Five Weeks

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

As I typed in the title of this post, I wondered when (and if) I would ever stop labeling the weeks of my life based off of the time I escaped my ‘old’ life.  I’m sure there may come a point in the future when I will be so occupied with my new life that I will no longer need to base it off of the old.  For now, I feel that each week that goes by is an accomplishment.  I came here expecting very little of myself.   I’m not even sure I expected to make it one week.  Now I’ve made it five weeks.  So what’s stopping me from making it six, seven, eight weeks?

I probably shouldn’t even be writing this blog post right now.  I have a thesis that is not writing itself.  Chapter 5 was due last Sunday while I was hospitalized and I have yet to hand it in.  Honestly, I haven’t even started it.  I’ve been so preoccupied with work, so exhausted with adjusting to a new schedule, and so many things on my mind that I just haven’t been able to sit down and focus.  It will get done today, I promise..right after I finish this post.

I can’t believe I have one more week of school left.  One. More. Week.  I have to give myself credit.  In five weeks, I have moved/escaped, got a new job, started therapy, gotten hospitalized, and still managed to write 60 pages of a thesis on a topic that I unfortunately live with every day.  And in one more week, I’ll have my 120 credits (121 actually) for my BA in Psychology.  I don’t know that many others would have been able to do what I’ve done.  I have fallen, but I’ve also gotten right back up.

In my previous post, I briefly mentioned the possibility of a DID diagnosis.  For me, it was hard to swallow.  That whole experience was hard to swallow.  I was dissociating so badly, it was out of control.  I could have been hospitalized again.  The other therapist brought up the possibility of putting me in IOP and my heart sank.  For me, I see that as a failure.  I am in no way saying those that go to IOP are failures, I am saying for me personally, it is a failure.  I want to be as normal as possible.  I want to be able to go to work every day.  I want to function.  I feel like IOP takes that away from me.

At the same time I understood where she was coming from.  I can’t put them in a position where I am a danger and it comes back on them.  They are only equipped to do so much.  I told them I didn’t want to do IOP.  I’ll do whatever it takes not to do IOP.  But to do that, I need to accept that I have a dissociative disorder and focus my treatment on that, instead of trying to cover up my symptoms and having it blow up in my face like it did in therapy on Thursday.

I think hearing those words hurt more because I knew deep down that I had a problem with dissociation.  I was familiar with DID from my courses in psychology and through meeting people with DID through trauma support groups.  I always felt that so many of the symptoms rang true for me.  But I didn’t want them to.  No one wants DID.  No one wants a lifetime of therapy, a lifetime of misunderstanding from others (although I sort of have that already).  There’s no cure.  DID won’t go away with a pill.  A lot of therapists won’t even acknowledge its existence and therefore won’t treat it.  It’s a complicated diagnosis.  It’s a complicated disorder.  I don’t need any more complications.  Why can’t life be simple?

Maybe I am just overwhelmed right now.  I’ve always wanted answers, and now that I have them, I am pushing them away because they are not the answers I want.  Why is it that now that I have escaped the horrible abuses my mother had been committing against me for so so long, that I am still being affected?  Why couldn’t everything just become normal once I left?  Why do I still have to suffer? She should be the one in the hospital (or better yet, in prison).  She should be the one in therapy trying to figure out why she does the fucked up shit she does.  She should be hurting.

Instead she’s living her life day in and day out like it’s nothing, like everything is okay.   Yet here I am, physically and emotionally in pain.  Here I am paying for therapy instead of groceries because my mind is going to kill me before hunger does.  And here I am struggling day in and day out trying to keep it together, not only for myself, but for those out there (my friends, my readers, my therapists) who are pulling for me.  This shit is backwards.

There is a part of me that is strong, that knows I can overcome anything and do great things.  Unfortunately, a lot of times, that part goes into hiding and I am left with my fearful, anxious self.  The self that doesn’t want to get out of bed.  The self that is so scared just to take a shower.  The self that fears mother is coming to hurt me.  I almost enjoy when I’m not myself because it gives me a break from living in fear for a while.  Or maybe it’s not even myself.  Maybe it’s another part of me entirely.  How do I even know?

Maybe I understand myself a little more than I like to acknowledge.

Resilience

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

Some would say it’s a contradiction for someone with PTSD to refer to themselves as resilient, since PTSD itself contradicts healthy adaptation to stress.  But you know what, I am resilient.  I don’t care who agrees or disagrees with me.  It doesn’t matter.  I’ve made up my mind.

