieter and more orderly brain with less loose associations. And a woman who is very sad and more than a little angry that she has to make the decision between living life at all and having an interesting brain, though she is pretty sure what decision she will keep making day after day, even though it means she doesn't get to have those conversations anymore.

"Well O.K. Then, Don't Cry"

I am probably still too emotional and close to things to really make sense but I feel like if I don't get something out and on paper (so to speak) I'm going to burst and I need a way to sort through my feelings.

'cause someone you don't know
is someone you don't know
get a firm grip, girl
before you let go
for every hand extended
another lies in wait
keep your eye on that one
anticipate

...

if there's anything I've learned

all these years on my own

it's how to find my own way there

and how to find my own way back home

The set-up: So Ginger is out of town on a much deserved vacation, after she drops her son back off at his father's house. My parents have just come back from a two week trip during which I took care of their dog, which meant never being away from their home for more than eight hours and never gone overnight. The Professor and I had made plans last week that we would do some more hardcore play Monday night and into Tuesday, since Tuesday is the only day that I didn't have to work. I was really excited because I have all these things I want to explore but he hasn't been in a headspace to play, and honestly I probably haven't at times either though I will usually play anyway and deal with consequences later. This was supposed to be the first getting-our-toes-wet-again playtime. But evidently the Universe had other plans because I got my period over a week early on Monday and he was having allergy and breathing issues. So not only was there no play last night (Monday night) but there ended up being no sex of any kind, period. Now I knew that later today (Tuesday) the Professor was supposed to be going out to dinner with his mom and sister, who are visiting sort of unexpectedly from out of town, but dinner with his mom is almost never until 6 or 7 o'clock, so since his breathing was better, I had had hopes that we would at least get some frisky time, or even just cuddling time, especially since his breathing had been better today. Then his sister calls and says that she's outside. Right now. "Well, I guess I better put on some real clothes." "You might want to take your collar off too." "Oh shit I almost forgot about that. I just get so used to it being on while I'm here."

Now last weekend when she came over the first time, it didn't feel as weird because Ginger and her son came in shortly after so everyone was there and it wasn't just him and I. Wait. Let me back up. So the Professor was brought up in a very strict, conservative, evangelical Christian church, which he calls a wacko fundie cult. While all the kids have strayed from it, his sister went back to help her get clean and sober from drugs and alcohol. His brother, while not in the church, is fairly successful, lives far enough away that he really only comes back for holidays, and was always the golden boy. The Professor is seen as the black sheep and it seems to be magnified by the religious context that his mother and step-father view everything. They have told him that the reason he has so much trouble in his life, why he isn't doing better job-wise, money-wise, and even physical health-wise is because he has strayed from God and that everything would be better if he would just come back to the church. He has come a long way from who he used to be in so many respects but they refuse to give him any credit for that because he still isn't in the church. But he loves them and they are still his family so he tries to have as good of a relationship as possible with them, which means not talking about a great many things. While I am totally out to my family, which is made easier by the fact that it's just my parents and I really, the Professor and Ginger come from more conservative backgrounds than I do and both worry about members of their family shunning them if they were as out as I am. (Ginger is kinda in the middle of the Professor and I's extremes as I know her family, have done family events with them, and one sibling even knows exactly what I am to her, but she maintains a don't ask don't tell policy at this time with most everyone, and they just assume I'm a really close friend.) I'm sure that it's bad enough in his parents' eyes that he lives with Ginger outside of wedlock, but for them to know about me would be even more detrimental to the relationship. Over the holidays, when his brother came to town and stayed at the apartment while I was there, the Professor told him, but I don't envision him telling his sister, at least not while she's so caught up in the religious sect of his parents and living so close to them. Back when I first moved in, which was right around the holidays, I was very insecure about all of this. Rationally, I understood both the Professor and Ginger's positions with their families but it made me feel like I was less than in the relationship. Now that things are set up differently and will be for awhile, it underscores that the relationship is different, but I know that I am not less than anyone else, that I am not loved less, and that they would stand up for me if they needed to, which is really what is important to me.

All that said, today still felt sucky. Like I cried for quite a bit kind of sucky. Like I'm crying as I write this kind of sucky. While I would like to get to know the Professor's sister better, to get to see him in that dynamic, I also thought that she probably wanted to get to hang out with her big brother on her own and that she probably wasn't expecting some random chick to be there. And that is probably exactly what she thinks I am, some random chick. Or, to be even more honest, some random trick. Before his sister got sober, she spent more than enough time around her brother and his friends to know, generally, what he was into and how his relationships went. I told the Professor that I was going to leave so they could hang out together and, despite the evil bitch in my head wanting to turn it into a "but I really wanted him to say 'no, stay and hang out with us' so I'm going to be mad that he didn't" kinda thing, that is completely unfair. I know that I would have been even more uncomfortable staying and they probably did want time to hang out together. At least she did or she wouldn't have come over by herself before dinner. But I had a bunch of stuff that I had wanted to do before I left, including have some sexual or cuddle time, all of which I had to just drop. I walked right by his sister with my overnight bag, after having come from the kitchen where I was starting the dishwasher. I was also going to run up to the convenience store with the Professor so he could get some cigarettes. As he said that his mom and sister probably wouldn't stop by there for him to pick them up, I ran to the store and back, rather than leave him with one cigarette. I felt so stupid when I came back. All I could think was what his sister must be thinking, "Who is this slut that he has staying overnight while his girlfriend is gone? Doing his dishes, running and getting him cigarettes? She's obviously ashamed to have been here, since she's leaving as soon as I got here. And she should be. I saw her just a few days ago being all good friends with his girlfriend. She should be ashamed of herself." Last week, the Professor and I celebrated being together for one year, a year with plenty of struggle on everyone's parts but where I love them more than ever, even if things don't look how we planned for them to. It's really difficult for me to remind myself that all that hard work wasn't meaningless when I feel like I'm probably just seen as some trick.

