#for context my melatonin meds work too well

[k1ranishf4]

I’ve been thinking (surprising, really)

And I’ve come to the conclusion that Bildad the Shuhite and Nanny Ashtoreth give off the same vibe on very different ends of the spectrum

It’s like:

If you don’t like you don’t deserve

me at my me at my

1827 Edinburgh Crowley is in the center of it all

Something like this

*vine boom* girlhood is a spectrum.

[graysistance]

hey friends! quick pause in ic content for a bit that may seem a little out of left field, but maybe someone needs a little encouragement like this today, so here goes: 

for context, i’m 26 years old. i have had severe depression from age 12 to 20 and have been recurring depressive since then. i’ve had anxiety basically since i could talk. i’ve had recurring panic and anxiety attacks since middle school. when i was 14 i got diagnosed with severe anxiety and severe depression but went to maybe....4 or 5 therapy sessions but that was it. i pride myself in being high functioning and not revealing any of this unless i have to. most people, if i do reveal anything, are shocked and surprised because i don’t seem sad or paranoid. only my mom, dad, and a few close friends ever found out how bad things were. everyone else knew me as the happy gal who never really got upset, just quiet.

those illnesses aren’t badges or anything, they’re just this one part of my life. they aren’t me and never have been. that said....

yesterday, i went to a doctor and ended up giving him the whole story of what was going on in my head lately. to my surprise, he didn’t push anything on me, although he did encourage adding some meds to my routine. overall, once i told him about my depressive bouts, he looked at me for a bit, thinking, and just said “six years? that’s a long time.”

there was no pressure to make any particular choice about a treatment, but he impressed upon me that living with this stuff and just muscling through it without help of some kind wasn’t necessary. he’d rather i took care of myself than just plod onward like i had been. so i caved and he prescribed the lowest dose possible of something. when i filled the prescription several hours later i looked down at the dumb paper pharmacy bag....and felt like i’d lost. 

let me add that i’m also an only child, a serial perfectionist, and have only child syndrome out the wazoo which means i’m stubbornly independent, i have to do everything myself and hate asking for help or bringing other people into my problems. most people in my life don’t even HEAR about my problems until well after i’ve fixed them. it’s not the best way to do things but it’s how i’ve muddled my way through most of my life. i was pretty content to keep doing that for as long as possible, tbh.

finally, i realized how much that wasn’t working when i had two anxious breakdowns in the span of a month several times in the past eight months. they were so bad i was in physical pain during them.

it sort of hit me in exam room and later, once i was home and looking at the pill bottle again, that maybe doing this myself isn’t the best way. i made it work for my whole life thus far, but were there things i was living with that maybe i didn’t have to? yeah. yeah there were. maybe these meds weren’t losing, they were just a different way to achieve my goal of functioning well. better, even. i don’t know if i’ll stay on them or not, but the choice is up to me. i can try different things until something sticks. and it doesn’t make me a loser. pretty cool.

now i understand that this isn’t available to everyone. medicine isn’t as accessible as it should be because for some it’s behind an insurmountable paywall or connections that just aren’t available to certain people. frankly, i think that’s bullshit and can’t wait until politicians in the u.s. get their act together and make mental health awareness AND resources more widely available. i’m voting for those people every chance i can.

but i guess the point is that you’re really not by yourself in your struggles. alone in your head maybe, but your head isn’t the only head that’s dealing with this stuff. i guess the point is it’s okay to ask for help. you didn’t lose. you’re not weak. really, you’re not. in a rare example of the internet really hitting the nail on the head, remember this: “if you can’t make your own seratonin, store bought is fine.” and if your outside source of seratonin is in hobbies or past-times or little affordable and nice forms of escapism, that works too. you’ll be okay. and if you’re not okay yet, it’s not over. hang on, you’ll get there.

( alsO DON’T DRIVE OR OPERATE MACHINERY on this stuff. i got double teamed by my roommate and kat last night saying that it makes you drowsy and boy does it ever so take it at night. melatonin WHO )

[skruffie]

the ADHDening

so... I will start off with what I know: I was diagnosed with dyscalculia in 2011. I know that learning disabilities and ADHD often go hand in hand. I know that I’ve talked with other ADHD people who have said “That sure sounds like ADHD” and I’ve talked with my mother about it and she said “Yeah i wouldn’t be surprised if you have ADHD, I’m starting to think I have it too”. I know that I was diagnosed with PTSD in 2012 and that I did EMDR therapy for it which helped quite a lot for most of the symptoms, and I know that I shared about 99% of everything that I just talked about in the intake session, on my paperwork, with the guy doing the testing, etc. and today I was told that ADHD can’t necessarily be ruled out but it’s probably depression and anxiety--the answer that pretty much any AFAB person can expect in this situation.

