I can't find my words...

If you don’t already know much about me I suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder.  When I feel sadness, grief, loss, threatened, vulnerable, or any other feeling where most would cry and move on with it, I get angry and defend against feeling the hurt.  If I allow even the smallest amount of pain out expressing it to someone I love and trust, almost immediately I will lash out in anger because I feel exposed.  Rage takes over to prevent me from feeling more pain or being hurt by my expression of it.  I was once a very happy little girl then life happened, as it often does.  But I changed.  I developed these personality trait(s) as a cover up to hurt.  They weren’t helpful traits. 

I am in the middle of figuring all this out in intensive Dialectual Behaviour Therapy.  I am very raw.  All this hurt and pain I never let come out in 45 years is right there at the surface, wanting to come out, so I can be done with it.  And it’s there, all the time.  I am either about to explode into tears or into a rage to stop the tears.  I never stop thinking about whether what I am feeling is legit, or a cover up.  Am I being reasonable, or not? Is this genuine and authentic or bullshit?  Often I cannot even identify that until I sit down and do a chain analysis to see what happened and where that might have triggered something I couldn’t handle feeling or expressing. 

I can’t find my words. 

Every time I go to say anything I struggle, especially in a public forum like social media, I freeze and the following happens in my head:

Is this right?

Is this going to hurt anyone?

Will anyone think I am stupid?

Is this stupid?

Does this make sense?

Do I really need to say this?

What is the purpose of this?

Who does it serve?

Could I word this differently?

Is this offensive?

Is this funny or not funny?

What if they think I am stupid?

What if this hurts someone?

What if I am wrong?

What if I am not liked for these words?

9 times out of 10 I end up feeling very anxious and I don’t say anything. 

Sometimes I say things and then I sit and wait, praying it is okay, and that I won’t be judged negatively.  I can sit and obsess over a single sentence for hours.  You are probably thinking, “Then, keep busier”.  Just don’t go on social media.  Well this happens in public too.  With any interpersonal exchange.  I am often silent because I am worried about what I am going to say and what people will think.  I can spend hours after talking to someone wondering if I offended them, hurt them, or if they like me.  It’s agonizingly painful.  I can have a beautifully full and busy day and once I am alone for five minutes I start second guessing everything I did, said, or thought. 

I used to just say shit.  I didn’t care what you thought.  Then this stupid mental illness crept up on me. 

I used to have a pretty high end career.  People knew me.  I was productive.  I think I always struggled with interpersonal relationships.  I was often referred to as a “bitch”.  I was strong willed, opinionated, and aggressive.  Bitch is often what we are called when we are strong women.  People came to me to get shit done back in the day.  Then gradually I started struggling more and more with interpersonal relationships.  Work was becoming an emotional, not intellectual, battle.  I was stressing over things at work I couldn’t understand.  I was constantly wondering in meetings:

Is this right?

Is this going to hurt anyone’s feelings?

Will anyone think I am stupid?

Is this stupid?

Does this make sense?

Do I really need to say this?

What is the purpose of this?

Who does it serve?

Could I word this differently?

Is this offensive?

Is this funny or not funny?

What if they think I am stupid?

What if this hurts someone?

What if I am wrong?

What if I am not liked for these words?

It was the end of my career.  When I started arguing with people irrationally I knew it was time to go.  I knew when I started basing my decisions on how I felt and not what I knew intellectually, it was time to go.  I didn’t fit in there anymore.  I was full of emotion.  To go from that high functioning to where I am at today, over 8 years, is hard to explain.  I spent the first two years after leaving work trying to figure out how to be Nicolle and not Nicolle from Bay Street.  Then I spent the next three years trying to identify what was wrong with me.  I fell entirely into the abyss of depression.  I was misdiagnosed and had to go through endless medication changes until last year I ended up in the hospital for 60 days.  I was finally diagnosed properly and given a plan of action to get my life back.  Since then I have been working my ass off to accept who I am, what this means, and how to go about being the best new me I can. 

I know this is going to get better as I get more emotionally regulated and find more confidence in myself and my reactions.  And that takes work.  Every day I need to evaluate my reactions, my feelings, my emotions.  I have to rate them, and keep track of them.  I have homework each week from a skills class in DBT that teaches people like me how to feel what we feel and let it go.  Not to ride the train of emotions until it takes over every fibre of our being for great lengths of time.  And to be honest in our emotional exchanges.  If it hurts, it hurts.  Hurt is no reason to be angry.  Just feel the hurt.  To say this is an exhausting process is an understatement.  My mind rarely settled before all this started.  And now it’s busier. 