Last Friday on Facebook, I re-posted this list that a friend of mine had posted a list called 15 Things You Don't Owe Anyone At All (Thought You Think You Do). It includes "You don't owe anyone an explanation for your living situation", "You don't owe anyone an explanation for your sex life" and "You don't owe anyone an explanation for your relationship choices." I re-posted it with the following (long) comment "My friend who shared this said she doesn't usually read or share these things but this spoke to her. Obviously it spoke to me too & though it is about not owing an explanation, I wanted to throw my 2 cents in. 
Several things in my life right now are not how I had been planning them to be, plans I'd been sharing for months. It's been difficult and embarrassing to have to explain why this is to people, especially in my work situation where I am not completely honest about my relationship. Maybe this is partially my fault bc I wear my life on my sleeve. If I hadn't told anyone about the plans, they wouldn't have known when it fell through. What's been just as hard is that people in my life want to blame my significant others or the kind of relationship (or just my bf if that's the only one they know about) and it ends up feeling like I'm protesting too much when I assert the truth, that I am still really happy & in love & that they helped me a great deal through all the problems & that they are also disappointed with how things went. I don't really know how to straddle that line between "let me share my happy/share my life events so we can build mutual trust" and "I dont really want or need your negative opinion on the people I love or how I live/love/fuck."" It's still really difficult for me. Obviously. No, I don't owe it to his sister to tell her who I really am to him. Nor does he. If she went off on a tirade about me, actually calling me some random trick out loud to his face, I would expect him to stand up for me and at the very least say, "You don't know her. You don't know the situation. She's someone Ginger and I care about very much and she isn't doing anything to hurt either of us. Anything more than that is none of your business." I don't think he would let that shit slide. (And I know Ginger wouldn't.) But it sucks. Just like it sucks when people in my life blame things not working out as planned on it being a poly relationship or just on him (mostly those are people who only know about him, but sometimes not.) For the most part, you get to say that once, after which I will explain as much as I can depending on what you know why that isn't the case, and then I'm going to tell you, very nicely, that I don't want to here that bullshit again. It's always more complicated than you know, even if you know everything, or think you do. (Which, yes, is something I should remind myself more often when I butt my nose into other's people's business too.) But I have a client that I just can't seem to get to STFU about how he thinks that it's all the Professor's fault. Look, it's nice that you're on my side and acting like my grandpa and all, but you don't actually know what the relationship is at all and I don't feel like I can tell you, much less also tell you about all the fucked-up shit on my side, not to mention that some of it was just that things out of our control happened long before we met and continue to this day, like his health issues, like my mental health issues, like the management at the apartment being shady assholes, like me hurting my back right as all the moving stuff was about to happen which put even more stress on an already stressed out me. He might have been the one who chose to talk to me, to pursue something with me over a year ago, but everyday that I'm with him, I chose him, and Ginger and this situation, over and over again.

So now that I'm at the end of my story, I'm not really sure what the point is or where it leaves me. For so long, I spent so much time cultivating this attitude that I didn't really care about what others thought and the idea that that was why I was so honest about who I was so early into all kinds of relationships. But I think it was really that I would rather they dislike me for who I really am than dislike, or even like, me for who I'm not. If the Professor's sister wanted to dislike me or think I'm a horrible heathen for being his whore in the true context, I think I would be much less upset than I am now. It's the idea that she might think I'm just some random fuck of his and that I would do it behind Ginger's back that I think digs in deep. I can't get to the point that the Professor and Ginger are at where they don't care what people might wonder or gossip about as long as it doesn't negatively effect how the people treat them or us, because what our relationship(s) are or aren't isn't really any of their business. I'm not upset with them for this attitude or think they should change it, it just isn't how I feel. Just like I am not saying that the Professor should have or even could have done anything different, especially while attempting to keep the current relationship he has with his family and I completely understand that, but that it is also true that, while not his or anyone's fault, I'm hurting. I guess I just needed to get it off my chest. One of those DBT lessons that sticks in my head is that two seemingly contradictory things can be true at the same time- nothing could have been done any different but I also felt like I was probably being judged in a way that erased all that we've all been to each other over this year.

everything i do is judged
and they mostly get it wrong
but oh well
'cuz the bathroom mirror has not budged
and the woman who lives there can tell
the truth from the stuff that they say
and she looks me in the eye
and says would you prefer the easy way?
no, well o.k. then
don't cry

On Being a Shitty Friend

I am a shitty friend. I try not to ask too much from the people that I give too little to, to make up for this fact.

It is not that I don't know how to be a good friend. It is that I don't have enough space in my head or energy in my body to give it to more than a few people at any given time. This means that, for the most part, I choose to give my time and energy to those I'm closest to and, selfishly, who give the most back to me, which usually means the people I'm romantically involved with. Even when I'm doing really well and I have more open time, I seem to only manage to see anyone about once a month. When I'm not doing well... well, you can just forget seeing me. Oh, and I don't go to parties or group gatherings. The few exceptions are when I'm going for or with people that I'm romantically involved with.

I am not always there for the people I care about when I should be, or when they ask me to. Sometimes I don't know how to be. Sometimes I don't have the energy to be. Sometimes I'm sure it seems like I'm selfish. Sometimes I am.

Sometimes I get a brief window in which I have the time and energy and head space to do what I think makes me be a good friend. But sometimes you end up doing what makes them think you are a shitty friend, even shittier than before.

I hope you are not too mad at me, or that with time you might stop being mad at me and see that I was trying to do what I thought was best. While I can't say I know exactly what you are going through, I have felt hopeless and had a friend stop me from doing the only things that would actually take all hope away. Hell, I've had the same friend do it on multiple occasions. I know what it feels like to think that the world is better off without you or that you are better off without the world and not care what it is like without you. But I've also been at the funerals of two people who committed suicide, seen firsthand the toll that it took on one of those people I am a shitty friend to. There have been times that that thought was a large part of what kept me not doing the same. Even if your family is horrible, there is someone in your life who doesn't deserve that. When speaking philosophically, I don't feel like anyone should get to tell a person that they must continue living an intolerable life. When it is a terminal physical disease, I'm the first to argue for their right to end their life with as much dignity as possible, at the moment of their chosing. But mental illnesses are not so clear cut and, especially when it comes to someone I know, I have a much more difficult time giving up the hope that their life can be better. Though maybe that is because if I do that, then I can start letting myself give up hope that my life can be better. And without that hope, I am lost.

So today I'll be a shitty friend.

Short untitled 5/15/14

The nice thing about living on your own is that you don't have to feel self-conscious about crying yourself to sleep. Nor do you have to explain yourself to anyone when you sit in front of the tv until you fall asleep every night because you just don't feel like crying yourself to sleep tonight.

Can't Stop

I just want to collapse. I'm tired and cranky and sad and depressed. I just want to go to bed and cry and have for a significant portion of the day. 

But I don't. 

I took a nap but that was the only time I allowed myself to really rest. 

I'm afraid that if I stop, I might not start again. I will probably soon be unemployed. I am supposed to be moving out. I know that usually when the depression hits, I spend months on the couch, staring at the tv until I can start to get myself back together. But I don't have the luxury any longer. 

Or I don't feel like I do. The closest I will be able to get to what I used to do at my parents' house is what they are talking about doing anyway, setting me up in their house now and having me get a room or two who pay my parents rent while I live rent-free for a bit. Of course, I still have health insurance, a car payment, and a student loan that I have to pay, no matter what. And though I know that they are trying to help me, it sounds like a rather disappointing option after I had allowed myself to dream of having a place on my own. 

Even if I took that option, I would still at the very least have to work enough for those bills and I would have to move out of here. Neither of those things are things I can do if I just give up for a while. In my head, it seems the only other option is to just keep doing stuff. 

What I Wish I Could Tell Work

I really don't want to have to look for a job right now. What I want is to be looking for an apartment, to be applying for housing assistance on the off chance that I qualify, and/or to be looking for a roommate situation for awhile. What I want is to find a cheap but airy studio or one bedroom apartment that is just mine, where my cats and my stuff can live, where I can settle in, where I don't have to be anything to or for anyone.

