A relapse in time.

 It is now Tuesday.

Thursday, we had an emergency plumbing situation at the duplex. It involved opening walls at my mom’s place, and water accumulation in the crawl space. What we thought had been resolved, had not been. The emergency plumber mentioned all the corrective work that would be needed, and I spiralled.

I went upstairs, to bed, and did not sleep. My heart raced. I was ill all night, running to the toilet, I tried to stick to the edge of the bed as not to disturb my dog. He kept trying to sleep between my legs or in the nook behind my knees. He became hostile and irritated. He would stand on my legs and stomp. He is not a dog who is sensitive to when I am ill or in pain. When I had bronchitis and would have coughing fits and have to shoot up to cough and breathe, he would refuse to get up from between my legs, half asleep and adamant I go around him. 

My chest was so hot, I couldn’t put my head down to the pillow, not fully, because all I heard was my heart racing. All I was hearing was how hard my heart was working, how close it was to exploding.

When I say my heart raced and my thoughts spiralled, I don’t think that does the experience justice. 

My chest was hot, as if I’d swallowed too-hot coffee that then seeped through my throat and lungs, spreading throughout my ribcage. But it never cooled, and there was no relief.

My mind was barraged with incessant thoughts. This place is a money-pitt, I cannot afford it, what have I committed my mother to, I am unable to take care of myself, I will lose my job, we should sell the duplex, what if we do not recoup our money, all of it can go to my mom, where will I live, how will I take care of myself, I can’t move, that takes money and energy, I am alone, how can I do this, if my mom dies, I have nothing. 

There was a lot of focusing on losing my mother, and what that would do to me. How that would feel. In earnest, it felt like she was dying, like I was losing her. That I was actively grieving and losing her. How alone I would be. How nobody will ever love me like my mother loves me. There is no love so unconditional, not that I have experienced. 

Thursday was sleepless. I e-mailed in sick Friday around 5 am, and when my mother came upstairs to check on me, I was still spiralling. I would have bits of sobbing, and was also trying to figure out emergency cleaning services for our crawl space. 

I reached out to some friends, and those who live with anxiety shared breathing exercises and some prompts. I tried to breathe it away. Sometimes it would mellow things, sometimes it was like throwing an ice cube onto a bonfire. 

I have not had a panic attack, or suffered acute anxiety in years. Not since school. I naively, thought those times were behind me. 

I had been off of Effexor for months, and even through the pandemic and quarantine, I thought my depression was level, and relatively good, considering. But I was clearly wrong.

Over the course of Friday I also asked around if people knew of any emergency services. I called a help line or two, 

“Are you suicidal?”

“No.”

That’s the extent mental illness emergency care.

I called 8-1-1, the social side first, who of course confirmed that CLSC wait lists are months if not years long. I remember asking about services in English and they said that list was over 5 years long.

I called the EAP line at work, and they said it would take 3-5 days for someone to get back to me, and that the services were only short term, 3-4 sessions. So again, nothing long term, and nothing in the realm of emergency help. 

I called my family doctor office for an emergency appointment, I would get one for Tuesday. 

I was unable to eat, I was so anxious and nauseous and panicked. I managed 4 triscuit. I drank water. 

Saturday morning things were not getting better, and I asked a friend if she would be willing to drive me to the hospital. She was pro-active and said to keep her on stand by if I wanted to go. I took a shower, and put on clean clothes and asked her to bring me to the emergency room. I ate a banana before leaving, I drank water. I brought myself a bottle. I tried to wear clothes I would be comfortable in if hospitalized. Layers. 

The drive was more pleasant than I would have expected, since my friend E is a trained interventionist and just a really good person to have in your corner when things aren’t going well. Her tone was even and calm and she made me feel calm. Even when she drive the wrong way up an emergency bridge meant only for ambulances. The signage was shit.

She dropped me off and I cried thanking her. I made my way to the emergency ward, through taped off areas and security stations asking us to change masks and sanitize our hands. 

Once in the ER, I told the nurse I was having heart palpitations and trouble breathing and that I was having a panic attack that would not end. 

I sat until the triage nurse could see me. Maybe 30 minutes. Once seen, I was given a yellow bracelet. 

Yellow is potentially covid-related, green is not. 

They called me in for a quick ECG, in one of the ER consult rooms. I went back to wait. They called me in to give me an Ativan. I went back to wait. The took my blood pressure. I went back to wait. Eventually I saw a doctor, and he said they would do a blood test, but that things looked good. I went back to wait. I was called for the blood test. The doctor told me things looked good, that I would get some emergency meds (clonazepam) for a week, until I could see my family doctor.

He said I could go home, I asked how I would get through the night (since it was now past 10pm, and he said he would give me a pill, something in the Ativan family). 

I got to the hospital around 12:30 pm, and left around 10:30. I took a cab home. 

I got home and took the pill, and slept for a few hours, but woke up often.