I can feel in my bones that this is going to be a long post! (I do get briefly TMI in one sentence regarding like, sex but it’s not in detail but just keep that in mind)

Both in the dyscalculia assessment from years ago and in this one that I just did a couple weeks ago involve an IQ test aspect. IQ is really not super great science, but I got similar results both times (126 in 2011, 127 in 2020). Much like in 2011, I scored very alarmingly high in the areas of verbal intelligence. I scored in the top percentile. This seems to match my 2011 score in the area for reading/writing/communication. I’ve always been a really advanced reader and... if I can say, smarter than I think I accept? 

The weak areas I scored in for this were things like processing speed and I had average scores in other things like fine motor skills and such. I’m trying to remember all of it because it was quite a lot of groundwork that we covered and she also explained the function for each test, but I don’t have my full report with me yet so I can’t really fully get All the details, but she noticed the trend for the areas of weakness were brain functions that are pretty centered in the frontal lobe. I remember this because she was motioning to the frontal lobe area of her face.

I did do really well with this one part, which was the storytelling aspect (a story being read to me and then I try to repeat back as many details as I can remember) but scored less so on the one that required me to repeat back just specific words void of context, so she was saying something that can help with my recall is to try to contextualize information in a story. It’s not a bad tip, honestly. 

So it was kind of weird for her to bring up these specific points that seemed like they were pointing to ADHD like remarking how on one of the tests my mind blanked out while it was timed (and it was also math related), pointing out my impulsivity on another test, things like that, and then conclude that it must be transitive depression and anxiety. one of the big factors is that my sleep is really fucked now to a point where I’ve been taking a benadryl a night to knock me out on a consistent schedule (because ADHD and sleep problems are a thing!) but she took my answer of “can’t get my brain to shut up” as a contributing factor to insomnia to “can’t get my brain to shut up about things that worry me” literally, this morning. I woke up at 5:30 and couldn’t go back to sleep because I had the name Crispus Attucks stuck in my head on a loop. 

She told me that benadryl used like this could cause memory problems so I’ll at least stop taking it now, but I already know what is going to happen because I have tried literally everything that I can to keep a consistent sleep schedule. She wanted to send me information on good sleep hygiene like I haven’t considered or done it yet. Here’s a list of what I’ve tried: going to bed early, going to bed when tired, reading before bed, meditation, melatonin (STOPPED WORKING FOR ME ENTIRELY), [TMI ahead] masturbation, weighted blanket, aromatherapy, journaling. This also completely ignores the fact I’ve been struggling with sleep problems virtually my whole life. Obviously stress makes it worse but my mom can attest that I’ve been a weird sleeper since I was a literal infant. 

She wants me to get more sleep but with the schedule I was keeping up until the pandemic started, I literally would not have time to do anything. I would have to get home and immediately go to sleep for the amount of sleep that I need. The pandemic has shifted things considerably for me now that I’m not out of my house 12 hours a day but since I’ve been doing this for a few months now with little change in my concentration abilities I don’t think it was the schedule that was CAUSING it. 

Also, a potential side effect of SSRIs is insomnia. She won’t want to put me on ADHD meds but putting me on SSRIs is a walk in the park?? Medication that can make my already fragile circadian rhythm even more broken? Really?

Anxiety being a factor is like telling me that my hair is brown. What I’ve personally noticed though as I’ve been looking back on my life with the “do I have ADHD?” hat on is that a lot of my anxious moments surround when I’m running head first into a limitation that seems to be caused by ADHD! What I thought was maybe a trauma response I believe now to be RSD! My anxiety is not taking over my life though. It’s a factor of my life, and there are times when it’s not proportional to what is happening, but I’ve accumulated a wealth of coping skills to fall back on to deal with it. One of the reasons I sought out my previous therapist was because it felt like my anxiety was getting unmanagable but by the end when we mutually decided to part ways she said that I seemed pretty okay and that my anxiety wasn’t so much that I needed to continue therapy. How did I go from that (a therapist that admittedly didn’t seem to understand why I am bothered by thoughts of my abuser) to needing medication to control my moods?

I don’t have depression. I just don’t. I was confident in my answers on that part of the screening and even made an offhand comment to one of my friends just the other night that I was answering on the low or none answers for “have you felt ____ in the last two weeks” part. The feelings that I have that look like depression again are linked to my limitations: feeling like that I’m fucking things up or that I’m worthless because I’m not able to complete tasks that are simple or maintain my focus like “normal people”, not that I feel like I’m a fuckup or worthless most of the time with no other context. 