But to keep my job, you want me to be able to tell you a designated person who I will be able to tell when I'm starting to not do very well, so that they can call you and tell you "Hey, she needs a bit of a break, even if she isn't in a place to ask for it herself." I get it. You want to make sure that the clients are taken care of, that I don't no-call no-show and leave everyone wondering what happened to me. And I even understand that you do care for me and you want me to take active steps in dealing with my mental illness, in making sure that I go through an easier time next time that I go through a difficult time.

Just two things.

One: You don't know what I already do for my mental illness and I don't really feel like it is any of your business. While the manager who has dealt with mental illness in her family is sympathetic, the boss ended up throwing out a bunch of the stigmas about mental illness in our conversation and I don't really feel like talking about it with her. Shit, sometimes I have a hard time talking about it with people I am close to, people I love, people I am living with. I sure as hell am not going to tell you. I'm not going to tell you that I've been on medications for 13 years. I'm not going to tell you that I picked out my health insurance plan, which you contribute nothing to by the way, specificially so that I could go to the mental health in-patient hospital that I liked the best of the three I've been to. I'm not going to tell you that I go see a psychiatrist every couple of months to tweak my meds, except that until recently I couldn't afford to think about adding another one because I didn't have health insurance to help me afford anything other than barebones generic medications. I'm not going to tell you that I've been in a therapy program for over two years where I see my therapist once a week and go to an educational therapy group once a week. I'm not going to tell you that my girlfriend, who I live with, works in mental health, understands my illness, and I still couldn't tell her. I'm not going to tell you that I didn't tell my therapist how bad it was because I didn't realize it was that bad until everything blew up because I was trying so hard to keep everything under control that I almost thought I would be able to keep it all under control long enough for things to settle down again. I'm not going to tell you these things because I'm not sure that I think it's any of your fucking business. I'm also not going to tell you these things because I worry that you'll think "Well, damn, if she's this bad with all this help, how bad is she really?"

Two: It never works like what you are wanting. It is not like I don't know that this is a chronic illness I have. It's not like I don't say the same things to other people about mental illness, that it is like any other chronic illness, like say diabetes, that must be managed and evaluated in a realistic light. But when I am bad, I am lucky when I can express to someone else that I want to hurt myself, that I have hurt myself, when I'm starting to feel suicidal, when I'm feeling full on suicidal, when I've already attempted. Hell, I had one attempt that no one knew about at the time, that no one knew about until months or maybe a year later when I was joking about it. It doesn't work like that for me. You are right that maybe it should. But guess what? That's something I don't have the head space to change right now. Right now, all I can manage to do is to keep moving, to keep getting up each day, to keep doing chores around the house, to keep going to appointments, to keep taking my meds, to keep eating, to not just decide to fall into a bottle until the money runs out, to keep applying for jobs since it doesn't look like I'm going to be going back to this one. Right now, there are moments when it is all I can do not to harm myself or start drawing up plans, so I can't really promise that I'll  make this thing that I've never been able to do in the 13 years that I've been dealing with this mental illness happen.

I have until Friday to figure out if I'm gonna lie and say that I can do it and name a person or be unemployed.

"Every Love Story is a Ghost Story"-DFW

This is not a love story. At least not in the way that this term is taken today. At the end, the girl doesn't get the boy (or girl, in this modern age.) At this point, it is a little early to tell what the girl does get. (And she's not a girl either. She's a woman. She's over 30. Not only is she older than her mother was when she had her, but she's older than her mother was when she remarried and did her 'happily ever after,' even though we should all know by now that 'happily ever after' is only the start of all the real hard work. Though of course we always forget that.)

But maybe it is a love story. Because the girl, wait, scratch that, woman has found love. Lots of love. Love she didn't think she'd find again. She found two people to love at the same time. On the same date that was supposed to just be for a side fling D/s relationship. (She was supposed to marry a lawyer and start having kids, but that didn't exactly work out like the fairy tale it was on paper.) So she did find love and people who wanted to commit to her and start a family, though not the traditional kind of family but a family nonetheless. She moved in and they started making plans for getting a bigger place, one to fit the three of them, allowing them each space and privacy and give the visiting child a place of his own too.

But this is not a love story because it doesn't end there. Love stories always end there, at the happily ever after. The woman has two major shortcomings. One is that she doesn't work a job that allows for her to work enough hours to pay (what she feels is) her fair share, at least not without working so much that she has a nervous breakdown. Which leads us to her second and larger shortcoming- she's crazy. I'm trying not to put this in a derogatory way, but just the facts. She is bipolar and has borderline personality disorder. To say the least, she has a low tolerance for distress and doesn't have as good of an ability to bounce back as the average person. She's doing better than she has in the past and she tries to work on being better but things are as they are right now and she will probably always be this person to some extent.

This is also not a love story because her lovers also have shortcomings. Not cute ones that resolve themselves by the time they decide to be together or ones that the lover is miraculously able to change by the time they coming running through the airport to stop their lover from leaving. Nope. These people are who they are as well. She knows this and loves them because they are who they are, though, like everyone, sometimes she'd like them to do something(s) differently. She tries for unconditional but she's not perfect. Mostly she just tries to not be one of those types who wants to change a person. But as things got closer to moving day, everyone was stressed and had turned inward and away from each other. "This is just how they are," she told herself. "It will cycle back and everything will be fine after the move."

This is not a love story because they didn't move. The apartment complex was gonna screw them and they decided not to sign the lease. They were a week away from moving, half packed. While they felt triumphant in not getting screwed and working as a family, they were now further away from their goal of living together in a larger place. And the woman was still just as worried as she had been before about being able to afford her share of any place they got that was big enough. Hell, if anything she was more worried. The place that they thought they could afford was only that way because they screw people out of money. Everyone else was still stressed and turned inward. She was so lonely. Every night she went to bed alone. There was very little physical or sexual contact in the household, which was what she craved to keep her head straight, to feel loved and wanted. It's not that they didn't show her or tell her that they loved or wanted her, just that it wasn't in a way that she could take in. That first week after she had a heavier schedule because she had told her work she needed more hours to afford the new apartment. She caved under all the pressure. By Friday, she missed a shift, no call no show. Only a compassionate coworker who's son has bipolar saved her job, or so she is hoping. She started to spiral into that suicidal depression she had struggled with all her life, blocking everyone out herself.

This is not a love story because the woman is leaving. It's not unreasonable for her to ask for the things she asks for. (At least for the most part.) And it's not unreasonable for them to say that they can't give her those things, at least not right now, at least not at the level she needs them. But that leaves her feeling lonely and unloved by people who are just in the next room. Which will leave her resentful and angry before too long. The woman has a friend who has space to rent out in her house for pretty cheap and, though it is her friend, if she can't pull her weight there, it will only be her who eats ramen noodles every night and her credit that gets fucked up. (Update: the woman's friend's therapist doesn't think it's good for two crazy chicks to live together so she's not really sure what she's going to do. )

This is not a love story because the woman knows that leaving could mean the end to their story. Though they cry together and reassure each other that they are still together and it will actually be more special when she comes to visit because they won't have seen each other for awhile and they'll be all over each other as soon as she walks through the door and they are making plans for how to actually shore up their relationship, she knows this could be the beginning of the end, the slow death of what they had but could not sustain. The woman has seen lots of movies and love stories don't end with the heroine alone with her two cats in a two room mother-in-law apartment on the other side of town. But the woman knows she'll kill herself if she stays, that she is killing herself with each night that she masturbates and then cries herself to sleep when the people she want to have sex with are just twenty feet away. The woman knows that it is killing them too. That there isn't enough for them to care for her hurt in the ways they do and care for themselves and/or each other too.