Sunday was a hard day, I still felt like I was in crisis and I did not know what to do. My mother came upstairs and stayed with me. I cried. I rested. I hugged her.  I still did not want to eat, but for some reasons bananas were it. And remain it. I had a banana. Then 1/4 of a bagel.  My mother spent the night, I cried myself to sleep. I was afraid. I was fragile. I felt like nobody could help me. I felt impaired. I felt disabled. I felt like I would never be able to take care of myself properly. I was afraid that the comfort I had then and there with my mother, in her arms, was the only comfort I would ever feel, and that it was all I had, and that it would soon be gone, because one of us will outlive the other, and I very selfishly hope it’s her.

My friend E dropped off food, frozen dishes and fruit and things to get me through. An additional kindness.

Monday was more of the same. Less painful physically.  Uneasy. Fragile. I felt like I was a wee bird. 

My friend checked in, but I didn’t know how else to tell them I wasn’t doing well.

I was able to have some soup. Small portions of food.

Today is Tuesday. I was feeling low-level anxiety about the phone call with  my family doctor at 3pm this afternoon, and I was not incorrect in my intuition. 

My doctor sounded tired and uninterested. It felt like I had to tell him what I needed, he made no suggestions. He said he would prescribe a low-level Effexor again, for 2 weeks and then check in. I said I needed therapy, and he said everything is full. He offered no suggestions. He said he could send me a referral for the CLSC wait lists. When we hung up, I did not feel seen, or helped. 

I cried. 

I told me mom I guess I would be going back to work tomorrow, to which she replied I should call him back and ask for an extension. So I did. His secretary was irritated and said he would call me back at the end of the day.

He called me around 5:30, and I asked for a referral to a therapist, and he said it would come with the CLSC referral, that they were one in the same. i asked about going back to work, and he said he’d give me a note to be off until Monday. He did not offer it. I asked for it. 

He sounded tired and uninterested, so I tell myself he is also burnt out. He is also going through a lot.

But as someone who still feels a hair away from a crisis, I am devastated  by the emergency services I was unable to find. I feel abandoned and completely disillusioned by the mental health marketing of every goddamn thing. 

It’s all bullshit hash-tagging and sales speak, the bare minimum. Add the terms mental health, diversity and if you’re dangerous, social justice to your buzz words and then leave us all to rot. 

I have never felt so fragile. 

I feel like I have been snapped in a way that’s never happened before. I feel like I am walking on eggshells, but I am the eggshells. 

Neal Brennan: 3 Mics.

I watched 3 Mics last night and it was very good.

It's part stand-up and part one-man show. The premise is excellent (3 mics, one for one-liners, one for "emotional stuff" and one for stand-up), and it's poignant and funny. Brennan goes in deep and honest on his depression and the darker bits of his life, it's just real honest and unflinchingly straight.

I highly recommend it.

Thank you for being honest Neal. Depression is the fucking worst.

Barely here.

I had problems with my meds at the top of the week. I think I must have forgotten Sunday, and then doubled my dose on Monday, and then had to call in sick on Tuesday because I couldn't wake up. I slept like 16 hours.

When the meds leave my system, I hear zapping, a noise similar to if you block your ear canal with your finger. The sound seems to originate between my ear canal and my brain. I also have trouble moving around, because it's like my vision lags and catches up. So I get this sensation like I just missed a step, but didn't. I can't focus. And if people talk to me it's like I can't focus on them. So when I got home Monday I took another dose of meds ASAP, because even at home I felt fucking awful.

I also feel like I'm losing my fucking mind.

But then I just slept and slept and slept. I wonder if sleeping resets my brain or something.

I feel like I have a sleep disorder and it's fucking getting to me.

So the beginning of the week was a mess.

I'm really just, feeling like an unemployable scumbag these days.

The Icarus Project.

Check out the Icarus Project.

The Icarus Project is a support network and education project by and for people who experience the world in ways that are often diagnosed as mental illness. We advance social justice by fostering mutual aid practices that reconnect healing and collective liberation. We transform ourselves through transforming the world around us.

I just downloaded a bunch of their literature. I'm especially interested in their booklet on harm reduction whilst coming off psychiatric drugs.

It's been raining for days. I usually take such comfort in grey days.  In the dying - but not quite dead leaves of October. These days, it's okay to stay home, it's okay to say the weather is a bummer. It's the weather reflecting me. My Nordic blood doesn't complain when it's cold. I don't complain when it's shitty out. I'll just stay home. It's okay on these days, it's understandable.

I've been thinking a lot about my physical and mental health, and about what the next step will look like for me. It's something I'm rolling around in my head.

Withdrawal: an essay.

I had put aside Surviving Psych Med ​Changes and/or Withdrawal: an essay & guidebook for creative minds to read at a later time (today!). The piece, by Luke B. Goebel stuck out for me, since I have intense dis-associative symptoms when I don't take my medication. I didn't take it for a few days once due to forgetting it while on a weekend away and it was brutal. I had to ask my mom to drive since I was hearing "brain zaps" and couldn't focus. It was something I do not want to re-live.