With less than a day of being released from the hospital, I started my job.  I called them as soon as a got out of the hospital to find out if I even still had a job.  Luckily my roommate called them while I was in the hospital so they were somewhat aware (though they do not know the circumstances).  I woke up at 4:45 in the morning so I would be able to shower and get ready in time to make it to the 6:00 bus.  I was tired and in pain, but I managed.  There were a couple of times when I just had to go to the bathroom to decompress for a few minutes.  I also lost myself for I don’t know how long.  When I came back to reality, it took me a few seconds to even realize where I was and what I was doing.  I don’t think anyone noticed, thankfully.  It’s not something I wanted to happen on the first day, though.  I’m so scared of someone not understanding what’s going on.  Why can’t I just be normal and not dissociate and not have flashbacks and not have breakdowns?

Regardless of all that, you know what?  I still went to work.  I functioned like a normal human being.  I would bet my savings that a good portion of the other patients that were discharged either went right back to drugs or right back to another hospital (most of them admitted that they would).  I’m not about that life.  I want to function.  I’m fighting my hardest to be normal despite all this bullshit I have to deal with.  How is that not being resilient?

Even in childhood, I managed to adapt quite well despite everything that was going on.  I received excellent grades.  I rarely got into trouble (except the rare instances when I was tremendously bored out of my mind).  I wasn’t a complete social outcast, though I was definitely socially inept.  Perhaps being resilient hurt me in a way, because no one suspects anything bad is going on when a child is acting relatively normal.  Maybe if I did act out, someone would have noticed something was wrong.  Resiliency seems to have been a double-edged sword for me.  While it got me through to adulthood alive, it also quite possibly prolonged the abuse and trauma I experienced for so long.  But I can’t do anything about that now.

I know a lot of people think I am weak for not being able to handle myself all of the time.  My strengths far outweigh my moments of weakness.  Maybe that is my fault for not talking as much about my strengths as I do about my faults.  I believe people can learn more from me if I talk about the things that so many others don’t want to talk about.  No matter what people say, no matter what people think…I am strong.  I am resilient.  I am me.

Involuntarily voluntarily admitted

~ KJ ~ Leave a comment

I’m back.

A few hours ago, I was released from the psychiatric unit of my local hospital.  I had been there since Friday.  I didn’t want to go to the hospital.  In the end, I knew it was the right thing to do.

Friday night, everything just came to a head.  My flashbacks were occurring quite frequently to the point that I was becoming almost paranoid.  Looking back, my thoughts were so irrational.  I genuinely believed that my mother was going to come and hurt me.  I heard her voice in my head and I couldn’t get it out.  I didn’t feel safe.  I jumped at every little noise.  I couldn’t breathe because I had gotten myself in such a panic.  I was switching between wanting to die and wanting to find safety.  I ended up cutting myself more than I even consciously realized.  I taped menstrual pads to myself, grabbed my hoodie and my sneakers and ran out of the house.  I left the house originally planning to take a walk, hoping I would be able to find some relief.  Instead, I found myself panicking even more, constantly looking over my shoulder, running through the streets in the dark of night.  After awhile I decided to walk to the hospital.  I waited in front of the emergency room for a while still hoping the feelings would go away.  But they were still there.  I knew I had no control at that time.  So I went in.

When I first got in the ER, I was panicking. I kept telling the nurse to “please don’t let them (my family) find me, please don’t tell them I’m here.”  When I met with the social worker in crisis, she asked me if I was hiding from anyone because of what I kept saying. I told her the basics, that I left my family because they were not nice people. No one wants to hear that shit anyway.

After a few hours in the hospital, the panic began to subside.  I started to feel safe again.  I wanted to leave, but of course you can’t just do that.  If you don’t admit yourself voluntarily, they will involuntarily commit you.  Then, if you try to sign out of voluntary before you are released, they will involuntarily commit you.  So not much of a choice, is it?  The staff kept trying to tell me I was depressed.  I specifically told them I was not depressed.  It was an issue of anxiety and PTSD.  I know the difference very well.  It always seems to be a fight, though.  I was more upset at the fact that I was now going to be missing my first day of work, and I’d probably be out of a job.  All these steps forward I took and now I’d have to start over.

In the hospital, I contemplated going back home.  Maybe I just wasn’t cut out for this freedom.  I don’t know.  I moved away, yet I still ended up hospitalized.  So maybe it wasn’t the right choice.  Maybe I missed something.  Maybe my mother was right.  Maybe I can’t live without her.  I just want to be normal.  But maybe I have to acknowledge the fact that I will never be normal.

It doesn’t help hat my support system is lacking.  I have no family, and while I know that is for the better, hospital staff see that as concerning.  I tried to reach out to someone on Friday night, only to be shut down.  I couldn’t contact my therapist because she was out of the country.  While my online friends are available, I often think there is a lack of understanding, especially when some of the comments they make tend to piss me off or upset me even more than I was upset to begin with.  I’m not even surprised I ended up in the hospital.  I have no one here.  I’m not even sure the people I have a distance away are supportive for me anymore.  At this point, I only have complete trust in my therapists.  Everyone else is just sort of out there outside of my protective bubble.