So this is not a love story.

Vicious Voice in my Head: Bad Date Edition

There's no reason to love me. And no sane man would trust me. Who wants to have and to hold what's been bought, what's been sold, just to love me? There's no reason to know me. And what good man would need me? Who wan'ts to peer through the dust and forget all the lust, just to love me?

What does a girl like you expect would happen?  The things you want, the things you like, putting it all out there like you do, do you really think any man is going to treat you with respect or kindness?  I mean, how could he? You were lucky that this one talked to you like you were a real human being.

what kind of paradise am i looking for? i've got everything i want and still i want more.

And why are you put there slutting it up anyway?  Don't you have a lovely boyfriend and girlfriend at home who love you? And doesn't he give you sex how you want it but still manage to love you and care for you and be tender with you? A girl like you couldn't expect to get that anywhere and you've found a home where you do, so why are you going outside of it? Oh, because everyone is feeling off right now and no one is up for fucking? It hasn't even been a week, wasn't even half a week before you started seeking out ways to slut it up. You can't wait that out? What is wrong with you?

Because I revenge myself all over myself. There's nothing you can do to me.

Making Up for the Lag Time

Lag Time

There's really no hope for me

And that three second rule

Somethin gets dropped

And still I'm the slowest damn fool

Slow to realize what's really going on

Slow to know in a moment

Who or what has gone wrong

I wanna tighten down on the lag time

Your consonants were buzzing

Around your head like flies

Your true colors were showing

And your shape and your size

You were drinking your way though it

I was shrinking right there inside of my clothes

My eventual twenty/twenty

Arms crossed

Tapping her toe

I gotta tighten down on the lag time

Survivors are part turtle

We are part potato bug

We know enough to go fetal

'Til it's still up above

And you gotta crawl through the desert

Between when you hear it

And when you can play it with your hands

Just to rendezvous with whoever you are

When you finally understand

I gotta tighten down on the lag time

I wanna tighten down on the lag time

Gotta tighten down on the lag time

I was never as quick as others with a comeback. I've spent my whole lifetime in my head re-doing conversations with what I should have said. So of course it should come as no surprise that I would be no match for a lawyer. But that lawyer was a friend, so I didn't expect the "bitching about my home life" that I was doing, that I do with most of my friends, to turn into Matlock unraveling the alibi witness on the stand. And I'm stupid enough to have let it happen twice. After both conversations, I went over and over what I wish I had said, but I was afraid it would all just sound like me trying to justify myself after the fact. So I've spent three weeks having this conversation in my head. I finally figured that I needed to get it out, no matter how it sounds to anyone. I don't need to defend my life, but I do need to stand up for the people that I love, which I failed at doing at the time. 

One of the assertions was that I deserve better than The Professor. But if I deserve better than so does he. When he is in "the hole," I see my own depression, the months I've spent on the couch just staring at the tv, the endless hours of Law & Order and House episodes, with no sleep schedule to speak of, being both bored but too disinterested to actually get up to do anything. I know what it is like to be the ghost that others live with. I know what it is like to let everything happen around me, even if that means that it falls apart, because I'm too depressed to do anything about it and not yet ready to get help. And I know how hard it can be to take the leap of getting any help or making any changes because you are so used to life the way it is and there is no guarantee that changing or getting help will make things better. So when it's asserted that I deserve better than him, it's like saying that I deserve better than...myself? But questions of what we deserve often come up short because we can all be shitty, deserving nothing, and we can all be amazing, deserving better than whatever we could possibly find. We don't deserve to be treated poorly on purpose, but no one will always be able to treat us like the royalty we are at our best. 

In the same vein, my lawyer made the claim that if he was working and his partner was not, he would expect that the house be spotless all the time, meals be cooked, and sex be on demand. In the weeks since, I've often thought to myself that sounds more like he would expect a maid/cook/hooker combo. It's true that I don't have that, but, as Ginger says when people she knows try to argue the same point, no one knows what he does for me. The thing is, I can make my own money and clean my own house. Though I can't make any gourmet meal, I can cook my own food. I also don't think I could be Dommed by a man who gave me sex when I demanded it. What he does for me isn't something I can do for myself, or that I've been able to find anyone to do for me, for that matter. He can make me feel safe and loved even when doing things that would make most people run away screaming. He knows the exact right time to switch it up, before it goes farther than I can handle. He makes me feel loved not in spite of all the awful stuff in my head and in my heart, but because of it. He has never doubted that my place with him and Ginger, or if did, he never let it show. But it's not all serious Dom and relationship stuff. We can sit around watching Babylon 5 and bullshitting for hours. And even though he is on a different sleep schedule, he comes into my room just before my alarm goes off, to cuddle with me, to make my day happier when I wake up. He makes me breakfast because he wants to make sure that I have at least one decent meal during the day. He worried about me, but never tells me not to do things. All the rules I have were developed together, to help me. On my roughest week of class, he took the time out to say how proud he was of me. Ok, look, this isn't an all inclusive list here because I don't have the greatest memory and could never remember the cool little things he does for me that make me so happy. He's far from perfect but I never wanted that. He's screwed up in just the right way for me and we both think we're lucky to have found each other. I suspect that to the lawyer, this sounds like too little too late, but at least maybe I'll stop having this conversation in my head and I hope that the Professor reads this and knows that I know how hard he does try and how happy he makes me. I hope this makes up for the lag time I've demonstrated all around. 

(Yes, I know that I've said nothing about Ginger and all the awesome things that she does. But that wasn't the point of contention in the conversation. I'm sure I'll write posts about her too.)

I Can Listen With My Heart

I'm not sure I'll be able to get this down right and its difficult doing it on my phone but I don't want to get up and lose this moment.  It's probably that this is a new relationship driving this feeling but I'm still at that "I want to tell you everything because it feels like I finally have someone who will understand it or at least appreciate it being shared. "

Sitting here with an odd sense of deja vu. Raining outside.  I opened the big Window in my bedroom to hear better. From where I sit in bed,  all I can see are trees and rain. I had a big window like this in the apartment in University Park,  when I was 12. I'd open the window to listen to the rain at night,  sad adult contemporary disks playing on my stereo, softly so they wouldn't wake my parents on the other side of the bedroom wall.  Crying myself to sleep.  That was probably when it should have been evident that I had a problem. 12 year olds don't cry themselves to sleep every night. Or listen to adult contemporary music, for that matter.

The rain made me want to listen to Mary Chapin - Carpenter's "Rhythm of the Blues," then the whole Come On Come On album.  Remembered snatches of a summer spent at The Nightmare on Spruce Street, watching the rain through the big picture window,  cranking up my uncle's cds as loud as I could,  singing at the top of my lungs.  Probably crying to.  I've always had a weakness for the sad songs. The therapist tells me I shouldn't indulge it but some habits are impossible to break. 