I recommend reading his piece in its entirety. Writing, when you feel insane seems impossible. Trying to properly express the entirety of how you feel when you're manic or down is hard enough, but the experience of being in some kind of fit is so fragmented that the parts of us that are able to use language are often partially disabled. There's also trying to organise the madness of it all. It seems like a cliché to put it that way, but things that one day came and went through you become absolute certainties you fixate on, to your own detriment. So much of who you are seeps out, and so much of something darker takes its place.

Goebel:

So much of it is living without a healed self, without a celebrated empowered identity or persona as an author or person sharing how they healed. I agonize that I am not a packageable brand of salvation I can sell, a story line of resurrection and overcoming of challenges. A Ted Talk. No, I’m still trying to crystalize meaning. I’m still wild. I’m still healing this sometimes hard-to-handle self. And so are the authors I’ve mentioned, many of them, and yet they have their story sorted. I don’t need that to be resolved today. I need my medication to straighten out. But in this state, everything swirls together into madness.

It's a difficult place to come to and to accept: there is no downhill, it's all uphill. There is no snap back into place, you'll have scars, that part of you will never go back to how it was before. You might have some good days, but you'll never be better. In Goebel's case as a writer, I can see what he's facing. I adored Lidia Yuknavitch's memoir The Chronology of Water. I felt she wrote it to me. It floored me. But in all the memoirs I've read by the mentally ill / on mental health, so many ended with a "and I'm better now" ending. It isn't the norm. Or is it? Am I part of the statistic that's forever afflicted?  Regardless, the completion of a narrative in art is a false god.

What is having a sorted story? Maybe Goebel is talking about it as a narrative, about a story with a clear arc. I know for me, I had this sense that eventually I'd get my shit together and eventually life would be easier. But that's not where I'm at. My realisation is that no, things just evolve into something else. I have the language now, I have some tools, but the struggle is still omnipresent. 

I may not be actively suicidal, but I am always fucking worrying about job security now. Always worried about being able to afford myself, afford a life. I'm tired. It's been uphill and the slope is unforgiving. I am now piecing together what it is I do have, and trying to focus on what it is I do want. How do you learn to live a life within a "normal" set of societal set of rules when there are days of your life you vividly remember wanting nothing more than to burn it all down.

This bit, ooooof:

He didn’t seem interested in my crashing. He gave me a prescription to add to the stack: Neurontin. He told me I might want to decide to get back on my medication at full strength. (It was left up to me!) Every doctor and shrink I have talked to since say it is insane to cut Desipramine in half as a starting point to weaning off the drug. Not insane—dangerous. Extremely dangerous. I smelled burning plastic that wasn’t there. I wept. I felt panic. Every day lasted and lasted for what felt like weeks.

It is beyond me, how we're asked to make life-altering, DANGEROUS decisions while possibly manic or going through some kind of panic or psychosis. WHY DOES IT TAKE THE MENTALLY ILL OF US TO POINT OUT HOW THAT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE. I've documented my own experiences in accessing care, and time and time again I've been dumbstruck by how often we're left to our own devices. 

Read Goebel's piece. 

Kristen Bell on her experience with anxiety & depression.

I listen to podcasts at work quite a bit. They keep me sane.

Last week I made my way through a few episodes of Off Camera, and really enjoyed Kristen Bell's episode. I'm a fan of hers. She had me at "hello" with Veronica Mars, and then made Forgetting Sarah Marshall and is now on House of Lies, so basically I liked her choices and she kind of pushed it over the top to just loving her / thinking we're secret friends when she cried about sloths.

Listen to the podcast episode for a great discussion on all sorts of things, I thought it was fascinating hearing about her and Dax Sheppard's relationship, especially since they're so different. If you can, listen to his episode as well. Really fascinating. I really identify with Dax's "the world is full of wolves" mentality, but I can see why he'd be drawn to Bell's enthusiasm and joie-de-vivre. 

Shame on me for thinking she was the living embodiment of a Disney princess, beautiful and worry-less (I thought this before she got Frozen, she's like all cute and perky and sings to animals). Here is an excerpt in which Bell talks about her experiences.



I just want to wrap her in a blanket and hold her like a baby, but like, in a cool way.

My beautiful life on and off meds.

Ijeoma Oluo over at The Establishment has a great piece up called My Beautiful Life On And Off Meds.

If you've had any experience at all dealing with your mental health, you've most likely dealt with medication. Taking it or not taking it. Changing it. Upping or lowering a dosage. The questions you have about it. The judgement you feel for needing it. Weaning on or off. Forgetting a dosage or two and feeling like you're losing your mind. Side-effects. Existential self-questioning about the nature of your mind, your brain and your self. Medicare. The cost of your medication. Questioning the actual difference between the seemingly endless choices. Questioning the validity of clinical trials. Questioning long-term side effects. Questioning dependence. Wondering if you can stop. Knowing (in some cases) that you can't. There's a lot that goes through a mind, even a medicate one.

