On Poop-Out

I just have to say that I have experienced a lot of frustration in my life. I’m an overachiever, and I’m smart, which means I tended to get frustrated with my peers as a child for just not getting things so we could move on, PLEASE. My younger brother has Asperger syndrome, which, I love him, but he was a pain in the butt every single day from two weeks before my third birthday, when he was born, to the time I got my driver’s license and could GTFO whenever I wanted. Do not even ASK ME about my living situation right now, because talk about wanting to beat your head against the wall. Oh, and I’m a feminist (snerk).

So I think I know frustration. And there is absolutely NOTHING more frustrating, in my experience, than SSRI poop-out. I got depressed seven years ago, and my psychiatrist put me on an SSRI, and it worked beautifully for five-and-a-half years. Then I started pulling all-nighters regularly, and it stopped. Sixteen months (and one shiny new comorbid diagnosis of generalized anxiety) later, I’ve tried two SSRIs, a non-SSRI antidepressant, a benzodiazepine, an atypical auxiliary anxiolytic… and nothing. And the thing that is the most frustrating is that I know there is no end in sight.

Part of that is, I’m sure, the depression. (I can admit that because I’m writing this on a Very Good Day, comparatively speaking.) But it just seems like I’m facing a Wheel of Fortune of side effects followed by the unpleasantness of discontinuation. Like Wellbutrin! On it, I get severe worsening of my usual bruxism as well as akathisia (baseline only slightly higher than the normal depressive/anxious psychomotor agitation, shading all the way to the acute desire to flail all of my limbs at once, usually occurring at the least convenient times possible). Discontinuation involves the worst irritability I have EVER experienced, which sent me into crisis on Sunday night. So now I get to pick between four or five drugs and try it again. And this is at one year. I’ve talked to people who have been doing this for three.

I just really wish the Zoloft hadn’t stopped working. It worked so well that I was able to do enough CBT to make significant inroads on the social component of the generalized anxiety I had been experiencing my entire life and had never been diagnosed with. I want it baaaack.

I wish…

I wish I had it in me to blog about the things I’m thinking about.

Like: Over winter break, I watched the Sarah Connor Chronicles, and I thought I had lots of things to say about the way the show depicted mental illness.

Or: Today I went to Wal-Mart to find pantyhose, and discovered that I am a size that does not exist, at least in one brand. It goes right from “Q” to “2x.” I’m a 1x. Fail.

Most recently: I reread synecdochic’s “Take These Broken Wings” today, which is a work of SG-1 fanfiction that centers around a disabled character. I think I read it last year or maybe before that, before I was thinking of myself as a PWD. Beyond the aspect of being fanfiction, it’s a story that depicts the life of someone with a chronic pain condition from hir perspective. That’s so ridiculously rare in fanfiction, and in general fiction–In three years of middle school English and four years of high school English, I don’t think a single novel or short story I read was from the perspective of a disabled character. I’m sure only a handful even featured characters with any kind of disability. And ditto the not-inconsiderable number of stories I read on my own time.

So I really want to write about these things. I want to write clear, cogent essays that start with an experience and reverse-funnel into greater truths about society. But the words stop working and my thoughts all dissolve into the ambient static of my brain. And if I marshal that focus–even marshaling that focus now, to finish this sentence–means I don’t have that marshaling power for doing schoolwork, or forcing myself to do the laundry, or getting out of bed. I want to wield the mighty teaspoon and say the things I’m thinking. But they float away. And I have a long weekend ahead.

the excesses of illness

I’ve spent the past nine hours wandering back and forth between the same two rooms: my room and the common room my best friend and I share.

I’ve gotten maybe an hour or an hour and a half’s worth of actual work done.

Ordered pizza for dinner– the only way to trick myself into eating.

And, you know, I have the privilege of passing, which means nobody knows how sick I am unless I tell them, but which also means I have to produce the same amount of work, of the same quality and in the same time span, of someone who can sleep at night without drugging ziemself, who can go a week without crying like it’s as natural as taking a breath, who has the luxury of regarding someone like me as crazy, as othered.

The upside is that they take me seriously, and the downside is that they take me seriously. Most of the time I really appreciate that privilege, but most of the time I haven’t been wandering between the same rooms for nine hours without interacting with anyone other than the pizza delivery guy.

On Teaspoons and the Ordinary Kind

[Trigger warning: gun violence, suicide; depression and anxiety]

As Shakesville and FWD/Forward have brought to my attention, it was twenty years ago today that a man walked into L’école polytechnique de Montréal and killed fourteen female engineering students with a rifle before committing suicide.

