Uncertainty and fear

[Girl_Anachronism]

"Depression is a prison where you are both the suffering prisoner and the cruel jailer."
~Dorothy Rowe

How am I today? Afraid and uncertain.

I made good progress these past few days. I went shopping most days for this or that. I even did the dishes. TWICE. So why do I feel so bad. I was out doing things. Achieving things. This should make me feel better.  So why do I feel this crushing weight on my shoulders now? Why does the thought of next week fill me with dread?

I think I know the answer to that one. I have my first volunteer shift on Monday. Just three hours. Three hours I get to spend with cats, volunteering to help out at the cat shelter. Cats make me happy. It's only three hours. That should make me happy.

But I'm not. I am afraid. So terribly terribly afraid. My monsters keep whispering to me about what could go wrong. They keep whispering about how I'll screw it up. Normally I have at least a little strength to fight it off, or at least shrug it off and let the social anxiety of missing this appointment carry me through those three hours.

I look inside and all I find is emptiness. These past few days, I almost felt like a person again. Hell I can shorten that sentence. I almost FELT. Where did that person go? II saw her, glimpses of her in the edges of my vision. I can't even see her now, where did she go?

It hurts too much to hope. Hope should be a big positive, glowing thing but in my mind it is but a flickering candle flame. I don't dare com out of the dark towards that light because I can't trust it. It might go  out any minute. I'll be left in the dark again, the dark I know so well. Worse, I'll be left in the dark with the memories of what that light was, what it could have been.


I'm not sure why I am posting. I just felt all these thoughts, like a pressure inside my head. I had to let it out somewhere. It's chaos in my head at the moment, voices shouting over voices; faces appearing in the crowd only to disappear a split second later. I don't know if I'm making sense. I don't know....

I wanted to apologise for not posting much lately. I just can't hear over all the voices, to get one clear line of thought sometimes. And then there is the effort of coming on here and pushing all these keys to get it out. Then the waiting, the anxiety as I hope it gets posted. I hope someone sees. The fear that something will go wrong and it will disappear and I'll have to type the thing out again, which seems all too hard.

So you see I am having trouble helping myself right now. I don't know how to help others. It' like offering a hand down to help someone up and over a cliff edge. I don't have the strength in my arms when the ground is crumbling beneath my own feet. If I only had a firm footing, I could help pull you up. I could do something good. I could do something.

GA

[Girl_Anachronism]

Hi,

I feel a bit raw and emotionally exhausted from my psych appointment today. I will post later in reply as an update.

Just a quick post to say thnalyou, for feeling like my thread is worth posting a reply to. I appreciate every message I get, even if I can't believe what you say.

GA

[Neil_1]

Dear GA

I write this on Tuesday evening - may I please ask you how did your cat shelter visit go??    Can I have a stab at how you went?   In that, I bet you didn't stuff up and everything went far better than you would have expected??  I so hope I'm right.

GA, you also wrote this:

"my bedspread looks awfully purple in the dim light from the window"

May I suggest that if the colour isn't as you'd like - go out and get yourself a new bedspread!?!?!?  Just a thought.  🙂  🙂

Kind regards

Neil

[Girl_Anachronism]

"Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow." - Mary Anne Radmacher

That's what my existence has boiled down to. Living until tomorrow. My husband asked today what I wanted to do for my birthday in a few months. I commented on some of his ideas but honestly, I haven't thought far ahead. I honestly do not know if I will be here for it. I feel the same for my birthday I feel for everything else. Nothing.

The volunteer shift was good. I enjoyed just doing something for a few hours, however monotonous. It felt weird to have so much social contact. I didn't panic or anything, just weird bieng around so many people. At least got to say hi to the cats on my way home. They offered me another shift on Friday.

My psych session was somewhat productive. My perfectionism is just rife throughout everything I do. I went over a mini breakdown I had with my brother-in-sin not last week but the week before. I had meant to mention it in last week's session but I got distracted and just forgot. He came over to ride bikes but I thought we had said morning so I left the house, despite it not being a good day to leave the house and hid by the river, writing until a couple hours passed. I figured if he didn't see my car in the driveway, he would reschule for another time and I could ignore his calls.

