People

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I don’t even know where to begin

Things have been up and down. Work was stressful as hell. Last Thursday I got stuck having to stay an extra three hours, because the girl who was supposed to come in quit out of the blue. So I had to stay and work the front counter until 3 when someone else came in to cover the shift. And towards the end of the three hours, it got insanely busy and overwhelming. I had to sign up a new member, which I’ve never done before- and he wanted to do the year paid in full and add his two employees also to the membership. And I tried to do it but it was so confused and I think I totally fucked it up, and then forgot to actually charge him. I don’t know.

And then I missed my bus, and got stuck on the extremely crowded bus where I couldn’t move it was so packed and it was horrible, and I was half an hour late to therapy. And I just wanted to have a fucking meltdown.

And then I got stuck having to work Saturday too, which is a shitty shift, because it’s busy, and the other guy working took off as soon as I got out of daycare. So I was stuck at the front counter, alone, again. And I had another person coming in wanting to sign up for a membership, again, which I think I fucked up as well. All in all work has sucked so hard lately.

Friday night, we had girls night at TL’s. It was actually fun and it did distract me for a while. I got to see the kids, and we played games. We played those cool disney game who you have to ask yes or no questions to figure out what character you are. And the kids made turkey crafts.

Sunday, we all went to the children’s museum and that was a lot of fun too. I felt like a kid again too, running around playing with the kids, and taking hundreds of pictures. (I’m an idiot though and fucked up my camera arm, I had really bad golfer’s elbow for like 3 days after, it only just started to get better today.) I spent a lot of time with K, and it made me really happy to feel like we were still close despite having not seen each other in so long. She was wearing the bracelet I made her last year for Christmas, too, which made me so happy. I try so hard to be there for her, cause I know she has a hard time, and sometimes it feels like no one else sees the good in her.

But yeah… it’s been a very long week. And now I’m sick. I think I might maybe have the flu, but I’m hoping it’s just a cold. I still have to work tomorrow, until 2. Which means 2 hours by myself at the front counter. But my BFF said she might maybe stay and hang around at work with me. I’d owe her so much if she did. I don’t know if I can handle being at the front counter alone again.

Sadly, as I’m sick I think that means I might have to miss girl’s night on Friday. Which sucks.

I want to make a bracelet for K for her Christmas… in addition to whatever else I get her. I want it to be something special… I don’t know what though.

Also this week I talked to my dad. He was trying to contact me to do with insurance stuff, saying if I got on disability and shit then I might be able to stay on his insurance longer. Which would help a lot… He also updated me on stuff that’s been going on. Basically, my mom’s still crazy and is splitting him black again, and even tried to throw him out of the house. My grandmother is still crazy and being a bitch about everything. My uncle is living with them now, but I guess my mom hates him again. And I’m just like… I told you this is exactly what would happen. You KNEW this is what would happen, and you chose her. So, no. I don’t feel bad.

My therapist was saying what while she knows he made his choices, and they were poor choices, she still feels bad for him. But I just… I don’t. We talked about splitting in therapy today, and how I’m still very black and white when it comes to my family of origin, especially my mother.

But I think I just got kind of upset and trigger, cause she used the my mother did the best she could line. And I fucking hate that line. The only thing that goes thru my head when I hear it is, “Yeah, but it wasn’t enough.” I feel like I get defensive when people say that. Because it feels so much like people say that and sweep everything under the rug and act like it’s okay. I feel like people say that and then expect you to praise your mother for the saint that she is just because she’s your mother. I feel like people say that to make you feel like complete shit for saying anything bad about your mother. People say that and give a free pass on all of the abusive behavior, just because it’s your mom. People say that when they’re judging you for being such a shitty daughter.

So I sort of brought that up to my therapist. Not all of it. I couldn’t say all of it. It was hard enough to get out what I did manage to say, but I think she maybe understood why I was getting upset. So she went into, “You mom did the best she could. And it wasn’t enough. Can you hold both of those at the same time? Can’t they both be true?” And… yeah. They can be. They are. My mom did the best she could. It wasn’t enough. I can hold those. Why does that mean I can’t be mad at her? Why do I feel like I’m being judged for not wanting anything to do with my mother ever again? Every time my therapist pushes contact with my mother, or trying to empathize with her, this is how I end up feeling. My therapist said she just doesn’t want me doing any of this out of fear. I don’t know. I don’t think I’m doing it out of fear. I don’t know.

I feel like… like I burned those bridges, and I don’t ever want to look back. I want nothing to do with any of it.