I am so volatile right now it takes every fibre of my being just to keep a lid on my reactions.  When I drive to the city for example and get around other people, some of whom are not very intelligent I become a different person.  I am all hyped up like I snorted cocaine for hours, I appear confident, funny, and aggressive.  But I feel anxiety building so fast and furious it’s like I am going to explode.  When someone pisses me off the rage that comes across me can be overwhelming.  But I keep it in check.  I have to.  You don’t let that loose.  So I lose my words.  My mind is too over stimulated and I can’t find my words.  Or conversely there are so many words that I can’t see straight.

By the time I get back home to my isolation, I could sleep for days I am so emotionally exhausted.   And then I can’t find my words. 

Lately I have been having these attacks, almost like seizures.  Where I feel like I am losing control of the electrical wiring in my brain.  Like I have no control of what’s happening up there.  This can be very common with this type of therapy if you go at it like I often do with things, FULL THROTTLE.  I am being monitored quite closely but you can see how this all might be a little, well, a lot. 

This is why I don’t talk much or write much anymore.  For right now, handling my thoughts and emotions is all the energy I have.  The balance goes to my dog, my step kids (teenagers, they'd suck the blood dry of a vampire I tell ya'), and my husband (an man sized child).  They get what’s left of me, in that order of importance.  Dogs first, humans second.  My motto in life as well. 

I have tons of things I want to say trust me, I usually do.  I just can’t find my words easily right now.  I will be back.  I have a few posts almost ready to go.  I just have to find that right moment in time where I have my words at hand.  

 

Thanks for the patience, support, and reading.  

 

 

 

 

I Think I Might be Ignorant *sigh*

malaysian-mountain-stripping-2-canadians-2-others-get-prison-time-served-to-be-deported-1.3110576

 

I posted the other day how silly I thought this story was that these people were apparently being arrested for pissing off a mountain.  I should have made that point clear.  That was my only point, one cannot piss off a mountain.  The people who worship the mountain, yes.  A mountain, no.  I said it when I posted that there are people all over the world trekking up mountains.  In some cases, climbers have been criticized for leaving their feces behind.  Apparently base camp at Mount Everest is a dumping ground.  But none of those mountains have retaliated was my punch line.  And the local people that worship continue to allow people to climb their places of worship.  I am confident that the shrine I worship at will not be open to the public.  It’s my private place.  Even with a sign reading “Princess” above.  I can say no more or news of it could get out. 

Scientifically it is ludicrous to think a mountain attacked the human race by causing an earthquake because these people got naked.  I will stand by that statement until the cows fly home with the pigs.  And when they flock together I will come on here, in my little public forum, and apologize profusely for doubting the mountain and its followers.  When I posted my thoughts some others jumped on my fool hearty band wagon agreeing with my, “this is ridiculous” statement.  It was all fun and games until that one person got offended on the mountain’s behalf. 

At the time of my post I didn’t make it clear that I actually believe these naked people were wrong.  In trying to make a funny, I forgot to fuck up my punch line with footnotes to that effect.  If these “young people” knew this was sacred ground as one of the guides said they did, they were wrong indeed.  Whether you believe in the spirituality itself doesn’t matter.  You cannot climb up on someone’s alter and shit on it.  The “young people” (as they are referred to in the press) claim they didn't know, and they were just being young people.  Being stupid young people.  So shouldn’t they be charged with being stupid young people?  Or indecent exposure, whichever costs the most.  But jail time?  For offending a mountain?  Keep in mind please, that was the charge some spiritual people wanted to bring against them, “offending the mountain and causing an earthquake”.  Sure you have a right to believe in that, but I have the same rights to not agree.  Don’t I?

One cannot just strip naked wherever you want, even at the ends of the earth with other people getting naked, unless it's legal.  And to know it is or isn’t legal means to know the laws of where you are at the time you are getting naked.  And this is what the defence attorney argued and the judge agreed with, in Malaysia, at the hearing for the two Canadians involved.  Law is law.  Getting naked was the offence.  Pissing off a mountain based on someone else’s spiritual belief, is not.

In defending the mountain someone referred to the naked young people (and by association anyone commenting on this article, including me) as, “typical North Americans”, both "self-righteous and ignorant" ... to the customs and beliefs of anyone outside of North America feeling it’s their right to shit in someone’s living room.  It was something to that affect.  I got really angry and deleted it all.  I do that sometimes.  It’s an impulse control thing when I can’t think straight.  I often find myself being offended and hurt which then rolls lightning fast into being offended and angry as fuck.  I have learned that’s part of who I am and to step away and breathe.  So I deleted it all then sat on this for most of the afternoon thinking about how I really felt and what I wanted to say.   And represented here is how I feel.  I put on my big girl panties and wrote this.  Oh, so you know, when I put on the aforementioned BGPs the outside did see me naked through an opening in my curtains so any rain today, totes my fault.  

