One day at a time.

I had a really good November. I won NaNoWriMo with a few days to spare, I was fairly creative and felt quite upbeat, even though I was averaging only 3 hours sleep a day.
We are 5 days into December and I spent the best part of two days in bed. Tuesday I wanted to beat peoples heads in with a sledgehammer so figured it was best to stay out of people's way. There wasn't any person in particular, just a general thing. Wednesday I just felt like I couldn't deal with anything. Others were being all stressy around me and it really didn't help. Monday was only slightly better, and I at least made it to choir practice. I didn't make it to the first Xmas singing thing.. that was Wednesday. Sunday I had a beadie thing, which was ok.
Today is Thursday and I have actually been up and relatively active since 8:30am. It is almost 5pm as I type this. I went out and did a bit of shopping with my man, did some cleaning in our room and did some dishes. And I had a shower and got dressed. In terms of December so far, today is what I would call a really good day.
I was hoping I would keep the momentum of October and November going, but it hasn't happened so far. I'm not going to throw the whole month away. I've had a few bad days, and each day is a fresh day.
At the back of my mind is the knowledge that I won't see my therapist until well into the new year and I think that I am feeling almost abandoned. That could suggest I rely a bit too much on my therapist. And that scares me. What if I have to stop seeing him? What if I have to start with a new therapist and go through all the back story again? It may not be healthy to be so attached to a therapist, but he has helped me so much over the last few years. I seriously wonder if I would still be here if it wasn't for him. I could well be in a mental institution otherwise.
Anyway, onwards we go.

Life, and all that jazz

So I have been a terrible blogger this month, and whilst it isn't entirely true, I will blame NaNoWriMo for my slackness.
I went to see my therapist yesterday and things are looking very positive, even though I have had a really busy month with a lot of emotional stuff going on. I have managed to be the one in control, instead of the depression/anxiety/PTSD being in control. This is huge for me and marks the second month in a row of this being the case. Considering I have been out of control for over 3 years I really cannot state how freaking huge this is.
Onward and upwards.

Halfway

We are halfway through November, and that means halfway through NaNoWriMo, which is the main reason I am not really blogging here. I have passed the 30,000 word mark, so I am really pleased with myself.
I have also been really creative this month, which is nice too.
Today hasn't been such a good day though. I'm still in my pjs at 10:30pm and I didn't get out of bed until after the kids got home from school. I'd still be there frankly, if not for my partner. I really didn't want to deal with life today.
I have had a couple of days where I have gotten up early, with the kids, and then wanted to go back to bed but have fought against it, but today bed won the battle.
Anyway, it is only one day. Tomorrow is a new day.

Dagnabbit!

Oh crap on a stick! I have been so involved with NaNoWriMo that I have completely forgotten to blog here. I have finding it really cathartic this year, my main character is like me, in that she is mentally ill. I am actually ahead of schedule with it, and I am feeling quite buoyant, even though sickness has continued to plague my family.
I need to make more an effort to blog here, because it really has helped me stabilise, given me an outlet when I need to offload. I don't know how many bother to read it, but I have realised that I need this for me. If others find it interesting or useful then cool.
Anyway, back to writing :-D

Dates are so passe

I am so so tired. All I want to do is sleep.

Oct 31 2013

October draws to a close and November looms. For the second year I am attempting NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writers Month. It is a personal challenge to write a 50,000 word book in 30 days. I completed it last year, and have high hopes to do so again.
Last year I wrote a pretty smutty romance, but this year I'm thinking of trying to write something with a bit more depth. The main thing with NaNo is not to get hung up on rewriting or reworking sections, just let the words flow. To successfully complete it you need to write around 2000 words a day, which doesn't sound like much until you try to do it!
I am hoping that November is on the whole positive, as October was. If I was to take my mood for the last two day as a barometer then it will be a pretty shit month, but I'm not going to do that. I may have spent the best part of the last two days in bed, but that doesn't mean it has to be like that for the whole month.
Part of dealing with mental illness is not letting the bad days colour the good days. You have to accept that you've had a bad day or two, but that that is ok. Tomorrow is a new day. The next hour is a new hour. The next minute is a new minute.
So bring on November.

Oct 28 2013

Today was counselling day. This is like a spring cleaning day. I offload a month or so's worth of accumulated stuff, epiphanies, thoughts, feelings etc. I really think I'm getting a handle on things. It's not great, it's not even close to 'normal' but it's progress and that is the most important thing.

Today I am feeling positive, even if nature has decided to hurl all it's assorted weapons at me in the last three weeks.. flu, gastro and monthlies. Oh it is sooooo much fun! And I want to stay positive today, so there is no deep and meaningful, no spewing forth of 'stuff'. Just a 'hello, I'm here' and a smile.

Oct 23 2013

Blimey, where the heck did the last three days go? It doesn't feel like 3 days have passed, if you had asked me I would have said I just blogged yesterday. Must be going senile....oh.. wait.... nevermind, it's just my mental illness.