We talked about boundaries too, and how she wonders if I’m afraid if I’ll stop having boundaries if I’m in contact with my mom. I never understood when my therapist would say I’m very good at keeping boundaries and I’ve been doing it along time. She used an example today that kind of made sense. But okay fine, maybe I’m good at setting boundaries. But what good is any of that if the other person barrels right past them anyway? There’s just no letting my mom in a little bit. She just doesn’t work like that. It’s everything or nothing with her.

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Today we got to baby sit TL’s kids for a few hours. The babies and the girls and it was awesome. I spent most of the time on the couch cuddled up with Little Man, and the girls. Boo was running around all over the place. If I’m honest I didn’t want to leave. I’ve missed those kids so much for so long. They all seem like they’re doing really good too which makes me happy.

I’m tired though. Night.

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I’m so tired…

The past week or so has been a blur of chaos and anxiety… and I don’t have the energy to get into it…

The worst part is 3 nights in a row I haven’t gotten enough sleep and on top of that what sleep I do get has been filled with nightmares.

So my psych doc added prazosin to my crazy pill cocktail. It’s supposed to help with nightmares. I guess we’ll see.  At this point I feel like nothing is ever going to work. Ever.

I saw my therapist yesterday cause I needed to deal with shit that happened on Monday. It was a rough session cause I got all activated and this time she refused to walk me through coping skills… She said the time’s long since passed for when she jumps in and walks me through it, cause she knows I can do it on my own, even though I feel like I can’t and that’s why I suck at calming myself down on my own outside of the therapy room… And it sucked and was painful and scary and frustrating.

I don’t believe her. I feel like I always get stuck with this problem… like I need something outside of myself to latch onto, to focus on, and when I don’t have that it feels like none of my coping skills work…

I’m so tired… I just want some decent sleep… My body aches… This morning is even harder because new medicine makes me dizzy, awesome…

I keep feeling like I can’t move… My body feels so tense and locked up…

There’s a voice in the back of my head that’s starting to say the only things that will ever help me are drinking and cutting…

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Birthday Therapy

I had therapy today. My therapist baked me a chocolate cake. =D

It was both a present and a reward for getting 14 stars on my star chart. M makes little checklist/star charts for me with things I have to do. It started out with eating a fruit or veggie every day and exercising for 20 minutes twice a week. She’s working on getting me physically healthy, especially since eating better and exercising  is supposed to be good for your emotional and mental health. I grumble and whine and sulk and complain about it, cause I HATE exercising, but in the end I usually do it because she’s holding me accountable for it. And rewards me every so often ( and that especially works since I went above my goal this weekend cause I wanted my cake). Eating better isn’t so bad, at least, I eat more fruit now. I still don’t eat veggies, I hate them, but I like fruit. So I eat fruit instead.  This past week, she added on taking my medicine because I was bad and got out of the habit of taking it every day. I’d hardly taken it at all over the last 3 weeks. I’m also supposed to do “something fun” that’s outside of the house (and that’s tied with exercising for how much I hate it cause I don’t like going out).

Anyway, so yeah.

It was also sort of an anniversary for us cause tomorrow it marks 1 year since I first met her. I realized this last night- I knew I first met her right around my birthday, and so I went back to august of last year in my google calendar and saw my first appointment ever was Aug 19th 2012. So yeah.

BFF and I painted our nails today. My fingers are neon green, and my thumbs are this awesome confetti glitter. It’s called “It’s A Trap-eze” from China Glaze. It’s fabulous. And I don’t usually like glitter polishes.

After that I started drinking the birthday wine I picked up for myself. Very yummy. All in all it’s been a pretty good day.

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Dear self: you are not a special snowflake

I should have realized my thoughts would start to spiral into this.

At one point, Sunday, in therapy, I brought up that I’d been tempted all week to text her, “I need to hear from you that we still have a lot of work yet to do.” Sunday’s session focused a lot on the progress I’ve made, and going back through her notes and my blog regarding where I was 6 months ago and where I am now. As the week went on, I had this needling thought in my head that this is going too fast. Because getting better eventually leads to therapy coming to an end.

And right now I just can’t fathom not NEEDING to see M twice a week. (Often times I wish I was seeing her 3x a week…) So I needed to be reassured that I’m not losing this relationship any time soon. So we talked about that, and how it doesn’t mean we’ll be out of each others lives. Just that eventually a few years down the road, she said as my life becomes fuller, I’ll only need to see her once a week… then maybe every other week… then maybe once a month… then every few months. And that she’ll always be here. And stuff.

So I was thinking about that stuff.

