Back from the Sidelines

March 4, was one year sober for me.   It was sort of a bittersweet occasion.   On the one hand I felt happy, on the other I was acutely aware that the last time I had one year was in 08-09, so it’s taken me 4 years to get one year.

It’s been an interesting year – It started with a not completely voluntary IOP mental health program at North York General Hospital, followed by a stint in rehab, declaring bankruptcy, having to give up my apartment and downsize, move into transitional housing, go back to school, request a deferal from school, and now find myself in a psych hospital again.    I sometimes wish my life was more boring.

The ladies at my Big Book study group threw  a nice little party for me, complete with carrot cake (yum) and since I’ve known most of them for years, they were all genuinely happy for me, which made me feel as loved as I ever feel.

I’ve had phenomenal support from the ladies at Women for Sobriety, AA, my friends, and my rehab – this is a collective victory.

My recovery feels really fragile right now, which is why I’m taking a year out to do nothing but focus on recovery – which in itself is scary.   But I feel like it’s my best option.

On my medallion I had the words, Trust and Ask for Help engraved.   Because those are both very hard concepts for me.   I’m learning to trust people and to ask for help because when I do, things generally go better.

Elizabeth

I’ve been in an extremely dark and negative headspace for about the last 6 weeks.   I haven’t been coping at all which is hard for me to admit.    About the only positive is I’ve managed to stay sober.   But otherwise lots of usafe behavior.

I’ve had to withdraw from school, although I hope to go back next January, and I got fired from my teaching job for screwing up so badly.

I finally managed to scare my psychiatrist.   Now you have to understand my psychiatrist – he’s an amazing Dr., but his primary goal is keeping people out of hospital, so when he suggested I think about hospitalization at my appointment on Tues. my thought was great – I must be really messed up.    He talked to a couple of other people on my care team and then phoned me last night, saying he wanted me in the hospital.   ok.

This is my third psychiatric hospitalization since 2007.   It scares me.   Psych hospitals scare me.    Now don’t get me wrong – my psych hospital is a great hospital that offers phenomenal care, the last two times I’ve been in were good experiences that helped me get healthy.

It’s just that I don’t want to admit that I’m sick enough to require intensive care and my life is sufficiently messed up to need it.    I want to believe I can get better.   I need to believe it.    I need to believe I can get back to work, although possibly not in a finance role.

Part of me feels like this is a step backwards – but it’s not really if it helps me get better.   So I’m choosing to view it as a step sideways, to help me ultimately move forward.

I’m just scared.

Elizabeth

It’s taken me a while to gather my thoughts about Christmas in transitional housing.    Some of it’s happy, some of it’s sad, some of it’s downright funny.

Out of the 30 of us living here, there were maybe 15 of us here over Christmas – the really hard core loners who don’t have family or friends to invite us for the holidays.

The atmosphere was frankly kind of depressing although staff did do their best to make it cheerful and pleasant.

Christmas was actually spread out over a month, during which time, I got to experience the quirks of charity gifts.

We had our “official” Christmas dinner Dec. 3 when volunteer chefs who come in once a month came in and made an amazing meal – that was nice.   Afterwards we all got to pick gifts from a pile of gift bags.    I got a set of espresso cups that someone had clearly donated. Erm ok.   Can’t use them here, and not really sure how useful espresso cups will be in setting up a new apartment.   But they are nice cups and it’s the thought that counts right?

Mid Dec. we were all invited to a ladies luncheon at a nearby Church which apparently has strong ties to the house.   I couldn’t go due to exams, but they sent back gift bags for everyone.    Think heavy on the toiletries.

Dec. 23 a nice Italian family came in to serve lunch (I missed it as I thought they were coming for dinner – my bad) At any rate on the 23′rd we were supposed to get one of the gifts we’d requested from this particular charity that was sponsoring us.    I’d requested a book or a pair of earrings (complete with URL as to where they could be bought).  These were apparently too esoteric to track down, so I got a gift card to Indigo.   Fair enough – I can buy my own book.   It was just a bit of a let down watching all the other women open their gifts.   But did get a nice warm set of Ski gloves.

