I Have A Plan

I vacillate between trying very hard to use DBT skills and basic coping skills and all of the “tools in my toolbox” and throwing my hands up in the air.

The Rosa of the past didn’t believe in recovery, and the Rosa of the current still isn’t sure about “recovery” from mental illness, in general.  Do I think things can get better, yes.  Do I think they can stay that way, not really.

After my therapy session yesterday, I have come away with a few goals.  Goals that the Rosa of before would not have meshed with.

They are, in no particular order:

1) Daily hygiene every day, plus a bonus if I can put on makeup and try to pretty myself up.

2) Sun lamp 30 minutes, two times a day.

3) More time out of the house, doing what, it really doesn’t matter.

4) Eventually get back to the pool.  The staph infection issue is ongoing, so I can’t do much about this right now.

5) Stop thinking about the zebras.  You know, the zebras, the constant and negative thoughts that come from the brain.  Try replacing the zebras with a giraffe, or an elephant, or maybe a cute teacup pig.

I have come to the conclusion that I can’t fret about my weight too much at this point, because it is clear that it will be an extra-supreme challenge in which I may or may not have to make serious decisions.  The plan is to continue eating right, with small meals, and try to increase fruit/veggie intake.

Above all else, I will continue to avoid negativity and will cut it out of any corner of my life in which it will be lurking.  This may mean cutting some people out of my life, but so be it.  I actually went through the million blogs I follow and unfollowed some that are simply always so negative without even a hint of positivity or solutions that may be found.  Bloggers that wrote all the time about things that were triggering to me were deleted, too.  I hope someday I can come back and read some of those, but I simply can’t right now.  Chances are, it’s not your blog I stopped following.  Most of those people don’t read me.

I am going to have to do something different with jewelry/crafting, and I’m not sure what that is, but I’ll think of something.  I don’t think I am going to meet the October 14th deadline of having pieces in for the holiday show, but at this point I think it is more than I can manage.

I may be starting an adaptive yoga group that my art therapist is trying to get together.  I am excited about that.  As in, yoga I can actually do, maybe seated at a chair or in some other fashion.  I really hope she is able to get some numbers together so I can start that.

Day by day, broken down into manageable chunks, I will get through Fall, Winter, Hell of Winter, Spring of Winter.  I will because I always do, and there is no point in giving up now.

A Million Endings in My Mind (TW)

TRIGGER WARNING –thoughts of suicide

 

There was a time in my life when I thought that everyone on the planet thought about suicide like I did.  That every depressed person obsessed over it, that it was at the forefront of everyone’s mind, even when the feelings of depression had diminished.  That is was the first thing every person thought of when they woke up, or when they drove over a bridge, or when life seemed even slightly too cruel.

My thoughts turn toward giving up at the slightest provocation.  They have been that way for a really long time.  Decades.  I’m not sure how it got that way.  I have (obviously) not given up, because I’m sitting here typing this, and haven’t given up (ever) in the sense that I have tried to end my life.  But, man, do I ever think about it.

All the time.  In good times and in bad.  The thought is always right there, hovering near the surface.  When I say I think about it in good times, the thoughts are always much more passive, such as wanting to sleep and not wake up or wishing that I didn’t exist.  Times other than the good times, the thoughts are quite a bit more graphic.

I think its possible that the thoughts themselves have become obsessive, in a way.  I used them as tools to get through some really impossible situations in life.  When life is harsh and ugly and you are being beaten over the head (sometimes quite literally) with your own illness, the thoughts that you wish you would never wake up are comforting.  The thoughts that you could just oh, say, slide your hand a bit to the right on the steering wheel as you take this curve make you feel a little bit more in control of things.

I’m not sure if anyone is going to understand that, and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to publish this post, because I fear that I’m going to have a whole lot of people tell me how beautiful life is and how I am cherished in it and how I have so much to live for.  Yes, I know these things.  The thoughts still come.  This has become about the thoughts and how the thoughts have taken over my life.

I don’t talk to anyone (at all) about this.  I fear rejection, stigma, and I fear having to look another human in the face and say, lying all the way, that, oh yes, I know things are never that bad that I should have these thoughts.  Because having these intrusive, repetitive, obsessive thoughts is not something I choose.  I don’t *like* these thoughts, but I do have to deal with them.  I do have to live my life, with them whispering about in my head.

I do a lot of living inside my head, I do a lot of not going places, and not talking to people.  Not going places I love to go, like to basketball games, and not talking to people that I love more than any on Earth, like my sister or my dad.  I can’t tell them these things, about these obsessive thoughts.  I can’t picture the words coming from my mouth, even if I think there is a good chance that they won’t immediately commit me to a locked ward somewhere.

If this post reaches even one person who can relate, who can understand what I’m saying, and they can know they are not alone with these commanding and hostile, yet sometimes just whispering thoughts, then that is all I really wanted.  So much of having a mental illness is feeling alone and misunderstood.  I get tired of feeling that way, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.  I’m tired with it, with the isolation and the feeling that no one is really grasping what is happening in my head.

But my story, it’s not ending this way.  I have a  million different endings churning in my head, vying for space and attention, and if I have anything to do with it, the ending I will forge in time’s book is that of a person who never fully gave up, even though the thoughts tried to convince her every day.  I may have to deal with the thoughts, but I can vow that I will do my best to not give in, and to continue to try and learn to silence, to ignore, to resist them along the way, as best I can.

 

What I Need

I realized yesterday that I haven’t done a single mindfulness exercise since I moved into this new house.  Additionally, it seems I have stopped practicing mindfulness all together, here within the past however long.  At least that’s what it feels like.

I have started to notice that I am having a lot of intrusive and obsessive thoughts.  They spiral, they go out of control, they so go there.  And then back again.  And then there.  I have become stuck inside of my own brain.  There is a part of me that wants to get out, and a part of me that would rather just stay there.

I have been doing some evaluating of my health here in the last month or so.  I feel like shit.  My weight has gotten to the point that it is keeping me from doing things I once enjoyed, and also keeping me from things necessary to function.  It’s not pretty.

I am considering Lap-Band surgery.  I have had a weight problem since I was young, and have tried to control that problem since I was in my mid-teens.  I go up and down, up and down.  Off and on Weight Watchers, trying low-carb, joining a gym, buying a Bowflex, taking diet pills, exercising into pain and then relapsing on food.  Nothing has given me the results I desire.  And I don’t desire to be thin.  I just want to be able to function again.  I want to have energy and I want to be healthy for years to come.

It has been quite an experience for me, reading all of the forums and literature about Lap-Band.  It is anxiety-provoking, because I wonder if I can do it, and it is exciting because it is a new possibility.  I would have to radically change how I eat and live.  I would have to do that anyway in order to lose any weight.

If I don’t want to end up dead at 35, I will have to radically change my eating and exercise patterns, whether I get a Lap-Band or not.  I question if I can do it.  I wonder if my overall life pattern of apathy toward improving my health can change.  I am asking the question and not getting an answer.

I am going to a seminar on Saturday about the procedure.  Hopefully that will help me decide if this is something I want to do and something I think I can do.  I want to be sure.  This is serious.

If this blog seems forced, that’s because it is.

Sometimes, I have to practice a little opposite-to-emotion to get through all that willfulness I have churning inside me.