The full list of what she suggested is this:

1. Stop taking benadryl (easiest thing on the list)

2. Find a therapist (kind of a sensible suggestion)

3. Potentially find a different job altogether (not realistic right now because I’ve just finished what I’ve been working toward for the past year and it’s 10k more a year for me. I’m NOT happy with my job but I’m not about to abruptly quit either)

4. If not quit, see about transferring to the office closer to me (easier said than done, I just need to wait for someone in that unit to quit or be fired and also I’m not sure if I can transfer while I’m in a probationary period for the permanent position) 

5. Get more sleep (like I didn’t even think of that before)

Here’s what I’m going to predict will happen with my sleep because this is going to be the most immediate change I’ll notice, and also the benadryl has been more of a stop gap than a magic bullet: my insomnia is going to get worse. It’s going to take me longer to fall asleep, and my once-a-night waking up is going to increase to several times a night. This is going to get worse at different points with my cycle but the next cycle is going to probably be even worse. 

[rhenal]

Hello again

Wow, it’s been a year now since i last posted anything here. I’m still alive, if anyone is still here at all to care. Um. Last post I did was about the status of my mental health, so I guess a follow-up would be prudent, no?

So now it’s official. I have both Aspergers and ADHD. I thought it was just ADD, but no. The hyperactivity aspect is something I very much have. It’s just that it doesn’t manifest physically - it simply manifests mentally in that my mind is always everywhere at once - that my train of thought manifests more like a puppy on its first snow day than like an actual train.

I’ve been on antidepressants for 13 months now, but I’ve only really felt any real effect from them for the last month and a half as I finally got to change med type. The first type barely helped and gave me nightmares two nights out of three, but those things were small and irrelevant enough for me to it really bring it up until now. Because for all that time, I have been searching for and adjusting to ADHD meds as well, and you only want to sort through one set of side-effects at a time. Turns out I’m really sensitive to side effects, so finding the right type and dosage took a long time, and I’m not certain that the one I’m on now is the best choice still. 

I’m still on full-time sick leave for burnout, since February 14th last year. Currently it will last until the end of August, then we’ll reevaluate from there. Hopefully I can start studying again by that point, if only at 50%.

Turns out, it takes a really long time to recover from a bout of burnout that has had five entire years of buildup. 

So what am I doing now? Mostly just being useless. Restless but without the energy to do anything about it. I barely eat these days, and my sleep cycle is just completely nonexistent. See, in large part due to aforementioned double-whammy of Aspergers and ADHD, my capacity for self discipline is basically nil. With me being on sick leave, I have nothing that forces me to get up and do stuff. There is no reason other than my own health to get up in the morning.

Add to that the fact that both my current antidepressants and my ADHD meds lower my appetite. I do not get hungry anymore. I just get tremors in the late afternoon when I’ve forgotten to eat all day. I can go entire days where I am never ever hungry, and when I finally manage to make something to eat and force myself to just eat it dammit, I can barely get half the meal down.

My doctor has actually advised me to eat small snacks through the entire day to make up for it. You know, the thing that you’re usually heavily discouraged from doing? :’)

In conclusion, my daily life is kinda shit. I’m doing what I can to get better at it all, even going to group therapy every week, but it feels like a Sisyphean effort. 

I’m too burnt out to study or work, but without study or work, I can’t really recover properly. It’s one real bastard of a catch 22.

I’d move back home, but that’s not really an option. Not now that the family’s got a much smaller apartment. I’d have to live on the couch, in a living room with no possible way of real privacy. And I’m an introvert. I am really fortunate to have a family as loving and supportive as I do, and I love them dearly - but I NEED my space. When I went there over the winter holidays, just those two and a half weeks I was there was enough to suck me completely dry of energy. 

If anyone has any advice, I’d love to hear them. Because I need them desperately.

So well. That’s where I am now. 

[garbling thought-vomit about social issues and the failings of tumblr as a community below. Probably best ignored.]

So, why’d I disappear from Tumblr? Should be obvious. The state of my mental health is bad enough without having to deal with the constant anxiety of dealing with this social network. The nonexistence of nuance and the total intolerance of anything even remotely problematic. And the idea that if you like anything that has any problematic aspects in it at all, that means YOU are problematic and are to be ashamed.

It’s actually a really hostile environment for creatives. 

The pressure to be perfect and totally 100% inclusive at all times with not a nanometer’s space for human error or honest mistakes, the attitude that ‘if you’re not perfect 100% of the time always you are EVIL AND BAD AND SHALL BE SHUNNED FOREVERMORE’. 