Here is my defence.  The leader of the pack in this naked quest was not in fact from North America, but Europe.  I believe there were some Brits and Dutch.  Therefore, it was not “typical self-righteous ignorant North Americans” to blame entirely. 

The defence rests. 

No wait, I have more. 

The truth is the entire world is full of self-righteous ignoramuses.  I might even be one of them for thinking that being arrested for annoying a mountain is a plain old waste of time.  I believe we have a right, as human beings to challenge, question, even joke (oh no you di’ant) about beliefs, religions and spirituality.   But to literally shit on them, no, that might be pushing it.  I did not mean to shit on the Malaysian people as a whole.  I did mean to shit on the idea that you can be arrested for pissing on/off a mountain.  Apparently these kids urinated on the mountain.  When you gotta go…..I joke but really, where does one go up a mountain?  On Everest they use plastic bags and then leave them apparently.  Bleck.   

This is one of Malaysia’s top tourist sites. (Per the old Wikipedia, “Malaysia's top tourist destinations are the Mulu Caves, Perhentian Islands, Langkawi, Petronas Towers and Mount Kinabalu [the offended mountain in question]”).  It also happens to be a place of worship.  These are very conflicting ideals.  Profit versus worship.  Well they should be conflicting but are not according to Pastor Bill Ray on the Huntley channel every Sunday morning.  They are not as conflicting as one might think.  The laws need to be made clear for all the self-righteous ignoramuses travelling to this site with their disposable incomes.  No, that disposable income does not give them a right to shit on the Malaysian people.  But this is a tourist site, a tourist trap, a money maker.  If you are going to profit as a country off your tourist sites, and keep them as sacred places of worship, you need to make the rules clear to protect their integrity.  The law needs to be clear because us ignoramuses be dumb.  Apparently we like to get naked and think nothing of peeing when we have to pee. 

For the record, I do not believe the Malaysian people stupid in general for believing in the spirituality of nature.  I do believe that laws should be based on fact, scientific fact, and much less on religion.  Religious law always segregate against differing beliefs or lack thereof.  I don’t believe anyone has the right to arrest someone for offending a mountain any more than I think a Republican Christian Minister from Texas has the right to arrest a gay person because it offends their belief system.  If that makes me typically self-righteous and ignorant, so be it. 

I am no comedian but I believe that comedians have the right to say whatever the hell they want that’s why they are called rights and freedoms, granted to all.  If I don't like it then I either cringe my way through it, leave, or heckle.  If heckle is my choice then I had better expect a comeback.  This is my heckle comeback.  Yes, I am bracing myself.  I expect to be called something else for being this ignorant.  It’s funny because if I were a professional comedian then my words would likely be considered an "art form" and all bets would be off.  I wouldn’t be criticized or called ignorant I would be called challenging and confrontational, thought provoking.  Label it Art and most tend to climb down off the proverbial high horse.  “Freedom of expression is your god given (if you believe in that sort of thing), right”, they say.

I need a guidebook to get around all these rules in today’s society, I really do.   I have to mention that I do love when comedy is ironic.  I call humans assholes allll the time which oddly enough makes me an asshole by default for that whole, “I am a human thing”. 

*sigh*

It’s all so complicated. 

You judge me for judging and I judge you for judging me.  And none of us went to law school. 

Fuck.

  

My First Anniversary #getloud #bellletstalk #endstigma #areyouokay

It's my first year anniversary.  AAD, After Almost Dying.  PSA, Post Suicide Attempt.  Shocked?  I know.  I just figured that one way to end the stigma of suicide and Mental Illness is to just throw this shit out there.  It is what it is.  I tried to kill myself a year ago today and apparently I wasn't very good at it.  I am still here.  I am beyond lucky.  I am surviving Mental Illness.

I am guessing you are still a little thrown off balance.  How can I seemingly make light of this?  I have to is how.  I am going to keep talking about my suicide attempt matter-of-factually until it stops being a shock.  I want you to feel uncomfortable until; you no longer feel uncomfortable.  I couldn't put it more simply than, suicides take lives.  Suicides are derived from Mental illness.  Mental Illness takes lives.  Every second of every minute of every day, like any other disease, people are dying from Mental Illness.  I tried to kill myself by an overdose a year ago today. 

Are you hiding from me now? 

Did you actually go hide? 

Did you consider unfriending me?

I bet you are unfollowing me?

Have you stopped reading this?

Is this too unhappy for you?

Maybe it's too negative, I mean you might already be struggling with a bad day?

Shall I post a video of baby animals?  Give me a minute. 