Oluo's piece talks about her experience weaning off of her meds:

I went off my depression and anxiety meds a few months ago. I had a feeling that with the medications, I was doing better, but I missed things that my medication had denied me. I missed wanting friends. I missed wanting sex. I missed feeling really happy or excited. I missed crying. I wanted to be able to feel sun on my face and feel it warm my soul instead of just my skin. I had spent a month or two romanticizing my unmedicated life before I decided to wean myself off the meds again.

I think if you spend a significant chunk of time on meds, romanticising your unmedicated life is nearly an absolute.

When the weather is nice, when nobody in my family is sick or in crisis, when I can pay my bills, when my physical health is good, I can manage my lifelong anxiety with exercise, meditation, and engaging hobbies. For me, “managing” means a few pretty bad days a month and a few pretty bad moments a day, but I’m out of bed and moving and able to get some joy from the world.

I think for those living with neurological privilege, there is a deep lack of understanding of how much  work "managing" is. It takes an enormous amount of energy, planning, and "spoons." It takes so much to just engage in your life. There's an extra step for the chronically ill that only the chronically ill even see. It's a new language to learn.

That may sound like a chaotic and frantic life, but it’s not. Chaotic and frantic was before, when I couldn’t understand why I acted the way I did, when I would let waves of depression pull me into months of self-loathing, when I was at the complete mercy of my brain’s chemicals with no idea when my brain would turn on me or for how long. Anxiety and depression can be chronic illnesses. And just like any chronic illness, they are improved greatly by regimen. For some, that regimen is running and yoga; for others, it’s therapy and meds. For me, sometimes it’s therapy, sometimes it’s meds, sometimes it’s long walks on the trail by my house. And like with many chronic illnesses, sometimes no interventions work, and those are some pretty dark times. But even then, I have the comfort of knowing why.

I have to say, though I'm sometimes very hard on myself about my "status" and where I'm at in life, especially regarding my "lost 20's," I am cognizant of my ability to use language to describe my life, my illnesses and my limitations. I have friends with whom I have a short-hand for certain kinds of pain and struggle. It took a long time and a lot of work for this to happen, but I do have it now.

Knowing why, and having the language to talk about yourself, and for yourself is hugely powerful. Understanding the nature of my illness, and being able to stand-up and actually set people straight about their bias or judgement is important to me. I am able to talk clearly about my condition (when I'm in a good place) and that helps. I am not lost to myself.

Oluo's piece is a good representation of some of the considerations we have when on or off medication. Check it out.

Who Gets To Be The “Good Schizophrenic”?

Check out Who Gets To Be The “Good Schizophrenic”? by Esmé Weijun Wang over on Buzzfeed. I saw this make the rounds a while ago but I've only today had the time to read it properly. 

It’s kind of nice that I read this today, since I've been really pre-occupied with work stress. Wang talks about being able to work a 9 to 5 as a benchmark for being a functional mentally ill person. Things at work for me are sketchy. They don’t have enough work for me, so I keep losing hours. But I’m also exhausted and I just don’t know what to do.

2013 was also the year that I surrendered my last benchmark of sanity, otherwise known as my full-time job at a fast-paced start-up company. For years, holding down an office job had been what I believed sincerely, and perhaps a bit desperately, separated me from others of my ilk, but I stepped away from my 9-to-5 because my job, despite its accommodations and allowances, exacerbated my illness.

It’s so difficult to identify what is a “bad day” and what is a job that isn't right for me. There’s also the stress of needing to work. I need an income. I am not on disability, and from what I understand I wouldn't qualify. For years I was trying to get an official diagnosis, but nothing has really changed, and I still feel like there are parts of me that transition and evolve. I have periods of heightened anxiety. Periods of deep depression. Periods I feel manic. Periods I feel despondent and sub-human. There are days I cannot focus. I can’t actively listen. I have trouble focusing my eyes. It’s just a shit show sometimes.

In Blue Nights, Joan Didion remarks, “I have not yet seen that case in which a ‘diagnosis’ led to a ‘cure,’ or in fact to any outcome other than a confirmed, and therefore an enforced, debility.” Living under the shadow of a new “code” bore no curative function, but it did imply that to be high-functioning would be difficult, and it warned me that to live beyond that code would be a tricky gambit. A therapist had already told me in my mid-twenties that I was her only client who was able to hold down a full-time job. Having a job, among psychiatric researchers, is considered one of the major characteristics of being a high-functioning person.

I don’t consider myself high-functioning. I'm functioning. But I'm exhausted and it takes all of my energy.

Read Wang's piece. Schizophrenia doesn't get much representation, and when it does it's usually used to put other mental illness struggles "into perspective." 

The more representation there is of living with and working with mental illnesses, the more there will be an understanding of flexible work-lives, different strengths, and ideally there will be a societal conversation regarding working conditions and ways of supporting the mentally ill and listening to what they need to work and support themselves. Ourselves.

Ketamine.

The Washington Post has an article up on ketamine possibly being a new treatment for depression.