The attitude a lot of Tumblr seem to have that the only things you are ever allowed to write or otherwise portray are essentially self-portraits because if you haven’t personally experienced it you should never ever write it ever. Kinda makes it impossible to even try to do properly inclusive work for fear of getting even a single minute detail wrong. It’s actually really really fucking hostile and I hate hate hate it. Like, I keep seeing creators of all kinds - writers, artists, cartoonists, animators and game devs alike try their very hardest to make something as inclusive and culturally diverse as they can, only to be rewarded with heaps upon heaps of abuse from Tumblr users just because they weren’t 100% perfect in every single aspect, or that their efforts were seen as ‘virtue signaling’ and are only doing it to make themselves look good and that is false and sin and to be PUNISHED.

It’s like the reward for trying your best to make something that everyone can enjoy without feeling left out is only hate and vitriol. 

(All the while creators who do not care about inclusivity at all get perhaps but a mere fraction of this abuse, I might add. It’s pretty fucking insane when you think about it.)

It’s suffocating.

And it’s total fucking bullshit.

People make mistakes. 

People change. 

And people can absolutely grow from those mistakes and be better. 

But Tumblr as a community keeps fostering this attitude that if you have ever said or done anything even remotely wrong on any level, regardless of the context or how long ago it was or how much better you have grown to be since then, once an uninformed or unthinking statement - accidental or not - always a racist. Or homophobe. Or transphobe. Or ableist. Or any kind of -ist or -phobe imaginable.

I’ve been very fortunate to not really have had to endure any witch-hunt personally, but I saw them happen all the time. And it just. Well. I got really fucking tired of it, and it further worsened my mental health by quite a lot. I just cared too much that I couldn’t stop ranting about it in my head. Sometimes for days.

So I left.

Why am I back? Honestly, I have no idea. I guess I still have a lot of thoughts about things and I’ve been really isolated this last year, so I just need a place where I can put them.

I intend to go on a bit of a purge of the blogs I follow and start with a zero-tolerance policy for witch-hunting bullcrap and other drama. 

See, I have a pretty simple, straightforward moral code. It’s often difficult to follow, due to the human brain working as it does with it’s shitty, garbage, garbage ‘us vs them’ mentality, but it is something I intend do always strive for.

No one should ever be judged for that which they can not control

Ever. That includes the entire spectrum of skintones, every single possible gender identity, sexuality, romantical affiliation, neuropsychiatric status - normal or otherwise, physical condition, place of birth, state of family or culture they grew up in. Or anything else I can think of.

No one picks the toolbox they’re born with. All that should ever matter to anyone is what they build with it.

Fuck jokes about skin colour - ANY skin colour - it’s tacky and only serves to further strengthen the idea that they somehow make people fundamentally different, and that idea can get set on fire and shot into the sea. 

Yes, there are absolutely issues with the culture surrounding differences in levels of melatonin. White people like myself carry a lot of privilege in the west, and darker skinned people of all kinds absolutely do face a lot of unjust treatment in the world. No matter what country in the world you are in, that place’s “default” - how I detest that unfortunate consequence of the human brain functioning as it does - will always carry a strong privilege compared to those who do not fit that default.  But it’s all cultural. There’s nothing inherent in looking any certain way that dictates a person’t being. It’s all the norms and values of the culture they were raised in - and cultures change. It’s slow. It’s difficult. But it is absolutely a worthwhile struggle, is it not?

And, maybe a reasonable path to changing a culture to be more inclusive is to maybe not constantly call attention to such differences? Because that only strengthens the idea that the trait pointed out is ‘other’ - not part of the ‘normal’. 

And we want to widen the definition of normal to include all of us. Right? That’s pretty much this entire community’s mission statement, isn’t it?

I’m thinking that simply acting like a trait is normal, that it’s not something that’s even worth calling attention to, does a lot to normalise that trait. To help it be included within the definition of normal. 

Maybe I’m wrong. But I don’t think I am.

And then there’s the whole thing with white guilt/cultural shame or pride or any somesuch. I have thoughts. Probably pretty controversial thoughts. So I’m preparing myself for pitchforks.

Feeling shame or guilt over whatever hand you drew in the grand lottery of genetical happenstance is just really fucking stupid. That much should be thoroughly established by now. But the thing is, so is feeling pride, for the same reason. You did fuck all to affect what you got. The deeds of your ancestors have nothing whatsoever to do with you. 

You don’t get to choose your toolbox. You can only choose what to do with it.

It feels kind of weird to condemn cultural pride as a concept like this, but I do. I really honestly do. Because it’s dumb. Incredibly hard to drop, absolutely - most of us are fed with it since birth, after all - but it’s still dumb. I mean, what on earth did anyone do to earn the culture they grew up in? Nothing. Because it’s entirely out of your hands.