Going back to my hospital experience, I can’t tell you how much I dislike going into psychiatric hospitals because you have to answer the same horrible questions so many times, tell all your problems to at least one person on each floor.  It’s frustrating for me because I always struggle with whether or not I should be open about my history.  If I say I have flashbacks, they want to know of what and why.  When they ask about any abuse history, they want to know who, how, and how long.  I never know what reaction I’ll get when I say it was my mother.  I admit, the last couple of times I was hospitalized prior to this, the staff were accepting and appropriately responsive to me.  During this hospitalization, when I revealed that my mother was my abuser, the nurse made a face and asked me “Are you a lesbian?  Is your mother a lesbian?”  What? Hold up.  I just told you that my mother and father both abused me, which means my father was in the picture, which means my mother was not a lesbian.  But even then, what the hell kind of a question is that?  Saying something like that makes me feel like you are insinuating all parties involved are homosexual.  Mother-daughter sexual abuse has nothing…I repeat NOTHING…to do with homosexuality.  This assumption gets me so infuriated.  If I was a male who admitted being abused by a male, would she have asked me if I was gay?  I highly doubt it.  Sexual abuse is rarely about sexuality.  I am not a fucking lesbian.  Fuck.  If it weren’t for the fact that I hadn’t slept in about 30 hours at that point, I probably would have blown up at her.  But I was so physically and mentally exhausted that I just let it go.  It makes me rage just thinking about it, though.  Then again, I can’t blame people for their complete lack of knowledge about MDSA.  I just need to use this experience as more fuel for me to spread awareness.

I have to say, the one (and probably only) positive that came out of this hospitalization experience was seeing the psychiatrist.  This psychiatrist had a brain.  He had a concern.  He actually talked to me for a good 30 minutes, which is something I have never experienced from a psychiatrist before.  He listened to me.  He listened to my concerns.  We went over my whole lengthy medication history.  For the first time, someone is focusing on treating my PTSD.  Not depression.  Everyone always wants to shove anti-depressants down my throat.  In fact, within 10 minutes of arriving on the psych floor, they wanted me to take a dose of Celexa.  I refused.  First of all, been there, done that drug.  Second of all, these people don’t even know me or my history yet, how are they medicating the unknown?  I am glad I stood my ground, and the psychiatrist agreed with me.  I think he liked me.  He told me that I should pursue a career in psychiatry.  When I told him I wanted to be a counselor, he said “you can do both, you can do whatever.  You’re probably smarter than I am.”  This dude just met me.  What?  How does he assess me so fast?  At the end of our session, he said “I would be honored if you would be my patient.  I genuinely enjoy talking to you.  Can I shake your hand?”  It was late at night.  Maybe he needed sleep.  I don’t know.  Everyone else was saying how much of an asshole he was, but he was anything but to me.

Anyway, he prescribed me Prazosin.  It’s actually a blood pressure medication but has been used off-label to treat combat veterans returning from war with PTSD with considerable success.  He said it should help my nightmares and night terrors.  He also prescribed Topamax, which has been used in treatment-resistant PTSD (since I haven’t responded well to anti-psychotics) and hydroxyzine for panic attacks.  So far, so good.  I had no problems in the hospital.  No side effects, except for the hydroxyzine making me extremely tired.  But I’d rather be tired than in a panic.

Overall, the other patients were cool people.  I talked to everyone.  There was one girl who was a little inappropriately attached to me and the other patients were saying she was in love with me.  She may very well have been.  She was constantly sitting next to me and at one point pulled me over to the side to ask me to help her fix her bra.  She also touched me several times despite me telling her please do not touch me.  It irritated the hell out of me.  I try to be nice to everyone but between the MDSA and the nurse’s question about being lesbian, I was just not in the mood to be involved in that shit.  I knew I had to be patient and bite my tongue if I wanted to get out of there.  Acting out would have just gotten me involuntarily committed or punished with a longer stay.

Since I was doing well on the medication and had a therapy appointment already scheduled today, they released me.  I’m glad, because being in that place was not an overall positive experience.  It was very unstructured.  There were very few groups and activities, no outside time, and very little staff.  There were no individual counseling sessions and no meetings with a social worker, which I have always had in my other hospitalizations.  It just seemed very disconnected.  You never really knew what was going on.  If it wasn’t for my roommate getting in contact with my therapist for me, I don’t think the hospital would have even ever contacted her to tell her I was there.  I learned a lot of the patients were “regulars”.  With the lack of care there, I am not surprised.  Many of the patients were just homeless and needed a place to stay.  It’s sad.  The system isn’t working.  It needs to be fixed.

Four weeks

~ KJ ~ 1 Comment

So, it’s been four weeks since my escape.  I’m still alive.  I’m still kicking.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t all over the place emotionally.  These last few days have been trying for me.  I had a lot of feelings about my family resurface after trying so long to keep them suppressed.  There are a lot of unresolved issues I have with people in my family that I just haven’t had the strength to deal with.  I still don’t have the strength now.  I don’t know if I ever will.  For now, my anger and sadness about it come out through my tears.