They're still a lot of caution tape on this, but the initial research seems promising.

Ketamine seems especially helpful in situations where immediate intervention is needed. Which, if you're suicidal or deeply depressed, can get you into a space where decisions about your well-being are easier to make. It also just alleviates suffering, which is often only mentioned in passing.

I have not always been suicidal, but that doesn't mean I'm not in constant pain. And sometimes, that baseline of pain is manageable, but sometimes it doesn't take much to make you incapacitated by a slight increase in psychological pain.

I'm always happy to read about research funding and the scientific findings happening around mental health and mental illness. Especially when it reminds me that there are people actively working on these things.

I often feel like it's not really happening. That nothing is changing. That this invisible disease isn't taken seriously. People have to take my word on my experience. My words fall flat to what it really feels like. This low-frequency hum that burrows into my chest.

 It's encouraging to know that relief could be possible.

Onward.

Oh, Mother.

This past weekend I drove out to the Eastern Townships with my mother. We often drive out to see my brother and his family. We get to see the kids and get some fresh air, and then get the fuck out of there when we've had enough. I’d been dog-sitting for him for the last three weeks or so while they were on holiday down in South Carolina. I’d gotten into the habit of furry cuddles and dog-park visits, so it’s not without a twinge of sadness that I returned their dog to them.

The weekend was nice. We arrived Saturday while the family was out visiting friends, so we were able to enjoy the calm before the storm. I napped. We sat outside. We went for dinner at a nearby place my brother recommended. During dinner, my mother commented on how my new medication seems to be making a significant difference in my mood. We talked about my mental health, and my understanding of my struggles, and how things are going now. While we began making our way back to my brother’s house, I asked about whether or not she knew if either of my grandparents had any issues with mental illness.

I was driving (I'm always the one driving) and sitting comfortably. It was the end of a nice evening, and the conversation seemed to be flowing well. “Well,” she said plainly, “there was the nervous breakdown I had when I was 14.”

And just like that, the world shifted into something else.

This is new information to me. I asked my mother about her experience, and she explained that after her father died when she was 13, her mother decided to move them out to British-Columbia to be closer to the family she had out there. It didn't go well for my mother. Already distraught over the sudden loss of her father, her vulnerability was exacerbated by her being away from the friends and comforts she had left. According to my mom, she suffered from anxiety attacks and hallucinations.

When I asked if this is something that continued on throughout her adulthood, she said it was. The anxiety and panic didn't last, but her visions and loose hallucinations occurred occasionally.

This is where things get, muddy. My mom represents these things through a spiritual lens. She said she’s highly sensitive, and she’s always viewed these visions or hallucinations as being the product of a thin veil between her and something else. Another universe? Another plane? Whatever separates the living from the dead? She's vague on that point.

She does not identify these as hallucinations. When I asked her if she’d experienced any of this recently, she said yes. In the past few years she’s had experiences, mainly at night, where she feels someone sitting on her bed, or moving her sheets. She said that through conversations with her best friend (who recently died) she was able to make sense of all of this over the years. Again, through a spiritual reading of the happenings, they would discuss possible symbolism or meaning behind what was happening. She felt these things were not negative, or threatening.

I mentioned my readings on what it is to be a highly sensitive person, and how studies have found that sometimes night-terrors or waking-dreams can be associated with all sorts of pseudo-psychological phenomena. They’re the most likely explanation for alien abduction experiences and other night-time, sleep-based “unexplainable” events.

My mom seemed to stick to the metaphysical.

As we got close to my brother’s house, I asked her why she never thought to mention all of this to me. Her having a nervous breakdown as a teenager is important information for me, since I've been living in a state of mental health crisis for years. Now, granted, I feel the crisis since I live it constantly, and she might not perceive the level of pain I've been in, but this is relevant information to someone like me.

“I never thought about it,” she said innocently. “It’s not something I think about anymore.”

Within that 15 minute car-ride I talked at length about some of my symptoms and experiences, she seemed to relate to my descriptions of feeling dissociated or uprooted.

As I pulled the car into the driveway she began telling me about her more recent experiences with visions, but the kids jumped out of the house. Ready for bed, they were looking for pre-bed hugs. I asked that we continue the conversation during our one-hour drive home.

The weekend passed, as they usually do. My brother’s house is a cacophony of ipad sound effects, French television and snarky comments. In between all of that, there are laughs and moments of sweetness.

Eager to avoid Labour Day traffic and escape the irritability of the children, Monday morning we headed home. As soon as we hit the highway I returned our conversation to my mother’s experiences.

She described her anxiety attacks as fits of crying. She would cry until she slept, like a voiding of stress until the respite of sleep came about. She would see people, hear conversations, like a viewer. She’d be passive, an observer. She was medicated for a short time. She moved back to Quebec with her mother. Her visions become increasingly rare, and were attributed to the metaphysical by she and her friends.

This has been an odd divulgence. It doesn't seem to have been a secret, just an omission that’s nonsensical to me considering the last decade of my life.