Treasure your culture, absolutely! Revel in it. Learn all you want and can and strive to carry it forth to the next generation, and to teach anyone who wishes to listen. Absolutely do! Take pride in your accomplishments. Take pride in what you do to carry your culture forth into the future. Take pride in what you help others accomplish. Take pride in what you do to raise public awareness of the reality of your culture. Or your sexuality. Or gender identity. Or any other aspect of your being that is being woefully misrepresented somewhere.  But don’t take pride in simply being what you are. 

Because that’s just part of the completely random toolbox you got at birth - a toolbox you could not have possibly chosen any part of.

Taking pride OR feeling shame over things that you had no hand in is something you have no right or reason to do.

Never judge anyone - not even yourself - by what they have. Judge only by what they DO with what they have.

These thoughts have all been spawned by my time on tumblr. It’s a community that wants to be progressive and inclusive, but is much too often anything but. It’s all complaining, all vitriol, all salt, all echo chambers fostering this kind of thinking. Very little, if any, actual attempts at working towards real improvement.

I remember seeing a comic that circulated some time ago. About equality vs equity. There were these three kids standing by a fence, trying to watch a game of some sport or another taking place at the other side. They were all different height. 

In the equality picture, all three kids got a box to stand on, of equal size.

In the equity picture, they got a different amount of boxes, making it so all of them could see over the fence.

But there was a third picture. One rarely included. 

This picture adressed the fence itself. It swapped the wooden fence to a wire fence. One that all three kinds could see the game through, without any need of boxes.

That’s the kind of world I’d much rather live in. One where the barrier itself is adressed. Where there is no need for boxes to stand on. 

Yet all anyone can really, truly do, is do as Michael Jackson said, and start with the man in the mirror.

We can complain. We can decry. We can wallow. But it’s all for naught if we don’t then step up and act on it.

I'm sick and tired of the ceaseless complaining without action and the oppressive feeling of helplessness fostered here. I want to actually DO something to help the world be better. And if I’m not in a position where I can help personally, I can at least reach out to those in a position to do so.

This is why I donate to charity whenever I can afford it, despite my miniscule budget of a university student on sick leave with a lot of medical fees.

This is why I endeavor to always smile to strangers, be they the retail worker at the checkout, a simple passerby or the cold beggar on the street.

This is why I am always eager to share what I know with people who may need it, be it pointers about mental health or simply how to patch up a torn pair of pants.

All minuscule, inconsequential acts in the grand scheme of things. But it’s something. It’s my small straw, pulled to the anthill. Makes me feel just a little tiny bit less helpless about all the terrible things in the world.

Because even if it’s something small, it’s better than doing nothing. Far better than simply complaining and wallowing about a problem without ever following it up with action.

I don’t even know what I’m on about anymore. I should probably stop writing. Get something to eat. Go to sleep. Bye for now, then.

[teenspoonies]

my depression is causing insomnia at night and heavy sleeping during the day. no matter what i do to fix my schedule i still end up lying here exhausted and unable to stop hyperfocusing on death. its 7am and i still haven't slept. im desperate.

Bri says:

I would really recommend talking to a doctor about this if you can! When I was having sleep troubles there are a lot of things I could work on myself (sleep hygiene) but I didn’t get the full fix without my doctor. Every now and again we have to reevaluate and play with my medications to get the right mix for me to get the best sleep I can. 

If you are on medication for your depression this is especially important, because when you are taking your meds can have a big impact on you sleep patterns. I take some of mine in the morning, and then a different one at night because it makes me drowsy. Then one of my nerve stabilisers (for pain) also causes drowsiness, so I take a higher dose of that in the evening than in the morning. Then there’s melatonin before bed too. I can definitely say from experience that even if you get the dose balance right once, it doesn’t necessarily mean that will always be the right balance for you.

Aside from the impact medication can have on you, make sure you are looking after your sleep hygiene. This can be super tricky, but is incredibly important. Check out this for an intro to sleep hygiene. During the day, aside from avoiding sleep all you can, make sure you are getting sunlight (ideally direct sunlight) *especially* in the morning. If your eyes don’t get those rays, the sleep chemicals in your brain don’t turn off. It’s going to be tricky to adjust (same as changing time-zones and jet lag are difficult to adjust to), but unless you stop sleeping during the day, you are not going to start sleeping well at night. In the context of a condition like depression (where the issue is brain chemicals not damage to the body or faulty stuff that needs to be repaired like in some other chronic illnesses), the body actually only has so many hours of quality sleep it can get in a 24-hour period, and getting more sleep than that amount doesn’t mean you get any more rest. That means that if you are using up your sleep quota during the day, your body literally can’t get any additional rest overnight.

