10:00 p.m. - 10/22/02
they can't hurt you now// can't hurt you now// can't hurt you now-oh-ow-oh-ow
I had a really hellish day. Last night, I made these plans; I was going to write a card to Silje, collage a little, do my psych reading guides, generally veg. I didn't get to any of it, but maybe tomorrow can be what I intended for today. Maybe tomorrow my energy will stay above zombie level, and the fog around me will be a bit more permeable. I wanted to cut again today, for the depression this time, to ease the depression, and I started to realize; it's those urges that are the hardest. I've been able to keep from giving in all week, no matter how difficult the shame became; I've kept that up for months, actually, but it was the anxiety that tipped me over the edge last Sunday and the depression that pushed me toward it again today. I didn't go through with it this time, but I started visualizing it, which is a close step. I started to wonder if it's really so bad, which is closer. Instead, I did some quiet reaching out, the withdrawn version of asking for support, and by the virtue of the act more even than response, managed to lift the clouds a bit. I did some stupid things. Misguided, I guess, or...uncautious. It seems insane to call myself uncautious, as I'm the girl constantly so on edge about things she's likely never to act in *any* direction. Still, I feel that I'm fairly capable of dealing with my emotions and keeping them from overwhelming me behaviorally. I might still struggle with them to a great extent, but I can break them down - "partition" them, as the doctor says- and keep them from pushing me toward relapse. What I can't seem to deal with are the mood disorders: the depression, the anxiety, and so forth. It's gotten a lot better because my meds are helpful and in dealing with the emotions I keep the disorders from surfacing so fully and so often, but I still don't have control. I still sat and watched a nearly four-hour miniseries about kidnapping and abuse that will probably give me nightmares, and at the very least has left me twitching and afraid to go to bed. At the very least left me shut down to the point I doubt I could have identified my own mouth as I was speaking. I don't know why I do these things. I don't know why I let myself be triggered so deeply. My head may want to believe that the past does not affect me, but my body isn't giving into those claims no matter what pressure I put on it. The tightnesses, the small jumps of muscles at words, at themes, expressions; I can't pretend it's all coincidental. And I hate it; I hate all of this. I don't deserve to be this scared all the time. And if I'm this scared all the time, how can I believe the future will bring any change?
He said it must make the pain worse, to believe this is all global. To not simply feel the pain I'm in right now, but to believe this is how it is and how it will continue to be. But every day I wake up without RED, I have to be aware that despite all the wonderful things they are, they aren't that place I always hoped I'd find. They may have been, last year, before, but now they're not, and I feel like if they can't withstand, what can? Forget withstanding, what *prospects* do I have?
I want to believe that people could/would/will care for me, and I want to take care of myself, not simply in my behavior, but emotionally as well. I've been feeling this horrible guilt (again) lately, mostly based on not having a right to my feelings, and that's so terribly close to shame. I don't want to stay up nights thinking about whether bleach is best spent on my skin or down my thorat. That's a horrible thought to have in your own head. That's a terrible, terrible idea that none of us should have to deal with ever. So what do I do? I walk around the house thinking, for the first time in months, how Katia told me I should get a kitty, and wouldn't that be absolutely marvelous, to have a little cat or pup to crawl into my lap or jump against my leg? sometimes, especially when depression fogs everything over, when it's night and no one's home but me, the house feels so dead. it would just be really lovely to have a living someone who could look at me with eyes-that-really-see and remind me we're alive.
I tried this one with my parents, and it never took. I'm also terribly allergic to aminals (spelling intentional), and I'm on so many meds as is, a Claritin is difficult to justify. I just feel so alone so much of the time, and it has nothing to do with my actual support level; it's all about my past and my moment in-the-moment. I want someone who can curl into me, who responds to my touch and my mood. I guess I want a family, and maybe that isn't a fair need to place on one poor cat. Then again, maybe a kitty would like a family, too.
This is erroneous daydreaming; there's no hope in it, but I can't stop wishing. I hope everything isn't like that. I hope a portion of my fantasies can be realized in the practical world.
I can't shake this headache. If it isn't the flue, it's a migraine. If it isn't a migraine, it's insomnia. If it isn't insomnia, it's stress, and if it isn't stress, it's tears. There seems to always be some sort of pain ravaging my head, and tonight it's so intense, it's making it hard to type. It's like all the pain of my depression has temporarily relocated to my frontal lobe. (Yes, lobe.) It's a nice relief for the rest of me, but I can barely hold open my eyes.