Seriously.

A few years ago I had an almost photographic memory, now I struggle to remember things and have to write things down if I don't want to forget. It is what I find to be one of the more annoying aspects of my illness, and impacts my family a fair bit. They came to rely on me to remember important dates and appointments, and then suddenly I was forgetting even some really basic stuff (like paying bills).

So yeah, I forgot that I hadn't posted. So now I have.

Oct 18 2013

Today the world can go get fucked.

Oct 15 2013

Not going to be blogging much today. Yesterday's blog brought up a lot of stuff and I have spent a lot of today trying to process it and take the next step forward. However I do have one thing to say.

If you know someone with depression or PTSD or any other mental illness and they make a move to socialise, even in the tiniest of ways, be sure to acknowledge them. When you are feeling low and you reach out for human contact (physical or verbal or written) and noone reaches back it makes you feel even more alone, more unhappy and tends to make you feel like it isn't worth reaching out. The more it happens the further back the sufferer drops until it is very hard for them to even make the attempt.
So if someone reaches out to you, grab hold of their hand and walk with them a while, let them know they are important, special, wanted.

Oct 14 2013

Bloody hell my ears are giving me the irrits!

Nevertheless, today I soldiered on (without Codral) and did some baking. I also had a shower, got dressed and let the house (under slight protest.. it wasn't in my plans for the day). But when I made my plans I didn't realise I didn't have enough eggs for my proposed baking.

I actually feel relatively good, which is nice, however I am aware of a fairly high level of dissociation.

My son, the one who allegedly committed a very serious crime, has been uncontactable for a bit. I have had two phone calls from his case manager. It would appear that he left the youth shelter he was at and is sleeping rough. It is difficult on many levels. On one level I want to 'save' him, but I know he has to want to be saved. Up until recently he was following along with his major obligations regarding his bail, but in the last week he would appear to have thrown it all out the window. On another level I know I have to step back, he is legally an adult and as far as he is concerned I have no say in his life.

It hurts to be a parent, for a lot of people. The strain and upset that familial issues cause is often a trigger for me, leading me into depressive episodes, anxiety attacks and sometimes full blown meltdowns. So far in the last couple of weeks I have avoided these things, even whilst being ill (which reduces your resistance normally) and I know that it is because I am dissociating from it in order to protect myself.

I don't like dissociating, it took me a long time to break the habit when it first became apparent. At that time I had basically been dissociated almost permanently for more than 10 years. It contributed to my marriage breaking down, and before that to an inability to form good relationships. 9 years ago I first started seeing my current therapist and he was the one who pulled me back, or helped me pull myself back. Learning to manage my emotions was a hard road after not dealing with them for so long. I would make comments like 'how do you people deal with all this emotion, its so hard'. I was virtually robotic for so long it was like learning to be human again.

Learning to deal with emotions again allowed my man and I to rebuild our relationship (there were other issues as well). Not many people get a second chance, but we did.

So for a few years I was almost 'normal', to the point I stopped having therapy and things were going quite well. And then my best friend died. She had been by my side through a lot of my abuse, and was also abused by Griff as well. She was like a sister to me and the pain of her death tore me apart. Then one of my son's friends committed suicide, a former doctor committed suicide too (he was a staunch supporter of mental health issues, yet didn't deal with his own), another friend got murdered and a long time family friend died suddenly. All this happened in the space of about 6 months, as well as some other fairly unpleasant stuff.

I wasn't mentally equipped to deal with such a massive onslaught of trauma and it led to where I am now. The trauma of my childhood became tied to all this new trauma, especially because of my best friend. We had banded together to bring Griff to justice, and after she died I wanted to get justice for her as well as myself. When Griff was 'spared' I was devastated. The trauma he put us through was one of the reasons behind her death. She never learnt to deal with it and she began escaping via drugs and alcohol. At first it was just dope and a bit of ecstasy, but eventually she became addicted to heroin.

She used to joke that I was her only 'straight' friend, and nothing I could say, nor nothing she experienced with friends overdosing was ever quite enough for her to quit completely. She tried lots of times, she was even on the methodone program for a while. But in the end the demons were stronger than she was. I'm not sure she intended to kill herself, but I know at the time of her death she had just suffered a betrayal, and it may well have been the final straw.

I still haven't really come to terms with her being gone, and it has been 3 years. I see her face on my facebook page sometimes, I don't have the heart to remove her. I can think of her and smile now, but I still cry inside.

The fact that drugs took her life makes what my son is doing even harder to endure. He swears he will never touch harder drugs than dope, but I have heard that before. I truly hope he is stronger than his demons. I already have one scar on my heart that will never heal, I do not want another.

