Daily Archives: 2014/03/27

We Don’t Chew Glass

Depression is like this crushing weight, this mantle of sadness that you can’t take off.  And it is so heavy.  You don’t want to wear it, because it makes everything seem pointless and it drags the ground wherever you go.  You try to stand up under the weight of it, but it is persistent, and it pulls you down and down until you feel so small and insignificant that you think you might disappear.  And if it is really bad, you think everyone might be better off if you did.

Depression is sticky, like a spider’s web, and you’ll try and try, and you might think you finally got it all off, only to find that you can’t breathe and you can’t see and all you can feel is guilt – guilt that you’re crazy, and sticky, and always crying.  Guilt for not being strong enough to throw off the cloak and clean up the webs.  Guilt for being weak and for being in pain and for just wanting to hide.

Depression is like this bottomless pit and you just keep falling.  You might reach out and try to stop the fall – or you might be so far down in the dark that you don’t think you’re worth saving.

Read the post in its entirety!  Visit Blog for Mental Health Project | We Don’t Chew Glass.

Fragments of my Thoughts – Managing Anxiety and Motherhood

After I go to these great measures to make sure no germs or bacteria invade my spawns’ systems I sit back and question; “was that a bit overboard”?; “what if I’m making their immune system weak by not allowing their bodies to fight off germs while their young and healthy”? And then I think of children dying from diseases easily prevented with a protocol of hand washing; and reach for the hand soap yet again…

When my son was invited toa  birthday party at a water park the following month all my Fowleri fears came flooding back (excuse the pun). I had images of my son playing in the water then picking his nose (as 4 year olds do); getting a stream of water shot in his face a nd right up his sinus passage. I refused to let him go to the party.

Then, I had a realisation. That I was letting my unfounded fears effect my child, and the quality of his childhood. Never did I imagine that my anxiety would impede on my child’s innocence. Why should he suffer and miss out because Im a little effed up in the head? He shouldn’t. I had to forget about my fears and let my 4 year old be a 4 year old (a dirty, disgusting, germy little 4 year old).

Read the rest of the story by visiting Managing Anxiety and Motherhood | Fragments of my thoughts.

Radically Mad

My identities sometimes seem to contradict each other, which can be really confusing.

For instance, I often grapple with being simultaneously a psychology student working to enter the mental health field, and a radical mental health activist working to end stigma and improve the treatment of mad people by professionals.  (Existential crises:  an occupational hazard of trying to dismantle the very system you’re a part of.)

Sometimes this paradox hurts my brain so much that I become exasperated, and wonder if it’s possible at all.  Depending on how my studies and my activism are going, and which I’m more devoted to at the moment, I might either wonder why the heck I’m studying psychology or why the heck I’m a radical mental health activist.  What did I get myself into???

Read the post in its entirety!  Visit Activism as Therapy | Radically Mad.

fractalthoughts – The mind/body infinite loop

When I began taking [Depakote] I felt great, as if my brain was working properly for the first time ever. I was no longer under water or foggy. The thing was, the weight gain was insane. . .

I had a hard, unfair decision to make. Do I choose a healthy mind or a healthy body? So for the past year I chose my mind. It’s been a great year professionally but my body reached that tipping point, more like a domino effect, where I was in serious danger. My liver blood work was dangerously bad which can ironically be caused by either or both obesity and Depakote. I won’t list the trail of ailments that have plagued me the last year but let’s just say when I flipped the coin on mind vs body I may have made the wrong call. I have to do something fast. So, I’m having surgery next month…a sleeve gastrectomy (for weight loss) ,gall bladder removal (already have a huge stone and the majority of the people who have the sleeve end up losing the gall bladder anyway later on). They will also biopsy a lesion on my liver (likely unrelated but they’re right there so why not go for the organ trifecta?)

I’m hoping with this quick weight loss I will undo some of the damage I have done to my body recently. I don’t know if the Depakote will hinder my progress and whether or not it’s the culprit on my liver enzymes. I’ve dragged my feet on a drug change since my brain is so highly functioning right now but I guess a badass brain doesn’t do you much good if you are dead.

Read the rest of the story by visiting The mind/body infinite loop | fractalthoughts.