Sufficeth to say, then- for now- that the appointment this morning despite being horrible, was the best moment in the day. And it wasn't horrible; there are just horrible feelings to be expressed or not expressed that make it seem that way. I kept drifting away to places that aren't places, drifting behind walls that do nothing but make the world I'm *in* seem less real. I tried to look at the room, to keep myself grounded, but I couldn't find it, and I doubt I caught his chin, let alone his eyes, the entire time. We still talked. We talked about what happened with Laura, how it sucks and I learn and go on. We talked about how I deal with application stress and made a goal in that regard, which he suggested I reward myself for meeting, and I only just now realized that the reward I'd want (couldn't realize any) would be the right to one day where I don't have to do anything. I like those days, so that will be good. It makes me a little nervous, but using another of his recommended coping methods, I can say that I don't have to do anything that day, so I can *elect* to spend the time on schoolwork, for instance, if that feels right in the moment, but I have no "musts" "supposeds" or "shoulds." Good.
We talked about college because when he asked for my top two anxieties that was the second one. We went in depth, and then finally I asked, why he was skipping number one, so he asked me to reiterate it because I guess I didn't communicate it the first time. My prime anxiety right now is basically the idea that the pain I'm facing is pain that has always been here and that this means it will continue to always be there, that I can do nothing to stop or minimize the pain that hurts so so so so so so much. He asked what of that pain was prominent; I told him the alone-feelings, the isolation, the idea that I can never have anything different. And he talked about the globalization idea I mentioned earlier and told me my isolation worries him, too...not because he thinks it's what I'm meant to experience in the future but because it's so painful now. He said there were parts of me that would endear me to people and that I have skills that would be wonderful in relationships, with some practice, but running down the list of them with me would probably only seem to confirm how little he understands my perspective. It's not like I wouldn't have liked to hear them, but I know he's right. Cheap affirmation would probably hurt a lot more than it would help. Knowing he understands, that honestly, he knows- for whatever reason- what it's like to think the way I do about myself, means more than "you are good because" ever could.
But then, "you are good because" would not be all bad. He said it's ok to want your mentors to like you. I feel a little ashamed, but I guess he's a mentor of mine, in many ways. He's the closest thing I have to a real-time relationship at the moment, and that has to mean something. He's like the highlights of the entire self-help section, past and present, with a little bit of philosophy and bad television thrown in...He just helps in whatever way he can.
We talked about approach-avoidance conflict, too, which he said is when the pain of being afraid to both do something and not to do it is so severe it's actually worse than what it would be like to choose a course and go with it. My ambivalance about everything, basically, and how it keeps me afraid. To help with this, I can "rehearse success"...I can "partition" the prospects that make me anxious (for instance, going to college) into small tasks (for instance, finishing my portfolio) and the success in each of those can be acknowledged and rewarded until I believe in it. I guess eventually I need to start doing this relationally, too, but I have no idea where to start. I have no idea how to not hide in the dark just thinking about it. Which I would guess is why we haven't come up with a task in that regard yet.
Hmm, maybe I did do some psych work today. Oh, my teacher would be so proud. Parent/ teacher conferences are Thursday and Friday. I can go if I want to, in order to meet my teachers, but I can't decide if I'm going to. I wonder if they're in their classrooms, or gathered in one area. I won't go if it's a crowd-thing. I probably won't go in general, which I'm telling myself only means I'm not attending. It doesn't mean I'll never meet them.
The doc helps. I told him I feel alone, I told him I wanted to teleport back home to avoid being around my parents, I told him I worry I always be alone...and he did this very marvelous thing. He said, "I'll be gone until Monday" (which I already knew; that's why my appointment was earlier) "and my machine will say that. That I won't be returning calls until Monday. But, if you need to, still call. Because I'll be checking in throughout the week, and I *will* get back to you before Monday, it just might not be *as quickly* as it normally is." I couldn't believe he did that for me. It was like, "hey, I'm telling you this little secret, so you don't have to be alone." It was a way of knowing he's not really gone.
It was, basically, a way of ensuring that I don't think he's gone for good or completely out of reach. I don't have to feel alone, and I'm so grateful for that. The pain's too much for a girl 17-and-younger to take on alone. I may not have to call him, but knowing I can, makes what I'll have to deal with less unnerving.
I'm so glad he went into this.
chord
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