Sleep is also super individual though, so it is super important that you speak to a medical professional about this if you can! Followers, maybe you can share your own experiences of what is useful for changing sleep patterns?

[shes-healing]

Recovery is a choice <3

It’s the end of mental health month so I thought I’d share my story, to show you that no matter how disabling or debilitating your illness is, you always have the power and the choice to change things. (Please read until the end.)

I’ve struggled with dealing with my intense emotions ever since I was little. Where I lived then, there was essentially no mental health awareness, so by the time I was 11 I was self-harming, purging, having suicidal thoughts, and struggling badly with perfectionism. My thoughts and emotions became more and more unbearable, but because I didn’t know what was happening, I didn’t reach out until it was too late; by then I’d become horribly depressed and painfully suicidal. I was put on fluoxetine, but it didn’t work for me. 7th April 2016, I was admitted to hospital after a suicide attempt. You don’t want this.

I know this is all negative atm, but please keep reading.

My first psychiatric unit was a high dependency one, so I was under supervision 24/7 - including the toilet and showers and at night. It was so embarrassing, so degrading and frustrating. You don’t want this. Far away from home, the other patients and staff had to put up with my daily hysterical sobbing and screaming on the phone to my parents, begging them to get me out of there. I couldn’t sleep feeling the nurse’s eyes watching me every night. Terrified, confused, and utterly miserable, I had no bedsheets, no clothes in my room, no nothing, because of my risk. I felt abandoned by everyone I knew as I had no contact with them, which just worsened my state. I had no control over anything. I’m telling you: you don’t want this. 

Still with me? So far it’s just a sob story, but I promise you my post has a real purpose.

I was put on citalopram, quetiapine, promethazine and zopiclone, and after a month I made enough progress to be transferred to a lower-risk unit where, although I had incidents and more attempts and lows, I learned a lot and improved. Through the help of the amazing staff there, and through my motivation to get well enough to go home, I was discharged in August, with a diagnosis of a depressive episode, anxiety and emerging EUPD. I regret keeping my purging habits a secret; if you hide things, you’ll get worse. The doctors will find out eventually and intervene, and you’ll have to deal with the implications, as I do now. I’ve now been home for almost a full year, working my arse off to recover.

I’m not there yet with my independence. I still rely on my mum to help me cope with a lot of things (too many); I only go outside if she’s with me, I only eat if she portions out the meals and tells me to and sits with me, and I panic if I’m in a room on my own for too long. I have four therapy sessions a week. My mum has to put up with my meltdowns, my “stroppy toddler” moments, my sensitivity and my incidents. My sisters are used to their big sister having crying fits. My school made a lot of adjustments for me. In other words, my illness affects a lot of people daily, and whilst I’m forever grateful that I have their support, it’s not normal. You don’t want this.

What’s the point of me telling you this? Well, I think only after knowing the context of my illness will you see that I’ve made progress.

I can now cope without constant supervision. I can now sleep on my own. Most days I can cope at school, and if I can’t I know what to do and have a support system. DBT is the best thing that’s ever happened in my recovery - I’m learning to cope with my struggles in healthy ways instead of clinging onto unhelpful behaviours. I’ve finally found meds that work for me: sertraline, quetiapine, and melatonin for sleeping. I’m eating enough most days, I’m a healthy weight, and I’m purging way less. Yes, I’m not there yet. Yes, it’s easier to give in to my urges. Yes, my thoughts are still disordered, and there’s still A LOT to change. But I will recover. And right now I’m taking my GCSE exams like most 16-year-olds in the UK, which is also a huge achievement. 

It’s taken LOADS of hard work to get to where I’m at right now. There hasn’t been a day when I haven’t been terrified of recovery, but despite that, I persevered and I’ll continue doing so. I refuse to have my life be controlled and defined by my illness.

You can either let your illness win, or you can do what you can to make the most of what’s available to you. You can get better. Don’t be ashamed of having therapy and taking medication, and don’t give up if things don’t work at first. You just have to bite the bullet. I promise you: it will pay off.

Maybe my problems wouldn’t have escalated if there’d been more mental health awareness, and if I’d known how to cope healthily with what I was experiencing when I was little. So please look after your younger siblings. I’m teaching my little sisters all about healthy coping skills. Early intervention is so important, and I hope that in the future more and more people will have a better knowledge of mental health. 

