I am a hypocrite. I started this blog with two intentions in mind: 1. to let people into my world of mental illness. To let people see the day-to-day life of someone living with a mental illness and experience the uncomfortable. 2. To be a small part of eliminating the stigma that comes with mental illness. To talk about it, as it is not talked about. To make people realize that, as you wouldn't balk at the symptoms of someone with any other disease, a person with a mental illness should be able to be honest about their symptoms without people thinking it's fake, or for attention or that they could really just get better if they wanted to.
So why am I a hypocrite? Well the last time I posted was in January of 2015. The last time I posted about mental illness was even before that. I also only seem to post during times in which I am experiencing severe symptoms. It's not that I think you all want to hear about every aspect of every day of my life, especially when nothing extraordinary has happened. But it might be good for me to prove that people with mental illness can live very normal lives. It's been a pretty good year, which is why my last post was so long ago. People need to see that it is possible to lead a perfectly normal life, even though there are times you're not sure you want that life to continue.
As you may have guessed, this has not been a great day for me. It actually hasn't been a great month. If you've read any of my other posts, you know that winter is terrible for me. If there wasn't an Elijah and Jon hadn't gotten sick, we would have moved south long ago. Winter seems to go beyond any medication I'm on. This winter, thankfully, has been fairly mild. I've only had a couple of really bad days, and just a couple of weeks in which "daily life" was difficult for me.
One of those really bad days was today, and here is where I am really a hypocrite. I spent the day covering up how I was feeling. I knew when I woke up today that it wasn't a good day. But Jon and Elijah were introduced as members of the church today, so it was important to be there. There wasn't a lot of talking involved on my part, so I could handle that. When we got home, I went to my room and laid in bed until I had choir rehearsal. I considered not going to choir, but I knew I needed to go. On the way there, I tried to think of lies about why I was upset, just in case I suddenly burst into tears or just couldn't muster a smile for someone. I thought of how best to put on a happy face. Basically, I was planning about how to lie to people because I couldn't possibly tell them how I actually was, and I certainly didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable. So I'm sorry if you're reading this and I lied to you tonight and told you I was fine, or all right, or something of the sort. I'm sorry if you bought my "happy face". I even laughed at times. But I'm not fine. I'm not all right. I'm not happy. I had a bad day. I fell apart. I struggled with symptoms of a disease that I have lived with for 25 years and will live with the rest of my life. I was numb, I was sad, I was angry, I was hopeless, not all at once all the time, but all within 12 hours. But I made it. It's the end of the day, and I will wake up tomorrow and get through that as well, and hopefully feel better than I did today. So no, I'm not all right. I'm not ok. I'm not happy...but I will be.
Coincidentally, I heard this song for the first time tonight. While it was written for sexual assault victims, and I wish to take nothing away from that, I think we all feel like this sometimes. And tonight this resonated with me.
Til It Happens to You
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Being comfortable with the uncomfortable
I've had a few things on my mind, so please excuse me if I ramble. To start off, I wanted to reiterate my reason for this blog - or at least one of the reasons. I want to help erase the negative stigma associated with mental illness. Any kind of mental illness, but because my experience is with depression and anxiety, that is where most of my subject matter lies. The biggest way I know to do this is to make the very personal, public.
If this is your first time reading my blog, I have dealt with depression for over 23 years. I almost typed "suffered from depression", but I am not a victim. I won't allow this to define me. It's part of me, but it's not me. I have days where I am sad, I have days where I am happy, I have days in which I can't get out of bed for lack of energy due to my depression and yes, I have days that I want to die. Most of the time, I say that I don't want to exist. I use these terms because the fact is, I don't want to die, I just don't want to be a part of the world outside my bedroom. But, yes, I also have days where I feel that I want to end my life. The days are not often and I never act on them, but they are there. Is this normal? NO!! But it is there and it is real and I will not be ashamed of it. Are you uncomfortable? Well get over it, because it's real. It's part of many people's lives and it's not going to get better if you ignore it because it makes you uncomfortable. (read my previous post for a little more in this realm)
Ok, so continuing in the vein of making the personal public, a friend recently asked me a question. Well let me rephrase that. She started to ask a question, stopped herself, and then would only ask it when I dragged it out of her. She prefaced the question with, "Remember, I opened my mouth before I thought about what I was asking." Her question? Do you think about what it might be like if Jon dies? Yes, yes I do. This is another area in which people are afraid to ask questions, or talk or spend any amount of time. My husband has cancer. The first two days after he was diagnosed I spent feeling as if he were already dead. Our lives changed forever. They will never be the same, regardless of how long Jon lives, or how long I live for that matter.
Because I try not to think about it, or don't have time, or really just can't for my own mental health, I don't think about it a lot. But I have thought about where we would live, how I would be a single mom, what his funeral would be like, among many other things. I hate every minute of thinking about losing the person I love most in this world, but there is part of me that has to. I have to be prepared for that if it happens. So chalk that up to one more thing that I am not unwilling to talk about.
At the same time that there are horrible things that come with a cancer diagnosis (chemo, medical bills, the aforementioned sad thoughts), cancer has actually done a lot for our family in a good way. Jon and I are closer and talk more than we ever have. We have both gotten reacquainted with God and we have started going to church again. We are so much more aware of every moment we get to spend together and how precious they all are. Despite the cliche sound of it, we are living fuller lives now. We're not perfect, and yes there's always more we can do, but as of now, cancer has gotten us out of the complacent lives we were living.