I’m appalled that I’ve made it to twenty years old without ever hearing about this, and it’s easy for me, as a student of the sciences, to think about the technological advancements we’ve made over the past twenty years, how those women could have contributed, and how those women would have felt if they’d known they would miss out on so much.

I have a lot of thoughts about what it means to me to be a woman in the natural sciences, and how to balance that against my mental illness. After learning about the Montreal massacre, I have more. It certainly helps me to think that every assigment I complete is an act of teaspooning, except that I can easily weaponize that against myself: if I earn anything less than an A, I am letting All Women Everywhere down.

(That’s the risk of the particular flavor of depression I tend to experience, which is less Sweatpants Syndrome (though I’ve experienced that) and more an anxiety so pervasive, persuasive and entrenched that the only way to keep everything from being deeply, ineffably Wrong is to achieve a certain standard in everything I do. The good news is that said standard is no longer superhuman; the bad news is that I still deeply believe that I have no human worth unless I can achieve it.)

Ultimately, I would like to go to graduate school. In order to do that, I need to cease to be at immediate risk of suicide: it’s not so much that I’m depressed as that I’m anxious, and it comes on in waves. It’s another voice inside me, and sometimes it becomes so loud. It tells me: You have been actively battling me for a year now, and you will never feel better, and every day will be like this one; I’m too entrenched, I began growth so early and you fed me so well; I make you a burden, and your loved ones will be better off without you, because of me. And you have so many pills. And then there is a long road from not-a-suicide-risk to actually feeling good, which involves things like eating meals, and having one goddamn conversation with your best friend where your illness doesn’t come up, and sleeping without terrible dreams.

There have been times when I disguised budgeting spoons, even from myself, when I had unlimited spoons during certain hours as long as I did things for myself to get them back, like following a bedtime routine and getting enough sleep and taking my medication and eating. If I could get back to that place, I could do graduate school. But right now I don’t have very many spoons at all.

It seems like such a simple conclusion: if I had more spoons, I could teaspoon more, including graduate school. But it took me half an hour and almost 500 words to get here.

Hate the Stupak Amendment?

I certainly hope so.

Sen. Barbara Boxer has a petition up to have it removed: http://www.fightforwomenshealth.com

The URL is “fight for women’s health,” and what we’re doing is exactly that. Abortion is the only legal medical procedure not to be covered under the new healthcare plan. Denying coverage for abortion will herald a return to the days of back-alley coat-hanger abortions and the unnecessary pain and suffering of countless women. Regardless of one’s stance on abortion, I don’t think anyone can argue that unnecessary death is a bad thing.

On Disability.

I’ve decided to accept the disability label for myself– because I’ve been budgeting spoons for a long time, probably since the first time I was depressed (six years ago) although I haven’t been calling it that, and I’ve had to be a lot more stringent about it lately; because the first thing I did when I realized it was getting worse was talk to the Coordinator of Disability Services on campus; because I’m taking a medication which has the side effect of limiting my verbal abilities in both speaking and writing in a way that I feel is fairly severe, but the alternatives are far, far worse–  trouble falling asleep and the concomitant loss of function the next day with the specter of depression looming large on the horizon, the risk of a panic attack, or crying in public, or beginning to pull out my hair– which, on said medication, are not actually wholly eliminated, but much diminished; because I can’t sit down with six or eight hours budgeted out for work and get six or eight hours’ worth of work actually done the way I used to; because today it was 1:10 and I was in the lab doing work and I hadn’t eaten yet, and my professor was more concerned about that than I was, and that scared me; because it’s not getting better.

I want to express my gratitude to the writers at FWD/Forward for the collection of posts that led me to this decision, and to not being terribly afraid of it, and to not feeling alone.

On Things Sucking.

(Haha, sucking.)

I have a major exam tomorrow. Yesterday I was frozen– paralyzed– and couldn’t start studying until about ten to five, and I had obligations starting at 6. I’ve been sitting at my desk for, what, four hours? And gotten maybe– if I am lucky– an hour’s worth of actual studying done.

I cannot marshal my thoughts for long enough to focus for more than five, or maybe ten minutes at a time.

This is what clinical anxiety is like. It goes beyond worry to lying in bed, stewing for an hour until I finally get up to take two Tylenol PM, reliving the same imaginary conversations, feeling the same worries. It goes beyond spacing out to not understanding how three hours could have passed that I’ve been sitting here. I don’t even really have the train of thought to finish this post, especially when I have this exam tomorrow.