Until such time as we stop making Mental Illness taboo, the unspeakable, deaths are going to continue.  People need to be able to talk about how they feel without worrying that they are going to lose the people around them for any of the above reasons.  People with depression, who seem innately negative are suffering with Mental Illness.  They are not "negative nellies".  They are not in control of their thoughts.  They are very much lost and they need your love and support.  They need your understanding and compassion.  They need you to stop saying things like "negative thoughts equal a negative life".  Be that as it may be, they are sick.  They feel miserable.  Unhappy.  Alone.  They want to be anything but all that.  It might just take a little more time and effort than your saying, "just be happy", to get them out of it.  Love them.  Understand that.  You may not understand them but understand they are sick.

"Are you okay?"  Funny you should ask, because that is exactly what you should ask someone you think might be suicidal.  People suffering with Mental Illness are often so lost that this question, may be about the only safe question you can get away with.  The one question that might just push it's way through the darkness.  I remember prior to my suicide attempt being angry with someone as depressive people often are.  I was lashing out at them.  In the middle of that they said, out of nowhere, "Are you okay?" My thoughts raced, "How dare you ask that of me, that's not the point, you were mean to me".  Then I stopped and thought, "NO I am NOT okay.  I am really quite angry right now, unreasonably so, I think.  I am lost in this anger.  Why can't I get out of here?  I am dying inside right now.  I need help.  Someone fucking help me".  Even in that fit of rage, that question would hit home for me, "Are you okay?"  It's so simple really.  Was I okay?

Please don't ever stop asking, "Are you okay?" 

I am alive today because I talked about being suicidal.  I knew I was.  I knew I was feeling so dark that to end my life seemed like a better option than simply living it.  People around me, those that loved me, and had stuck with me, knew I was considering this.  They didn't leave me much room to hurt myself.  But room I found.  If someone is in so much pain they want to die, they are going to find a way to try.  The pain of Mental Illness can be unbearable.  Had I been left alone even an hour longer than I was, I wouldn't be here today.  I talked about being sick and it saved my life.  I got lucky because I talked.  Many are not this lucky.  

Please understand that I am not saying that knowing someone is suicidal will save their life.  But it might.  Certainly knowing someone is suicidal gives them a better chance at survival than silence does.  Often times, there is nothing we can do.  We cannot assume responsibility for another person's life or death.  Mental Illness is a disease.  Until they find a cure for all the various forms of this disease people are agonizingly going to suffer.  People are going to die.  If they do maybe, just maybe, some small part of your heart can find a shred of comfort in knowing that you gave that someone a shoulder, a sympathetic ear, love and compassion.  It's all anyone dying of disease could ask for. 

I know people who have died from suicide and those loved ones left behind will not admit that is how they died.  There is shame surrounding suicidal death.  The fact is, disease took a life.  I think people feel if they admit their loved one took their own life they are somehow admitting they failed them.  They feel responsible.  How did they not stop this?  Perhaps if we all talked more openly about Mental Illness and suicides (suicide attempts like mine) then people could live life with less suffering?  Both those stricken with the disease and those left behind.

Too many mentally ill people are suffering in silence, alone.  As are the families left behind in the wake of this disease. 

Admit to your suffering.  Awareness is key.

I got lucky because I talked.  Someone was listening.

I tried to kill myself and I am grateful I didn't succeed. 









 

Judgement

What is the difference between a flower and a weed? 

Only your perception of it.  The judgement YOU place upon the flower/weed. 

It's all in the eye of the beholder.

Judgement is a very hot topic in Mental Health these days.  Many of the go to therapies right now advocate for mindfulness of ones thoughts and judgements.  The thinking is that if you are mindful of your thoughts and judgements then those thoughts will eventually have much less impact.  Positive or negative, they will not be attached to such emotional upheaval. 

Being aware of the negative talk and judgement in our minds allows a person suffering with Mental Illness to identify how they might be causing themselves harm.  When people struggle with depression their thoughts are inevitably negative.  They find the negative in every day things.  They are expressive in a mostly negative manner.  And their thoughts are all negative, especially when directed at themselves.  It's part of the illness.  They are in such a dark place they see only darkness.  Seeing only darkness makes things seem....darker.  It's a vicious cycle. 

Mindfulness therapy asks you to be being aware of your thoughts, especially negative self talk.  It doesn't ask you to try to change the thoughts, from negative to positive.  That takes an immense amount of energy and strength most struggling with mental illness do not have, or cannot find.  Often times a person cannot even comprehend that.  The process asks that you just be aware of your thoughts and how they make you feel.  You ride out that thought process and the attached feelings.  Your simple awareness of your own thinking will become so automatic that each time it will have less and less an impact on how you feel.  Of course the hope is perhaps you will stop having the negative thoughts altogether once you become infinitely aware of them and how they affect you. 

