You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Mental Illness’ category.
…but I took a stupid nap this afternoon, which was more like early evening and when I woke up it was 7 p.m. Oops.
You know what the problem is? The house is too cold, so I sit curled up on the couch with a book and possibly a blanket, and then what am I supposed to do? Huh?
On the other hand, if I turn up the heat and therefore (theoretically) stay awake, the house will be too hot for me to move around and do stuff. Therefore, theoretically, I should make myself warmer by moving around and doing stuff instead of curling up on the couch and reading. But I hate to do stuff!
Case in point: We are going on a little trip tomorrow, the Madhousefam + MadhouseMIL. Just a little trip, out to The Dalles. Someone heard we were going to The Dalles and said, “Why?” I dunno. Because it’s close and low-impact and we’re going to fool our kids into thinking it’s a real vacation. We’re going to stay overnight in a hotel and swim in the swimming pool, and that’s pretty much all our kids require in a vacation that’s only going to last two days. More than two days and there’s gonna need to be roller coasters.
Have I mentioned lately that I don’t enjoy swimming? But this vacation isn’t for me.
Anyway, we’re going on a little trip tomorrow, and I’m supposed to be packing right now. I was packing earlier, but then I stopped. I had some laundry to do, as it’s been piling up. I was only going to do one load, but then I realized that somehow, all of Elvis’s socks ended up in the laundry hamper. Every last one! This wouldn’t be remarkable except that he has about 20,000 pairs of socks. We all do, except for Mister Bubby, who is very particular about his socks and therefore only has about half a dozen that he’s willing to wear. It wouldn’t be remarkable if all of his socks wound up in the laundry at once. But anyone else, it’s kind of amazing. And suspicious. I doubt very much that all of those socks were dirty. That seems kind of impossible. And yet, there they all were. And I wasn’t about to start subjecting them to the smell test one by one. It was easier to just wash all of them. Are you beginning to see why I have so much laundry all the time? I suspect a conspiracy, but I don’t know who all is in on it.
Anyway, I’m waiting for the socks to dry so I can pack some. I really dislike packing. I do it because I’m the only one I trust to make sure everything gets packed that needs to get packed. I very rarely forget anything. But that’s because I almost always overpack. Often I overpack grossly. I just can’t not think of all the contingencies. We’re only going to be gone overnight and come back on Tuesday evening. Theoretically we should be able to get away with just one change of clothes and the clothes on our backs, shouldn’t we? Everyone’s toilet trained and no one wets the bed anymore. And yet…what if something happens? Something could happen that would make it so we needed more clothes. Something like what? I don’t know. We’re going to Multnomah Falls tomorrow–what if someone…falls in? Well, I reckon we’ll have bigger problems on our hands than wet clothes in that case, but you know what I mean. Something could happen. And if we don’t have spare clothes, it’s all on me.
It means I am overpacking again.
More than once in the past year our family has gone on a day trip and there’s been some event that caused someone to need spare clothes, but of course we didn’t have any because it was a freaking day trip and everyone’s toilet trained. I can’t even remember what any of these events were, just that Sugar Daddy would always turn to me and say, “Do you have any extra pants for Girlfriend/Elvis/whoever in the car?” and I’d be like, “Noooo [tone clearly implying "Why would I have extra clothes in the car when we're on a freaking day trip and everyone's toilet trained?"].” Well, clearly I ought to have. Not that SD was blaming me or anything–he was just being hopeful. But I hate to disappoint people. Also, I hate to be personally inconvenienced because I’ve disappointed people. So why haven’t I learned my lesson about the day trips? Always have extra clothes. Yes.
But if you’re going on a two-day trip, does that mean you need twice as many extra clothes? I just don’t know!
I have some banana-chocolate chip cookie bars sitting on my counter that are going to be stale by the time we come back from our trip. I don’t suppose I can talk people into eating them in the car. I can’t talk people into eating them while they’re sitting on their cans inside the house. I gave some to my MIL and some to our neighbors, but no one in the family wants to eat them. I take it back. SD had one last night. He’s still on his diet, but he’s relaxing a little lately because he’s so close to the end and he’s so far ahead of everyone else in his challenge group that something really crazy and unlikely would have to happen for him not to win.
Something crazy and unlikely like needing extra clothes on a freaking day trip when everyone is toilet trained!
I’m packing his gym shorts so he can exercise in the gym at the hotel. That’s how hardcore he’s gotten. He’s going to exercise on vacation. (A two-day vacation!) On the other hand, I am not packing my tap shoes so I can practice my clogging routine while we’re at the hotel. One of us had to make a sacrifice.