"it's a need you never get used to-  soft,  fierce,  and so confused. It's a loss you never get over to the first time you lose."

In those early teenage years,  I longed for. .. well,  hell,  I'm not sure I knew what I was longing for.  Love,  sex,  companionship.  I know I thought of it in very simplistic terms.  Find the right guy,  as it was still a guy though I knew I liked girls too,  and it all gets better,  sorta itself out.  That summer I was 14, my uncle was marrying his college sweetheart and they seemed perfect for each other.  Just hold out long enough to find it and you're set. 

Almost two decades on, with my uncle having come out, divorced and been just as poly as I am working on being now, I can't help but laugh at how naive that sounds.

Right now,  one of you is at work and the other is sleeping so soundly that my trying to cuddle with him didn't stir him at all.  It's beautiful and complicated and yet sometimes much more simple than you'd think it could be,  definitely more simple than my mind wants to make it.  Last night,  all of us in different tired and kinda grumpy mindsets,  hung out together in the living room,  me doing homework, her reading,  him playing video games.  No weird sex stuff.  No drama. Just three people living in the same space.

Once again,  I get to the end of what I had to say without any point emerging. Maybe it's that I feel very ambivalent right now.  Memories of the girl I was flooding back,  trying to evaluate if she got what she ultimately wanted,  and how I feel about it not looking the way she'd envisioned it,  and how it all doesn't feel the way she thought it would when she got it.  "Some people remember the first time,  some can't forget the last.  Some just select what they want to from the past."

When your best hopes and desires are scattered to the winds

I want to write. I've had a post on alcohol rattling around in my head for two weeks and another about leaving my hometown for a week. But all I can think about is you.

You as Lisbeth, girl with the Dragon Tattoo

You were found dead on Saturday, of an apparent suicide. The "life celebration" is Thursday. Your Facebook page is full of people talking about how much they loved you and how much they'll miss you.

I didn't actually know you very well. About this time last year, I attempted suicide. Like most people in that situation, I absolutely did not want to be hospitalized afterwards. And there you were. This cute little baby-dyke ball of love and energy and acceptance and welcome. And all at once you look across a crowded room to see the way that light attaches to a girl. You made me smile, just to look at you, so young and fresh and pretty. You got me to play that stupid Settlers of Catan game. You and the big guy were spots of promise at a really desperate time, when I felt like I'd fucked up the couple months of therapy that I'd been working on, felt like I'd always just end up back in the same place. Afterwards, you created a secret FB page for those of us who were in the hospital at the same time. The group even met for a few dinners, though I was only there for one. I have ended up becoming real friends with another member of the group. Though ze's moved several hours away, I still see zir whenever ze comes back to visit other friends.

Our dinners stopped when you went into an intensive in-patient program in the Large Midwestern City. You stayed there after the program was over. Through the summer, I'd see pics of you at famous locations all around the city, particularly the baseball stadium. You seemed happy. Then again, you always seemed happy, which must not have been the case, considering how we met.

But I hoped that all of us were doing better. Through FB I knew that another person had dealt with medication abuse issues and was back on zir feet. The person that I'd become friends with has found a job ze loves and likes the new city ze is living in. Though it took me until August, and two failed jobs, I finally found a job that I think I can stick with, that I really find rewarding. I finally feel like the skills from therapy are becoming second nature, not "ok, what skill should I use here?" I'm really feeling good.

I'd seen that you'd been back in the hospital a few weeks ago but you said that you were fine, no worries. But sometimes the toughest part is when we get out of the hospital. And holidays. And fall/winter.

I don't presume to tell people that they should stick it out, no matter how much they are suffering, because life is sacred, because it might get better, because of their family and loved ones. I don't know their pain and only they can say if it is bearable. I've read that 10% of major depressive disorder is treatment resistant. I have no idea what the stats are on bipolar, mood disorders, or schizophrenia. Even when medication works to treat the mental disorder, the side effects can make it difficult to continue. These are diseases. Like diabetes. Sometimes you just take some meds and are more mindful of things in your life. Sometimes they take whole parts of you.

Last June, you turned 20 days after I turned 30. Time doesn't always bring wisdom though it does bring experience. It might not have changed your mind, but I wish I could have told you a few things before you were gone. I would have told you that you might not be able to change who you are, but you can find ways to manage bad behavior. I wish I could have told you that life is both longer and shorter than you could ever imagine. It is long enough not to spend it miserable. It is long enough that you'll get more chances than you'd think. It is long enough to find and lose love over and over and over. That it feels neverending when you're watching someone go, but like the time with them went in the blink of an eye once they're gone. That hard times come and hard times go, hard times come and hard times go...just to come again. That they do go. That so much of this will pass, yes the good, but also the bad.

But I'm sure people had told you all those things before. You decided to do this. It's not my place to say you didn't do the best thing for you. Even if I did, it wouldn't change anything. So I'll put these thoughts out there, with hopes that you'll hear them and hopes that they might help someone else. Maybe me on a day when I really need them. And I'll mourn, for my loss, for your family's loss, for your friends' and lovers' loss, that half the world don't even know what they could have had. Whatever comes after this, I hope you find peace or at least reprieve.

Adventures in Employment, Vol. 1: Am I the only one who thinks this?

"Were you sleeping? So what, were you planning on laying in bed all day?" the assistant manager asked, after calling me to talk me into working more.

"Yes. Yes, I was. I was planning on sleeping until I am actually scheduled to work," I replied. I wanted to add, "And that's none of your fucking business!" And with that, I wanted to just throw my hands up. 

One of my favorite bloggers, who shares her research into BPD as well as her own experiences, recently did a series of posts about BPD and Jobs/Careers (Posts 1, 2, 3, and 4.) Now she has several engineering degrees and works a steady, high-intellect job, but has some of the same crazy thinking that I do when on the job. These are things that don't seem all that strange to me, because that's how I've always felt, but that most people in my life can't relate to. From post 2:

It can be tough. I see over and over how family and friends of people with BPD get down on those of us that have a harder time maintaining adequate employment.  Inevitably what I see is, “She’s just lazy and refuses to get to work on time,” or,  ”If he would just do [INSERT normal brain function that is impaired for us] it would be fine,”. There are plenty of other iterations but they all fall into the general category of: I don’t see why you can’t just grow up, be normal, and act like an “adult”.

1. Because we’re not “normal” (whatever that is).

1. Because there are a lot of things going on in our brains that make this whole “being an adult thing” kind of impaired. Like having the emotional development of a 3 year old. < ---- That’s actually what psychologists say. People with BPD tend to have a stunted emotional growth (often due to childhood trauma) which contributes to poor interpersonal development.

1. This isn’t a helpful attitude. I get that it’s shitty for the Nons in our life too, but this is not helpful. We’re not dysfunctional on purpose. We didn’t choose to have the chemical responses that cause our brains to freak the hell out. What we need is to learn the kind of coping mechanisms that will allow us to be more functional. Blaming and shaming pretty much just makes us feel even more worthless and even more angry. When you feel worthless and you’re super pissed about it, that’s not going to end well for anyone. Just sayin’.

