Another day of struggling

[Cammy]

Work stuff: The other day I had a defining moment at work. A coworker was showing me where stuff was kept...we walked all over an area the size of a football field for him to show me. This, after I asked if we could sit down for 5 minutes and help me draw a map so I'd know exactly where to go every time. No, he had to show me (for the second time). Picture me in severe pain, having a lot of trouble walking at this point, and picture buddy who is leading me looking over his shoulder at my struggles and then deliberately doubling the pace to almost a run with a kind of sadistic leer on his face. This image of deliberate cruelty is burned into my brain and I've been PTSDing the image over and over and over again for the last 24 hours. I just can't get it to stop. Eventually it will, but right now it is grotesque. Over and over I see the look of pleasure as he watches me limping to keep up, and his smile widens as he starts going faster and faster. Well...now he's going to spend the next 21 straight days working for that bit of inconsiderate nastiness because that was it for me. I quit and he has no replacement. Maybe he should of thought of that. I do not allow any kind of abuse in my life where I can possibly help it. I do believe that I've had a sufficient amount, thanks all the same, or I wouldn't be what I am today. At least now, as an adult I have some control over what happens to me in terms of abuse. I find that I am sensitive to even the smallest amount of it. Maybe things that others wouldn't even view as abusive or as just mildly abusive, definitely set me off. This set me off...triggered something...enough to turn the whole thing into a visual möbius loop that is going to take me days to lose now.

[Cammy]

More work stuff: This thing with the guy...just the tip of the iceberg in that place. It was just the straw that broke the chameleon's back. Just wasn't meant to be. I'll find something else...maybe where people still remember to be polite to each other and maybe give a teeny damn about others. It's out there...I'll find it. I'm just going to a) Chalk this up to experience b) Pat myself on the back for giving it a good try, even with the pain and such, c) Look for something more suitable and d) Not lose too much sleep over ditching a really, really bad date.

[Cammy]

May 2: Feel so strange and disconnected from the outside world. I try so hard to relate to 'normals', but I just can't do it. I've spent an entire lifetime standing on the outside looking in. I relate well to psychopathology, but those aren't 'normals' are they? I've always thought of myself as an unperson, but I am a people, not a one. As far back as my mind can stretch its memory the being different is there. I can go back to a 13 month old me and it is there. I know that DIDs are created, but I sometimes wonder if some part of it is already there...there before the first touch of trauma. Perhaps we are more sensitive than others...all those other children and people I carefully watched with amazement as they just were themselves so unselfconsciously. I always wondered what that would be like. Sometimes, now, when I am not exactly me, I think I know how to just 'be'. What others take for granted is huge stuff for us. Days like this...the in-between alters lost days are the strangest of all. It's like my mind is trying to fill the gap by creating a new identity, but can't because it doesn't have enough raw material to work with. Everyone is very tired and no one wants to be in charge, so I'll take my in-between me and go to sleep so I can wake up as somebody tomorrow. Hopefully it will be someone who knows how to drive because there is stuff to do.

[Cammy]

Still May 2: OMG, do I ever feel terrible tonight for some reason. Really empty and hopeless, like there's just no reason to ever get up out of bed again. Yet, so much anxiety in the mix. Too many different feelings from too many different perspectives hitting me at once, and also a lot of blank nothingness as well. Layer upon layer of thoughts, feelings, unfeelings, memories, future visions, all rolled up ...all here clamoring for notice and I am just too tired to sort it all out. Don't even care if it ever gets sorted out. Nothing makes sense right now. My logic center is absent or shut down. My mind has become totally aimless wandering wondering blanking out focusing in reviewing destroying regretting remembering reaching for emotions too high on the shelf to get to. What the heck is happening to me? This is not psychosis...this has a different flavour. Reality still persists even though I wish it wouldn't. I can't feel right now...not really...not clearly. Feelings are blurred and blunted and I want to feel so that I can cry or scream or something and purge myself of this horrid state. At some level there is severe panic and terror...up through the many layers we can feel it's presence. But it won't gel and thus we can't react fully and be rid of it. We don't know what this is, but we don't like it. We are blank and frightened at the same time. We are many more things at the same time. It's like all our selves are being poured into one giant mix and we are mingling with the different attributes of ourselves simultaneously. No...I'm not on drugs. I'm just me and this mess right now is just another manifestation (how close to 'infestation' that is) of our multiplicity. I need sleep. But I'm scared to sleep when I'm like this.

Here comes a wave of panic washing over me. So, at last, some solid feeling. What a horror it is sometimes just trying to get from one moment to the next.

P.S.I'm safe. Scared, uncomfortable, miserable, but definitely safe.

[Cammy]

Still May 2: Experiencing things now in little jerky snippets - like a stone skipping over the surface of time. I don't ever recall feeling this disarticulated in relation to reality or ever feeling as horrified/fascinated in this manner. I'm NEVER eating chicken lasagna again if this is what happens!

