Tag: ptsd

Autobiography · Mental Health

Dance

Ruby Pipes34 Comments

"Bubbles" © Steffen Ramsaier, 2010. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
“Bubbles” © Steffen Ramsaier, 2010. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
“I don’t put a whole lot of emphasis on diagnosis,” she said. She lowered her pen back to her clipboard and locked eyes with me. It was something I’d heard from every medical professional I’d ever liked. The people who understood they couldn’t put me in a box and go through the corresponding motions. But you still have to have something to submit to insurance. Diagnostic codes: 309.28, 305.00, 309.81, 296.33, 296.53. Each had its own set of symptoms and accepted treatment options. Each meant something, even if what it meant wasn’t the end of the conversation.

She took another breath and changed the cross of her legs. “That being said, we need to start talking about medication. You have some options, but I’m not comfortable leaving this where it’s at.” Because all those diagnoses have very real, tangible symptoms attached to them. And bipolar disorder is one of those.

Bipolar disorder–for me–is like depression with a scheming side. I get miserable for a couple months, but then I feel pretty good for a few weeks. Just long enough that I start to think maybe my depression isn’t going to come back with force. But right when I’ve gotten comfortable, it sneaks in. Like a friend you were just starting to trust breaking your heart again.

My mania gives me just enough confidence to be dangerous. I sign up for things I won’t be able to follow through with when the depression comes back. It makes me just optimistic enough to line me up for a solid let down. Swings wide enough to make me feel like I’m never getting my feet under me. Narrow enough I can sometimes convince myself nothing is wrong.

We’ve known I have this illness since I was sixteen. It wasn’t extreme then, either. Since it wasn’t getting me in trouble it was left untreated. But over the last few years it’s been getting more violent. It’s been growing teeth. And so a couple weeks ago I made the call.

“Do you talk to your husband about how you’ve been feeling?” the woman from the psychiatric outpatient program at the Bellevue hospital asked me.

“Yeah, I do. He’s great. He doesn’t like those conversations much, though.”

“No, of course he doesn’t. You’re trying to kill his wife.”

I slid down the wall, landed slow on the ground and pulled my knees up to my chest. “It’s time to get help, isn’t it?”

So we doubled up the therapy. We added medication and adjusted doses. Took time off work and wrote for hours every day.

And today I woke up and I felt… Okay.

For the first time in a long time I feel safe.

Autobiography · Personal Development

Fire

Ruby Pipes30 Comments
“Wildfire Forest fires BW 1” © Reidar Murken, 2015. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

While getting ready I realize it’s another day I can’t wear mascara. “You’ll be sobbing later. I guarantee it.” I dry my hair and powder my face and leave without the coats of black I like the most. Looking just a bit off. Just a bit less put together than I like to be. Just a little bit different.

Maybe I think the dresses and the make up and the hair will make me feel like no one can tell I’m falling apart at the seams. Barely holding it together. Maybe I’m not actually as fucked up as I feel I am, and when I get ready in the morning I remember.

Remember. Remember that I know what it’s like to be okay. That I know what it’s like to not be hurting.

And Becka told me that your best looks different every day. And my guided mediation told me everything looks different every day. And Alyssa told me there is nothing wrong with me anyway.

There are no voids that need filling. That thing you think is emptiness is only there because you named it and you keep talking to it. You keep trying to change something that doesn’t exist, so of course it doesn’t seem to be working.

Every time you try, you draw more attention to it. It’s just like meditation in that way, isn’t it? How when you try to think about not thinking you just think more. When you get upset about getting upset you just get more upset.

All your feelings are compounding. They snowball. Pile up and drag us down. And you know that. So you start to feel like you ought to do better, be better.

But what if you could learn that you’re fine the way you are? That you don’t have anything you need to prove. That you’re lovable and worthy. That you don’t have to fix anything. That you’re okay.

That you are not a hollow shell. That you are ferocious and vibrant. That you are unbreakable.

Mental Health · Personal Development

Stop

Ruby Pipes4 Comments
"Quiet Silence" © Massmo Relsig, 2014. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
“Quiet Silence” © Massmo Relsig, 2014. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

“When you live with wolves, you learn to howl.”

A Mexican proverb that’s been running through my head on and off for years. You become who you spend your time around.

It explained how I grew so curt, so harsh. Gave me room to point to my influences–to my life experience–instead of turning in.

“Of course I lived like that. Of course I turned out like this.”

And yeah, a lot of that is true. There are habits we pick up off the ground and carry on tattered ribbons around our necks for a lifetime. Scars other people placed on us that we now must live with. I know we want to let them go, recover, move on.

I know it’s hard. I know. I know. We’re trying.

But the kind of trying I’ve been doing hasn’t been working. The wrong kind of fight. Struggling violently is only tightening the grip. It’s time for a new approach.

Time to realize I’m the wolf. That all those stories I spin myself every day are playing a big part in my hurt. No, maybe I can’t change the things that made me think that way, but I can chose to stop listening.

I’ve been teaching myself to say, “Stop.” Sometimes quietly under my breath while sitting behind my desk. Sometimes loudly and repeatedly while I’m showering in the morning or walking home from work. Every time one of those thoughts comes into my head and tries to light a fire that doesn’t need to exist.

Alarmist. Extremist. Paranoid. Delusional. Built on years of abuse and broken promises. Molded from heartbreak. Repeated over and over until I forgot they didn’t have to be true anymore. Forgot I didn’t have to give them my time, my respect, my attention.

I’m practicing stopping them in their tracks. Cutting them off completely. Giving them no time to get their claws in.

“He didn’t call me because–STOP.”
“I can’t do this–STOP.”
“They’d be better off if–STOP.”

Censoring the telegrams my learned behavior keeps trying to send.

Stop.

Practice. Practice stopping. I don’t want to go where they’re going and I don’t have to follow them.