[canaryatlaw]

Okay, well today was better than yesterday, and I was in a significantly better mood for most of the day, although I'm back to being slightly irked now with no real logical reason (you know, other than the obvious). But yeah. Woke up, ate breakfast (fucking cocoa pebbles not nearly as good as cocoa krispies) and caught the bus to work. Tbh I don't remember that much of what I did for the morning because I kind of ended up napping for a full hour....more on that later, though. I think I was mostly just sourcing stuff and building the timeline for the TPR prep. See, the issue with the sleep thing is like, I can't just push through it. I can't control my eyes closing. And I also can't fucking type. Like it takes me twice as long to type something because every other letter is wrong. I did 30 minutes then tried to get back to work but it wasn't happening so I did another 30 and I can get away with this because I'm an intern and for the most part nobody cares what I do. I took a lunch too because fuck it, I don't care. The interesting assignment of the day came in the afternoon from my boss, she wanted me to watch a VSI (I know I defined that yesterday but I'll be nice and do it again, it's victim sensitive interview) because her computer wasn't sound equipped or whatever and mine was because of the prison calls, lol, so she wanted me to transcribe it verbatim for her. The thing was only 13 minutes long, but obviously took me substantially longer to get through because I can't type on a PC in real time conversation, lol, so I ended up pausing after each line to type it, then generally play it back to make sure I got it right. I ended up with like 13 pages of transcribed notes, so like one per minute of the video. A couple things here. One, I'd never actually watched one of these before, so I didn't really have a context for it. Two, I had no idea what the circumstances were going into this interview- if the girl had made an outcry or what had happened (I'm avoiding giving details for obvious reasons when discussing child sex abuse) but I finished it with the impression that there had been an incident. Then my boss comes back and explains she had read the detective's notes and he said there wasn't gonna be charges and it didn't seem like there was anything there, which of course was not at all what I got from it. Apparently going into it wasn't based on an outcry but a weird hotline call that the little girl had been saying sexually explicit things in school but they unfounded the report as just nothing. So I of course relayed all of this to my supervisor, and she said she'd have to watch it now haha but had my notes as well. So that took me about to the end of my day. I had a 6:30 PT appointment because it was the only one available, and after last week's fiasco I knew there was no way I would make it on time if I took the bus, so I ubered, figuring I should have just enough time to get home, change, and go right back out. Uber was in a price surge so I ended up paying like, double the normal rate (ugh) for it but whatever. I liked the driver a lot, he said I was actually his first customer because this was his first day driving for uber haha so I was like okay, hopefully this will go well! But we started talking and I went into the cases and the reforms that have been populating the news (the more recent child death case that supposedly prompted the DCFS director into reforms that I was ranting about the other day had been pretty widely reported so he brought that one up) and I told him about my case and the ridiculous can't make this shit up facts of it all. And of course we talked the random stuff. We took the street my street is off all the way up because it's pretty much a straight shot, like the bus I take to work and back, except that one goes a few blocks over then shoots down. It had a fair amount of traffic, but I had tried to allocate enough time to make sure it was okay and I arrived at my apartment just at 6:10 which was perfect, I ran in and got changed and did a few other things then came back out at 6:20 to walk over for my 6:30 appointment. While I'm almost there, I get a call from a Long Island number, so I'm like okay, I answer it and it's my psychiatrist that I've been playing phone tag with for two weeks now. Of all the shitty timing!! But I knew because of my mental state lately I did have to have this conversation now, so I ended up standing outside the therapy place on the phone for 15 minutes while motioning to them that I'd been in as soon as possible. It was a good conversation though, I'm glad we had it, and it was definitely necessary. Apparently the deal with the phone tag was the secretary or whoever would take down my message that I needed him to call back, but somehow in there my name got substituted for my mom's, so he ended up calling her repeatedly and trying to figure out what was going on before someone realized OH, it's the daughter who's in Chicago and not Long Island, lol. So that made me feel significantly better than my messages weren't being deliberately ignored. So I told him my exams were over and my anxiety was through the roof, with the Xanax not helping. Then he asked about my sleep, and suddenly the light bulb in my head clicked on and I went OHHHHHHHHHH, YOUR MID MORNING NAPS HAVE BEEN BECAUSE YOUVE BEEN INCREASING YOUR XANAX DOSAGE YOU FUCKING MORON and suddenly that made a lot more sense. He asked some questions about describing the mind racing thing and asked if it was like hyper, and of course I knew where he was going with that so I said it definitely wasn't manic (because it's not) but more just anxiety based. So we ended up swapping out one of my regular meds for what I believe is the generic version of Zoloft, and he said to do whatever with the Xanax since they weren't helping anyway, so I'm gonna cut down on them a lot lol cuz I can't live like