And then earlier I was trying to think of what I might write as a like testimonial thing, because maybe a month ago or so, she mentioned she’s working on updating her website and was asking a couple of her clients if they’d want to write testimonial things for her website, and that I was one of the ones she had in mind.

So I was thinking about what I might write, how I’d recommend her to someone else, because I totally would, she’s amazing.  Then this nasty little voice in the back of my head pops up, “What makes you any different than any of her other clients? What makes you think she cares about you any more than she does any of her other clients? Why should she? Do you really think you’re some sort of special snowflake, that you’re different than all the other crazies she works with?”

Just like that I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut and I can’t breathe.

On some level, I almost think I should have expected these thoughts to creep up. It feels like a fucking cliche for someone with attachment issues.

I try to talk myself out of it. I have 15 index cards with things she’s written for me, advice, coping skills, positive thoughts, and little notes. She filled a whole page in my art journal in response to a statement I wrote in it. I’m trying to tell myself not to listen but it’s so hard right now. I know she cares. I know she does.

But I can’t stop hearing those thoughts now… They keep going over and over…

Catch me, I’m falling… faster than anyone should…

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Apparently I’ve Changed A Lot

Therapy somehow turned into how far I’ve come. M mentioned how different I appear today then when we first met. She also talked about how much more freely I communicate, and that it’s especially changed since I’ve been working.

I hadn’t noticed this. I mean, I know there’s been dozens and dozens of times in therapy where I’ve struggled to speak, struggled to find the words to express what I’m trying to say. And at times I’ve resorted to writing it out, rather than saying it. M says I speak more, and I make more eye contact, and that we have more of a back and forth conversation now.

She also said my appearance has chanced a lot. That I look healthier, and I hold myself differently. She also really thinks I’ve lost weight- but I doubt that.

I tried to argue that we haven’t been talking about hard, intense, difficult, painful stuff lately. But she pointed out that we have, that there’s been a lot of talk to do with dealing with conflicts, sexuality, and, the fact I spoke with my mom a couple weeks ago. (Yeah. My mom called me and I spoke to her. I don’t think I even wrote about it on here.)

I don’t know. It’s so hard to believe.

I tried to think about things we’ve talked about, and what we’ve been dealing with, but everything blurs together for me. I took out my phone and started going back through my blog, and she started looking through her notes as well. I even let her look at my blog on her phone, until after a while I started getting a little be self-conscious. Partly cause she said I’m a good writer and partly because she read something I’d written a while ago about something she said and then my response to it in my blog.

She also thought it was sort of neat and useful how much I keep a record of stuff, and how most people don’t. I started out doing it on forums cause I wanted feedback, and then I moved to a blog to have my own space and stuff. I do it so I can remember, and look back if I want to though I don’t look back at my old posts often. I also do it to process and hash things out that’s swirling through my head.

I didn’t even used to be very good at keeping up my blog. Though I’ve been pretty regular about it the last few months.

… ugh. I’m totally not any good at writing though, I don’t know why she thinks it’s good. I just write down the crazy shit going through my head. And I don’t bother to proofread.

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Am I Giving Up?

Therapy today was difficult. I still had a lingering migraine, and before my session I nearly had a panic attack because BFF’s mom called me but I missed the call, and when I called her back she didn’t answer. And of course my first thought it, “omg what did I do?” And I’ve been hovering around a 6ish on a scale of 10 when it comes to anxiety, so yeah this bit set me off into a total panic and a freaked out. (When I got home, I found out she’d only called cause Aunt P needed the stroller I have sitting around in my room and BFF’s mom was gonna have me run it out, but, I wasn’t home. So yeah. I panicked over nothing.)

Things went bad when I admitted that I didn’t follow up on the job lead I had. I was supposed to call this cousin’s boss to ask about an opening they have. But I freaked out and didn’t do it because I didn’t know what I was supposed to say or do. I didn’t even know it’s okay to ASK for a job so directly and shit. And I was upset and frustrated because I was like, “I CAN’T ask.” And M sighed and was like, “Then you’re not going to get a job…” And then she asked me if I WANTED a job, and she said she thought that I had but now she wasn’t sure.

And I couldn’t outright say it, but truth is deep down, no. I still don’t want a job. But I NEED one and I HAVE to get one.

