Lease's Pieces

This post is from October 20th, 2018. Thankfully I’m not feeling this way today. 

I woke up out of sorts this morning and it never really got better. You know that sleepy, relaxed, calm feeling you get when you’re juuuuust waking up on a weekend? I don’t get that anymore pretty much ever. I go from feeling dead (deoxygenated, dehydrated, not moving at all) to sudden movement and awareness of my own existence as I start moving immediately upon achieving any shred of consciousness, my heart pounding and my existence just buzzing as I greet the morning with panic and dread.

And then today, emptiness. All my words are gone. All my feelings are gone. I feel cold and alone, even in the company of good friends. Not anxious. Not sad. Just like my consciousness is floating somewhere in the ether, remote-controlling my squishy meat suit.

I tried to put a hot shower in the hole. I tried to put coffee in the hole. I tried to put healthy, carefully selected food in the hole. I tried to put Coke Zero in the hole. I finally put red wine in the hole and that numbed the hole a little bit and then I shoved crap food into the hole until I felt slightly fuller and then I tried to socialize at Commons for hours and nothing touched me or moved me. After stressing myself out about not having enough time to see people before I had to go home, I wanted to bail out and be alone, but not alone. Will I ever be soothed and calm again?

Is this depression? Is this my mental illness? Is this my personality? Is this the waning sunlight as we drift into winter? Is this my mid-life crisis?

Welcome, readers! Or, as I call you “Warriors” because we are all warriors together in our quest for better mental health. 

The previous 6 posts are curated content from my personal Facebook. I’ve been meaning to pick some out and copy them over to the blog for more general consumption, and thankfully I have a great friend who did just that and sent the links to me for easy access. I am genuinely touched at the effort she put in because I’ve been really depressed and overwhelmed for a couple of weeks now and it seemed insurmountable. 

I kept putting off “Starting the Blog” because it seemed like a giant task to go back and pick some things out to get started. I hesitated to know exactly what information about myself to share. 

I guess the relevant bits are this: It’s 2018 and I just turned 42 years old a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been with the same man since January 1996 and we got married in May 2001. We have a 12 year old daughter together and we had our son (born too soon) in October 2004. We both work full-time. I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder I in October 2002 and this blog will primarily be about how I deal with my busy, complicated life in spite of my mental illness and the challenges it presents. 

Today is better. I have literally the BEST friends. We went to A&S night last night and I drank some good mead (and some terrible mead) and laughed and joked and walked directly into a straight line and felt a lot better.

Today I am sad, because it’s Dante’s angel date, but that’s normal and ok and accepted and it’s not the empty nothingness and pain of depression. There is no time limit on grief, and while my level of sadness is unexpected to me, it’s OK.

There is a huge difference between real, genuine “feelings” and “symptoms” that are cooked up by my stupid, evolved brain, and I think I’m just coming to realize that.

Feelings are good and while they may be intense or “big”, they are tolerable. I didn’t have feelings for a long time because I was dramatically overmedicated for a lot of years.

But even with all the meds, I still had symptoms, which feel icky and gross and terrible. Like, depression or irrational rage or even in some cases, hypomania or mania.

I am super stressed, and having an ever-growing run of “bad days”. 
I have no idea what to do about it
I take my meds. I keep my appointments with my doctor and my therapist. I reach out to friends for help. I keep trying different “coping” mechanisms.
I’m truthful with my providers.
I gaze at my own navel and try to solve my own problems. I try to get other people to solve my problems.
It feels like I’m spinning my wheels.

I took off yesterday to “relax and recuperate” from the stress I’m feeling and the resultant depression and anxiety. Last night, I knew I was going to need today, too.

I wound up going to bed at 2:30am in a total depressive funk. I woke up promptly at 8am with my heart pounding out of my chest (again). I couldn’t get back to sleep.

I’m a totally emotionally unstable crack monkey today.

I find that I have SO many words and thoughts in my head. They’re not always racing but they are frequently present.