Not helpful face. Full of snark. (not me)

So why is it so difficult for some people with BPD to have steady employment? (Some People – this isn’t true of everyone, but it’s common enough).
Yanno all those things that hinder us in our day to day lives? Yeah those don’t magically go away when we punch in from 9a-5p (or 7a to 4p in my case). So now it’s even more important to hide it all.
So why’s it so hard?
·         Identity Issues·         Paranoia·         Criticism/Rejection·         Splitting·         Impulsive Behavior·         Co-morbid symptoms·         Poor Stress Response

I'm gonna guess that the above is how my step-dad, TyRoy, and probably even Moneypenny have looked at my work history. People just go to work. That's what you do. Unless you're some lazy, freeloading asshole. It's not all that hard. In my head, I can hear Moneypenny telling me that half of life is just showing up, as is much of graduating from college. But sometimes just showing up is hard. Then staying there can be even harder.

The getting a job and getting to the job like I'm supposed to get hampered by the "co-morbid symptoms" and the "poor stress responses." I get depressed about not having a job and it's harder to get motivated to apply for jobs. I have never been able to sleep when I was supposed to and being anxious about getting up on time for an early shift or about the job itself leads to rumination which leads to very little sleep. Then, I don't get up on time or sometimes I don't get up at all.

If only that was where my issues ended. There's also black and white thinking (what the blogger refers to as "splitting") and impulsive behavior.

Black and white.


“People with BPD may be more likely to view potential work situations in terms of extremes, idealizing each potential job or career choice as an opportunity like no other. A person with BPD may be blind to anything potentially negative or questionable about the job. This perspective can also hide potential difficulties in achieving the idealized goals. For instance, if Bruce were looking into certain sales positions, he would need to be able to clearly assess his ability to make cold calls and deal with the rejection from these calls (something that he is extremely sensitive to) in order to reap the rewards of the generous sales commission plan.”

 I’m not sure how I feel about that particular example but I definitely know what it’s like to idealize and then demonize a particular job. Hell, I do it all the time. Ever have one of those days where everything goes wrong, nothing goes right, and all you can think about is the bad, atrocious things you have to do and put up with every single day? Sure. Everyone has. Now imagine those scenes from the day projected onto an I-MAX screen in 3-D magnified with surround sound replaying endlessly on repeated ruminations inside your own head. Everyone deals with it, but it feels extreme. And it’s impossible to remember the reasons to stay when you’re shrouded in the darkness from the day. I have plenty of days where I hate what I do. I have days where I love what I do and feel like I’m the king of the world wearing a clockwork crown of awesomeness. I rarely have days where I just feel content. I actually hate feeling like I’m not progressing. I hate the feeling of stagnation. I hate that sometimes you just have to keep plugging on, for what seems like an endless indefinite amount of time with no site of change.

For me, on a day like today, it feels impossible to remember the good things about the job. When you're settled with a client and things are going well, you don't talk to the main office very often. My client, his wife, and I are in a nice little groove and things are going well. But I'd also worked with another client, his family likes me, and the office e-mailed me to see if I could sub in for his current caregiver. But I'm fine with the number of hours I have right now, which I haven't been able to convey to the office. I was planning on emailing them back this afternoon, until the assistant manager called me before I even woke up this morning. Every time they call me about working with another client, I feel so much pressure. I feel like I'm letting them and the other client down if I say no. I feel like I'm going to be judged if I just tell the truth, which is that I don't really need to work 40 hours, that I'm happy getting 60 hours over a two week pay period. And, as they usually call me when I'm half asleep or stressing about something else, I am not really "with it" enough to firmly explain myself and turn them down. Then, all I can think about is how much this sucks, how I hate this pressure, how I've ended up working more hours than I want or need because I couldn't turn them down, how I won't have enough time to myself to decompress and destress in between shifts.

This leads to the rumination. All I've been thinking for the past twelve hours is "I can't fucking do this. I'm so fucking done. Done, done, done, done, done." Which quickly leads to "How can I not do this? This work thing that people find so easy, that most people can do every day, forty hours a week, more than forty hours, that so many people all over this country are busting their as looking for, how can I not do this? What the fuck is wrong with me that I want to just give up on a job that I actually really like, that is rewarding for me, and most people would love to have?" Then, I get even more freaked out thinking about the near future. This job has made me contemplate getting schooling in this field, but I know that many jobs, most jobs, in this field require 12 hour work days in much stressful situations than the one I'm currently in. How am I going to be able to do that if I can barely do this? Which leads to being freaked out about the future, even longer term. I can't make a living doing this, especially with no certification. So what am I going to do? Though I know this might make most people more resolved to work harder, I just don't have much fight left in me. It just makes me want to give up.

Which usually leads me to impulsive behavior. I attempt to take back my power, either through acting out in my private life, which usually bleeds through to negatively effect my work life, or by lashing out, even just quitting, at work.

 One of the problems with having impulsivity as a part of the way your brain reacts is that by definition, there’s no time given to consider consequences. When you’re faced with a scenario that makes you feel threatened (paranoia, stress) that fight or flight response kicks in. Adrenaline pumps, fear chokes you, and all there is to do is react. When you have a disorder that is marked by emotional dysregulation (a.k.a. impulsive emotional responses) controlling those emotional responses is extremely difficult, if not impossible, if we haven’t learned how.

For example, receiving criticism in the work place can trigger a fear or anger response leading to vocal attacks or quitting on the spot. Hearing something, being in a situation, where you feel like your job is threatened, you become paranoid that you’re going to get fired, so instead of letting someone do something to you, take that control away from  you, humiliate you, it’s better to take action, make the decision yourself, quit on the spot… except less thought out and more emotionally charged.

I had a very unrewarding job as the cashier at a valet stand. One particularly busy Saturday night, the bosses decided to hover over my stand. Not just my immediate manager, but the bosses of my boss's boss. The company didn't have a very good way of keeping track of the keys in relation to the tickets and I was getting really frustrated by the end of the night as more people came back for the cars. My bosses were pushing me to go faster, while not actually helping at all. Finally, in frustration, in front of a group of customers, I told one of them to just give me goddamn minute. Yeah. That didn't go over well. Instead of just apologizing and hoping that it might blow over, I took my employer-issued shirt, tossed it at my manager, and walked off the job. That job doesn't go on the resumes.

Not all my decisions to quit are that impulsive, but they aren't usually that well thought out either. I've never had a job for over a year, I've rarely given a two week notice, and I've only ever once had a job before I quit the previous one. If it wasn't for the fact that I'd be leaving my client(s) high and dry, I probably would have already quit this job in one of my freak-out sessions. And if I hadn't been working on the DBT skills for a year. Hell, if I hadn't been half asleep, I'd probably have said everything I wanted to say to the assistant manager, then I'd have added paranoia to my ruminations.

I know that other people have much more difficult lives than I do, much more difficult jobs than I do, much more difficult bosses than I do. I know that they do it everyday and don't bitch half as much as this. I don't want to discount them and I don't want to say that "normal" people don't have these same thoughts. I really have no idea. But what I now know that I didn't know until those posts was that any other people felt like I do. While group has shown me that I'm not alone in some of my fucked up thinking, most of those people are actually firmly employed and, as it's an education group not a process group, I don't hear as much about what goes on in their heads in relation to their jobs. Reading her blog posts gave me a window into the thoughts of another person who felt those same things, but the fact that she is steadily employed gave me hope.