I asked my mother why she didn't think to tell me this while I was having panic attacks, in front of her. She said it just never really occurred to her to make that link, and that instead, she rubbed my back to sooth me, knowing that it had helped her once, like a loose memory of another life.

I'm a little stunned by it all. By the story, and by the omission.

As my mother told the story of her experience, I couldn't help but think poor little bird. My mom was a little child, and she was lonely. She gravitated towards the family of her best friend, who came from a family of seven children, and later to my father, who came from a family of six kids. Her brother left home at 17, when she was 9. Her mother, she describes as a woman who “didn't want to be a mother.” And though she speaks fondly of my Nana, there is a missing tenderness there, maybe a little bit of longing in my mother’s voice. I can’t help but see her, small, with tiny wrists and knobby knees, a little bird of a girl.

All of this also reminded me of how little we ever know about the experiences of others. Even those we came out of. I am close with my mother. I live with her. I've lived with her for 31 years. Granted, roughly a decade of the time I was barely sentient, but she and I are not strangers. We've grown closer as I've gotten a hold of myself, and as I wake up, I'm reminded of the importance of learning who she is. Yes, she’s been my mother for 31 years, but she was something else for the 32 years before that. Next year, in 2016, I’ll be the age she was when she had me. Haven’t I been dragged through the coals? Don’t I have stories to tell? If I had children wouldn't I spare them the stories of my trauma? Wouldn't I focus my energy on their new life, and the innocence and positivity that comes with their ignorance?

I don't want children. I never have. So I can also relate to my mother saying that my grandmother seemed to not want to be a mother. And that intrinsic, deep-rooted loneliness that my mother has in her, is something my grandmother gave her. I've never felt that from my mother, I've felt nothing but love and never doubted how much she wanted me and my brother. She tried to get pregnant with me for four years, and I always felt I had all of her attention, support and pride, warranted or not. Unconditional, as the mouths of mothers often state.

It often pains me that I never got to have a conversation with my father as an adult. The memories I have of him are those of a child. My brother was 21 when he died. I was 13. The feelings I have when I think of him are those of a paternal energy, of being protected, of supreme trust for him. The feeling of being asleep in the back-seat while he drives through deep wilderness. I'm always safe. My dad is here. I would like to ask him so much. To really learn about him. To challenge him. To learn from him. He likes playing chess with me. Once I beat him and he got a real kick out of that. Would he be as delighted by my challenging his bias, his fears, his prejudice? Would I continued to have been a daddy's girl? I didn't feel the need to rebel as a teenager, would that have changed had I someone to rebel against?

And what of my grandparents? My Nana was born in 1919. She lived through the second world war, for fucks sake. She lived through desegregation and the women’s movement. What would she think of the world now? How would she no-doubt offend me? How would I offend her?

I'm still letting everything I learned about my mother sink-in, but I wanted to record it here. First, because of it’s importance in relation to my mental health, but maybe more importantly because of the importance of story, and of shared history. I want this to be recorded.

Sometimes important things happen, and eventually they seem so far away. I have so little memory left of my father. What I have of my grandparents is small, and faded. I am lucky for having my mother, and I want to do her, and her stories justice. I want to remember her, and record what I know, and what I feel here, so that one day, when I'm without her, I’ll have tokens to call on.

My mother wasn't always my mother, but she will always be my mother.

The brain fog.

I'm foggy today. I feel slow and kind of impaired. Kind of like I'm a sleepy baby.

Specifically this sleepy baby:

It's difficult to explain, but I guess being sleepy is the closest reasonable comparison. It's very much like when you're trying to stay awake, but you know you're tired and need to sleep, and your body is starting to shut down regardless of your intentions to stay awake.

It's like an early stage of that. I'm not nodding off, but I can feel the heaviness in my eyes, and everything has a slower, languid pace.

I'm having coffee now, hopefully that'll help a bit. I'm limiting my coffee now though, so I can't just count on that.

This upcoming weekend is the labour day weekend, so I'm looking forward to having the extra day off, and then also having that shorter week next week. I'm tired.

Have I mentioned I'm tired?

Optimism, once removed.

Yesterday I took the day off. I had an appointment with Dr. Rishi, and a dentist appointment. So, all the travelling meant it made more sense to just take the day off. This past weekend I was in Bromont with S, "taking it easy" so it was nice to have the extra day to putz around.

It was a nearly incomprehensible doctor's appointment. As usual, Dr. Rishi was engaged and talkative. We talked about some of the literature I mailed him (legit mailed to him, since his office doesn't work with e-mail). I had sent him a report on ECT (and explained that I like knowing it's an option if things get bad again) and also mentioned my readings on hypersomnia and inflammation.

I talked about my wanting an official diagnosis, because I feel it adds legitimacy to my struggle, and that in the future if there's ever a need for official documentation, I want my struggle to be legitimate. He thinks I suffer from Major Depressive Disorder and Hypersomnia. This is what I would have self-diagnosed as, but it's nice to have a confirmation of my own readings.