I want to eat one of those cookie bars, but I’m in the living room with the new carpet and I shouldn’t eat in here, and I don’t want to move the laptop into the kitchen. I’m too warm where I am. But I’m not falling asleep, no sir.
I’m telling you people, those cookie bars are good. They deserve to be eaten. I’m just saying this because I have such a hard time getting people to eat my baked goods. I’m not like the world’s most magnificent cook, but I know how to bake cakes and freaking cookies. Come on. This crap is hard to mess up. It’s not brain surgery or pie crust. And yet no one will eat what I bake. I know how that looks, and I know what you’re thinking: “If nobody’s eating them, that means they’re no good.” But you’re wrong! I eat them myself. Would I eat stuff that didn’t taste good? High-calorie stuff that doesn’t taste good? Do you really know so little about me? Please. No, the rest of my family is just obnoxious.
Yesterday I spent all day in my bedroom cleaning out my desk. It’s actually a desk with…I dunno…would you call it a hutch? There’s drawers and shelves and crap over it. It’s a big freaking thing that holds a bunch of crap, and I spent all of yesterday cleaning it out and didn’t finish. I kind of hate myself. But I hate my crap more. Why does it have to taunt me? This is the same problem I have with the packing. I want to toss out 90 percent of these papers, but I just don’t know which ones I’ll need ever again. I do not want to find myself standing around someday and SD turns to me and says, “Did you keep the EOB forms for Elvis’s speech therapy from 2007?” and I have to say, “Nooo [tone clearly implying "Why would I have saved those things when I obviously wasn't ever going to need them again?"].”
As it is, if he ever does turn to me and ask that question, I will have to say, “Yes, but hell if I remember where they are.”
Which should tell me something, but something in my soul doesn’t believe it. What’s wrong with my soul? I should probably get some professional help specifically for this problem.
And please, please, please do not ask me if I’ve seen Hoarders. One, my house is disorganized and often a wreck, but I’m not a hoarder like you see on Hoarders. I’m only a mini-hoarder. I like to dabble in hoarding on the side. Two, I have a limited amount of time to watch television and why would I watch anything so depressing and close to home? I may be some kind of masochist, but I’m not that kind. I like to dabble in masochism on the side.
Which reminds me of a tangentially-related-but-not-really anecdote. SD and I teach the ten-year-olds at church and today we were telling the story of some people in the Book of Mormon who were in bondage, and one of the boys in the class was surprised to learn the meaning of bondage because he’d assumed that it meant “like you bond with a friend.” And I, being so very articulate, said something like, “No, usually when people speak of bondage, they’re not talking about the good kind…of…bonding…” and then I had to explain the difference between good bondage and bad bondage while my husband just sat there giggling.
I didn’t do very well, by the way. I eventually just had to change the subject so SD wouldn’t wet himself. (‘Cause then he probably would have asked if I happened to pack him a spare pair of dress pants in my purse, and I would have had to say, “Nooo…”)
The socks are probably dry now, and I’m starting to feel sleepy.
Apparently, in addition to compassion fatigue I also have title fatigue. (Was the “also” redundant? Yes. But it sounded better to me. Just like saying Tuesday thrice sounds better than just twice.)
I feel certain that I’m going to forget that my daughter has piano lessons today, just as I forgot that she had them yesterday, which is why I had them rescheduled for today, but will I remember that? It doesn’t seem possible, all things considered.
(And all things considered, why would I say my daughter has “piano lessons” today? She has a piano lesson today. She accumulates multiple piano lessons over time, but technically has only one today. But I always refer to piano lessons in the plural. Like I did just now. I can’t stop myself!)
I’ve had a few things on my mind. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, but I’m easily overwhelmed. Like most people, I have a hundred things I ought to be doing at any one time, but I’m only willing to think about one or two and prefer to ignore all the others. When circumstances converge so as to force me to not only think about but actually do something about more than a couple things, I start to feel put upon. Hence, my current discomfort. And forgetfulness. I’m simply incapable of remembering most things, let alone everything.
The other day I panicked because I thought I had forgotten to order my dad’s birthday present, but then I remembered that I hadn’t forgotten, and I was relieved. So relieved that I proceeded to forget everything else. (Once I start relaxing, it is really hard for me to stop.)