I have been on edge these past few days, and likely will be into this weekend and coming week.  As this is the four week mark, it is also the time I told my family I would be coming back home.  I haven’t had contact with my family since I left; the few text messages I received from my mother remain unanswered. I was actually relieved that her contact has been minimal.  With that being said, she hasn’t yet had the realization that I am not coming back.  People have warned me to prepare myself for her acting out.  When she realizes that she no longer has any control over me, she is not going to just concede; she is going to try to gain back her control.

While I have taken every precaution I could to make sure I am untraceable, I am still scared of her.  I am still scared she will find me.  It may be irrational, but to me, the fear is real.  The last couple of nights, I have barricaded my bedroom door before I go to sleep because I am scared she will somehow get in the house and try to hurt me.  I haven’t left the house the last few nights because I’m afraid she’ll be there, waiting for me.  I’ve had nightmares.  The other night, I became startled by a fight my roommate was having with someone.  Before I was able to process what was really going on, I began fearing that it was my mother coming for me, and I urinated on myself.  I haven’t done that since I left home.  I felt like a failure.

To add to my already increasing anxiety, I start work tomorrow.  Yes, I got my social security card just in time and was able to finalize the paperwork on Tuesday.  While the job is nothing I haven’t done before, I am anxious about being in a new environment with people I don’t know and who don’t know me.  At my old job, I often had days where I was not mentally present.  Sometimes, I was completely non-responsive, staring into nothingness; other times, I was in a child-like state.  Regardless, my close coworkers knew my situation and covered for me.  Now, I don’t have that.  What if I can’t focus enough to get my work done?  What if I break down?  What if I have a flashback while at work?  No one is going to understand what is happening.  I’m going to end up getting fired.

I really just hope I can get through these next few days unscathed.  I don’t know if I will ever get over the fear of my mother coming back to hurt me.  I can only hope that over time, the fear fades away.  I don’t want to live like this forever.

A need for connection

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

Some days are harder than others.

Some days, I make it through the day without thinking much about home.  Other days, like today, I think about the people I’ve left behind…and it makes me sad.  I feel completely alone here.

While I do keep in contact with my best friend, it’s just not the same.  We talk on the phone once a week and text a few times in between phone calls.  My other friend from work has remained distant; aside from a few texts, we rarely talk.  I am too afraid to reach out anymore than I have.  I don’t want to push people into something they are not comfortable with, considering they work with my mother.  But for a long time, these two people were my only source of meaningful human contact.  We would exchange hugs every day when I got to work, and then again when I left.  I needed that comfort, that affection, that connection because it was something I had never had before.  And now I am back to not having it.  Sometimes I think about dropping everything and getting on a train and going back to see them, even if it’s just for five minutes, even if it’s just for a hug.  But I know I can’t do that.  I can’t go back.  And that hurts.

Last week, I became so lonely that I started talking to random strangers on the internet.  One of the conversations seemed genuine so I decided to meet him.  I just wanted to talk to someone face-to-face.  It wound up being a horrible experience and I ended up at a place I didn’t know at three o’clock in the morning with a guy who refused to take me home unless I gave him what he wanted.  Once I managed to get home, I walked in the door and immediately broke down crying.  I can’t blame anybody but myself.  I am ashamed that I even thought anything good would have come out of that.

In therapy today, I talked a lot about my strained relationships with my two friends.  Then I disclosed what had happened a few days earlier with the random internet stranger.  When she asked why I did it, I told her I needed to connect with someone.  I needed to connect face-to-face, not over text or phone conversation.  It’s just not the same.  At that point, I didn’t care who it was; I needed it that bad.  At the end of our session, my therapist asked if she could give me a hug.  I tried so hard to hold back my tears.  I didn’t want her to let go.  For that minute, I felt comfortable.  I needed it.  She knew I needed it, too.

I’ve spent the last few hours crying to myself.  I feel like I am grieving the loss of so many relationships; the relationships with my family (which weren’t good anyway) and the relationships with my friends (which are slowly fading away).  As much as I try to pretend like I don’t need people, I really do.  I wish I didn’t have to abandon everything and everyone I knew.  It’s not fair.  While I may be safe, I am so incredibly alone.

Giving crazy a name

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

I’m a very analytical person.  I like when things have names and definitions and concepts I can understand.  One of the reasons I went into psychology was so I could put a name on my mother’s type of crazy.  I wanted to know why.  I wanted to know what exactly was wrong with her.  There has to be something.  People don’t just act like that for no reason.  I needed an explanation.

