*very long post today*
Is frustrated the word? Or just lost; incredibly lost? I feel crippled, like I am not whole, and yet all my body parts are in working order. In fact, they are great. I am a little bit on the lean side, yes. The weight sort of melted away slowly like the snow soon will in order to give way to spring, and I didn't really notice it until it was indisputably pointed out to me by the scale and my psychiatrist, all in the same day. People notice that type of gradual changed much more abruptly when they haven't seen you in a while, and he hadn't seen more for four and a half months, by his records.
Dr. Debbie told me yesterday to sit with my thoughts and be "mindful" of them. So I am practicing my homework, you could say. Be mindful of meaningless tasks and give them meaning by being in the now instead of distracting yourself. When you eat food, notice the texture, taste, your response, the smell... Mindfulness is noticing everything and engaging in what you are experiencing instead of being somewhere else. But mindfulness of your thoughts, now that is tricky.
I try to sit with them and talk about them to myself, talk to them even. I have found it most effective to talk out loud. I sit and talk to the wall about how it makes me feel suffocated. I correct myself. I feel suffocated by the walls. I feel that way. It does not do it to me. So it is a feeling. I feel like I am being suffocated, not by the walls, but because I have been within them far too long. Now I look even crazier than I feel, talking out loud to myself. This being mindful with my thoughts is proving to be quite the difficult task.
How do you notice a thought as just a thought? Perhaps it is an important thought or an unimportant thought, but how does one distinguish between the two? Recognizing a thought as just a thought and not "who you are", but something separate from you? It is hard to have a dialogue with what you are thinking if the rules say do not engage with the thought. Just recognize it for what it is, and then let go...well, then I just get back to where the problem started. How does one let go?
I have been having ruminating thoughts lately, the worst kind, because they don't make me feel very normal. I worry about repetitive thinking . It makes me wonder if I might be flipping over to either a manic or depressive state. In this case, mostly likely it would be manic because my depressive side is finally breaking after its seven-week stint, so this usually means swinging over to the other side. That and it feels like a manic thought, this one that keeps repaeting itself to me.
"Run away run away run away run away run away..."
Over and over and over it goes until I notice it, catch myself in the act with this thought. Tsk tsk, I feel naughty like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar. But then, instead of challenging it and arguing out of the thought with the pros and cons, or just noticing it and letting go, I engage it. If I were to run away and leave everything behind, what would happen?
I would not be running away from life. I have done that just fine by my self-inflicted confinement to my room, by isolating myself from as many people as possible. No, rather I seem to be convincing myself I would be running into life, full bore, head on. I am a twenty-three year-old fully capable girl who is scared of the world. I am so full of potential, as everyone keeps saying, as a part of me knows myself, and yet at the same time I feel totally dependent. I am stuck.
Why am I stuck? I think really it all comes down to needing the medications because everything else I could live without, for a time at least. I mean, I may run away but not forever, just long enough to I suppose prove to myself that I can be ok. With medications come doctors... I need my doctors. With doctors and medications comes money... I need money. But money doesn't scare me so much. Because I could make money wherever I went. I know if I went it would still be in Canada, I could find help from someone my parents wouldn't really know, so they could not track me.
I would need to change all the passwords on my computer so they could not get into my email, SG account, or Facebook. Then they could in no way talk to any of those friends that I know and they do not. I would need to cut them out of my bank account, since the have access to part of it and could trace me from that. I would need to stow my phone away somewhere, or delete the numbers at the very least. I couldn't use it because they would get the bill saying where I was from where I had used it. But at the same time, I don't want them...
ARGH!
And here I do it again. Engage the thought. I let it take over and distract my attentions to somewhere else, somewhere away from here and now, because right now feels terrible. I ask them to help me, and either it explodes in my face, attached with all their worries and fears and problems, or it doesn't get heard, it gets shoved aside. But really, how have they been proactive in helping me get better just in this last little bit? I am asking for something I have been asking for a very long time, but they don't want to hear it. I just need to move my room around; I need to simplify it down. It is far too stimulating. I need to separate my workspace from my sleep space. Fuck, just listen to me and let's make a plan of action! Really, how does your worry help me? It doesn't. This is how to help me, but you won't do it. And i get pushed and pushed further into these stupid episodes, these unrelaistic thoughts.