I don’t know if I analyze things, or OVER analyze things. Do I think about my thinking too much?

I don’t even feel comfortable sharing it all online. But I definitely need to address this. I don’t think it’s a symptom of anything, per se, just a lot of things I need to work through and process. I can only spend about 45 minutes a week with my actual therapist and I need to discuss more than we can fit into that time slot.

I feel like I’m being drowned in the endless cascade of my own thinking. I do best with a sounding board – someone to challenge my distorted bullshit feelings and perceptions.

I don’t want to “wear out” any of my friendships. I truly appreciate the people who have “been there” for me.

October is the best and shittiest month for me.

Have you ever heard of the Deming Cycle (aka the PDCA Cycle or Plan-Do-Check-Act)? It’s a pretty fundamental model for what I do at my job ALLLLL the time, but in my personal life, it was pointed out to me, I am missing the reflective “Check” step. I’ve been so busy working on things, that I haven’t slowed down to take stock of where I’m at now.

I need to stop and reflect on all the stuff I’ve done and all the progress I’ve made and everything I’ve accomplished thus far, especially this year, as it has been exceptionally challenging and overwhelmingly busy.

I know that I have this demented notion that Everyone Else has “got it all together” and has everything working for them. I certainly hope I don’t give off that vibe that I’ve got it all figured out, either.

For example, unfucking my mental health took up a great deal of my focus and energy from April till just recently and to be totally honest, it’s still not where I’d like it to be. In giving it that focus, I thought I was being “kind” to myself by indulging in unhealthy food that soothed me in the short term. Whelp, I put on about 30lbs between April and October. Getting even half-assed “back on plan” this week I lost 2.4lbs.

It’s super hard to keep ALL the plates spinning all the time. Plates are going to fall. Plates are going to shatter. Sometimes we pick up the pieces or sweep them under the rug or I dunno, HIRE someone to clean up the mess. But the mess is the inevitable part.

My WW leader quoted Lincoln tonight: “I walk slowly, but never backwards.” Keep grinding, Warriors.

[The Problem and my Solution]
I’m having a really hard time focusing on tasks at work lately. This isn’t exactly new, but it is worsening lately. I have mentioned it to my new pdoc and he’s declined to do anything about it. I will bring it up again when I see him next week, I think. I am going to try going back to the original (full) dose of my wake-the-fuck-up-and-focus medication starting tomorrow.

[Some Details]
I directly manage a team of 10 engineers, for whom I need to complete annual performance appraisals. I won’t get into the flaws of this practice; I just have to DO IT. I’ve had weeks to get these done and I’m down to the last 2 days before the due date and I got three done last Friday, working from home, and just one done today. I had 4 hours blocked out on my calendar today to work on them, and it took until about 2:30pm for me to actually open the performance system and do some goddamned work.

I cleaned off my desk. I did my makeup. I got 15 refills on my water bottle. I went to the bathroom a million times. I rearranged my pens. I tried out my new notebook. I browsed the internet. I got interrupted by legit work questions from the people I supposedly manage. I made PHONE CALLS to avoid doing work. That’s how desperate this has gotten.

I can usually FORCE myself to do work when I absolutely have to, but this is pretty fucking daunting.

My boss DID agree that I could be late with the submission. (He himself will be late, and I know my PA will be kinda lame and half-assed, personally.) It still kills me to miss a due date, no matter how arbitrary it is. There’s also knowing that I’ll be super relieved to have gotten them all done.

Not everything is a symptom.

Some symptoms are environmental and not based on a specific disorder.

Stress exacerbates symptoms and makes them worse.

I need to read the book I bought for myself (DBT for Bipolar), learn some distress tolerance, and learn emotional regulation.

I AM making progress (however you want to define that) in therapy and with my pdoc.

I need to be less hypervigilant about turning everything into a disorder or a symptom of a disorder.

I still need to work on that list of things I actually LIKE about myself.