(Yes, I did just get into gifs. Why do you ask?)

That Wasn't Me

I remember when I was 18 and Moneypenny was trying to convince me to take meds for my depression. My biggest fear was that I wouldn't be me anymore. I had spent all my life feeling like I had. I thought that how I felt was just me. Six weeks later, when the meds finally hit, it was kinda the same feeling that I had when I got my first pair of glasses. I hadn't realized how blurry everything had been before. Each time I get a new med that works better, things come into focus more. That doesn't mean that everything is peachy-keen. It doesn't mean that all, or any, of my flaws have disappeared. It just brings a bit more clarity, a bit more control over and space between me and my emotions.

When you're dealing with mental illness, trying to become a better person, learning that your bad behavior was a result of a larger pattern in your mental illness that you can and should break, it's tough to figure out what was you and what wasn't. It's also difficult to explain, not just to others but also to yourself, that while you did what you did in the mental illness you still need to own it, make amends, and change. I often compare it to addiction. An addict has a disease that they need treatment for. Much of their personality and actions change. When they are in recovery, they are closer to who they are, but that doesn't mean that they didn't do what they did before, it doesn't absolve them of guilt. It means that they need to make amends, make positive changes in their life, and continue to manage their disease. I do too. I know I did more shitty things when I was more unwell than I do today. (I still do shitty things. We all do.) But I have to keep making an effort to put my actions in line with the person I think I am and then with the person I want to be.

This song really hits home on that and I hope that my loved ones know that wasn't me.


Hang on, just hang on for a minute
I've got something to say
I'm not asking you to move on or forget it
But these are better days
To be wrong all along and admit it's not amazing grace
But to be loved like a song you remember
Even when you've changed

Tell me did I go on a tangent?
Did I lie through my teeth?
Did I cause you to stumble on your feet?
Did I bring shame on my family?
Did it show when I was weak?
Whatever you see, that wasn't me
That wasn't me, that wasn't me

When you're lost you will toss every lucky coin you'll ever trust
And you will hide from your god like he never turns his back on us
And you will fall all the way to the bottom and land on your own knife
But you'll learn who you are even if it doesn't take your life

Tell me 
Did I go on a tangent?
Did I lie through my teeth?
Did I cause you to stumble on your feet?
Did I bring shame on my family?
Did it show when I was weak?
Whatever you see, that wasn't me
That wasn't me, that wasn't me

But I want you to know that you'll never alone
I wanna believe 


Do I make myself a blessing to everyone I meet
When you fall I will get you on your feet
Do I spend time with my family?
Does it show when I am weak?
When that's what you see, that will be me
That will be me, that will be me
That will be me

When I raked the springtime across your sheets...

Something about this time of year. Seven-thirty, mild late-April evening, nowhere near cool enough for a jacket. Still light enough for me to see well-enough to write this on paper in my car, but the steel grey clouds promise rain tonight. No, not just yet, I can't smell the rain, but it's there.

At the house we owned just outside of the large Midwestern city, there was a lilac tree just like this one. It always smelled so good. When people talk about loving spring, it's usually because it's the end of winter, there's sunshine again, and everything is growing. May flowers and all of that. But I can't remember this tree without seeing it against a stormy sky, can't remember the smell of the flowers without also smelling a coming storm. It's not just the growth. It's the chaos and destruction that brings the growth. As a Midwestern girl, spring means thunderstorms and tornadoes. Autumn is lovely, with crisp fall days, the sound of rustling leaves, and the fear in October storms. But it is is all death, leading to a long cold winter. The fear in spring comes with the promise of life. It's probably no coincidence that this is usually when my depression eases up.

Last night, I sat out on the step in front of our house until the rain started. It felt like the wind was blowing in a huge storm, looked like the new green leaves were about to be pulled from the trees. But I felt peaceful, like I was the eye of whatever storm might roll through.

Spring has also always meant open windows for my family. The humid heat of our summers demands air conditioning and then of course there the heater in the winter, always gas, sometimes a roaring fire as well. But spring and fall call for open windows. The bedroom windows in our house outside the large Midwestern city were placed higher up in the wall, long but no more than 2 feet tall, if that. The roof hung over enough that, most of the time, you didn't have to worry about rain getting in the windows, so we left them open through all kinds of rainstorms and thunderstorms. No matter how bad the lightning and thunder were, it lulled me to sleep like few other things can. Still does. But, for a suburban girl who doesn't much like camping and the like, liking with the windows open in my house, with them rolled down in my car, feeling the breeze, makes me feel closer to whatever is out there. It can be soothing. But it can be scary too. Opening up to the things you like also opens you up to things you might not like.

I don't know how to end this, so I'll end it with a song, the one the title is drawn from, which seems quite appropriate for this post.

Psy Treatment Ambivalence

Before I start exploring the side of this situation that I actually find interesting, I want to make something very clear. I am (currently) very happy that the intervention of my loved ones and medical professionals, medications, therapy, and even hospitalizations have saved my life more times that I really like to admit. I am happy to be working on making my life better in ways that I think are necessary and to be on medications that I believe allow me the breathing space to do that. This post is not the predecessor to me stopping either my therapy or my medication, as I have absolutely no plans of doing either. But, as my mother told me recently, I've never been able to not ask "why" of anything and I've been thinking more and more about the other side of this issue, to possibilities other than the current accepted treatment of mental illness in the U.S.

TV junkie that I am, some of this thinking was prodded by a quote I heard on a tv show, the finale to FX's American Horror Story. Though it was only meant to be a cutting comment to one of his former patients, psychologist Ben Harmon declares,“Therapy. Doesn’t. Work.” When the patient then asks why people do it is “Because they don’t want to take any responsibility for their crappy lives. So they pay a therapist to listen to their bullshit and make it all feel… ‘special’ … so they can blame their crazy mothers for everything that went wrong.” I would add 'absent fathers' to that. Of course I heard this only days after I was released from my latest (not exactly voluntary) hospitalization, typically a time of both hope for future treatment as well as bitterness about the circumstance surrounding the hospitalization itself. I have to admit that one of my problems with past therapists I've seen was that I didn't feel like I was progressing anywhere, but just dealing with the problems of the week, a season of Buffy without any overarching, linked storylines. I wasn't getting better. I just had a disinterested third-party to bitch to now. One of the biggest draws to the DBT therapy that I'm currently in is that my individual therapist and I clearly stated goals for what I want to accomplish through therapy while the group sessions are teaching and reinforcing the skills that I'm using to accomplish them. But it's hard to deny some level of truth to what Dr. Ben says.

The next dominoes to fall came after I started receiving bills from my hospitalization. While I find it difficult to say to anyone, especially people who have lost someone to suicide, that anyone, especially their loved one, should be (have been) allowed to die if that is what they want(ed), even if they had the option of medical assistance, when I am said person and that medical assistance costs tens of thousands of dollars...well, let's just say that I was not quite as enthusiastic about those prospects.