this. I do think I was on Zoloft at one point in high school and it wasn't terribly helpful, just one in a long line of antidepressants tried that resulted in a "meh" result, but the circumstances here are fairly different now that I'm on several meds and I have the Wellbutrin to actually treat depression, the Zoloft can potentially help the anxiety, which was definitely not really present in high school or even when I started with my psychiatrist back in 2012 (thanks, law school). I mean, it had started before law school, but that's what's really exacerbated it of course. Hey, it got my brother an OCD diagnosis after 22 years of only ever having super small tics like re-walking out of a room every so often. So hopefully those meds will get things figured out and it'll be better. So I finally got off the phone at 6:40 and of course was now very frustrated because I hate being late, but we just jumped into it instead of doing warm ups so it was fine. I keep getting asked if I'm feeling an improvement in pain, but the answer continues to be about the same, and in fact after PT it almost definitely hurts. It was actually bugging me at work today too, which isn't typical. But we had a good session anyway. Afterwards I walked across the street to Walgreens just because I wanted to grab a type of melatonin I know works for me to use as a control test for the Xanax- to make sure that's the thing that's throwing it off, not being unsure if it's the melatonin. Come home, get some dinner together and start Arrow. I wasn't totally thrilled with the episode given the plot was pretty weak, but it was of course strengthened greatly by the presence of Katie Cassidy and Katrina Law (though I would've liked more than 30 seconds of Katrina). Can I just talk about Katie Cassidy's acting skills though? I'm amazed as to how she's adopted completely different personas to the point where you can tell "who" she's supposed to be just by looking at her- that Laurel, Black Siren, and particularly black siren pretending to be Laurel, but not resembling either in any significant way but an entirely new image. I'm just like damn girl, that's intense. So things are set up for the final battle now, which has to happen on Lian-Yu because everything fucking happens on Lian-Yu, and I'll admit it does seem like it'll be a pretty epic showdown given everyone they've brought in on both sides. Back to that non-existent plot though- like really Oliver? Really??? That had to be the worst plan in existence of plans. You just handed him over and what, expected him to just let everyone go and go skip off into the sunset? Like dude, come on. That was really fucking dumb. So then it's just Oliver and fucking Malcolm, who has somehow managed to stay alive for another season, much to my annoyance. The moment with Nyssa coming in was pretty epic though, but I really hope they told her that besides her sister they were also facing off with E2 Laurel because those two got pretty damn close in season 3 and that could definitely throw her for a loop. Also, why the fuck had they not told Quentin at this point??? Like that was really dumb because you left him super vulnerable to exactly what happened. So yeah, I suppose I'm looking forward to the season finale, mostly for my two homegirls, but hopefully the rest of it will be good too. A tweet on my timeline reminded me that designated survivor was about to come on just as I finished Arrow, so I turned that on to watch live since I knew it was the season finale. Can I just say damn, I love this show so much??! It's so freaking well done in an era of totally overdone dramas, and of course this had the potential to do some incredibly shark jumping being that they blew up the entire government as the premise of the start of the plot. They've handled it really well. I think most of the episode was good and full of action, though I was sad to see Jason is actually dead (I mean, I think we knew he was, it just wasn't formally confirmed). I loved the scene between Kirkman and the reporter, because you can just tell how much respect the reporter gets from him because of how he handled the meeting, and I'm just left thinking whoever handpicked Kirkman as the designated survivor obviously massively underestimated his ability to be an incredible leader of our country. Damn what I would do for him to be our real president right now.....sigh. The speech was great and super satisfying, but I'm also watching the clock because I KNOW they have to leave some sort of cliffhanger disaster to predicate season 2 on, and of course that happened with them basically being like "we're fucked, they're fucked, everyone's fucked" which sounds like a fairly good premise to me. After this I watched Brooklyn 99 which was of course fucking hilarious. After that I got ready for bed, but for some stupid reason when I'm you know on autopilot for my routine I took the morning pills left in my "Tuesday" box instead of the evening pills in the "Wednesday" box (because I refill every Tuesday night) and took the wrong meds, then said well fuck, but my best bet is probably taking the meds I should've taken right now (none that should really interfere with the first) and just skip my morning dosage. And then tomorrow afternoon I can pick up my prescription for my new med so my body is just gonna be a psychopharmacological mess for the next 24 hours but hopefully it won't have any really bad side effects (it really shouldn't) (I'm also very impressed that psychopharmacological is an actual word and I didn't have to just make it up like I normally do when I want to use a form of a word that doesn't exist). Andddd it's past 1 am. I get to arrive at 9:30 tomorrow since we're going straight to a visit, so that'll be nice, assuming I don't fall asleep on the bus again like I did last time 😑. Anyway. Goodnight my little loves. Hope you had the loveliest of hump days.