SO. I know some of you would like to know why Princess Zurg was suspended on Friday. The short answer is “PMS? Insanity?” but the longer answer is this: She had a confrontation with her Language Arts teacher (the latest in a long line of confrontations with this particular teacher, whom she despises for reasons I don’t really understand) that culminated in her threatening the teacher’s life and subsequently she was taken to the Behavior Learning Center classroom to cool down and had another confrontation with a different teacher there, which culminated in her hitting the teacher on the arm. For those of you who aren’t familiar with these new-fangled school policies, that’s a no-no. I mean, all of it’s a no-no. She did very few things on Friday that are actually permitted under ordinary circumstances. So, yes, she absolutely deserved to be suspended for the remainder of that day, and she has had in-school suspension yesterday and today. I think she’s supposed to go back to her regular classes tomorrow, but I think she may be in for a change in Language Arts teachers. We’ll see. I really don’t have time to think about it right now.
Fortunately, I was able to get her in to see her shrink yesterday, and he has added another medication to our pharmacological support arsenal. It’s Abilify, which I think is probably the awesomest name for a psychotropic drug ever. I mean, it’s so stupid and nakedly condescending that you can’t help but love it. I believed I’ve blogged on it before, back when my own shrink was considering it for me (but alas, I was never actually Abilified). It’s supposed to have a calming effect and keep her from getting stuck on her runaway train of negativity. I’m sure I can come up with a better metaphor than “runaway train of negativity.” How about she’s got this Ferrari of negativity and someone’s cut the brake lines? That’s a little more apt. Anyway. She started that last night. One of the side effects is drowsiness (which is why it’s taken at night). She woke up this morning feeling nauseated. I was scared because I really, really don’t want this pill to make her nauseated. I don’t want it to make her anything but Abilified. Also, I really, really wanted her to go to school today. Because I want everyone to go to school everyday. It’s my dream, and I mean to live it.
She felt better after eating breakfast, so she went to school, and so far I have not had a phone call from the school reporting puking. So we’re cool. I guess.
Tonight is pack meeting for cub scouts. We’re going to eat cake. So that’s good.
Tomorrow night Princess Zurg and Sugar Daddy are going to the temple and the rest of us are going to Elvis’s basketball party. It’s the end of the season. So that’s good.
On Thursday I leave for California because it’s my dad’s 65th birthday on Saturday and my step-mother is throwing him a party. I am looking forward to the trip, but I haven’t really planned for it yet because I’ve been overwhelmed with thoughts of teacher-hitting and -possibly-murdering and suspensions and Abilification and scouts and cake and basketball and what to make for dinner and there’s also been a lot of laundry. Also, it is Dr. Seuss’s birthday on Friday and so the kindergarten is having Pajama Day.
HEAVY, PUT-UPON SIGH. Pajama Day.
So Girlfriend doesn’t actually own any pajamas. She did have some Thomas the Tank Engine pajamas, but they disappeared into thin air several weeks ago, and I have not been able to locate them. We even looked for them extra-hard once we found out that there was going to be a Pajama Day (HEAVY, PUT-UPON SIGH), but to no avail. I know what you’re thinking: So what has Girlfriend been sleeping in, if not pajamas? Answer: Not the buff. She just wears clothes to bed. Comfortable clothes, but not to be confused with pajamas, and therefore not a believable outfit for Pajama Day. So I went to the Target to look for pajamas, but being that it’s February, all the pajamas in stock are shorts, not long pants, because in Retail World, summertime starts in January. In the Pacific Northwest I shall not be sending my children outside the house in shorts until mid-July. Which is about when they’ll start selling heavy winter coats again, so I should make a note to pick one of those up then. Anyway, I got off the subject. I also went to Old Navy, which doesn’t sell pajamas, and I even went to Ross Dress for Less, which doesn’t sell children’s pajamas except for babies. So that was disheartening.
Today I had to go to Macy’s to buy fancy soap for my face, and while I was there I looked for pajamas. No love. So then I went to Kohl’s, where I eventually found something suitable. Ideally, I would have gotten her new Thomas pajamas, since they would match her Thomas slippers and her Thomas blanket, but there weren’t any Thomas pajamas to be found, so instead I got her Scooby-Doo. Of course, I had to go to the boys’ section because all they sell in the girls’ section is Pepto Bismol-hued princess stuff and stuff that says “Mommy’s Little Cupcake Sweet as Can Be” and crap like that. I mean, she is my little cupcake, sweet as can be, but jeez, she’s already going to school in her intimate apparel; let the girl keep some of her dignity.
While I was at the Kohl’s I remembered that I forgot to bring the belt that PZ gave to SD for Christmas and I’ve been meaning to return because it didn’t fit then, and since he’s lost 20+ pounds, it certainly doesn’t fit now. I just don’t shop at Kohl’s very often. It was doubtful that I could have returned it anyway, however, since I’ve lost the receipt and do they have a 60-day return policy or a 90-day, I can’t remember. Whatever. I think the best I could have hoped for was an exchange (which was all I wanted), but they appear not to carry that brand anymore anyway, so whatever. I bought him a new belt. Much smaller than the old belt. It was on clearance, so it sort of makes up for me wasting money on a belt he’ll never wear and I’ll never return. Kind of. Maybe I’ll just keep the old belt for those days when he feels bloated. Ha ha. If I see him start to put the weight back on, I can say, “Do I have to get out your fat belt, honey?” You know, just to be supportive of his new lifestyle.