This past Saturday, we went to the funeral of a good friend's brother. One of the things Adam (our friend) said after his brother died was for everyone to grab those they love because life can change in a heartbeat. This is the same lesson we learned in April, and one that broke our hearts to see others we care about learn. The funeral was one of the most touching I have been to and I haven't been that affected by someone's death since Henry and Natalie died. I didn't know Nick, I had only met him once, but my heart broke for his family This is also a family that has gone out of their way to make us feel supported and loved since Jon's diagnosis. So I think a big part of my emotional reaction was not wanting people I care about to have the "our lives will never be the same" experience.
That night, after the funeral, Jon and I were lying in bed and he said "That could have been my funeral today." (Nick and Jon were the same age) I told him I thought the same thing. We then, very calmly, proceeded to talk about his wishes for his funeral. There weren't any tears, nothing sad, just a practical conversation. For those of you that saw the video I made, this is the strength I talked about that could only come from God.
I can only credit God with any strength I have had in dealing with Jon's diagnosis, as well as my depression. There is something he has planned for me, I just have yet to figure out what it is. Yet again, I am finding myself without direction in terms of my career. My teaching credentials have been rendered useless by forces beyond my control, and I am left to wonder, again, what I want to be when I grow up. I feel like I have a million puzzle pieces in front of me, but have no idea what the picture is supposed to look like. It's not even really what I want to be, but what I'm supposed to be. It's on the tip of my brain and hopefully I'll figure it out soon. But I know it has to be there, because I'm still here.
If this is your first time reading my blog, I have dealt with depression for over 23 years. I almost typed "suffered from depression", but I am not a victim. I won't allow this to define me. It's part of me, but it's not me. I have days where I am sad, I have days where I am happy, I have days in which I can't get out of bed for lack of energy due to my depression and yes, I have days that I want to die. Most of the time, I say that I don't want to exist. I use these terms because the fact is, I don't want to die, I just don't want to be a part of the world outside my bedroom. But, yes, I also have days where I feel that I want to end my life. The days are not often and I never act on them, but they are there. Is this normal? NO!! But it is there and it is real and I will not be ashamed of it. Are you uncomfortable? Well get over it, because it's real. It's part of many people's lives and it's not going to get better if you ignore it because it makes you uncomfortable. (read my previous post for a little more in this realm)
Ok, so continuing in the vein of making the personal public, a friend recently asked me a question. Well let me rephrase that. She started to ask a question, stopped herself, and then would only ask it when I dragged it out of her. She prefaced the question with, "Remember, I opened my mouth before I thought about what I was asking." Her question? Do you think about what it might be like if Jon dies? Yes, yes I do. This is another area in which people are afraid to ask questions, or talk or spend any amount of time. My husband has cancer. The first two days after he was diagnosed I spent feeling as if he were already dead. Our lives changed forever. They will never be the same, regardless of how long Jon lives, or how long I live for that matter.
Because I try not to think about it, or don't have time, or really just can't for my own mental health, I don't think about it a lot. But I have thought about where we would live, how I would be a single mom, what his funeral would be like, among many other things. I hate every minute of thinking about losing the person I love most in this world, but there is part of me that has to. I have to be prepared for that if it happens. So chalk that up to one more thing that I am not unwilling to talk about.
At the same time that there are horrible things that come with a cancer diagnosis (chemo, medical bills, the aforementioned sad thoughts), cancer has actually done a lot for our family in a good way. Jon and I are closer and talk more than we ever have. We have both gotten reacquainted with God and we have started going to church again. We are so much more aware of every moment we get to spend together and how precious they all are. Despite the cliche sound of it, we are living fuller lives now. We're not perfect, and yes there's always more we can do, but as of now, cancer has gotten us out of the complacent lives we were living.
This past Saturday, we went to the funeral of a good friend's brother. One of the things Adam (our friend) said after his brother died was for everyone to grab those they love because life can change in a heartbeat. This is the same lesson we learned in April, and one that broke our hearts to see others we care about learn. The funeral was one of the most touching I have been to and I haven't been that affected by someone's death since Henry and Natalie died. I didn't know Nick, I had only met him once, but my heart broke for his family This is also a family that has gone out of their way to make us feel supported and loved since Jon's diagnosis. So I think a big part of my emotional reaction was not wanting people I care about to have the "our lives will never be the same" experience.
That night, after the funeral, Jon and I were lying in bed and he said "That could have been my funeral today." (Nick and Jon were the same age) I told him I thought the same thing. We then, very calmly, proceeded to talk about his wishes for his funeral. There weren't any tears, nothing sad, just a practical conversation. For those of you that saw the video I made, this is the strength I talked about that could only come from God.
I can only credit God with any strength I have had in dealing with Jon's diagnosis, as well as my depression. There is something he has planned for me, I just have yet to figure out what it is. Yet again, I am finding myself without direction in terms of my career. My teaching credentials have been rendered useless by forces beyond my control, and I am left to wonder, again, what I want to be when I grow up. I feel like I have a million puzzle pieces in front of me, but have no idea what the picture is supposed to look like. It's not even really what I want to be, but what I'm supposed to be. It's on the tip of my brain and hopefully I'll figure it out soon. But I know it has to be there, because I'm still here.
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