He came by in the afternoon though, and worse yet, he came with a surprise guest- a friend of his he was supervising as she practiced for her motorbike license. He said all the usual things to try and get me out of the house, even for five minutes to ride but I just couldn't It just felt like if I left the house again, if I stepped outside something big, bad and nameless thing was going to happen to me. I didn't want to but I broke down in tears in front of him. Eventually his friend had to go, but he said he would call by another day.

I have been avoiding his and my sisters calls ever since. I just can't face them at the moment. The world is too much. I don't want their looks, their pity or their blessed ignorance of the darkness that lurks within us human beings.

I just can't right now. I don't know what to say to them. I don't know if I can keep up with the volunteering- what if one of those big bad day comes on a day when I have a shift? How can I explain that somedays I just can't leave the house?

Time for sweet, sweet sleep now. I have a medication review on thursday. I wish I had more hope to give you all. I just can't see the light right now. I haven't for some time.

GA

[geoff]

dear GA, firstly Dennis not sure your quite OK at the moment, so look after yourself.

GA, 'if I walk into the light and see just how messed up' as you say then your not ready to see the full light just yet, because once you are ready then you won't see 'how messed up you are'.

Imagine yourself being locked up in solitary confinement, which really is what depression feels like, and you walk out of it then the light is too strong for you, so you have to adjust, the same principle applies with having depression. L Geoff. x

[Neil_1]

Hi GA

This post probably doesn’t have a lot of major content in it, all I wanted to do by sending this post was to say that I’m thinking of you, and I hope that what Mary Anne Radmacher says in her quote, “I will try again tomorrow”, I hope that you can try to do that.

I understand your husband wanting to try to get you focussed on your birthday, but that being way in the future (well for us anyway), a few months down the track – well that’s just too far to contemplate.  But it still is a lovely gesture by him, and I know you wouldn’t have dismissed it – I’m just wanting to mention that it’s a very kind hearted gesture, as I know you will know it is as well.  That’s just reaching out a bit too far for you just yet though.

May I also ask, did you write the letters “apos” all those times in your post?  I notice that Geoff has them in there too … perhaps it’s some quirk with the BB system??  Beyond Blue?  Is there a fault or something with us sending posts?  Or were they simply naughty words and so they were transposed into ‘apos’?

GA, have you read your post again?  You had an enjoyable time doing your volunteer shift and all went FINE.  🙂  Brilliant.  🙂    But you dedicated one short para to it. However, come the incident with your bro-in-law and that was detailed out in two paras – and you know, I guess this is what depression does to us. 

We dwell, we focus on the negative and boost that up, while something that was positive, we almost quickly dismiss it – as though, well that went ok, but really it shouldn’t have happened like that and I bet that NEXT time it won’t go so smoothly. I guess we all do this to some degree – hence why we suffer from this illness.  It just sucks so badly that this is the way we roll – cause I reckon you should have really written far more about your positive cattery experience and how your interactions with the other humans there was.

Anyway, for someone who wasn’t going to write much, I guess I failed to fulfill that earlier promise!

Cheers

Neil

[Girl_Anachronism]

Hi Neil,

Administration first -  I am not sure what you mean by 'apos'. I don't see them in my post or Geoffs. I am not sure what you mean. Although to my knowledge I didn't type any of them in my post, nor any bad words. While I can swear like the rest of them, I write so much that I figure I'll go as easy on the mods as I can.

Also, I like my bedspread. It's purple zebra print. Zany and out there, like me.

Everything feels like watching a tv show. I didn't expect to get used to this feeling. I have though. If I think about it too much I get low because I realise how screwed up my head is that I can't feel love back when my husband says I love him or I stare in confusion when a tear rolls down my cheek, because I don't know why I'm crying. I don't know that I was even crying til I felt it. It's almost like my body is a foreign object. A subject to observe but that I don't seem to identify as part of myself. Events matter less this way; the good and the bad.