Here are the things I have to do before I leave town:
1. Figure out what the weather is supposed to be in California. I mean, as I recall, February in Southern California is pretty warm, but it’s been a long time since I’ve actually experienced a SoCal February. I don’t know. It’s impossible to predict the weather in Oregon; you just have to be prepared for anything. But California tends to be pretty predictable.
2. Touch up my roots. I have this patch of grey by my right temple that looks like a bald spot from a distance. I don’t like that.
3. Remember how many ounces of liquid I’m allowed to carry on the plane. Now that I’m all high-maintenance with the fancy Macy’s soap and the conditioner that I have to buy off the interwebs, it makes travel a little more complicated. But I don’t want to check a bag.
4. Remember that PZ has piano lessons today. A piano lesson, that is. Just one. Approximately 50 minutes from now.
Last night I read Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why. I didn’t like it. Here are fewer-than-thirteen reasons why.
1. For those of you unfamiliar with this popular YA novel, it is about a girl named Hannah who commits suicide, but before she dies she records six-and-a-half audio cassette tapes explaining her “thirteen reasons why” she did it–or rather, describing thirteen incidents with thirteen different people that led up to her committing suicide. The book is alternately narrated by Hannah’s audiotaped voice and Clay, one of the thirteen people on the tapes, who is listening to Hannah’s audio tapes. Does this make sense? I feel like I’m making it more complicated than it is. The premise is not so complicated: You’re reading the words of Clay, who is listening to the words of Hannah. So you alternate between Hannah’s narrative and Clay’s reactions to what he’s hearing. The concept is simple enough; the execution is somewhat flawed because it’s not like there’s a section where Hannah speaks and then a section where Clay speaks, but there’s a constant back and forth between the two. My sister enjoyed the audiobook version of this novel, and I imagine that the audiobook version is superior if only because it is much easier to determine who is talking when, if the different characters’ words are spoken by different actors: Boy Voice, Girl Voice, Boy Voice again, etc.–what could be clearer? In the text version it’s Italics, Not Italics, Italics, Not Italics–who’s the Italics again? Wait, was that one thing in Italics or Not Italics? Italics. Not Italics. It’s more complicated than it sounds, or maybe it’s because I’m coming down with something and my brain is foggy, but I found the narration very confusing for that reason.
2. Confusing narration is not a deal-breaker for me–I just finished my seventh Toni Morrison novel, and it took much longer than a single evening to read, but I plugged away at it, by golly, because I’m that way–but in addition to being insufficiently differentiated in their respective fonts, the characters in TRW were not particularly fleshed out. Again, this is where an audiobook version would be really helpful, since actors would be dramatizing everything and making it all…dramatic…you know, making the characters seem more like real people. Reading the plain old slanty-letters/non-slanty-letters version, I never felt like I really knew these characters, much less cared about them, which brings me to Another Reason Why.
3. Hannah’s story is very sad. It’s sad because some kids were mean to her, and she ended up killing herself. Suicides are almost always inherently sad, or sad by default. At the same time, because she never seemed like a real person–i.e. I never really understood where she was coming from or what made her tick–her suffering didn’t seem all that real to me either. Now that’s just cold, isn’t it? She killed herself and I’m like, “Meh.” No, it was actually more like this: Some kids did some mean stuff sometimes, but I did not have a picture of what her daily life was like, at school or at home (there was some technically-non-zero amount of information on her home life, but it was not useful), so although she explained how Incident 1 led to Incident 2 which led to Incident 3 and so on, and certainly all of these incidents sucked, I did not get a sense of their cumulative effect on her life or her psyche. She told me she was overwhelmed and hopeless, but I didn’t really believe her, even though she was clearly dead now because of it.
4. But here’s the real thing: Her suicide was a calculated means of revenge against everyone who had wronged her. I can see how such a plot would energize and motivate a person, but it still came off as exquisitely cruel. And yes, I realize I’m talking about a dead girl (albeit a fictional one) who was the victim of bullying. But it seemed like she gave at least as good as she got. She would lay traps for people, including, in the end, one completely innocent person she used to render her suicide Totally Justified. All of which made me think, “Really, Hannah? Why don’t you just grow up?” But of course, she can’t. She’s dead now. And it’s all everyone else’s fault.