Dec. 24, was really nice.   We had a supper of leftovers from the 23′rd, and staff asked us to gather in the common room.   The common room, was really nicely decorated and we had eggnog, and cookies, and chocolates.   Then one of the counselors asked us to go around and say what we were thankful for.   Most of us said housing, I said I was glad to have the opportunity to be back in school and retraining.   But it really was a lesson in being grateful for the little things.      We all got gift bags again, and these were the most fun, as some thought had gone into them.   I got a large selection of black socks, the only colour I wear, a scarf, gloves, a fun stuffed toy, and some stuff that really will be useful in setting up my own place once I’m out of here.

Dec. 25 was low key – they made a really nice Turkey dinner for us, that was super yummy and we sat around after dinner talking.

The funniest bit about the whole season however had to have been the saga of the Gingerbread houses.   An elementary school, that’s loosely affiliated with the same Catholic charity decorated and sent over 4 absolutely gorgeous gingerbread houses.    None of us wanted to eat the houses because they were too pretty.   But staff insisted we eat them.   This actually led to an argument and a bit of a stalemate until one of the more assertive staff members attacked a house with a large knife and smashed the roof, after which we were all more than happy to eat it.

As a result of the gift bags I’m now more than well stocked with toiletries – last count it was 4 toothbrushes and 5 tubes of toothpaste, plus multiple soaps, shampoos, and moisturizes – I’m not going to have to go shopping for a long time.    All sensible practical gifts that women living in a shelter would need.

Just never imagined me needing them.

Elizabeth

If you’ve been reading along, most of you will know that I recently went through a depressive episode and OD’d.   Well, between depression, and physically recovering from the OD,  and adjusting to a higher dose of one of my meds, I missed a lot of classes, after the midterms.    I finally realized that I couldn’t get out of the academic hole I’d dug myself without soliciting help from my prof’s.   So I emailed them and was honest.   I said I’d been suffering a major depressive episode and had OD’d.   In hindsight it probably was too much information, it didn’t occur to me to just say I’d been sick.

At any rate, one of my profs sat me down for a talk after class last night.   It was  a wide ranging discussion that got into many areas of my life, the details of which I won’t bore you with beyond saying he feels I need more exercise and a cat, and these things may help me get off meds. erm ok.

But the point he pushed the strongest and he was quite vehement on this point, was DO NOT TELL ANYONE.    He further advised me to call all my other profs and ask them to delete my email and confirm that they’d deleted it by return phone call, so as he put it, there’d be no fingerprints.   He also told me to make sure I deleted the outbound emails from my sent items folder.     Now I’m not paranoid enough to think anyone is going to deliberately hack my college e-mail account searching for evidence of depression but clearly that’s what he was thinking.

And it really bothered me.

Yes I know there’s stigma around mental illness, but how in hell are we going to get past it if nobody is willing to talk about it.

And yes I’m being hypocritical as I write this blog under a pseudonym so that when I’m job hunting, employers who google me, won’t find this site.   Because while I may hate the stigma and prejudice, I’m not stupid enough to advertise that I deal with mental illness.

And I hate that that’s the way it has to be.

Elizabeth

After my last OD, my psychiatrist was understandably concerned, so we once again tried the remedy that’s worked in the past to blast me out of a sever depressive episode.   We raised my risperidone from 3 to 4 mg.    Now I’m not advocating meds as the solution to everything, but talk about night and day,    I’ve gone from being actively suicidal to some semblance of my normal charming pessimistic self.   Happy is asking for too much.

My motivation is up, my concentration is better, I’m able to get things done.   Most significantly I don’t want to off myself, which really is reassuring.   Yeah, there’s still a lot of negative self talk floating away in the back of my head, but it’s like there’s a fuzzy blanked between me and it.   I can hear it, and I can see it, but I don’t have to believe it.

In some ways it freaks me out that my brain is so sensitive to one little chemical, albeit at a moderately high dose.   But it definitely shows me that at least part of my depression is biochemical.   I can’t decide if that makes me feel better or not.

We’ll see how long I’m able to tolerate being on the higher dose.   Historically I’m only ok on it for 3-4 months and then I start getting side effects that I can’t tolerate.    And I really don’t want to add Cogentin to the mix – I’m on enough drugs.

So for now, I’m starting to feel better – I’ve still got a long way to go, but at least I’m able to function at school, and in the course I’m teaching.    I’ll settle for that.

Elizabeth