Trying to just alter your thinking without an awareness of it would be unto itself, a mindless task.  Until I am aware of what I am actually doing, I cannot undo it.  I am not there yet, but I becoming aware of my negative self talk and how it makes me feel.  I negatively judge myself constantly which makes me feel very badly about myself.  I struggle with self love. 

Just so we are clear, I hate the expression "self love".  I always think I am some how saying I struggle with masturbation.  Which is clearly none of your business.

Often times in group therapy I will hear people ask, "when is it an opinion and when is it judgement?"

I do not like Coconut.

Coconut tastes like crap.

One is my opinion.  One is my passing judgement onto the poor coconut.

If I think someone is doing something stupid, that makes it my opinion of what they are doing.  It does not make them stupid.  It's a very fine line I like to cross often. 

But one I am trying to be aware of doing to myself....far too much.
























 

Mental Health Week - #getloud - My Story

As I sat there in my room, tears running down my face, I found myself asking, "How did I end up here?"  Here I was, sitting in a room that can only be described as a room that was the result of a university dorm room having procreated with a hospital room.  It was my first day, of many days, in the private mental health facility I checked myself into in July of last year.  How did I go from a high functioning, high profile, Director in an Investment Firm on Bay Street to someone mentally ill and so fragile I now needed a full time hospital to take care of me? 

Mental illness can creep up on you.  It doesn't have to be dominantly present from the time you are a child.  Or debilitating throughout your youth.  Sometimes, by the time you reach adulthood you are just tired of fighting to keep it at bay.  You get overwhelmed by life, and you realize it has caught up to you.  You have a mental illness.  You are no longer high functioning.  In fact, you are barely functioning at all.  

I always knew there was something different about me.  The way I reacted to things was not like the other people in my life.   The way I felt about things wasn’t the same as most.  Every emotion felt overwhelming so all my energy was spent pushing those emotions aside.  I showed little emotion but anger.  I was exhausted.  It was like running a marathon in my brain every day.  It caught up to me in my mid 30s.  Like any other disease, mental illness can take its time developing inside of a person until it starts to affect their everyday life.  And it can make you feel tremendous shame.  That is the difference with mental illness as compared to other diseases.  Most diseases don’t come with so much shame attached to them.  Very few people with Cancer are looked at the way people with mental illness are looked at.  No one wonders what the Diabetes patient will say or do in an emotional or stressful situation. 

The facility my husband and I found for me had been on our radar since before the 2014 year even began.  I had fallen into what can only be described as existential angst in the latter half of 2013.  Constantly wondering why I was alive.  What was my purpose?  Why was I here?  It was excruciatingly painful.  By May of 2014 I was far beyond clinically depressed, I was completely lost.  I tried to push the darkness aside with every ounce of strength I had.  By June, I couldn't do it anymore.  I was tired of fighting just to convince myself, every waking second, of every day, that there was a reason I was here.  On June 4, 2014, I attempted suicide. 

Up until that fateful day, my husband’s fulltime job had been babysitting me.  I was so full of sadness and despair he worried about me constantly.  I talked endlessly about the unbearable pain.  During this time if my husband wasn’t physically at my side he made sure I was in touch with him every half hour.  Even if only by text.  If I missed the half hour mark he would call.  On that day he had meeting away from the house.  He did not want to go.  I convinced him that I could be left alone.  It wasn’t long after he left that I realized I shouldn’t have been left alone.  The racing thoughts, laden with pain, wouldn’t stop.  I had been fighting for so many months.  I was so tired.  I sat on the floor of my bedroom with every prescription bottle I had.  Some pills were for mental pain, for depression.  Some were for the diagnosed Bi Polar disorder.  Others were for back pain, some to relax my sore muscles at bed time.  And others were to sleep.  I had a lot of pills at my disposal.  And wrongly so.  Looking back, there is no reasonable explanation for someone with a mental illness to have access to that many pills, but I did. 

I sat on that floor with all of the pills around me and I wept.  I knew I was going to cause considerable pain for so many I was leaving behind.  But that guilt, did not outweigh the pain I couldn’t shake.  I answered my husband’s text messages.  I told him I was fine.  One handful after the next, I took as many pills as I could stomach swallowing down.  I got into bed, and I waited to die.   There was a point I panicked that I had made a mistake.  That I didn’t, in fact, want to die.  And then I realized that it was already too late.  I had taken the steps and I had to make peace with it.  No more pain, I thought to myself.  No more pain for all those around me.  Pain I am causing.  I decided it was out of my hands.  I had made my choice.

