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Last week, I got the paperwork written up and mailed out to the V.A. for my service-connected disability claim. As hard as that was, once it was actually IN the mail, my spirits started to improve. Even more, I was able to trace back the beginnings of my recent depression to... no, it wasn't my cat dying, or my Christmas tree not working... it wasn't post-NaNo blues, it wasn't SAD or the holiday season. You know when it went back to? The day I actually sat down and filled out the form for the disability claim, back in mid November. From the day I did that, I began to spiral down and down and down. The reason it took me so long to connect the dots was because immediately after I got it sent off, I was so high with excitement/relief over having gotten it DONE at last, I decided to do NaNo even though it was already the 20th... but after NaNo, I crashed, and it was from having sent in that application. Anyhow! So, here I am, putting the pieces of the puzzle together finally. And having gotten that last set of paperwork done last week, the crush of the depression began to lift. Then last week also, I finally re-connected with my therapist, and we decided to try a new mood stabilizer, since the lithium back last winter had been such an unqualified failure, I hadn't even wanted to TRY anything new. So now I'm on Abilify, and I'm here to tell you, it works great! So on more than one level, I'm back; I've recovered from the trauma of the disability paperwork (and having to re-live the trauma telling about it), I've reconnected with my therapist and DBT therapy group, and I've gotten on a new medication that is working! Now if only my work will cooperate, and stop running out of work, and I'd be in clover! LOL. Luscious Cat ~ Add to Memories ~ Tell a Friend ~ 8 replies ~ Reply
Read and journaled:
On my bookshelf, yet to read:
I've been told these novels are a "must-read" (I'm not sure why but I haven't so far had a chance to check them out yet):
Others On My To-Acquire List:
Polyamory:
and the effect of it on my life. I got paperwork a month ago from the V.A. to fill out to support my service-connected claim. I have to do it. Just sit down and do it. I've been hiding from it for a month. I really, REALLY don't want to do this. I never told anybody for 34 years. Then I had to tell my therapists last year in a special joint session just for that. Bad enough. But I'm visual... writing it down is MUCH harder than saying what happened. And I have to do it alone, there isn't anyone I want with me when I do this because there's nobody I want to know. Well, maybe one... my ex Master, up in Canada. But he's there, and I'm here. And I don't have any choice. It has to be done. Period.
A year ago, I was diagnosed with ADD, service-connected PTSD and bipolar 2 with OCD traits. Since then, and especially in the last six months and getting worse quickly, I've been pretty much on a downward spiral. I've been less able to cope, less able to "bounce back," and it's gotten terribly difficult to pick myself back up, dust myself off and fling myself back into the fray, which is what I've always done. Just a couple of weeks ago, I traced this back to the diagnosis itself. That is... I haven't only just started to have these problems last January, I've been dealing with them all my adult life (or in the case of ADD, all my life). It's just that I didn't know what the diagnosis was. And now that I've been diagnosed, it's like in a way, I gave up. I mean, how stupid is that? Nothing has actually CHANGED and in fact, I was doing a terrific job through Landmark in learning new ways to cope with the symptoms I had. But even that stopped last year, because suddenly I had a diagnosis, and it was bad and wrong and I was never going to get better and it was always going to be like this... yada yada. But the fact is, nothing changed, nothing was different from what I've always dealt with. Just some words called a diagnosis. Why should I let that make any difference, especially when I was starting to really get a handle on my life? Since identifying this a couple weeks ago, I've done a little better at pulling myself together, but this new (for me) conversation of "it's never going to get better" and "it's always going to be like this" is just... well... it's crippling. I know it's ME saying this, I know it's ME setting myself up to fail. I try to be aware of it and to take a positive outlook (in the last 4 years before the diagnosis I had actually turned my life around!) so it's not like it's true that it has to always be like this. But somehow, this message isn't getting through. The other conversation, the "bad" conversation, seems to have a lot of power over me, and there are so many days it's all I can do to crawl out of bed, because what's the use? And yet, I know I can be better, I know that this "bad" conversation isn't true, or at least, it's only true if I let it be. But I still can't seem to be able to