Geoff -  The light feels too bright some days. I just worry the longer I stay in this darkness, the more likely it is to kill me.

This will probably result in an email to my inbox from BB but if I was to be completely honest, I don't know if I should try stop it. I have fought this darkness for so long and I'm so tired. I don't know what I am fighting for anymore.

GA

[Girl_Anachronism]

Hi Dennis,

I know people screw up from time to time. I know academically that is how human learn. Experience is something we get right after we could have used it, right? My perfectionism is so prevalent though, that while I accept other people making mistakes, I can't accept it of myself. I hold myself to impossibly high standards I just don't know how to lower.

Your tip about listening to some of the voices helped though. I'm pretty sure listening to the voices is a bad sign and makes me more certifiable than ever, but it helps at the moment. Thankyou.

Scorch- If I hadn't cried myself dry at my psych session, I would have cried at your comment. I see so little of worth in what I do, I can't imagine how I could be an example for others, bar as a warning for what not to do. I guess that's what this illness does to us though, huh.

Helpful Soul - Thankyou. I really wish I could beleive what other people say but I just feel so broken. I wish I could find the good. I really wish I could.

GA

[Jo3]

Hi GA

I just want you to know that I am thinking of you and wish that you can find some good even just a little.  Even just a teeny bit of positiveness.  

Keep fighting GA, you will get there.

Take care,

Jo xx

[Dennis38]

Hey GA

 Listening to the voices is ok, it helps us put some light on the problem areas that the brain is trying to get us to pay attention to, the problem becomes when you believe what the voices are saying, most of the time they are all negative voices, there is one or two voices that get drown out in the mad rush of things, and those are the voices that you need to strain to hear, but they are so worth hearing, those are the voices that tell us that we have done a good thing to day, or we are looking sharp today.

The positive voices are the hard ones to listen for, the key here is to listen to the negative ones, let them have their little rant, then look at them objectively and say "Ok enough of that self pity, you are out of here" then picture yourself kicking the voice in the rump and watching it fly though the door..put the door up and close it behind the voice and that voice is gone for a while. (Sneaky SOBs have a key once in a while that we forget to take off them, but the next time it shows up take the key from them and kick them out again, its easier to kick them out the second time!)

Listen to the ones that are the loudest first, just one or two voices, listen objectively they are going to say nasty things and we know this, so ignore them after all you cant hurt YOUR feelings and that is what these voices are, its a hard thing to do but after a while you can start kicking these voices out of your own mind even if its for a day or two ( I have managed a whole four days once) and what you hear once all the voices are quiet is the little voices that are cheering you one, soon these little voices become louder and louder by the day. Until one day those little voices learn how to find their throats and roar. This roar, which aft first doesn't happen often, is the most beautiful sound you will ever hear and my friend you will hear that roar!

Never give up on yourself, keep moving forward and never fear having to take a step to the left or right, side stepping is ok so long as you know the next step will be forward. Always try to move forward, and if you cant move forward then hold your ground never give the demon any ground! And remember there are people out there that will help prop you up and have your back so you never have to give ground!

Your friend in the light and the dark

Dennis

[Girl_Anachronism]

Hi all,

An update, post medication review. Final decision was to up the dosage on my anitdepressant. Given I haven't had any sideacffects from the current dosage, she was pretty confident that I shouldn't from a higher dosage. That said all the support of if anything goes wrong than to come back and all that jazz.

She also mentioned that she would like to put me up to an even higher dosage pretty soon, but stepwise and all that. She also mentioned maybe going onto a second antidepressant but we'll see how it goes with the upgraded dosage first. If things get better on this, one pill is better than two.

I have also put on 7.5kg due to meds and depressions sucking my will to leave the house. Great. I don't have the energy for the effort it would be to cry over that right now. So depression is still pretty severe, anxiety has been getting worse these past few weeks and apparently though I have rituals and patterns to the way I have to do things, they don't affect my life greatly enough to qualify for OCD.

GA