Oct 11 2013

It is late in the day, an hour before the witching hour. I'm tired, but I know when I go to bed I won't sleep. My man is not home tonight. Sometimes you take it for granted that people are there, and it isn't until they aren't there that you realise how much you come to rely on them.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, I do realise how much I rely on my support network, which is made up of my man, my kids and my mum. My man is my rock, my go to guy when I need a hug or a shoulder. I hate it when he isn't here at night. I have enough issues with sleep without the anxiety that comes from him not being here.

When you feel anxious things are multiplied or exaggerated. The sound of the wind in the trees becomes something to fear. Leaves blowing across the ground sound like footsteps. Moths fluttering against the window screens sounds like knives cutting. The creak of the house settling is someone breaking in. And my kids look to me to be brave and in control and inside I am freaking out.

This is where my mastery of dissociating comes in. On the outside I look perfectly calm, in control, confident. On the inside I am a screaming mass of goo.

Some would say that it is 'faking it until you make it', but it isn't. It is putting on a mask for the sake those who are innocent. Whilst my older kids know about my illness, and to a certain extent the cause of it, my youngest child has no idea. She is protected from it by those around her. We strive to maintain as much of her innocence as we can. There will be plenty of time for her to be a grown up later on.

The older kids know varying amounts, mainly due to their personalities. We try not to burden them, but they also need to be aware of things like triggers. My illness isn't their fault, but it does impact their lives. My oldest kids knew me before my PTSD became debilitating (delayed onset is normal with PTSD). They remember when mummy used to do most of the cooking, cleaning, washing, ran a business, created every day, studied and was basically superwoman. I am a very different person now. It is a good day if I cook dinner, or bake bread, or do washing, or create, or get out of bed before noon, or get dressed etc.

I really hope that they see that I am taking steps to deal with my illness. I take my meds, I get regular therapy, I make the most of good days. I hope they see that mental illness doesn't make you a bad person, or a lazy person. I hope they grow up with compassion towards those with mental illness, and that if they ever find themselves suffering that they know that help is available, that there are things you can do.

On a bright note, I got out of bed today, got dressed and made bread. :)

Oct 10 2013

Today has been a good day. I am still recovering from the flu, so I slept until about 1pm. But then I got up and had a shower and got dressed. I spent most of the shower coughing up a lung, and felt a bit shaky and tired after, but much better than I had done for several days. I even washed my hair!
Then my mum and I had a girly afternoon..of a sort. I was completely exhausted when we got home, but at least I got out of the house.

These random days of 'brightness' are what make you continue on when you have PTSD/anxiety/depression. They are what remind you that there is something different out there. Unfortunately the illness is such that often these good days are overshadowed and ignored or used by those outside of the situation as proof of a lack of a problem. They will say things like 'oh, so you are having a good day' in such a way that you end up feeling guilty that you dared to have a good day whilst claiming to be depressed.

Many people who haven't had clinical depression think that it is like when they are a bit sad. But it isn't. I have days when I'm a bit sad, and I had them before I descended into hell. There is a vast difference.

A bit sad doesn't make every bone in your body ache.

A bit sad doesn't remove the colour from everything around you.

A bit sad doesn't make you wish you didn't exist.

A bit sad doesn't make you feel alone in a room full of people.

A bit sad doesn't make your bed your best friend.

A bit sad doesn't hang around when everything is going great in your life.

And that is the crux of it. Depression is being miserable on the happiest day of your life, when everything is going great, when you are successful, when you have tonnes of friends and everything going your way. Depression is not a symptom of your lifestyle. People who have nothing, who struggle every day, do not always end up with depression. Nor does money and success shield you from the possibility of getting depression. Depression is an illness that can strike anyone, anywhere, at any time.

Today happens to be World Mental Health Day. It is ironic that we have a world day for it, and yet it is still an illness with a lot of stigma, that many do not understand. And it isn't their fault they don't understand. Many sufferers of depression do not really understand either.

I am a highly logical, analytical, intelligent and educated adult. This illness doesn't 'make sense' to me in so many ways. I have struggled to accept that I have PTSD/depression/anxiety. I cannot understand how everything can be really positive around me and yet I feel miserable, anxious, exhausted and hopeless. The day I realised that my illness isn't a symptom of my life, but an actual illness was a light bulb day. It hasn't magically made it go away, and it hasn't made it any easier, but it has helped me not be so hard on myself.

Sufferers are often their own worst enemy. They think they should be fine, or happy or whatever, and instead of being kind to themselves they will beat themselves up (emotionally/psychologically) which makes matters worse. The internal dialogue of a depression/mental illness sufferer can be one of the most damaging things in their lives. And if anyone in their lives says anything similar, due to a lack of understanding or compassion, then the sufferer will take this as a conformation of their own worst thoughts.

So if you know someone who has any sort of mental illness, be compassionate, let them know that their illness doesn't define them, that you love/like them just the same regardless. Don't pity them, don't undermine them and for God's sake never ever tell them to 'just get over it.'