overcome it. At the same time, it's only been a couple of weeks since I figured out what was going on... so maybe there is hope... I'm also desperately lonely, because of course in all of this, I managed to isolate myself again {{{sigh}}} And I can't seem to pull out of that, either. I go to the Munches, but I don't seem to be able to "engage" even with people who were closer friends in the past. It's not them, it's me. But I don't know how to turn things around; it's all well and fine to say call, or write them and re-connect, another thing entirely to do it, I don't know what to say to anyone when my life feels like it's falling down around my ears. I hate people who are always complainging and things are always going wrong for them... I don't want to be one! But keeping a cheerful demeanor/attitude is almost impossible for me these days, unless I'm in one of my (rarer and rarer) "up" moods. And even then, up or down, almost ALL the time I just feel *tired* :( Luscious Cat
Then a couple of weeks ago (5:15 pm Christmas Eve to be specific, when I suddenly and unexplicably pulled out of the depression I'd spiraled down to over the last months, and was able to look at things clearly), I started to get present to what I had actually done; role-reversed Landmark into the Story and the story as The Truth, and also that I hadn't given up because the symptoms (which I've lived with for decades) had gotten worse; the symptoms got worse and I gave up, because of the diagnosis of bipolar disorder. I was reacting to and addressing the diagnosis itself, rather than the symptoms, which I'd already been doing a great job of transforming using Landmark before I was thrown off-track by the official diagnosis and the story I made around that. So now, after half an hour of coaching on New Years Eve day, I'm back on track. Because now that my Story about the bipolar diagnosis is no longer in the real of "What You Don't Know You Don't Know," when it comes along and tries to drag me down again I can recognize it and get present to it, and make that a Clearing for Possibility. In fact, that IS my stand for this New Year 2009: to be a Clearing for Possibility :)
So having pulled myself up by the bootstraps (so to speak) and gotten my tree out, I'm now back wounded in the trenches. Last year I got a beautiful 5' fiberoptic tree, with revolving light colors and it makes me SOOOO happy! I figured I could have it for years. I finally got myself into the spirit yesterday evening, I went out and got it from the storage closet. I rearranged some furniture, vacuumed, got it all ready to go and set up... and it didn't work. The light came on, but didn't the color wheel didn't spin. I spent a couple of hours watching it without the changing colors, trying to think what to do (hitting the "reset" didn't work)... and then the light went out. Now I just want to go lay down and not wake up til January 1st. If ever. It's still sitting there in the livingroom, every time I go down. Now I'll have to take it down and put it in the box. No, of course I'm not gong to throw it away. I'm going to put it back in my storage closet adn not think about it. Just thinking of putting it away has me crying. Not having any tree at all this year has me crying. Go get a tree? I scarcely have enough for me and the cats to eat. Nor do I have that kind of energy, even if I had the cash. On top of everything else, now I have my Dad's litany from childhood, that I usually have buried deep, shouting at me "stupid! stupid! stupid!" with every breath, til I want to .... well, never mind. I just sit here and cry and ask myself WHY I bother to keep going on. Why I would even want to. And I honestly can't give an answer. Luscious Cat
Really for me it's the carols and Christmas music, including Handel's Messiah (yes, I'm a pagan. Never mind, it was *our* holiday first! heheheh). I'm very responsive to music, it can send me soaring or dump me in the deepest chasm. Generally speaking, Christmas music tends to make me feel HAPPY, plus I get to sing along to it... music for me is also a participatory sport, whether dancing or singing along, LOL! My iTunes has 598 Christmas songs (not counting the Messiah by various artists), and I start playing them the day before Thanksgiving, and making new CDs for this season, and transferring last year's Christmas CDs out to the car to listen to while driving I also like the outside lights... I rarely have the energy to decorate my home (even the inside, aside from the tree itself and a few items here and there), but I adoooooooore the lights. I got really lucky, the folks that bought the house across the street this summer have kids, and they've really gone to town with the outdoor lights, trees, icicle lights, etc. I've been thrilled to death, I can sit in my recliner and look out my living room window and see their lights, or from my library upstairs, and then I don't feel so bad that I don't have my own up! maybe I'll make some cookies and take them over....