And now I just feel like going away. I have been fighting myself constantly, and I have been upsetting myself. I upset and worry the people around me who love me. It would be ok; at least the guilt would be justified, if this were something I chose, like if I were an alcoholic. But I did not choose this disorder. And the curse of it is, I think, that I am aware enough of what is going on that I can have guilt and frustration and feel like a burden, but yet I am so intertwined with it, since it is a part of me, that I cannot disentangle myself and be independent. I am neither out of it enough to be unaware, nor well enough for there to be no worry. What am I supposed to do?
I communicate my needs, as I have been told to. My dad breaks down. I rarely see him cry. Everything he has kept inside comes flooding out. All at the mention of trying to move my room around to better suit me, so I can function better mentally. And my mother, she is terse and snippy with her responses at dinner. She is clearly angry, slamming dishes about. I feel like saying , as I have so many times before, that if she continues to huff and puff like that she will blow the house down. But I don't saying anything. I hang my head low as tears cloud my vision and drop on the tablecloth beside me. We all sit in our moods and worries and lives that are all connected and yet every one is experiencing something very different all at the same time. Except for one unifying emotion.
We are all stressed out. We are all very tired. And I am the cause of it. Clearly.
So when my mother continued on her bad mood this morning, refusing to look me in the eye, but slamming things about quite significantly. Well, she doesn't have to behave any certain way, because I can get the vibe off her. It is horrible to sit with. It pushes me further and further...Her constant personalizing and catastrophizing. I hate sitting with it. And I know she has set her mood poorly for the rest of the day. Now nothing will go right for her, because she views it all from a negative lens from the get go.
As my mother wails behind me in the hallway, not a half hour later, having slipped on the ice outside on the way to her car, I can't help but think that she attracted this to herself. She would have noticed the ice if she weren't so stuck in her thoughts. Her overly negative, angry thoughts. Definitely, she would have noticed that ice and then she wouldn't be sitting in the hall on the bench crying and moaning. I sit away from her in the living room and look out of the backyard. I don't know how to react, because I feel like an "I told you so" is in order. So I just observe the squirrels running around having a feeding frenzy in the snow. My dad must have put out the stale bread last night and it's just been discovered.
I feel and inkling of guilt as I chuckle, watching one squirrel attempt to make off with an entire slice, up a fence. Except the bread gets caught in the fence on the way up and the squirrel sits atop the post. I am assuming it is wondering just how its bounty disappeared. I sit and chuckle as my mom wails. I go upstairs to start up a bath and here I am now. In the water, trying to be mindful of my wrinkly hands, my stomach digesting its breakfast, the warmth of the water over my skin, the little hairs floating around me...But the thought keeps coming back: Run away run away run away run away run away...
I wouldn't say where I was going. I would just GO. After all, they keep choosing stuff, furniture, over my sanity. If it doesn't go, I will. I will go away from here. Run away or to the hospital, anywhere but around this heavy house any longer that keeps pushing me and pushing me and pushing me.
Stars-Calendar Girl:
If I am lost for a day; try and find me
But if I don't come back, then I won't look behind me
All of the things that I thought were so easy
just got harder and harder each day
December is the darkest and June is the light
but this empty bedroom won't make anything right
While out on the landing a friend I forgot to send home
Who waits up for me all through the night...
Calendar girl who's in love with the world
Stay alive
Calendar Girl who's in love with the world
Stay alive
I dreamed I was dying; as I so often do
And when I awoke I was sure it was true
I ran to the window; threw my head to the sky
And said whoever is up there, please don't let me die
But I can't live forever, I can't always breath
One day I'll be sand on a beach by a sea
The pages keep turning, I'll mark off each day with a cross
And I'll laugh about all that we've lost
Calendar Girl who is lost to the world
Stay Alive
Calendar Girl who is lost to the world
Stay Alive
January, February, March, April, May
I'm alive
June, July, August, September, October
I'm alive
November, December ,yah all through the winter,
I'm alive
I'm alive
null
Is frustrated the word? Or just lost; incredibly lost? I feel crippled, like I am not whole, and yet all my body parts are in working order. In fact, they are great. I am a little bit on the lean side, yes. The weight sort of melted away slowly like the snow soon will in order to give way to spring, and I didn't really notice it until it was indisputably pointed out to me by the scale and my psychiatrist, all in the same day. People notice that type of gradual changed much more abruptly when they haven't seen you in a while, and he hadn't seen more for four and a half months, by his records.