My husband will never forgive himself for those few hours he took away from my side.  Just a few hours to go to a meeting away from the house.  He says he feels guilty every time he walks out our door now.  He flashes to that day and remembers racing back to the local hospital to meet the ambulance.  Praying I would live.  I gave him that burden to bear.  He has forgiven me, he has not forgotten.  I have forgiven myself, I have not forgotten.  That is a place I will never go to again.  I hope.  If I ever sense that kind of despair coming over me, I will check myself into a hospital Emergency Room.  Even if just to be monitored and to keep myself safe.  I was so lucky that day.   Answering the phone saved my life. 

With all the drugs in my system I was so incoherent that I didn’t even realize I was answering the incessantly ringing phone.  Answering the phone prevented my death.  My husband realized immediately on the other end of the phone that something was terribly wrong.  He called 911.  They made it to me, and I to the hospital in enough time to save my life.  I resented that for days, weeks even.  I resented being alive.  And that is why I didn’t fight it when the mental health facility called and said they had a bed.  If I wasn’t happy that I lived, I needed serious help.  More help I was capable of handling on my own.    

Thank goodness I had allowed my husband to put me on the waiting list for the private mental health facility early in 2014 when everything started going very wrong for me mentally.  The waiting list is, on average, about 6 months long for those patients paying cash.  Just imagine if I was an OHIP patient.  Having to wait for the government backed health care insurance system to fit me in.  Do you know how many beds are available in Canada at long term mental health facilities that are sponsored by OHIP?  Not many.  My wait was long enough.  And even in that time, while I waited for help, I attempted suicide.   I was lucky I survived.  I wonder how many die every day simply waiting for a bed.

Upon arrival at the facility we were moved through the admitting process pretty fast.  They obviously understand that no one really wants to be there.  People just know they have to be there.  From there we were escorted up to the unit and to my room.  I hadn’t been away from my husband for more than a week since we moved in together in 2004.  That’s all I could think about standing in the middle of the room.  That thought was quickly followed with, “How am I supposed to live in this room?”  The room was very small.  And crammed in this small room were two hospital beds, two small desks, two side tables and two wood lockers.  One set obviously taken.  I was supposed to have a private room.  I do not do well in tight spaces with other people.  Tears pouring down my face I turned to my husband, and said "I am not staying in this room.  I am supposed to have my own room.  I want to go home, NOW.  Please honey, I beg of you, take me home".  He immediately began asking about other accommodation options.  He knew I was ready to bolt.  We were told that beds open up, not rooms.  All they had was a semi private room.  Once a private room opened up, I would get moved she told us, “It shouldn’t be more than two weeks”.  Aside from my husband I have never had a roommate.  Here I was in my most fragile state and I was to have a roommate who was a complete stranger.  My husband hugged me tight and begged me through tears of his own to stay.  I had to.  If for no one else, for him.  He asked the nurse if another semi private room was available.  “Perhaps one a little bigger”, he asked.  He could tell I felt claustrophobic in that room.  This tiny room wasn’t helping prepare me for my stay away from home.

They took me to another room where a woman I had seen checking in at admissions was unpacking.  We had already smiled at each other through our mutual tears. I quietly introduced myself.  Leaving my things behind, I walked hand in hand with my husband to the door of the unit.  I watched him walk away through the glass door.  I felt much like an infant at daycare for the first time, nose pressed to the glass pleading with my eyes not to be left behind.  I slowly made my way back to my new home to unpack.  Once done, I crawled into my bed and facing the wall, let the tears fall silently.  I didn't leave my room much that day.  I can't recall eating.  I slept on and off, and I cried.  For 24 hours.  I guess it wasn’t much different than the last few months at home after all.

The next morning was a Saturday.  I was awoken by the nurses at 645am.  “Standard practise”, they said when I asked.  I didn’t sleep very well that first night.  Inside mental health wards, at least the ones known to me, patients must be monitored constantly so the nursing staff are required to check on the patients all night long.  Every couple of hours a nurse enters the patient’s room and shines a flashlight on the patient to ensure they are safe and sound, and sleeping well.  A little ironic.  I am not a heavy sleeper to begin with.  Someone opening the door every couple of hours and flashing a bright light on my face didn’t help much.  Every two hours, my brain screamed, “I can’t do this”.

My room didn't have its own bathroom so on that morning I had another first by making way down a public hallway in my pajamas to get changed in a stall of the women’s public bathroom.  This was my now going to be my new normal?  What was happening to me?  I asked those questions to myself over and over as I brushed my teeth muttering hello to other female patients who were coming and going through the bathroom.  Once the shock of that experience wore off I slowly made my way to the cafeteria for breakfast.  Where again, I found myself facing another first, having breakfast alone, in public, seated by myself.  The cafeteria was buzzing.  It was buzzing far too much for my over active, very anxious mind.  There were so many unfamiliar faces.  So many voices all talking over each other to be heard.  I almost turned and left without food but instead I forced myself to stay.  A challenge faced. 