In one of the recent GOP presidential nominee debates, this exchange occurred:

Wolf Blitzer, debate moderator: A healthy 30-year-old young man has a good job, makes a good living, but decides, you know what? I'm not going to spend $200 or $300 a month for health insurance because I'm healthy, I don't need it. But something terrible happens, all of a sudden he needs it. Who's going to pay if he goes into a coma, for example? Who pays for that?

Ron Paul, Republican nominee, but often described as libertarian: Well, in a society that you accept welfarism and socialism, he expects the government to take care of him.

Wolf Blitzer: Well, what do you want?

Ron Paul: But what he should do is whatever he wants to do, and assume responsibility for himself. My advice to him would have a major medical policy, but not be forced

Wolf Blitzer: But he doesn't have that. He doesn't have it, and he needs intensive care for six months. Who pays?

Ron Paul: That's what freedom is all about, taking your own risks (applause from many in the audience)

Wolf Blitzer: But Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?

Audience: Yes!!!

Ron Paul: No. I practiced medicine before we had Medicaid, in the early 1960s, when I got out of medical school. I practiced at Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio, and the churches took care of them. We never turned anybody away from the hospitals. And we've given up on this whole concept that we might take care of ourselves and assume responsibility for ourselves. Our neighbors, our friends, our churches would do it. This whole idea, that's the reason the cost is so high. The cost is so high because they dump it on the government, it becomes a bureaucracy.

Now, liberal commie me and the me who knows how high my uncle's medical bills were even with insurance and Medicaid doesn't really agree with that and, if you judge by the laws of our country, our country largely doesn't believe that the choice of whether people receive life-saving treatment should be left to charities and chance either. Emergency rooms are lawfully required to give whatever treatment will continue the life of a patient, regardless of if they have the ability to pay or not. I understand why this is the law of the land and agree that life-saving medical treatment should not be withheld because a person cannot pay, especially if they desire the treatment, but that does not mean that they will not be required or at least asked to pay.

Now, currently, if a person is not competent to make medical decisions for whatever reason and they do not have a specific DNR, living will instructions with them, and no medical proxy to make the decision to refuse treatment for them, doctors will give them the proper treatment to save their life. For the most part, even if they are conscious, people who have tried to commit suicide are automatically assumed to be not competent to make the decision to refuse life-saving treatment. If the person is not able to refuse medical treatment for whatever reason, they will be billed for whatever services are rendered, even though they did not consent to the services and might not have, if able to. For people who are being saved from an attempted suicide, a several day psychiatric hospitalization will be tacked on to their treatment, after their physical health is established and stable. Though the patient is nominally given the choice, this isn't really true. For those people lucky enough not to have experienced this, a person is usually given the chance to decide whether they will be transferred to a psychiatric unit "voluntarily" or the attending psychiatrist can commit them involuntarily with a 72 hour hold, to a dreaded "state hospital" if they do not have insurance. A patient can fight the hold and can fight further commitment afterwards, but, whether true or not, as I've never actually challenged it, patients are told that judges don't usually find in favor of the patient and resisting the hospitalization is generally seen as continued mental instability so no doctor will let you out. Even signing in "voluntarily" doesn't necessarily mean one can just sign out again. Doctors and nurses will tell a patient that their insurance will not pay for their visit if they sign out AMA (against medical advice), which is what they are requesting to do. If this doesn't work, patients will then be told the same thing that people who do not want to be voluntarily committed will be told, that their doctors can decide to put their hospitalization on a 72 hour hold, at which time they can challenge it, but they won't win and it will just be wasted time, since their resistance is seen as further instability. I'm not sure if these are scare tactics or not. I just know that this is what patients are told, from both my experience and the experience of my fellow patients.

My point with all of this is that, while I am not arguing that anyone should just be denied life-saving medical treatment just because they don't have health insurance or the ability to pay for the treatment, I am starting to wonder about our inability to refuse medical treatment on the basis that we cannot pay. I guess maybe I'm just surrounded by (too many) conservatives, but all I seem to hear lately is that people should not do things they cannot pay for and that no one should rely on the government to pick up the slack when they do things they cannot pay for. But in for a dime, in for a dollar, right? Just some examples: Should people not be allowed to drive if they can afford car insurance, but just the bare minimum, which covers anyone they might hit or any damage they might do while driving, but not whatever damage they might do to themselves and end up in the hospital needing life-saving treatment for? Also, if a person cannot work, cannot find work, or just doesn't want to to work, can they kill themselves so they do not require anything anymore? Oh wait...currently they can't. I'd been pondering all this since starting to deal with the bills, but came up a bit short on finding an audience for these views. Then again, I guess my mother was not the best person to start with and the best time was not just as we were about to get to my uncle's grave.

Then, a few days ago, catching up on my RSS feed, I saw this blog article From Risk to Harm and from Harm to Suicide. For some reason, now that I'm writing this I can't find the area of the article where the author discusses how true liberatarianism should advocate against forced hospitalizations and such. Crap. Either way, this article, the second in a series, after Mad Not Crazy, raises questions about the ways race and psychiatry intersect, helped me realize that not only was I not the ONLY person who questioned the mainstream ways of treating mental illness in North America (the author is a Canadian, living in Toronto), but that there is a WHOLE MOVEMENT (however small), called the "mad movement" (not to be confused with the Make A Difference, or M.A.D. movement), which, from these articles, seems to refute the idea that someone who thinks differently is ill in a manner that needs medical or psychiatric treatment, but asserts that there are many different ways in which people think and experience the world which should be embraced. When reading the above articles, my thinking about mental illness and the appropriate ways were challenged in ways that my thinking about anything probably hasn't been challenged since Miss Kee was alive. Though the articles are in depth and full of ideas on race that I'm not sure many of my readers will agree with, I still recommend them as they offer different ways to think about mental illness, about what I'm going through, about what some of you are living with, though I obviously am not telling ya'll to just throw your pills in the toilet and the rest of your life will be all daisies and roses.

I did want to share these ideas with a larger audience though, to show my dear readers that there are other ways to think of these things that are worth thinking about, and that even a person devoted to their current treatment can still be ambivalent about it and the way mental health is currently dealt with in this country, the country most of you are from and reside in. Please read those other articles when you have some free time. Comment. Thanks for reading.

About the title of the post: Quote from "Mad Not Crazy"

"Members of the Mad community may also identify politically as psychiatric survivors. Psychiatric survivors are people who have experienced the mental health system and feel psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy, and similar helping professions (called the “psy” complex) can be ineffective, harmful, and even violent. The “psy” complex does not just exist in the hospital or the therapy room, but is pervasive in other spaces such as schools, settlement services, and prisons. It’s present any time behavioral language and psychological practices are put into effect in a workplace. Psychiatric survivor scholars and activists explore how psychiatry is a tool for detention and social control. We lobby to end forced drugging, electroshock, restraint, seclusion, institutionalization, and outpatient torture."

Yes, I am aware that this is a rather non-mainstream view of things, but that is what makes it all the more interesting to me to contemplate.