The conversation was lightning fast and dense. He asked that I book another appointment for him at the beginning of November, since he's off all of October. We decided to keep me on my current dose of Effexor, and stabilize, to re-assess if an additional increase is necessary. 

The conversation ended with Dr. Rishi focusing on goals. This is still off-putting to me, and kind of shocking since being goal-oriented has not been something I've felt for years. In fact, he used the word ambition and I probably stared at him like:

Look, I understand words are important, but so are gifs. They can say things words can't. I mean, it's faster. Whatever. Gifs.

Rishi started talking about short-term goals. Since our next session would be in November, he wanted for me to have goals in regards to my physical health. To find ways to exercise. He also wanted me to schedule my trip to Victoria in February to visit C, since he says having something to look forward to would be good for me, and also leaving Montreal for Victoria in February would be a nice mood booster, since it'll be -30 here and spring-like in Victoria.

It's just all so odd. So alien. I have been taking things "one day at a time" and really just managing my life day to day. 

He ended up writing a bunch of stuff down for me, he pretty much said that he's worried things'll get worse for me in the winter, since statistically speaking they do. Seasonal Affective Disorder compacts whatever mental illness we're already living with. So he said I'll have to make an effort to go outside and walk around, to get some daylight in. 

Obviously (to me), I also need to figure out exercise. It's been difficult to commit to anything because of how far I have to go. He'd like to see me have something I can commit too that might be kind of social, like a class. I'm not sure about that, since I don't have much money. I have to figure out what might work for me. It's important that it be regular. Maybe I could just start going to the gym again - but the gyms in my area are such bummers. Douche-nation.

He also said to focus short-term, and to let go of my planning. Basically, try and take steps to cope with the winter as best I can, and then to re-evaluate in the spring. Which technically, is when I'd be looking to move out, anyway. Ideally. 

I always walk out of my appointments with him as if I've been spun around in an office chair. I haven't had a family doctor in over a decade. The doctor experiences I have had have been primarily negative. This is the first time in a really long time I feel handled. 

He's very optimistic about my diagnosis, and my ability to move forward. Sure, the optimism isn't mine, but it's optimism. Just having optimism in my bubble is discombobulating.

On discrepencies in medicating.

So I've been slowly increasing my medication, with the help of my family doctor, Dr. Rishi. I've been increasing slowly. I have an appointment set with him in three weeks to evaluate my higher dosage (since I only started this latest increase last night, after 4 weeks on a mid-dose).

A friend of mine went to her GP and had a widely different experience. She refers to her doctor as "not giving a shit" so already the story doesn't start well. She wants to change medication. She is on Celexa, which I was on for a while. She doesn't love it, and I told her I prefer Effexor. Her doctor wrote her a giant prescription for what Effexor, and told her she could just stop taking what she was on.

First, the dosage he's giving her is high. It's not a starter dose. Second, it really bothers me he told her to just stop taking Celexa cold turkey.

She and I e-mailed about it yesterday. She's going to wean off / wean on.

How it is she's prescribed over double a starting dose so nonchalantly - while my doctor is making sure we do it slowly, and that I'm followed?

She and I happen to talk about this sort of thing a lot, so I know she'll be safe about it, but taking too much or too little medication can totally fuck with you. It can put you on your ass. I find it so irresponsible to just throw her a huge dose and not really seem to care about how it goes for her.

It's constant work, making sure you navigate the medical system safely. It takes constant vigilance. It's frustrating, and it's disheartening because once again the onus falls on us.

"Ask for help" they say.

But what kind of help will you get?

Gif by David Michael Chandler at The Daily Doodles.

Did you remember to take your meds today?

Source.

Missing a dose.

It was a difficult weekend for me. I think I forgot to take my medication Friday night, making Saturday a bit of a shit-show.

While driving, I was fine. For some reason the focus of the road, and the forward motion eased the symptoms. I drove to my brother's house with my mom, to spend some time in the country.

As soon as I would get out of the car, I would feel lopsided and like I was a little off in the calculations of the space my body occupied. It was very odd. I would bump into things, it was like I was off my a couple of degrees, at all times.

I stopped at a gas station to get some Gatorade for my mom (she's been sick) and it's like I couldn't handle the tight rows of magazines and concessions. It was like a game of operation, only filtered through blurry glasses.

I went to my brother's house and hid in the basement, as soon as I laid down, I starting hearing the whooshing. It would come in 3's. It's just a terrible feeling. It's uncomfortable and dissociative. I'd have moments of depersonalization. It's frightening.

I took a pill in the afternoon, trying to get some drugs back into my system to cull the affects of the drugs leaving my body. After a few hours of laying low, I felt better.

I spent the night at my brother's house, and the next day felt alright. I had some mild anxiety in the afternoon, and was feeling sick in the car ride to the movie theatre. It was a feeling I hadn't felt since the peak anxiety days of a few years ago. It's not something I'd like to revisit.