M wrote down things on the white board and then asked me which ones feel true. It was stuff like ‘If I don’t try then I won’t fail’ ‘learned helplessness’ ‘self sabotage’ ‘identity made up of perceived deficits’ (or something like that) ‘fear of trying’ ‘not wanting to get better’

I circled the thing about identity and fear of trying. And then I wrote something on the board cause I couldn’t bring myself to say it. But I told her that she keeps saying I can do stuff and she believes in me, but that I can’t control it when I shut down and fall apart. M and I went back and forth writing on the board to each other. She wasn’t letting me sit there feeling sorry for myself. She says I’m choosing to let the anxieties and stuff beat me when I’m not in the therapy room, that it’s almost like a defense to prove that I can’t do things. I was upset… and actually bold enough to write back, “You make it sound like I’m faking it.” She replied that she’s seen me go from and 8/9 down to a 3 in five minutes in the therapy room, but for whatever reason at home I don’t use those skills. I just let myself shut down and fall apart. I curl up in bed and break apart.

“I care too much about you to participate in this learned helplessness.” She wrote down. For a long time I didn’t say/write anything else. Eventually all that was left in me was that I needed to ask, I need to be sure this meant she wasn’t giving up on me… because at some point I’d gotten scared that she was, because she seemed so frustrated with me. She then wrote back on the board some stuff, and that sadness was a better word than frustration and that it comes from it seeming like I’m the one who’s already given up, when she hasn’t.

((Y’all, this is why I suck at blogging and why I obviously still have some issues with ADD. I started writing this around 8pm on 5/30, and then I started clicking through some of my other browser tabs I had open and here I am 10am the next day finally remembering I was in the middle of writing a blog post. Whoops.))

I left the session feeling utterly drained and miserable. I have a lot on my mind and a lot to think about. When I get the chance I might write more to process some of the things swirling around in my head, but I don’t know if I will. I can’t tell you how many times I lay in bed writing blog posts in my head and then never actually write them. I might get out my art journal and try to get some things out that way too. I don’t know.

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Last Weekend

Friday, after therapy, I had to run a few places. By the time I got home my best friend was upset and annoyed because apparently she had been waiting on me so we could make dinner. I didn’t know- had no way of knowing. She was upset though and I got uncomfortable and triggered. I was sort of annoyed too because to me it felt like it was expected that I tell her where I’m going and stuff. And so I said stuff about how she goes places without telling me all the time. And she got even more pissed off apparently. I ended up shut in my room. Her mom dragged her out of the house so she wouldn’t storm in and rip my head off I guess. Also, I know when I’m scared and uncomfortable sometimes I smile more, it’s a fucked up defense mechanism. But yeah… It was a huge clusterfuck of misunderstanding and miscommunication and it sucked.

Sunday I had therapy. We talked about a bunch of stuff.

One of the things we addressed is that she thinks I really need to be on a higher dose of medication. I’m on the lowest possible dose of prozac. And… I forget to take it a lot of the time. It’s probably been weeks since I took it. I mostly forget I guess because it wasn’t really doing anything anyway. But my mood has been so unstable and I’m hardly functioning.

I cringe when M listed out everything I’ve been going through the couple months: the lack of energy and motivation, days where I just don’t want to get out of bed, cutting, fleeting suicidal ideation, anxiety, difficulty controlling anxious thoughts and feelings seriously impacting ability to function…

And yeah. It’s… it’s been bad. The depression is severe.

Yet, my gut reaction is to be like, “But I’m NOT depressed.”

I hate that label. Depression. It reminds me too much of my mother. It makes me think of weakness, and neglect, and hurting everybody around you. I don’t want ‘severe depression’ tacked on to my list of diagnosis. I don’t want that label. I hate when I think about the past couple months how much I’ve been acting like her. I don’t want to be like her.

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Depression

Why does every day have to be so fucking excruciating?

I don’t want to be around anyone. I don’t want to do anything. I should be doing productive things because I need money, but instead I’ve been watching youtube videos for 2 days straight. It takes my mind off of everything. After I fucked up last night, I ended up staying up until 3 in the morning watching this guy play horror videogames because it was hilarious. Then I slept in until nearly 11, and when I got up and got online I just ended up watching more videos.

We’re babysitting in less than an hour and, honestly, it’s the last thing in the world I want to do. Babies take too much energy. I just want to sit here doing nothing. I don’t want to be around anybody.

This is why I can’t get a job. I know I need one, I’m so fucking broke it’s horrible. But I can’t, because I’m pathetic and just want to do nothing forever. Honestly, right now, I don’t even care.

Also, I haven’t heard from J in a month. I know she was sick a while ago, and her girls were sick, and she’s so busy. The last time I talked to her was when all the crazy crap with my parents was going down, and she wanted to call and actually talk on the phone about everything, but we could never work out a time. So I’m feeling really disconnected from her. I miss her.

All I can keep thinking is that it’s always going to be like this. I’m always going to be alone, because for whatever reason I can’t hold onto relationships… they just… drift away…