I have since realized that my mother’s crazy is not diagnosable, or should I say, not limited to a single diagnosis.  My mother exhibits the signs of narcissistic, histrionic, and borderline personality disorders.  She’s also paranoid and likely has a mood disorder of some sort.  But you know what?  Knowing that doesn’t make me feel any better.  Having a mental illness doesn’t excuse you from being an abuser.  Hell, it doesn’t even excuse you from being asshole (that’s you, Dad).  In my early 20s, I struggled a lot with placing blame.  I so badly wanted to hate my mother for what she did, but then part of me thought, “what if she’s mentally ill?”  I was just trying to find an excuse for all the shit she did and was still doing.  Eventually, after several years, I realized all of that didn’t matter.  My mother did what she did because of who she is as a person, not because of some illness.  She had a choice.

Despite not caring about my mother’s diagnosis, I still so badly want to know what’s wrong with me.  Will it make a difference?  I don’t know.  I would like to think that it would.  A diagnosis provides a sense of direction, a method of treatment, an explanation of symptoms.  I have yet to have that.  It’s quite possible that my desire for a diagnosis, a name for my crazy, has been strengthened by my years of experience with different diagnoses.  I never really had a concrete answer.

My first diagnosis was bipolar II at the age of 15.  My first therapist worked with a psychiatrist who officially diagnosed me and started me on a mood stabilizer.  I didn’t really understand the diagnosis, even more so now that I am older.  My mood changes were nothing more than what is typically experienced by a teenager.  My issues were much deeper than that.  After more therapy, my diagnosis was changed to bipolar I with psychotic features.  My therapist believed there were times in which I was out of touch with reality; I did things I didn’t remember doing and acted like a different person, which she attributed to psychosis.  I now believe that those instances were actually times I had dissociated, not psychotic episodes.  Back then, I had no idea what dissociation was, and apparently neither did my therapist.

When I returned to therapy a few years later, my therapist diagnosed me with social anxiety.  I think he mistook my fear of talking with him (and others) as social anxiety when the real reason was because I was conditioned not to speak by my mother.  I don’t blame him for that bad diagnosis; you can’t diagnosis someone accurately if you don’t get the full picture.

Many years later, when I scheduled an appointment to see my primary care physician, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety.  Generally, I don’t condone primary care physicians diagnosing psychological disorders because their training is just not adequate in most cases.  But I was desperate at the time and could not manage to see a psychiatrist or psychologist, so I did the only thing I could.  I wasn’t looking for a diagnosis; I was just looking for relief.

After my first hospitalization, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression with suicidal ideation.  The PTSD diagnosis made sense, as I had experienced some debilitating flashbacks as well as other common symptoms (irritability, trouble sleeping, and hypervigilence).  The depression diagnosis I had no strong feelings about; it just seemed like something they labelled on most people.  My diagnoses were relatively similar after  my second hospitalization (which I would hope so, seeing as though it was less than two weeks later).  The only difference was that they added “chronic” to my depression diagnosis.

When I started mandated therapy shortly after my second hospitalization, my therapist was required to make a diagnosis to report to the insurance company.  After two hours of intake and two subsequent one-hour sessions, she completely ignored the PTSD diagnosis and any related anxiety and diagnosed me with depression secondary to asthma.  This diagnosis was laughable.  I was not depressed because of my asthma.  Asthma was the least of my problems.  And it wasn’t like she was unaware of my history.  She was sent all of my information from the hospital.  She was clueless.  So clueless.  She even had the nerve to tell me she didn’t think I had anxiety at all.  Anxiety was probably the only thing I was sure I had in some form or another.  She was such an idiot.

Around the same time, my PCP diagnosed me with ADHD.  I was having trouble keeping attention, focusing on anything…hell, sitting still was difficult.  I always had problems, but they seemed to be magnified in those last few months.  It was never an issue before because I managed to function quite well academically as a child.  It could have very well been all of the medications I was on that made it worse, or even just my ever-increasing stress levels.  Who really knows.

When I was hospitalized for a third time in February, the ADHD diagnosis was dropped by the psychiatric nurse.  Instead, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, chronic depression, and borderline personality disorder.  The BPD diagnosis was shocking to me.  I had extensive knowledge about the disorder from my psychology studies, and didn’t fit most of the criteria for diagnosis.  I believe they made the diagnosis based on my self-injury. Many professionals automatically associate self-injury with BPD, even though it is also present in order disorders.  I didn’t want that label on me.  I also knew, through my studies, that many professionals did not want to work with someone with BPD.  When I told my therapist about the diagnosis, she seemed to agree with my disapproval of it.  It was comforting to at least know that someone was on my side and I wasn’t completely unaware of my own mental state.

As of right now, I don’t have a diagnosis.  I have chosen to disregard all of my previous diagnoses because I don’t feel confident in any of the people who diagnosed me.  I hope that eventually, in my current therapy work, I can be diagnosed with something…anything.  At least this time, my therapist is taking her time and learning as much as she can about me and my history.  I trust in her knowledge and experience more than anyone else.  I just want to know that I’m not completely crazy.  I need a name for what I’m experiencing.  I need an explanation.