After breakfast, I wandered aimlessly back to my room.  I climbed back into bed and staring at the wall, I let the tears fall silently again.  We were allowed to keep our cell phones on the unit I was in.  Most of the other units didn’t allow this.  But on my unit they wanted you to stay in touch with the real world, the reality outside of those walls.  I texted my husband that second day and asked, "Please tell me how long I have to stay here?  How long must I give this before you will believe I gave it my best?”  He replied quickly with, "Two weeks.  Please give it at least two weeks before you decide to leave”.  I had hoped he would say a week.  But I resolved to stay for two weeks.  If not for myself, for my husband. 

I can honestly say those two weeks were some of the hardest days of my life.  They weren't awe inspiring days full of “ah ha” moments allowing for great distraction.  I wasn’t learning new and amazing things every day thus willing me to stay.  For those first two weeks you get a schedule and easy classes to attend like horticulture and art.  The time is simply spent getting used to waking up at a certain time and going to bed at a certain time.  Your challenge is to make it to a few classes a week where you are not pushed to do more than arrive on time.  Your schedule included the times you are allocated to receive your medications daily at breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Each time you went to the medication window you were required to share with your nurse how you were feeling.  And how you were truly feeling is what was expected in your reply.  As one of my nurses said that second day, "fine, okay, good, and alright tell me nothing about how you truly feel and are not acceptable answers”. 

By the end of the week one I found myself talking often with two younger women who had arrived on the unit just before me.  By the end of week two I found myself playing basketball in the gym with them.  Week three, we were walking to classes together, always sitting together.  That week I finally got moved into one of only a few private rooms with its own bathroom.  Looking back, I actually spent very little time in that room.   Suddenly I found myself looking forward to French toast breakfast Wednesdays and pancake breakfast Friday's in the cafeteria.  Where I sat at “our table” with the other patients from my unit.  I was spending all my free time with people.  I was knee deep in the hard psychology classes trying to figure myself out.  I found myself standing at the medication window three times a day, tears streaming down my face as I described in depth how I was feeling.  How did I end up HERE I wondered?  I got sick.  That's how.

I am a step mother, a wife, and a domestic engineer.  After spending 21 years on Bay Street, mental illness derailed my life as I knew it.   I have a new life.  It’s different.  Not better.  Not worse.  I am loved.  That is all I focus on now.

 

 

 

 

 

Thinner? Me? No pie for you!

Please do not tell me when I have lost weight.  I know when I have.  My pants fall off.  My underwear stop rolling over my belly and into my crotch when I run.  Suddenly I find myself wanting to throw on a bikini and run through a field of wildflowers.  Okay, that might have gone too far.  I understand that when you do comment you are going for flattery and kindness but I am going to share with you now, what I think when you do.  I think that my weight is important to you.  I think that my weight defines me as looking good or bad.  I mean, why else would you comment then?  Weight down, comment.  Weight up, "shhhhhh don't tell her, maybe she doesn't know".  When you comment then I think my weight defines me in your eyes as success or failure.

I don't want my weight to define me anymore.

If I lose weight it's likely because I am restricting my food intake to a point of distraction.  Somewhere in my life I have usually lost control of something and food is the way I can get a grip on that sense of loss.  Once the control issue has passed I desperately miss what I've been restricting.  Do you know how heavy a fridge is?  I do.  After restricting my food intake and then giving up those limits, I will tilt your average Fridgidaire back and inhale.  *burp* 

The simple facts are;

If I am depressed, I binge. 
If I am sad, I binge.
If I am stressed, I starve.
If I am scared, I starve.
If I am happy, I tend to forget about both and just eat the food I like.  And for the record, the food I like, it's not always on the nutritional list of best of.  Shit look at half my Facebook pictures.  They're of food, most often baking, and not the good kind, like Kale chips.  We are talking fruit pie with custard and full fat homemade whipped cream. 

As you can imagine the above pattern does not make for the best metabolic rate.  My stomach doesn't know if it's going to get food at every meal so it hangs on to every morsel for dear life.  No, exercise hasn't change that rate much.  I work out 4 days a week now, at a minimum.  I am in pretty good shape again.  I can even run a bit on the treadmill.  Sometimes without even gagging or throwing up.  Most of the time I walk at a 5.5 speed which is most people's jogging speed and I do it for 30 minutes.  There is nothing unhealthy about that. 