Honestly, it kind of bothered me. I know how the adolescent mind works. I have an excruciatingly vivid memory of my own adolescence. Adolescence sucks. Feeling like you’d be better off dead, likewise, sucks. I understand all that, so I feel like I should be more sympathetic. But I’m just not, and it bothers me.
Before you start getting too worried, let me reassure you that all of this is not over a mere YA novel. It’s more complicated than that. Because I have been the mother of a troubled adolescent girl for a few years now, and let me tell you, THAT sucks. It sucks to have this excruciatingly vivid memory of how much adolescence sucks and how much clinical depression sucks (that last part is not so much a memory, but I remember having clinical depression at that age, too, and it SUCKS), and to know that there is nothing in your power to change that for your child. You can listen, you can make (lame) suggestions (and know that they’re lame), you can take them to therapy and buy them pharmaceutical support, but the bottom line is that the will to live and the will to keep trying is all on them, not you. Your adult perspective is all well and good for you, but it’s useless to them. They have to get their own. And in the meantime you feel frustrated and helpless, and that makes you angry. And sometimes just plain annoyed.
That’s how you find yourself thinking things like, “Gah, just grow up already!”
Please.
I can tell it’s coming, just as sure as you know when the slutty girl in the slasher movie is about to get decapitated by a chainsaw-wielding psycho. Ominous music starts playing. Or it is quiet–too quiet. Or, you kind of just know it is time. This is what happens in these pictures. And even though you know what’s going to happen and that none of it’s real, that information doesn’t help.
Right now I’m feeling this overwhelming sense of dread and despair, and it doesn’t do any good to tell myself it’s all in my head it’s all in my head it’s all in my head because I already know it’s in my head–that’s why I can’t get away from it. I try. I’ve been reading a lot. Do you know how many books I’ve read in the last couple months? A lot. A LOT. I read three whole books in the last four days, if you count that awful Toni Morrison book it took me six weeks to get 15% of the way through. (It’s not really an awful book; it’s just eminently put-down-able. Like the half-grapefruit I used to force myself to eat every morning while I was in college. I was glad I’d done it at the end, but the joy was not in the journey. And now I’m off topic. But this is a good illustration of what’s been happening to me. How I run from place to place just in case where I currently am is not far enough from where I’m trying to escape.)
It was a mistake to mention the books because my husband reads my blog, and now every time he sees me with a book, he’s going to ask, “Are you reading for enjoyment, or are you escaping?” As if they weren’t the same thing. Escape is not only enjoyment; for all intents and purposes these days, escape is life, and living is the nightmare I keep waking myself up from.
I wish I could have woken myself up from my dreams last night. Well, I guess I did, just not soon enough. I had one dream that I was doing another tap recital, but my instructor had added all this stuff to the production, all this stuff we’d never seen before, the night of the performance, during the performance–and apparently enough of the people involved knew what was going on that it wasn’t just complete chaos, but at least a third of us had no clue when the thing was going to end. It was supposed to be about fifteen minutes and was going on about two hours and we still hadn’t gotten to either of the routines that I’d actually learned. In fact, I was beginning to forget them. I wasn’t sure I’d remember what to do when (or if) the time finally came. My husband had left with the older children–along with most of the audience–and it was just my mother-in-law and Girlfriend who had stayed with a few other faithful observers. ”When is this going to end?” I asked my neighbor. She laughed because she had no idea either, except we were facing the wrong way (again). Finally, even my MIL and Girlfriend left, and I was just there with nobody to watch my final tap recital, and I felt somewhat betrayed, or at least abandoned, even though I couldn’t blame anyone for not sticking around. The whole thing was a disaster. It made no sense. It just kept going on and on and on! What was my tap instructor thinking? Did she have a sudden onset of extreme narcissism? Yes, I blamed my tap instructor, which I think was appropriate, and yet I was too loyal to just call it quits and leave myself. No, I wasn’t loyal. I still thought that eventually we would get to the part where we’d actually dance what we’d been practicing to dance, and I didn’t want to give that up. But we weren’t getting to that part. Ever. At all. And then I had to pee. I mean, for real I had to pee. That’s when I woke up.
I was relieved that wasn’t a real tap recital. I felt like I dreamed it in real time. Like I’d really just done a two-hour tap recital that still wasn’t over. I was so relieved that I didn’t have to go back to that dream and finish it, and yet I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I tried to think about other things, so I wouldn’t fall asleep and God forbid, dream that horrible dream again, but nothing worked. Finally I fell asleep, and then I dreamed a horribly disturbing sex dream that also involved church, but at least it was a Lutheran service, whatever that means.
I could have done without that other dream.