Glorifying parents

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

I was checking some random news stories on my Facebook this morning out of boredom.  I came across the story of an 18 year-old who witnessed a woman in danger of being run over on a highway and came to her rescue.  I thought to myself “What a great man, with courage and bravery.  He made the right choice.”  Then I read through the comments on the news story and came across multiple people congratulating the man’s parents on doing a great job raising him.  What?  What did this man’s parents do?  They weren’t in the car.  He didn’t call them and ask what he should do.  This man made his own decision.  So why are we thanking his parents and not thanking him?

By that same logic, do we blame the parents when someone does something absolutely unthinkable?  Not that I have seen.  No one blamed the parents of Adam Lanza when he shot up an elementary school and killed so many innocent people.  No one blames the parents of murderers or rapists.  I don’t blame my mother’s parents for the traumatic abuse she inflicted upon me.  She made that decision. Just like the 18 year-old man in the story above made his decision.  No one else did that for them.

Unfortunately this is a common occurrence.  I’ve had it happen to me personally more times than I can count.  Whenever I won academic awards in school, people would tell my parents they had done a great job parenting.  Excuse me?  I won the award.  Not my parents.  Neither of them did anything.  They didn’t help me with my homework.  They didn’t encourage me to study or do better.  I chose to do that on my own because I needed something positive to hold on to.  When teachers told my parents how kind and driven to help others I was, they always included “you’re doing a great job as parents.”  No.  No they weren’t.  If these people only knew the horrors I was living through.

I was parenting myself.  I had to parent myself.  The only good thing my parents ever did for me was showing me everything NOT to do.  My mother never wanted me to succeed; I wanted that for myself.  My mother and father never showed me how to be caring and compassionate; that came from never wanting others to feel the same pain and despair I had felt all of my life.

I can’t tell you how I ended up becoming the person that I am, considering what I came from.  What I can tell you is that some of the most kind, compassionate, and exceptional people I have ever met have had the shittiest upbringings.  We raised ourselves to be everything our parents were not.  We raised ourselves because that’s what we had to do to survive.

Stop assuming that everything a person is, is because of their parents.  It is so invalidating to do something good, only to have someone else be recognized for it.  You wouldn’t want that for yourself, so don’t do it to others.

My love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with medication

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, but never quite got around to it.

Anyone who has experienced some type of psychological distress or mental illness has likely also experienced some type of medication to treat it.  Even with psychotherapy, most doctors and psychiatrists push medications to help ease the symptoms and improve functioning.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.  It’s always a gamble, more so than with physical conditions, because the brain isn’t always so straightforward.  Fourteen years of experience, lots of research, and an education in psychology has allowed me to increase my knowledge about psychotropic medications.  I almost wish I had the knowledge before taking some of these medications, but what’s done is done.

I started out, at the ripe young age of 15, on a twice daily prescription of Depakote.  Since I couldn’t swallow pills at that age, I had to take the liquid form – which came in a container that resembled a large bottle of peroxide.  The taste was not pleasant.  The side effects were annoying; I would get sunburn just from sitting in the car.  I also developed cystic ovaries that were most likely a direct side effect from the medication.  More importantly, Depakote didn’t do shit for me psychologically.  But why would it?  I didn’t have Bipolar Disorder.  It was a waste of money, a waste of time, and a waste of my ovaries.

I went quite a few years sans medication.  That wasn’t by my choice, really.  I wasn’t allowed to go to the doctor.  I just dealt with everything on my own, as usual.  I managed to stay alive, so I guess I can’t complain.  Maybe I should have kept with that method, because starting back on a path of medications turned out to be a horrible experience.

In October 2014, I managed to sneak to the doctor’s office to ask about medication.  I had been communicating with a therapist online who suggested that it was worth looking into.  I was at a point where I was becoming increasingly unable to deal with shit on my own.  I was prescribed 50mg of Zoloft and 0.25 of Xanax.  After a week, I was having trouble sleeping, so they added on Ambien.  After two more weeks, I still wasn’t feeling any better, so they increased my Zoloft to 50 mg twice a day and Xanax three times a day.  Within a week or two, I was severely suicidal.  I felt worse than I did the month before when I came to the doctor’s with nothing.  I just wanted them to try a different medication.  I knew there were numerous options.  Instead, I ended up hospitalized.