In a way, I’m lucky, and that way is that I’m smart enough to pull a B when I’m bringing my F game. The same intelligence which is in large part a major contributor to my anxiety is what helps me pass for, for lack of a better term, able-minded. The anxiety and depression I experienced last semester, and the anxiety and depression I’m experiencing now– which are bad but not quite so bad, because I’m fighting tooth and nail, because it hasn’t started snowing yet, because I have some new tricks up my sleeve– are debilitating enough that a less-intelligent person wouldn’t be able to make the grades I’ve been making. Even if I need to write it out to believe it, I can do this.

How it Works.

[Strong trigger warning for anxiety and depression.]

So this is how it works: you’re anxious, and for awhile you can attribute it to things– exams, being away from home, illness, whatever. Only then it becomes more than worry or stress, and you’re walking home on your really very safe college campus at night afraid of the shadows, crossing the street looking over your shoulder the whole way in case a car comes out of nowhere, that awful spine-tingle telling you you’re being watched even when nobody’s there. You’re shaky. You’re never hungry, and when you are it mostly feels faraway, a vague reminder of something you should do sometime. You can’t focus, even when your thoughts aren’t circling; it’s a foggy, ominous calm, thunderheads making the air too heavy for thoughts. It takes ages to fall asleep, and you never wake up rested.

But why are you this worried? Your concerns can’t be anything but real, because how can you distrust your own mind, which has done so well by you for so long? You get nasty, inside and out, emotions out of control. Maybe you take it out on yourself: stop eating altogether, as much as you can. Punish yourself with exercise.

Some moments of lucidity: you know you’re being irrational, but what can you do about it? You talk to your therapist, your psychiatrist. You’re still throwing books against walls.

There are hours, days, when you feel as if you are nothing but your illness. Anxiety attacks from the front; depression closes in from the sides. Benzos will help you sleep but then your eyelids are always dragging down of their own accord. At least you’re getting out of bed: you’re making it to your classes, you’re eating at least sometimes, you’re well-groomed, but you still feel hollow. All you talk about are the dreams you have: men are chasing you with syringes, you’re hallucinating, you’re naked in front of your professor. All you talk about is the sadness you feel. You are a third wheel, and it’s no wonder, when this is all you are.

There are good days: you get coffee with a friend, you do laundry. Smiling’s not a problem but the day always ends with tears. You know in the better hours with certainty that eventually you will beat this: you need a new doctor, you need a little help. It’s the same certainty you feel at night, crying, because you will never be anything other than this.

–

[Disclaimer: This is a highly, highly subjective description of mental illness as I am currently experiencing it. It's a fickle beast and I cannot purport to speak for anyone other than myself at any time other than now. But I'm not blogging about much else right now, and I wanted to get this out there.]

Sometimes I Blog About Knitting… starting now.

So, here is the thing: I love to knit. I learned in high school but only really got seriously into it last year. It’s a wonderful stress reliever, a form of meditation, and a way for me to express myself visually rather than verbally– something artsy that doesn’t require that I can draw, or paint, or sculpt.

And one of the greatest things about knitting is that I can knit myself sweaters that are made to fit me. Which is nice, because usually I have a hard time finding sweaters that fit me well in stores, with the whole in-betweenie thing, and being especially fat around the midsection, and blah blah blah. (So far actually knitting myself sweaters is mostly hypothetical, but I’m working on it.) And accessories! I have already knit myself several nice scarves that are colorful and unique and generally all around delightful.

Yarn and Kisses is giving away two skeins of Malabrigo yarn in a drawing. Malabrigo is the softest yarn with the most gorgeous colorways, ever, period. If I blog about it, I get another chance to win, so I’m blogging about it, natch. If you knit, enter, because who doesn’t like free yarn, and especially free, high-quality, super-gorgeous yarn? The drawing ends at 9PM Australian EST.

On a Moment of Which I’m Proud

The other night, I was with some fellow students; I was the only one not enrolled in a particularly difficult chemistry course, having taken it last year. One of my peers, a young man of whom I am generally quite fond, said something along the lines of, “this class is raping me,” and another young woman agreed with him.

And I made a choice I am still happy with: I said, “I’m not comfortable with rape jokes,” and they apologized, and we moved on.

Of course, it wasn’t perfect. In a perfect world, the joke would never have been made; or, knowing that they would be receptive, I would have explained exactly why I am not comfortable with rape jokes, and why they should not be, either– but these are my friends, the people I take classes with, do homework with, socialize with.

And the fact is, being super aggressive about things has tended not to work in my life. It has prompted my mother to tell me she hopes that feminism is just a phase, for instance.

But I neither swallowed shit nor ruined the afternoon, at least not wholesale. I learned from my mistakes, but I still said something– and hopefully, somewhere in my friends’ heads, a small awareness exists that wasn’t there before.