Holy Crap

Like a silent but deadly fart, I vanished without a trace.  I don’t know if that made sense. Anyway, I’m going through about 7 million things presently.  Nothing bad, per se, but I really felt this need to shut up and get inside my own head.  It’s funny, 2 or more years ago, I probably would have partied my ass off until I felt better.  Now, I live in my journal and meditate until I find my center.

I think most women – Moms especially – have a habit of putting their nose to the grindstone to get shit done, then deal with the messy stuff.  Messy stuff being emotions, personal wants/needs, and anything outside the lines of whatever shit that needs doing. At some point, reality inserts its foot straight up your ass, and you will be forced to sit (uncomfortably) in all the things you wished to ignore.

That’s essentially been me.  Since I saw my new psychiatrist over a month ago, I have had a torrent of emotions.  Do you remember on The Simpsons when Mr. Burns went to the doctor and he told him that he had basically every disease?

This:

 

That’s kind of me right now – both with life and my ability to write.  My psychiatrist said something relatively innocuous, and he unleashed the Kraken of all the shit I didn’t want to deal with because I had too much shit to deal with.  “After all the trauma you have been through, this year alone, you need to let yourself heal.  Slowly.”

I suppose I have put myself through so much hell, I have gotten desensitized.  I left his office shaking, after spending an hour telling him about the last 5 years of my life.  I’m not interested in the blow by blow, but let’s just do a highlight of since January 2017:

• Acute Psychosis for almost a month
• Hospitalization for said psychosis
• Medicated with ~5 different combos since with a wide array of side effects
• Felt sorry for someone, the same someone took my car and wrapped it around a telephone pole
• Moved from my home, back in with my ex, due to all of the above, plus being broke from being on disability due to all of the above

I think they say marriage, childbirth, moving, and job changes are the most stressful life events.  I don’t know what co-habitating with your ex-husband falls under, but getting used to living with my kids full time is kind of like child birth.  (Instead of hemorrhoids, though, it’s a consistent, perpetual pain in the ass…I kid, I kid, I love them…really)  I don’t know why, but my psychiatrist reacting to my description of this year made me realize I am putting the hot in hot mess. As the school year is about to begin, the birthday stretch is about to begin, and I’m in the midst of titrating up on a new round of meds, I allowed myself a generous month or so of falling the fuck apart.

I’m talking sobbing hysterically, throwing temper tantrums consisting of long drives to nowhere while I screamed or sang my head off, journaling for hours on end, and I decided to start learning Reiki & Tarot reading because something has to get my head outta my ass at some point. I also reconnected with bingeing Netflix, because I can’t turn my brain off anymore, so I stare at a blinking screen and watch the shit show of make-believe lives to comfort me about mine.  Anyone watch Bloodline? I just finished it and I need to talk about all of it. I just started Sons of Anarchy now.  I have watched more TV in the last few months than the last 2 years combined.  I’m not saying it’s a good thing, but I am saying it’s better than being miserable and depressed.

I mean, that’s what it comes down to.  I’m not feeling sorry for myself, if anything, I am laughing about it now.  This is me, this is my life.  I’ve hit bottom so many times, I refuse to acknowledge it as the bottom.  My brain takes this on as some sort of dare.  As if my life is a never ending game of limbo, and how low can you go seems to have no limit.  I guess I’m finally over the shock of everything, and I finally feel like I might be on a path forward.  If nothing else, I have a psychiatrist listening to me, and that’s exciting.

Like Mr. Burns, I apparently have pretty much everything wrong with me – except schizophrenia.  My psychiatrist, however, wants to go single medication at a time to treat symptoms and see how I respond.  This is fantastic – much nicer than going on five meds in a single shot.  He said this is going to take a long time to work through.  If symptom onset is at roughly 14, then I’ve got 20 years of relatively untreated alphabet soup stewing away in the gray matter.

Jack told me during one of my melt downs, “You have a choice – you can either let your yesterdays drag you down for the rest of your life, or you can choose to make today better than yesterday, every day.  And if one day you don’t, look to see how you can make tomorrow better.  That’s all you can do.  That’s all you can ever do.” For a man of relatively few words, the dude can drop serious poetic beauty out of nowhere.  Naturally, I first told him how wrong he was and cited all the reasons why I can’t possibly ever get my shit back together.  Then, I realized he was right, and I pulled my unwashed, afro rocking, snotty self together, and started taking some baby steps.  I’ve been saying “I have no goal, I have no plan, I don’t know what the fuck to do with myself!”

Yesterday, in a text to my mom, I realized my goal and plan currently are very simple.  I said, “I just need to get to get stable.  I’ve been all over the place for 5 years.  I have been self-destructing since I was a kid.  I can’t live like this anymore.” My profound wisdom was the much-needed slap in the face; I have to stop worrying about getting back to work, fixing every part of my life, and all of this pressure I put on myself.  I have to take everything one freaking day at a time.  Right now, all I’m supposed to be doing is seeing how I’m doing on the new meds, being a mom, and little by little, figuring out who the fuck I actually am.  Existential crises FTW!

That’s the nice thing about hitting bottoms.  Your masks fly off, your pretenses fly off, and all your careful stories become exposed because everyone can plainly see that your shit is absolutely not together.  Then, you don’t have to pretend it is anymore.  There’s something freeing about looking at today and not feeling like I have to do anything beyond inhaling, exhale, and repeat.  Oh, and buy all the school supplies and start planning birthday shit because all the birthdays happen in September and October (yay warming up in cold Decembers, right?) Barrel is Sept 2, Shock is Sept 23, I’m Oct 1, and Lock is Oct 12.  I get so tired of birthday cake.  I wish I could call in a substitute mom sometimes.  Or anyone who feels like putting the 8 tons of laundry away and clean my kitchen.  /whine

Anyway, so I suppose I’m kind of back.  I have no clue what the hell I’m doing anymore, but whatever.  Today, I’m rocking delightful Eagles PJ pants, and I’m probably going to take a nap, because I accidentally stayed up late a few nights in a row trying to finish Bloodline.  I have never loved a show so much while hating every person in it as much as I do.  Oh, and if anyone wants to bitch about Game of Thrones with me, I’m all ears. Although, I will never cease to be amazed at how we all went from “Incest, ew, oh my god!” to “Jon fuck your Aunt already!” I know I cheered.