I have spinal stenosis in my low back and neurogenic claudication, plus no cartilage in my left knee, and I'm always at a certain baseline level of pain that I just live with, without meds. But when the weather turned cold and rainy about a week or so ago, it set off an exacerbation to the point where I can hardly walk across my living room floor. I've had to take narcotics (Tylenol w/codeine) to sleep, every night for the past 7 or more, when normally I might have to take 1 or 2 every 2-3 months. The pain without the drugs is what I call "screaming" pain level. i.e., it's almost unbearable. With the narcotics, I'm at a lower, acceptable pain level but I'm groggy and depressed and just want to lay down and cry because I'm SO FREAKING SICK OF HURTING!! Mind you, I feel this way all the time, but mostly I just ignore it and go on. But when I get into exacerbation like this, when the pain is so bad it's in my face all the time (with or without the meds), it's impossible to ignore. It doesn't matter if I'm sitting, standing, moving around or laying still, I hurt. I just... hurt. Sometimes my back feels like it's about to just snap right in half, which is a hideous feeling. I haven't been anywhere or seen anyone for days, because I can scarcely leave the house; one evening I was actually unable to get out of bed because I couldn't move. I've been to a neurosurgeon; they'd consider spine surgery but only for the claudication; no guarantees it'd help with the back pain itself. I could take stronger pain pills (the docs like to throw narcotics at me hand over fist, I have all kinds of nasty but powerful stuff in my meds box), but they knock me for a loop-de-loop. And, just to make life really interesting, I'm considered to have an addictive personality, even though I've never been addicted to anything (except maybe caffeine), and so I have to be very careful about taking the narcotics, which I am. But right now, in an exacerbation like this, I have to take something at least so that I can sleep at night if at no other time. The Tylenol #3 isn't really doing the job this time, and I'm going to have to try one of the stronger pills, and I really, really don't want to. But I'm SO tired of hurting! And it's pulling my mental state down too and believe me, it doesn't need to come down anymore than it already is!
I am absolutely rolling in the aisles laughing. ohmigod that is just precious! Naturally, I signed right up <grin> Actually, I think I'm switching novels for this... my previous WIP, "Wishes in a Bottle" is up to like 73,500 words, so if I work at transitioning in all the out of order scenes and smoothing out the whole, it should come right out about 80,000 or over, which is what I need to submit it to a publisher. Since this book is in the same "Wishes and Dreams" series (in fact, it's the first book in the series; the second book is already finished) as "A Cat For Troy," it's not such a leap as you might think, as the characters carry over between the novels. "Wishes in a Bottle" Word Count: 74,500 / 90,000 words (298 pages). 82.8% done! "A Cat For Troy" Word Count: 61,000 / 90,000 words (244 pages). 67.8% done!
However, a little bit ago, motivated by a NaNo post asking about the quality, I started reading over what I'd written in the last 10 days, and mine is actually in terrific shape! Not counting the fact that I have chapters and scenes all over the board in regards to the plot line/time line; I wrote whatever scene or character I could get to "speak" to me, on the basis that the idea of NaNo was to Just Write. But the writing itself is great, pretty much final draft quality, once I get the scenes lined up and transitioned in. Thanks to NaNo, I now have only about 100 pages to go (plus or minus a dozen or so) to be submission length to a publisher!!!! yesssssssssssss!  I did it! I did it! Right down to the wire, too! Half an hour before the deadline, I had about 52,000, and then the NaNo counter even gave me a few thousand more! I'm going to leave it that way on the NaNo site, tho, 'cause I like their word count better than mine, which is what you see here {{{laughing}}} "A Cat For Troy" NaNo: 52,500 / 50,000 words. 100.5% done! I wrote this actually in response to a forum post asking how to survive the Christmas/holidays when you're alone, and reading it over, I thought it bore repeating: Luscious Cat
It wasn't as bad as I'd thought, when I actually went and got them. A neat little white box, printed with "Rascal" August 13, 1994 to October 28, 2008. Inconsequentially, it's heavier than I'd thought it would be. I'm putting it up on the altar beside the statue of Bast. I'd put it off for 4 days, and it has been weighing on me. Now it may be easier, a bit, to start to move on.
 Dearest Rascal, 8-13-94 to 10-28-08She had a stroke this morning and died. She was always "Mommy's girl" and followed me around the house no matter where I was, my constant companion since April 1995.