[Cammy]

It's May 3rd: Today my inner ear is making me dizzy and queasy, and I'm struggling with anxiety and panic stuff (the usual menu). Feel a tad better. Not so disarticulated, more in one piece. I think it was exhaustion, partly. I'm still fighting feeling so very, very frightened. I'm okay and then I'm not okay. The meds are the only thing holding me together right now, and I'd rather it were just me being able to do that for myself. I've lost so much of my support system, and what I'm left with doesn't feel like it much cares whether I live or die. Needing a little real 'care' from my care providers means so much to me...everything actually. I've been spoiled by people who really cared, and now....I'm starting all over and feel like I just want to stop fighting...like I just want to lay down and die. But not really - I AM SAFE - I want survival as much as the next person. I just get exasperated and tired and lonely and afraid, and I look into the future and see a lot of darkness. It's hard sometimes being what we are, hard on all of us here at MM and all the others out there who struggle with the same things. So few out in the real world who can understand, and so much we have to hide and protect ourselves from, predominantly public ignorance (which includes the medical community - my very special sore spot). Okay..well...there it is...another day in paradise...time to take a pill, hug a dog (or two or three) and hope for a better tomorrow.

[Cammy]

I am safe


3 days
can't eat
can't get out of bed
can't stop crying
can't hold back the tide of despair.

tomorrow
the same.

don't know where to turn
they can't mean for me to
suffer like this
all the time
or is this all i have
to look forward to?

there must be meds
something
to make it stop.

i just want it to stop.

can't get anyone
to understand
how bad this has become.
can't communicate.

don't know how to convey
this level of distress.

maybe
it's a self-limiting process.

Right!

[nats]

hang in there Igraine. sitting with you if you want.

[Tangled Web]

I think you communicated things very well in your writing Igraine. Sitting with also and offering you lots of blue flowers of support. I hope things ease up for you soon....
Tangled

[Laura and Co]

Just want you to know that we hear you and are glad you can come to MM for support.

Laura and Co

[Cammy]

It's been weeks since last posting. My new P-doc made all this crap stop for me by taking me off all the psychotropic drugs. Yes, the drugs helped for a bit, and then they kept making me worse. New research is showing that no drugs is best in the long term. So, what really helps for me? Mindful meditation and exercise. Keep in mind exercise is useless if you're taking SSRIs...the drugs negate the benefit of the exercise. Is this new way easy? Hell no. Does it work? For me it did...after 22 years on meds the exercise, meditation, etcetera worked better in a few weeks than 22 years of meds (for me).

Amazing things are happening for me. I'm not saying it will be the same for anyone else. But the new/true research is proving to be the real deal. There IS hope (at last), but it doesn't come from a pharmaceutical company(in my case).

Interested? Read "Anatomy of an Epidemic" by Robert Whitaker. It will cause a paradigm shift in how you view mental illness and psychotropic drugs. Major "WOW" factor. (available from Amazon...no e-versions yet).

[Cammy]

May 31: too much has happened...is happening. All that 'wellness' is gone today. I have never felt this high a level of anxiety ever, ever, ever. Thought I had, but I was wrong. Today I'm totally convinced I'm dying, for starters. Totally. I feel like I'm in hell. Chest pain, and six dozen other hypochondriac crap symptoms. Tried to meditate three times, and every time the phone rang with a major crisis on the other end.

I am guardian and trustee for two of my elder relatives...the tiny bits of family left other than my mum with whom I live with and care for (and she for me just by being there for me). My uncle lost his driver's license this week because of cognitive decline, plus I read the med report on his kidneys - not good, but he doesn't know or understand. Plus I can't get him to stop driving ... he really thinks it is no big deal and I can't convince him otherwise. Also today I had to make a literal life and death over the phone emergency decision regarding my aunt who is in a nursing home. That was the phone call that woke me up and started this nightmare day off. There's also been a lot of other trauma- drama kind of stuff non stop for weeks now. I thought I was coping well...instead I am so panicked and anxiety stricken that I am afraid to go to sleep. Add to this being slowly removed from Lorazepam over the past 2 weeks and now am on the second day of just Valium (some refer to this as the cross over phase of weaning off benzodiazepines- which, by the way I was only on for about 6 weeks).

[Cammy]

May 31 continued: The site won't let me scroll back or forth through my posts, so this is a continuation of the May 31 post I started. Anyway, as I was trying to say, just having a majorly super panicky anxiety day where I'm sure I'm dying. The usual textbook stuff looks so innocuous in print until you get to actually get the pleasure of really experiencing it. I've swallowed a pharmacy today, accept of course for Lorazepam which I am weaning off of (I'm safe...we are NOT talking overdose here, just desperate anxiety control). I can tell you nothing has helped, and these meds are high grade little helpers. I will be spending tonight meditating, drinking tea, and trying to get a grip. I just HAD to post. I had no where else to turn to to at least talk about what's been going on. As it is I can only seem to get out the tip of the iceberg, but it's better than nothing. Thank you for being here MM. At least I have a safe place to come, say my bit, and not have people freak out at what I'm expressing. If I were to disclose this to my friend, he would flip, throw me in the car, and drive me to ER. We all know what happens then...lots of waiting, then heaps of abuse for bothering them, then getting sent home. No thanks. He's a friend, but he really does not understand a damn thing and doesn't really want to, like most of the people out there.

Okay, I'm done. For now. Just a bad day I guess. Thanks for anyone who takes the trouble to read my ranting and crap. Please do not respond to this. There is nothing to say. I just needed to write this to get some of it out. Igraine.

[nats]

sounds like you have every reason to feel anxiety. hang in there. we're thinking of you and wishing you the best.

[Cammy]

Thanks nats...really appreciate the kind thoughts. One thing for sure, I'm a survivor and I'll get through this like I have everything else. It's just that some stretches are very very difficult as every single person here is more than well aware of. Again thanks nats and thank goodness for MM. I don't know what I'd do without this forum and the terrific people who have kept me on my feet.