So you see, not even sleep is safe for me. That’s a pretty sad state of affairs. That’s why I read. That’s why I’ll stay up late this week, while my husband is out of town, watching episode after episode of Ned & Stacey, which I ordered from the Netflix. On purpose. I happen to like that show. I’m pissed that they never released the second season on DVD, though. Not really “pissed,” that’s too strong. I’m really just disappointed. What kind of world do we live in where you can get Whoopi Goldberg’s entire oeuvre on DVD, but not the complete Ned & Stacey? It is a world worth escaping, I say. But that’s too neat an ending, isn’t it? I don’t feel nearly so much resolution in my heart.
I got up this morning, got the kids ready for school, secured a babysitter, and went to clogging class. It was a lot of fun. I think I am going to like clogging. I will like it even better when I get some real clogging shoes. Those suckers make noise. Unfortunately, it is more difficult to find clogging shoes than you would think. My local (i.e. close to me) dance supply store no longer sells them. It would appear, actually, that no dance supply store in the Portland metro area sells them. I’m sure that can’t be true. I’m just telling you what appears. I can buy them on the internet, of course, but I don’t like to buy shoes without trying them on. Also, it is very difficult to tell from the pictures and descriptions what kind of clogging shoes I am getting. I am not actually sure what kind I want. It took me approximately half an hour to figure out the difference between regular taps and buck taps. Such things should not be. There should be some All About Clogging or So You Want to Be a Clogger site that tells me everything I need to know. Or I could just ask other cloggers. But I am impatient. I want to know everything now.
Actually, I just want to distract myself from all the crap I have to do between now and Wednesday. The housekeepers come this week. My mother-in-law also comes this week. She is staying through Thanksgiving. She is supposed to take possession of her new home sometime between this week and November 1. I know nothing of the details. All I know is that she’s coming, and the people who are installing our new counter top in the kitchen are coming next Monday to do a “template,” whatever that is, and they may or may not have to remove our sink–meaning I will be without use of my kitchen sink either for one day, or for two weeks, which is how long it takes for them to come back and install our new counter top (with integrated sink). I’m having some difficulty living with the uncertainty, but I’m distracting myself with the fact that I have to get ready for the housekeepers, who are coming on Wednesday. And as I said, I’m distracting myself from that by shopping online for clogging shoes.
This is sounding less and less like a success story. But it is a success story because I overcame my fear of new social situations and went to clogging class today. And I think I am going to be good at clogging. Thinking I am going to be good at something is a rare experience for me, so I’m to be congratulated. Certainly I will be more to be congratulated once I have actually become good at clogging. But for now I take my victories where I can get them. You know what I mean?
My braces are really bugging me right now. I don’t know if I should say it’s my braces, or that it’s my teeth. The position that my teeth are currently in right now, courtesy of the braces doing their magic, is uncomfortable for me. There is something weird going on with my gums behind my upper front teeth. I’m getting a blister, or something. Something’s rubbing me the wrong way, somehow. I don’t know. Maybe it’s totally unrelated to my braces. Maybe I’m getting some kind of disease. At any rate, I’m having trouble knowing where to put my teeth, so they don’t chafe any sensitive tissues. Is this information about the inside of my mouth too intimate, or too boring, or both? I think I have lost interest, so we’ll move on.
Not that there’s anywhere to move on to.
I forgot to mention that I set an appointment with my psychiatrist. I have been faithfully taking my medications for about three weeks now–is that how long it’s been since the nervous breakdown?–and I don’t feel any better. To be sure, I don’t feel crazy–but I don’t feel better, if by “better” one has in mind a higher standard than “not crazy.” I guess I do have a higher standard, which is “not depressed.” So I have set an appointment. It’s for next Tuesday. Next Tuesday.
The up side to having a nervous breakdown right in the middle of church is that your Relief Society president will bring a loaf of cinnamon chip bread to your house. That’s pretty sweet.
So I was faithfully taking my meds and starting to feel like a normal person again, and then I got sick around…Thursday or Friday. I forget which. I spent a lot of time in bed on Saturday, and even more time in bed today. I won’t lie to you–it was kind of awesome. I don’t usually spend that much time in bed when I’m sick, unless I have fainted and poking me with a stick doesn’t help. Maybe that’s what happened this time. I’m not sure. I do know that children are a heck of a lot easier to deal with in the evening when you’ve been asleep for most of the day. Or maybe they’re all getting sick, too. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the head?