Yesterday, I took the day off work (planned) to go see Dr. Rishi. It was good to see him. I always find our sessions good, and he seems genuinely caring and interested. We decided to up the medication again, and see if I improve even more. I think I stayed with him for over 45 minutes, we talk and talk. He's so extremely personable. He's super kind and seems genuinely caring. He's clearly in the right profession.

We talked about a lot of stuff, I had my little list. I've mailed him articles I've found interesting. lol. I'm not a passive patient. Read these! 

I also mentioned to him this blog, and how it's helped to externalize certain thought-cycles, and allowed me to do something constructive with my incessant thinking.

He talked to me about how he sees life as being quadrant-based. How there's the social, the financial, the physical and the professional, and how sometimes you can only focus on one quadrant at a time, in order to better your situation. But that all of them play a huge role in your mental and physical health. We talked about that at length.

I'm set to see him again in a month. I should start taking my higher dose of anti-depressants this weekend (I gotta wait for a pay-check).

David Letterman.

I just got around to reading the Rolling Stone interview with David Letterman. I watched a lot of his final shows before he retired. The entire thing was pretty emotional (which is difficult considering how much emotion seems to make Dave uncomfortable) Norm MacDonald's segment absolutely killed me. I cried like a baby.

Letterman has a special place in my heart. I grew up watching him and Conan. Conan was the absurd side of me, and Letterman was the cranky side of me. He was like the grandpa I never had and always wanted. Cranky like me. We could sit on a porch, talk, and cackle.

His interview in Rolling Stone discusses his struggles with both depression and anxiety:

For years and years and years — 30, 40 years — I was anxious, and hypochondriacal, and an alcoholic, and many, many other things that made me different from other people. The hypochondriacal behavior . . . it sounds stupid, but it was killing me! Doctors kept telling me not to come back. 'Really, Dave. There's nothing.' Finally, I found out it's all a manifestation of anxiety. Once you realize that, you can self-monitor. Which I've found very useful.

Though he avoided medication for years, he eventually started taking antidepressants 25 years ago.

I was suspicious, and sceptical, and nervous about it. But it changed my life. I used to have kind of a hair trigger; I used to put my fist through Sheetrock. 

He says he's much happier now, and has let a lot go. He goes to talk therapy, he practices meditation. If you're a Letterman fan, it's a nice read. I just think it's nice to read something about a 68 year-old person with mental health struggles, doing more than what he referred to as years of just "enduring" life.

Viable sadness.

I'm making a real effort to document my mood and process today. I keep being distracted by youtube videos - and you know how infinite that black hole is. . .

I didn't go into work today.

I had an upset stomach overnight, and I woke up depressed and despondent.

I slept most of the day away.

I got up, had lunch, napped, and around diner time took a walk, which helped. I got some air and some sun and it lifted my mood a little.

I started my stronger dose of anti-depressants today. It should take a few weeks for me to see a difference - what that difference will be, I don't know yet.

Today was hard. I was just - it was all too much.

Whenever there's discussion or movement around my being medicated, there's a lot of stuff that goes on with me. I still have a fundamental issue with needing medication to function. My brain is, arguably, me. It's all that I am. If I were robocoped tomorrow, my brain is all they'd need. This brain of mine, everything that I am, has a default nature. And this part of me that is sensitive, and caring and steadfast, is also desperately sad and on a basic level, has little desire to be alive and part of this world.

I think there's more to it than that. Sometimes I describe my depression as a demon, or some type of leech on me. It's a disease. It's traumatic. But because of the way my brain works, with language, with being creative, with an flare for the dramatic, it's like a part of me sees this as an isolated, internalized plague. It's something I survive, it's a pox on me and my house. But it sometimes feels like something I also deserve. I can easily slip into some type of folkloric explanation that in a past life I was someone terrible. That this is now the remnants of pain I've caused others. If karma exists, what kind of a fucking shit was I in a past life? Seeing it as a curse on me, is almost easier to accept, and more comforting than thinking about my broken brain.

I re-read things I've written, and I clearly romanticize my depression. I don't mean to. It's not fun. It's not interesting. It doesn't add to me in any way. The only thing I can possible take from depression is a greater sense of empathy. But who gives a shit, really? I try and describe things as best I can but language is limiting.

You know when you're crying, intensely about something? You're sobbing. Your dog died. Your grandma died. You were dumped and shamed. You're sobbing, and you're in your pain, and for one brief moment you're purely in the act of sobbing without really being aware of what started your crying fit. Sometimes I feel that way. Like I should be sobbing, that I want to let go and release it all, but instead it's all caught in my throat. And instead I feel that I don't have a viable reason to be sad. To be devastated. I'm just a sad fuck. Just someone who is bad at life, and whose brain wants nothing more than for me to just quit. This is my default nature. This is my baseline.

My brain is a jumble today. I'm tired. I'm so tired. I want to sit in a field of tall grass and hear nothing but the wind.

Medication, by Sarah Lee.

Check out Sarah Lee's work over on her website.