Dr. Debbie told me yesterday to sit with my thoughts and be "mindful" of them. So I am practicing my homework, you could say. Be mindful of meaningless tasks and give them meaning by being in the now instead of distracting yourself. When you eat food, notice the texture, taste, your response, the smell... Mindfulness is noticing everything and engaging in what you are experiencing instead of being somewhere else. But mindfulness of your thoughts, now that is tricky.
I try to sit with them and talk about them to myself, talk to them even. I have found it most effective to talk out loud. I sit and talk to the wall about how it makes me feel suffocated. I correct myself. I feel suffocated by the walls. I feel that way. It does not do it to me. So it is a feeling. I feel like I am being suffocated, not by the walls, but because I have been within them far too long. Now I look even crazier than I feel, talking out loud to myself. This being mindful with my thoughts is proving to be quite the difficult task.
How do you notice a thought as just a thought? Perhaps it is an important thought or an unimportant thought, but how does one distinguish between the two? Recognizing a thought as just a thought and not "who you are", but something separate from you? It is hard to have a dialogue with what you are thinking if the rules say do not engage with the thought. Just recognize it for what it is, and then let go...well, then I just get back to where the problem started. How does one let go?
I have been having ruminating thoughts lately, the worst kind, because they don't make me feel very normal. I worry about repetitive thinking . It makes me wonder if I might be flipping over to either a manic or depressive state. In this case, mostly likely it would be manic because my depressive side is finally breaking after its seven-week stint, so this usually means swinging over to the other side. That and it feels like a manic thought, this one that keeps repaeting itself to me.
"Run away run away run away run away run away..."
Over and over and over it goes until I notice it, catch myself in the act with this thought. Tsk tsk, I feel naughty like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar. But then, instead of challenging it and arguing out of the thought with the pros and cons, or just noticing it and letting go, I engage it. If I were to run away and leave everything behind, what would happen?
I would not be running away from life. I have done that just fine by my self-inflicted confinement to my room, by isolating myself from as many people as possible. No, rather I seem to be convincing myself I would be running into life, full bore, head on. I am a twenty-three year-old fully capable girl who is scared of the world. I am so full of potential, as everyone keeps saying, as a part of me knows myself, and yet at the same time I feel totally dependent. I am stuck.
Why am I stuck? I think really it all comes down to needing the medications because everything else I could live without, for a time at least. I mean, I may run away but not forever, just long enough to I suppose prove to myself that I can be ok. With medications come doctors... I need my doctors. With doctors and medications comes money... I need money. But money doesn't scare me so much. Because I could make money wherever I went. I know if I went it would still be in Canada, I could find help from someone my parents wouldn't really know, so they could not track me.
I would need to change all the passwords on my computer so they could not get into my email, SG account, or Facebook. Then they could in no way talk to any of those friends that I know and they do not. I would need to cut them out of my bank account, since the have access to part of it and could trace me from that. I would need to stow my phone away somewhere, or delete the numbers at the very least. I couldn't use it because they would get the bill saying where I was from where I had used it. But at the same time, I don't want them...
ARGH!
And here I do it again. Engage the thought. I let it take over and distract my attentions to somewhere else, somewhere away from here and now, because right now feels terrible. I ask them to help me, and either it explodes in my face, attached with all their worries and fears and problems, or it doesn't get heard, it gets shoved aside. But really, how have they been proactive in helping me get better just in this last little bit? I am asking for something I have been asking for a very long time, but they don't want to hear it. I just need to move my room around; I need to simplify it down. It is far too stimulating. I need to separate my workspace from my sleep space. Fuck, just listen to me and let's make a plan of action! Really, how does your worry help me? It doesn't. This is how to help me, but you won't do it. And i get pushed and pushed further into these stupid episodes, these unrelaistic thoughts.