Generally, I’m the last person in the house to get sick. Sometimes everyone gets sick except for me. It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? You know, when I was pregnant with Elvis, I was sick the entire nine months. The first couple months were just morning sickness. The rest of the time was various colds and flus. Seriously, no breaks. From one virus to the next. I don’t think I breathed through my nose from October to April. It was the worst pregnancy ever. (In my life, I mean. Other women have had much worse pregnancies, but I don’t compare myself to other women; it makes me feel whiny.) The up side was that after the baby was born, neither he nor I was sick for, like, two years. No kidding. There was some serious antibody action going on there. And I have to say, my constitution has been pretty rocking in general ever since. At least it seems that way, when I’m not sick.
I’m breathing through my nose right now. Just thought I’d mention that, since it is a pretty nice feeling. Not something you take for granted, once you’ve been deprived of it for long enough. How are you feeling today? Are you a little stressed out? If you need some perspective, just ask yourself this question: “Can I breathe through my nose?” If the answer is “yes,” be grateful. If the answer is “no,” well, I’m sorry. It does indeed suck to be you right now.
I am so well-rested and nose-breathing that it is barely registering with me that the house looks like a hell-hole and I have only about 58 1/2 hours until the housekeepers get here. I do think I feel a sneeze coming on, though. … No, false alarm. Never mind.
Anyway. I woke up for the first time today–no, it was the second time…around 1:30 p.m. I think I must have dreamed very sad things because I woke up feeling very sad. I was so sad that I went back to sleep. I must have had better dreams that time around, or no dreams, because I woke up feeling like I should probably get out of bed and do something conscious-like. So I unloaded the dishwasher and made dinner. That was about it. And I played Pengoloo with Elvis. I was like a machine!
Okay, now I really do feel a sneeze coming on. There it was. There it was again. Okay, now it’s gone. What would you do without this play-by-play, gentle readers? You would always be wondering, wouldn’t you? About what, I don’t know.
The bad news is that now that I’m feeling better, I have a lot of work to catch up on. First, there is the laundry. Good night, the laundry. And the shopping. And the house/hell-hole. It’s always something! But I will do it all while breathing through my nose. And with pharmaceutical support. So, really, it will be like a Princess Cruise, compared to where I’ve been.
How goes it with you?
Here’s a thing about when your medication stops working–or at least stops doing what you’d like it to do. (Or stops seeming like it’s doing something. Whichever it is.) One day, usually around late afternoon, you realize that you haven’t taken your medication today. “Oh, well,” you think, “it’s late, I’ll just remember to take it tomorrow.” Then the next day, sometime in the evening, you realize that you forgot to take it again. “Well, whatever,” you think. “It doesn’t help anyway.” Then the next day you don’t think about it all. Neither do you think about it on the next day. And on the next day–or the day after that…it gets harder to keep track–when you’re freaking out for no good reason and/or having hour-long bouts of weeping several times during the day, for no discernible reason except that it just seems to be the thing to do, you might think, “What is happening to me? Why am I responding to the usual stimuli in such an atypical fashion?” (Okay, maybe you don’t think those exact words. Maybe your exact words are “AAAAAAUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHHmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop!!!!” But don’t worry, we know what you mean.) Then, out of nowhere, it occurs to you that you haven’t had your medication in at least four days. And it also occurs to you, though you hesitate to think it out loud, that the first day you forgot to take your medicine might not have been the first day after all. So, yeah, that could explain a couple of different things. But what does any of it matter now, when you’re clearly KA-RAY-ZAY?
This is the point at which people are eliciting promises from you that you will call your doctor (i.e. psychiatrist) and make a freaking appointment already. But do you really need to call your doctor, or do you just need to remember to take your freaking pills? Because even when you thought they were doing nothing, clearly they were doing something, or the absence of them would not make you crave their banal and unremarkable benefits. How much magic are you entitled to expect out of chemical dependency, especially the legal kind? That, I think, is a fair question to ask, even if you are insane.
Just so you know, I choked down my own pills just a few minutes ago. But I haven’t called my doctor yet. I’m thinking.
I took Princess Zurg to her doctor this morning, because PZ’s pills don’t seem to be working for her, either. Of course, she has been on the same prescription for the last four years or so. She’s thirteen and about 50 pounds heavier than she was in the fourth grade. It seems logical to get a new psych consult. We’ve been “between psychiatrists” for PZ ever since she left the day treatment program, relying on her pediatrician to write prescriptions for her, since she was so stable and all. (PZ was stable, that is. I mean, her doctor seems stable, too–I didn’t mean to call that into question. I just wanted to clarify the pronoun usage.) I didn’t want to go back to her original psychiatrist (the one we saw before she entered the day treatment program) because, although he was a very nice man and by all accounts a fine doctor, his doctor style didn’t quite match up with my patient (or mother-of-the-patient) style. What he would do was lay out all the different options before us, explaining how the drugs worked and the pros and cons of each, and then ask me what I thought–which I imagine would work great for a lot of people. I mean, it’s very empowering, I’ll give you that, but a little too empowering for me personally–because I would never have any idea what I thought. All the options sounded equally good and equally awful to me. And I would think, “What about his professional opinion? Isn’t that one of the reasons people go to medical school–so they can have a professional opinion?“ So, yeah, I am grateful for his help in eventually finding the correct medication for my child, but it was not a process I wanted to go through with him again. So I was putting off finding a new psychiatrist–happily putting it off while the medication seemed to be working, and unhappily putting it off when I thought I might have to go back to Dr. Empower-Me again.