We almost lost Christina (my daughter, age 22) this weekend. She was wading in shallow water in the Pacific when a wave knocked her over and the riptide pulled her out to sea. She was in the water 20 minutes before anyone even noticed she was gone, and was starting to go down when her friends finally reached her and managed to keep her afloat long enough to get her back to shore. Christina's a strong swimmer, has been swimming about since she could kick her legs, and is herself a certified Lifeguard. She knew about the vicious riptides and knew better than to try to swim there, she'd only been wading. She went out to about mid-thigh, decided it was too dangerous even that shallow, and had turned to go back to shore when the wave hit her from behind. She just called and told me about it this evening. I've been doing my best not to think about it or what could have happened if they'd been another 3 minutes getting to her..... pointless to go there but almost impossible not to. So much more in my head and heart that I could pour out here, but I'm just going to leave it at this. I think I may be a little shocky.
All of this just came to me tonight over dinner at 7 pm (ribeye, which was fabulous btw, and corn on the cob that was too tough to be good), and I'm still struggling to get the thoughts together into a cohesive whole, which is why I'm blogging it here, to work through it. It's probably not a newsflash to anyone but me that besides the ADD, I have a few other little things going on, like OCD. Not enough to carry a diagnosis of OCD, but OCD *traits* that contribute to the overall mix. This is not necessarily a bad thing, you understand... in fact, it makes me very, VERY good at many of the things I do, including my job. The problem is, the ADD and OCD are frequently at loggersheads. It's this situation of the conflict that struck me this evening, and that I'm trying to pick apart, examine, and see what's going on and what I can do about it. There's a couple of parts to this post: The identification and explanation of the needs; how they interact together and affect my life; then, the part where I figure out how to make them work FOR me, rather than against me, in the larger scheme of things. IDENTIFYING THE NEEDS I've identified 3 NEEDS that are crucial in my life, and drive my life. Two are internal, one external, and these needs are almost always in conflict. By accepting that these internal needs are a part of my nature, how I'm wired, may actually make my life easier if I can find a way to work with them, and make them work with the external need, than always be in conflict.
INTERACTIONS For the NEED for productivity and accomplishment, the iTunes example is a good example of where the ADD and the OCD come to work together; the OCD insists that I get things done just so; the ADD then takes over and pushes me into something they call "hyperfocus," which is a perfect description. Whether it's knitting or painting, writing, or organizing computer files, I will keep at it until I drop, almost literally, and after I've crawled off to bed for a few hours' sleep, it'll drive me up out of bed again to get more done. Writing the above, it seems kind of sick, but you would have to understand the incredible feeling of accomplishment I'm feeling while I'm caught up in this, even though it may be tedious enough to make me cry... I know that once it's done, it'll be over, and all I have to do is keep it up; taking the iTunes example, for instance, all I have to do is make sure each new song I add to the list, matches what I already have, which takes no more than a few seconds; the structure is already in place. In the case of more interesting things such as hobbies, etc., well, I have some really lovely scarves and shawls, a beautifully tooled belt, beaded hatbands and a tarot bag, and 4 completed 400-page romance novel manuscripts (one is pubbed by small press) and a fifth one almost done. The second NEED, the one for "down time," is, I think, more reactionary; it's a need to ESCAPE from the above. It's usually accompanied by a feeling of "if I can't shut off my brain, I'm going to implode" type of thing. This is the side that is the least fulfilled, and the part that needs to be fulfilled to bring balance to my life. The third need, to work and generate an income, is actually the point where everything falls apart. Sitting here for hours typing something that I never see again, and results in a direct deposit 2 weeks later, is just not TANGIBLE enough to satisfy my need for accomplishment; only in an emergency (like when the server was hacked and we wound up being 10 DAYS behind) does the ADD/OCD kick into hyperfocus and allows me to make thousands of lines a day. Otherwise, getting my work done on a day to day, hour to hour, even sometimes minute to minute basis, is always a struggle. Before you start thinking words like "loser" let me remind you that I just bought my own house :P~~~~ Obviously, I'm reasonably successful, it's the constant struggle that I'm trying to resolve so that my life is more balanced and easier to manage and enjoy. Because you're not enjoying when you're always rushing to catch up! and I do mean, always! EFFECT OF ALL THIS I'm always in conflict, being pulled this way and that by whichever need is paramount at the moment. Usually #1 and 3 struggle for supremacy, and #2 just whimpers in the background begging to be heard. Because work is not satisfying the Accomplishment criteria, I'm frequently