My parents have defined me by my weight my whole life.  I feel like I was considered a success if I was thin, and a failure if I was fat.  They figured I must be happy if I was thin, sad if I was fat.  They complimented me if I was thin, and absolutely no comments on my beauty if I was fat.  It's time I change that training in my mind and start to think outside the parental box.  Only I can do that, I know.  But your help couldn't hurt could it? 

I found myself realizing all of this because not to long ago I had surgery and I quickly shed about 40 pounds.  In two months!  This was not healthy. Every time someone said, "man you've lost weight", "you look great, how much weight have you lost", "look at you, skinny", my ego gained a pound.  I seemed to have this renewed sense of self worth.  It felt damn good.  I had done nothing but lost weight?  How had I really changed? 

As the weight started creeping back I started to feel really badly about myself.  It wasn't mood related. I wasn't sad or depressed.  I was self loathing.  Period.  There is no other definition of what I felt but self loathing.  I realized I was defining myself entirely by each pound gained or lost.  Gaining this weight back has been tremendously hard on me but also another valuable lesson.  It dawned on me one day that the fit of my pants was defining all that I am.

I know some of you are thinking, "well it seems to me that weight is your only problem then?"  If you lose weight your mood is better.  No, it is not.  The fact I define myself by my weight is a very large problem.  It's is extremely hard to battle even the day to day stressors in life with confidence when you have none.  Now imagine struggling with mental illness and having no self worth.  

Let's review then shall we.  Please, never tell me I look thinner, or thin.  No, "have you lost weight?"  "Healthy" or "fit", are great.  "Beautiful", is a spectacular choice, can't wait.  Any weight related comments, please do not share.  I simply need your help redefining myself and my warped self worth.  I don't need you to tell me I am pretty every time you see me, frankly that will get annoying, but I do want you to stop yourself from commenting on my weight.  Even if I drop 50 pounds and in your mind you've never seen me look better, hold back.  Take a second to think about how I might twist your comments into an unhealthy definition of myself and run with it. 

Will you take this on and help a girl out?  I mean, if you aren't busy?  If you do, I will bake you a pie.   

I am not an ostrich!

If you bury your emotions long enough, they will explode.  It's science, and them people, them Big Bang like peeps, they know stuff.  If you don't believe that, then believe me, you will blow.  I blew.  This is not as dirty as it sounds.  If you are expecting porn, do not keep reading.  I am Fifty Shades of....crazy, not sexy.

 

We all know that one person, who pretended everything was great, and perfect, shiny and happy.  Pretty much like everyone on Facebook.  We are all so seemingly shocked to hear they become sick, or that they ran away from life, or maybe the saddest of all, tried to hurt themselves.  Given time we find ourselves saying, "I am not that surprised because it just didn't seem real". 

Real life can hurt.  It's a part of life.  Losing someone you love, hurts.  A pet leaving us too soon, hurts.  Someone walking out of our lives, hurts.  Losing a job, hurts.  These are real feelings which should result in real emotions.  Imagine that!  Contrary to popular belief, we CANNOT control our feelings and emotions.  That said, we also do not have to live life as a hostage to them, under their complete control.  Feelings and emotions are instinctual, primary.  Before we even know it sometimes we are awash with feeling something. We don't always know why.  The greatest gift we can give ourselves is the journey to understanding, why. 

By answering the why we can start to control our reactions and our behaviours that come as a result of what we instinctually feel.  It's much easier to face that you don't like swimming if you realize you fell in a lake as a child, for example.  You can then become kinder with yourself.  Gift yourself with the understanding of your fears and accepting them as you take each step further into the water.  You will find great courage when you enter into an agreement with yourself that is derived from self love and kindness.  You will be amazed at all you can accomplish.

Okay I threw up a little with all that wise deep thinking full of great imagery *splashes water*.

Presentable and perfect is so yesterday's news.  It can stay in the kitchen with Mrs. Cleaver. 

I often hear, "they are not busy enough" as the solution to mental illness or even controlling ones emotions.  Distraction is nice but one cannot live on distraction alone.  No more than one can live on having no goals or aspirations.  One day, a day we will all face, there will be no more distractions and you will be forced to see yourself.  You will have to feel your feelings and deal with emotions you never even knew you had.  Drugs and alcohol were all created and designed as a way for the human psyche to avoid what is right there, the shit we don't want to face.  Give yourself that gift, face it, head on.    Even if it takes baby steps, one inch at a time, deeper and deeper into the water. 

Don't do it.  As per National Geographic Kids, Ostriches don't actually bury their heads in the sand.  Because why?  Because they wouldn't be able to breathe! Get it?  They'd suffocate, much like you and your feelings.  

This deep thought brought to you by The Matrix trilogy, which my husband forced me to watch last weekend, and where I realized most deep thoughts must inevitably come from.  They are deep, deep movies. 

Peace.