And now I just feel like going away. I have been fighting myself constantly, and I have been upsetting myself. I upset and worry the people around me who love me. It would be ok; at least the guilt would be justified, if this were something I chose, like if I were an alcoholic. But I did not choose this disorder. And the curse of it is, I think, that I am aware enough of what is going on that I can have guilt and frustration and feel like a burden, but yet I am so intertwined with it, since it is a part of me, that I cannot disentangle myself and be independent. I am neither out of it enough to be unaware, nor well enough for there to be no worry. What am I supposed to do?
I communicate my needs, as I have been told to. My dad breaks down. I rarely see him cry. Everything he has kept inside comes flooding out. All at the mention of trying to move my room around to better suit me, so I can function better mentally. And my mother, she is terse and snippy with her responses at dinner. She is clearly angry, slamming dishes about. I feel like saying , as I have so many times before, that if she continues to huff and puff like that she will blow the house down. But I don't saying anything. I hang my head low as tears cloud my vision and drop on the tablecloth beside me. We all sit in our moods and worries and lives that are all connected and yet every one is experiencing something very different all at the same time. Except for one unifying emotion.
We are all stressed out. We are all very tired. And I am the cause of it. Clearly.
So when my mother continued on her bad mood this morning, refusing to look me in the eye, but slamming things about quite significantly. Well, she doesn't have to behave any certain way, because I can get the vibe off her. It is horrible to sit with. It pushes me further and further...Her constant personalizing and catastrophizing. I hate sitting with it. And I know she has set her mood poorly for the rest of the day. Now nothing will go right for her, because she views it all from a negative lens from the get go.
As my mother wails behind me in the hallway, not a half hour later, having slipped on the ice outside on the way to her car, I can't help but think that she attracted this to herself. She would have noticed the ice if she weren't so stuck in her thoughts. Her overly negative, angry thoughts. Definitely, she would have noticed that ice and then she wouldn't be sitting in the hall on the bench crying and moaning. I sit away from her in the living room and look out of the backyard. I don't know how to react, because I feel like an "I told you so" is in order. So I just observe the squirrels running around having a feeding frenzy in the snow. My dad must have put out the stale bread last night and it's just been discovered.
I feel and inkling of guilt as I chuckle, watching one squirrel attempt to make off with an entire slice, up a fence. Except the bread gets caught in the fence on the way up and the squirrel sits atop the post. I am assuming it is wondering just how its bounty disappeared. I sit and chuckle as my mom wails. I go upstairs to start up a bath and here I am now. In the water, trying to be mindful of my wrinkly hands, my stomach digesting its breakfast, the warmth of the water over my skin, the little hairs floating around me...But the thought keeps coming back: Run away run away run away run away run away...
I wouldn't say where I was going. I would just GO. After all, they keep choosing stuff, furniture, over my sanity. If it doesn't go, I will. I will go away from here. Run away or to the hospital, anywhere but around this heavy house any longer that keeps pushing me and pushing me and pushing me.
Stars-Calendar Girl:
If I am lost for a day; try and find me
But if I don't come back, then I won't look behind me
All of the things that I thought were so easy
just got harder and harder each day
December is the darkest and June is the light
but this empty bedroom won't make anything right
While out on the landing a friend I forgot to send home
Who waits up for me all through the night...
Calendar girl who's in love with the world
Stay alive
Calendar Girl who's in love with the world
Stay alive
I dreamed I was dying; as I so often do
And when I awoke I was sure it was true
I ran to the window; threw my head to the sky
And said whoever is up there, please don't let me die
But I can't live forever, I can't always breath
One day I'll be sand on a beach by a sea
The pages keep turning, I'll mark off each day with a cross
And I'll laugh about all that we've lost
Calendar Girl who is lost to the world
Stay Alive
Calendar Girl who is lost to the world
Stay Alive
January, February, March, April, May
I'm alive
June, July, August, September, October
I'm alive
November, December ,yah all through the winter,
I'm alive
I'm alive
null
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
Your blog on the other hand has been a flurry of activity that I can hardly keep up with. Your life is one adventure after another my friend.
You always come out on top. When it gets tough just remember you always come out the other side. It is the best thing to hold onto.. your experience. Also I am inclined to believe that as you age you will experience these ups and downs less and less as your experience tells you how to manage them better. I know... I lived it.
Best,
Sean
i love that stars song by the by.
hope you're feeling well.