distracted by other things that need doing (need being relative to the OCD, of course). This means that, in order to get the work done that I need to do for a living, I am often working on and off from dawn to midnight. This causes me no end of frustration (we're talking about 5... FIVE... hours' worth of work), nor is need #1 very satisfied either, because everything I've accomplished has been done in fits and starts between bouts of work, and all the while fighting off guilt because I know I should be working. By the end of the evening, I'll fall into bed, with no time for down-time, and knowing even as I turn the light off, that the next morning will be a repeat of the day before. At some point, usually every 4-6 weeks or so, I'll crash and burn, my need for "down time" so great that I just shut down everything, turn off the phone and lock the doors and indulge in an orgy of doing absolutely nothing for 2-3 days. Not good when you're scheduled to work, and my mom isn't very happy either because I don't pick up my phone, return calls, or even listen to voice mails in the first place. NOW... RESOLUTION This is what was really giving me the "Ah-Hah!" moment after dinner that had me writing this. First: I have to honor my need for "down time;" without this, I will NEVER have balance in my life; just like a hamster on a wheel, running and running until someone turns out the lights, then starting again when the lights come on again. I've actually been doing this for the last few weeks, as I discovered that a certain kind of knitting... not the fancy, complicated patterns that you have to be right on top of things, counting and requiring close attention, but a simple scarf with pretty, fancy yarn and no pattern but straight knitting.... actually quiets the constant round of "chatter" in my mind... the plans, the mental lists of things to be done and organized, the worries, the debates, the musings, the mental blogging.... it all goes out the window. It's very peaceful and relaxing. I also found that doing this while watching certain, selective DVD's, worked well... not movies, where you follow the characters and all their ups and downs, but stuff that is superficially entertaining and/or amusing, that I can do while knitting that is equally easy to do. To whit, old daytime TV series. Yep. I knit away watching reruns of Hogan's Heroes, Bewitched, Gilligan's Island... (NOT I Dream of Jeannie, because she was always so stupid I wanted to bitch slap her, and/or throw her through the window)... LOL. In fact, I even have a special "Dark Shadows shawl" that's going to be 6 feet of a 3-stitch repeating pattern, that I only pull out and work on while watching Dark Shadows episodes! Oh, did I mention that my OCD/ADD curse (not sure which) includes multitasking? Yep, I'm the Queen of Multitasking. If I'm not multitasking half my brain is always out running loose, looking for something to grab onto and start doing. grrr! LOL. Oh, back to where I was. I'd started knitting and watching old daytime shows (also CSI is good for this), late at night, for the last 1-2 hours before I go to bed. And believe it or not, I started sleeping better... actually sleeping, instead of spending half the night trying to get my mind to shut the fuck up so I can sleep! I'm sure you all know the feeling. Well, that's usually my life. I started to make a point of doing this a few weeks ago. But not necessarily with real intentionality, but because I enjoyed it. So the next step to take, is to do it with INTENTION. Every night, 1-2 hours of this "down time" before bed. No matter what my day has been, good or bad, I will make this time for myself, because I NEED it, in the long-term. Now. I can't make work associate with need #1, they're just not the same. But waking up feeling relaxed and rested in the morning, is a good foundation for building a structure to get my work done by noon. ALL of it. EVERY day. I already have a plan for that, which I won't go into here. But I think that with creating the needed "down time" every evening, without fail, will go long way to helping me succeed in spending the allotted time for work, actually working. In other words... I need to create, take and maintain control ("Nooooo, not more control!" she whined, crawling under the covers and pulling them over her head, whimpering) in balancing these 3 needs. And having identified all of this (in maximum verbage, LOL)... I do believe that I can do it.
Wait! It gets worse! Yes, I sniffed this trail all the way to the bitter end. Especially in the arena of romantic-type relationships, there is no place in my world-view for someone to seriously be interested in me. If such a person came along, I would be oblivious to his interest (C: "That guy was really hitting on you, Mom" Me: "Sweetie, he was just being friendly." C: "MOM!!! HE WAS HITTING ON YOU" Me: "oh."). Furthermore, I'm completely unable to show interest in someone, because of fears of vulnerability and so forth, afraid I'll just be used because I've allowed myself to be available, or whatever myriad of reasons. So eventually, he's going to move along and look for someone else, under the assumption that I'm not interested. And it gets even more screwed up, because if I DO "get" that he is interested, he then falls under suspicion: What's wrong with him, that he'd be interested in me? Or his motives: What's he *really* after? (Because heaven knows, he couldn't be interested in ME, right? gotta be some ulterior motive). |