During the first hospitalization, I was taken off Zoloft and put on Paxil.  No change.  After a few days, I was taken off Paxil and put on Prozac.  Prozac made me want to jump out of my own skin.  I was constantly on edge, irritated, and anxious.  I couldn’t stop shaking during one of the group sessions, so the therapist called the psychiatrist in to reassess.  The Prozac was immediately discontinued and I was started on 10mg of trifluoperazine.  Yea, I never heard of it, either.  Once I got out of the hospital, I was able to research it and found out is an old-school anti-psychotic prescribed for schizophrenia.  It was definitely not a common drug – I had to go to several pharmacies before I found one that even had the medication in stock.  While it didn’t make me worse like all of the antidepressants I had taken before, it didn’t really make me better.  There were some days where it left me feeling weird overall – like it hurt to be in my own body, physically and mentally.  I had to keep moving because I felt that if I had stopped, my body would become rigid and it made my pain worse.  After a week of taking it outside of the hospital, I stopped.  The weird sensations were just too much for me.

During my second hospitalization, my medications were changed again.  I was put on Celexa and Ativan.  The Ativan worked better than Xanax ever did, but the Celexa was the same as any other anti-depressant I had been on.  I was switched to Remeron, which I had never heard of before.  It’s a less popular anti-depressant, not an SSRI but a tetracyclic.  I started back on the trifluoperazine.  By this time, I was just tired of being in the hospital. I was also dealing with malnourishment and was put on a load of supplements, and was sort of in a “fuck it all” mindset.  I had been sleeping a lot, but I had attributed it to the malnourishment.  Weeks later, my sleeping had only gotten worse.  I would wake up to take a shower and would crawl right back into bed afterwards because I was so exhausted.  When I was working, I would come home and go right back to sleep.  On the weekends when I had off from work, I would sleep 14-15 hours straight; even when I was awake, I was still too tired to do much of anything.  I was miserable.  To make matters worse, I started losing my vision; it was a side effect from the trifluoperazine.  Once I started having involuntary facial twitches, which I recognized as the beginning of tardive dyskinesia, I knew I had to stop taking the trifluoperazine for good.

Some time between my December hospitalization and my last hospitalization in February, my primary care doctor prescribed me Adderall for ADHD.  I always had problems with keeping focus and attention, but I managed all those years just fine.  It did get to a point where it was becoming overwhelming.  I was barely able to get my school work done and I was having problems at work.  I started out with 10mg and it worked.  I was able to get shit done.  My mind was clear.  I could focus for once.  My doctor gradually increased the dose to 30mg twice a day.  I felt so much better overall, not just attention-wise, but anxiety-wise as well.

Going back to that horrible drug Remeron, I couldn’t get a refill because county-run facilities are shit and the psychiatrist cancelled my appointments more than four times.  I couldn’t even wean myself off and I became increasingly suicidal again.  It’s no surprise I ended up in the hospital in February.  In the hospital, they took me off of all my medications, including the Adderall, which was probably the only redeeming medication I was taking.  The nurse practitioner did not think the Adderall was helping me; I found it somewhat amusing that this was the same facility that placed me on so many medications previously that did shit as far as making me better.

This time, I was prescribed 150mg of Zoloft and Seroquel.  Within an hour of taking the Zoloft, I lost consciousness.  I woke up on a hospital bed with no idea of what had happened.  I was monitored for the next 12 hours and got to stay in bed.  It was marked in my record that I was reactive to Zoloft and should not be prescribed it ever again.  They waited a day and then started me on Lexapro.  A few days later they changed the Seroquel to Risperdal because I guess I hadn’t had much benefit from it.  I was also put on Klonopin for anxiety.  I had a paper due soon, so I told the hospital staff the medication was working so I could get the hell home.  I wasn’t any worse, maybe slightly better, but still not stable.

I didn’t like the way Klonopin made me feel, so I switched back to taking Ativan as needed.  After a month or so, the psychiatrist doubled my Lexapro dose because I was (like clockwork) getting worse, added trazadone and increased my Ativan.  I was taking so many medications that I carried around a purse just so I would remember to take them all.

I tried to keep up with taking my medications…I really did.  I know that people go off of their medications all the time and end up in a worse position.  In my heart, I believed it was too much.  I got tired of taking multiple medications every hour of my life and not really seeing a result.  I made the decision in May to wean myself off of all of my medications, including my beloved Adderall (which was re-prescribed by my PCP).  I didn’t tell anyone because I knew I would get backlash from it.  I would not have done it if I wasn’t educated and knew what I was dealing with.  I also had enough sense to know if something was going wrong.  I never suffered any withdrawals.  While I didn’t get any better, more importantly, I didn’t get any worse. 

It’s been more than two months now and I’m still functioning.  I do occasionally take an Ativan when I feel my anxiety getting bad (who would blame me, especially these last several weeks).  I did notice that my focus and attention went to shit, but I was coping.  Then it got bad.  I was so behind in my thesis work and got to a point of desperation.  Luckily, I saved all of the medication I stopped taking.  I took an Adderall on Tuesday night and finished 13 pages of research by Wednesday morning. My mind was clear, my anxiety was gone.  I even decided to do something I never do and went to the beach by myself.  It was a good feeling.  I missed the Adderall.  I probably shouldn’t have taken a full dose, though, as I ended up staying awake for over 40 hours straight.  It was nice feeling somewhat normal for those 40 hours.