Do you remember me telling you how difficult it is to find a psychologist who treats adolescents, is taking new patients and is also covered by my insurance? I’m sure I must have told you, but I don’t blame you for forgetting. It might not have been one of my more interesting blogs, but to recap: it’s really very difficult. Take that difficulty and magnify it by a really large number if you want to find a psychiatrist who treats adolescents, is taking new patients and is also covered by my insurance. And I knew if I asked her psychologist or her pediatrician for a referral, I would probably have to answer the question, “Why don’t you go back to Dr. Empower-Me?” and being that Dr. Empower-Me is a very well-regarded child psychiatrist in this metropolitan area, I didn’t want to admit that the thought of working with him again made me feel very frustrated before even beginning.
Imagine my relief when I broached the topic of a referral with PZ’s pediatrician this morning and she said, “Oh, yeah–because you can’t go back to Dr. Empower-Me. He went over to Kaiser.” He did? Why didn’t anyone tell me? I would have asked this question months ago! Ha ha. Ah, now I feel really stupid. But relieved. So now I have a list, and I can begin working my way down that list–which shouldn’t take long, since there are only two names. Ha ha. I told you this was difficult, and you didn’t believe me, did you? Well, now you know. Or you will know, as soon as I report back whether or not any of them is taking new patients and/or is covered by our insurance.
My mother was very good about getting me treatment for my mental illness, but getting her to seek treatment for her own was like pulling teeth. Does that strike you as odd? It sure struck me as odd, back in the day, but now I understand completely.
There might be a nap in this afternoon for me. But only if I get off the computer. So adieu, gentle readers. Do you think I should take a Valium, or not?
When you have a very public nervous breakdown, it makes you not want to go out in public again for a long time. Unfortunately, there are strict limits on how long a person in my situation can stay out of public.
The last time I felt publicly humiliated and nevertheless found myself having to go out in public before I was technically ready to, I took a hiatus from the internet instead. I wanted some privacy. I had to retreat from someplace, even if it didn’t make any sense.
It’s getting harder to find a corner of the universe where I can enjoy being alone. I always find myself getting lonely. But when I put myself out there in real life, I regret it.
My laptop is broken, so I won’t be able to sit around typing on it for hours on end anymore. I may even have to cut back on Facebook time. It’s that serious.
It’s 9:51 a.m. and I’m still in my bathrobe. Actually, it’s worse than that because I just put a bathrobe over my pajamas to make it seem more like I was getting dressed when the fact is that I’m secretly plotting a way to go back to bed and stay there all day. It was weird, like I was subconsciously trying to keep my secret plot from myself. Why did my subconscious think it could do that? I don’t know. The subconscious is a weird thing. That’s where our dreams come from, right? And dreams are weird things. It makes sense, if you think about it that way.
The other night I had a lot of weird dreams, but I was aware that I was dreaming in all of them. That doesn’t usually happen. Like, in one dream I was at church and I took a shower in one of the bathrooms, and then I walked across to the other side of the church in just my towel. I didn’t run into many people because it wasn’t Sunday. I don’t remember what I was doing there or why I was taking a shower, but that’s not the point. The point is that I realized that it was probably bad form to walk around church in just my towel, even if it was a weekday, and I should probably get dressed–except that I didn’t have any clothes with me. But, being aware that I was only dreaming, I thought, “Okay, I’ll just dream that I do have clothes with me,” and voila, problem solved. It was like my conscious mind was controlling my subconscious, instead of the other way around. If only the conscious mind could have such power in real life. Is that what that dream means? Because I have no idea.
I didn’t get very good sleep that night, in case you’re wondering. I’m beginning to think that I wasn’t even dreaming, but now I will have to account for why my conscious mind was thinking such crazy stuff. (Technically, there’s no need for commentary here.)
I’m thinking about taking a shower. And eating breakfast. Not simultaneously. Also, about going back to bed. But I didn’t say that last part out loud. Or did I?
Recent Comments