I’m not even sure if I’ve mentioned all of the medications I’ve been on.  All I can tell you is it’s been too many.  I probably function better now that I’m not on a bunch of medications.  My therapist was actually supportive of my decision when I told her what I had done.  Now, I am working on finding a new doctor that my therapist can work with to make sure I’m not sent down that slippery slope of over-medication again.

Changes

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

After my therapy session and subsequent blogging Tuesday night, I decided to go ahead and make some changes for myself.  For the first time ever, I have control of who I am and who I want to be.

I wanted to change my hair color.  I could have just bought a box of hair dye from the drug store, but I wanted to do something different.  I went to a salon, for the first time ever.  I got 10 or so inches cut off and layered.  I told the stylist the color I wanted and she immediately made me feel like it was a bad decision.  She said it wouldn’t look right, and that I’d regret it.  Usually in circumstances in which people disagree with me, I give in to their wants without a fight.  But this time, I stood up for myself.  I told her I knew what I wanted, and eventually, she gave in.  I went from one side of the color spectrum to the other; the change was drastic…and I love it.  I received a lot of compliments on it, which made me feel even better about my decision.  The best part?  My mother can’t copy me.  She has no idea what I look like.  It’s freeing in a way that I can’t explain.

I also did some shopping for myself.  I bought new glasses, some jewelry, and a nice shirt.  I probably would have gotten a tattoo as well if I knew where there was a tattoo shop around here.  I should think that through a little more, anyway.  I don’t want to turn into one of those out-of-control youngsters who goes crazy once they get a taste of freedom.  I’m too old for that now.

As if that wasn’t enough for one day, I decided to go to the beach…by myself.  I was just going to sit on the far end away from the water and absorb the sun, but by the time I got there it was windy and there was not much sun.  I didn’t want my efforts to get to the beach to go to waste, so I took a chance and went into the ocean.  This was big for me.  I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I tried to drown myself in the ocean.  I’ve managed to avoid anything further than dipping my toes in the water for that reason.  I didn’t want a flashback.  I didn’t want to go back to that place.  And since I was alone, I was taking a chance that if I went back to that place, I’d have no one to pull me back to reality.  But I did it.  I went in.  At one point, the waves knocked me right down on my ass and I just sat there for a while as the water pushed and pulled me back and forth.  But I got through it.

Maybe it was the physical changes I had made that put me in a different place.  Maybe it was the Adderall I had taken the night before so I could get my paper done.  Who knows.  I feel like a different person.  Even small changes can mean so much to a person.

I am not my mother.

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

I am not my mother.

It is such a simple sentence, yet it is an extremely difficult concept for me to embrace.

I try to avoid thinking about it as much as possible.  But when I was at a group-therapy workshop this past Sunday, I participated in a body image project that brought up a lot of those feelings.  It took everything in me not to just color over my body outline and stab the paper.  I’ve always had difficulty connecting to my body.  I’ve always had difficulty loving my body because I feel like it’s her body.

I’ve mentioned before how many people tell me I look so much like my mother.  That makes it so much harder to separate myself from her.  Aside from her being a couple of inches shorter, she has the same skin color, eye color, and stature as me.  To make matters worse, my mother consistently went out of her way to make herself look even more like me.  I believe she did it because she knew it bothered me.  It was just another way to manipulate me.

If I dyed my hair, she dyed her hair the same color.  If I got a haircut, she got a haircut, too.  She’d buy the same underwear as me.  She would even take my clothes without my permission and wear them.  I remember getting picked up from work one day last year and she was in the back of the car, wearing a familiar outfit.  It was the outfit I got for Christmas from one of my best work friends.  I didn’t even get to wear it.  When I asked her why she took it, she said it looked better on her anyway.  It didn’t even fit her.

I avoid looking in the mirror because I constantly see her, both in body and in face.  I never see myself.  If I look like her, that must mean that I am like her in every way.  It is nauseating to me.  I hate my body because it’s her body.  I hate my face because it’s her face.  I don’t know if I can get past that.  I’ve never been able to feel like anything is my own, and that includes my body.

During my therapy session today, my therapist asked me about the body image project.  I told her about my difficulty in seeing myself as separate from my mother, and how that makes it difficult for me not to hate my body because of how much I hate her.  My therapist tried to get me to realize that I was not my mother, especially on a psychological level.  Our personalities are very different.  I am also more intelligent than my mother – and that was something that she hated about me and constantly made me feel bad about.

Despite the differences, I still have a hard time acknowledging that I am not my mother.  It’s hard when you grow up in a society that judges you on your looks before anything else.  Part of me wants to make a drastic change, because now she won’t be able to copy me.  Maybe I’ll dye my hair dark.  Maybe I’ll get a new pair of glasses.  I need something to help me feel different, because knowing it isn’t enough for me.