Forget It.

Every day I am more and more aware of just how much electroconvulsive therapy took from me.

Beyond remembering my own personal endeavors, It took the memory of every birthday my child had, his first days of schools, our vacations, our lazy Sundays, it took all of it.

All parents forget things that happen as their children grow, in fact I imagine they forget more than they remember, but then they are reminded and often say “Oh yeah, I forgot that.”

But my memory, much like my body, is completely resistant to jogging. The memories are simply not there anymore.

And, you know what, it was still worth it and that’s even counting the fact that the relief ECT gave me is long gone, and that ECT stopped being an effective treatment for me, and that I am currently still struggling with this disease.

Parenting involves lots of trade-offs, sometimes parents work more hours than they would like to so they can afford things for their children, or (gasp) because they enjoy what they do and want their children to see that their parents have a fulfilling life.
My trade-off has been losing most of my memories I’ve made with my son in order to remain alive to make more. Deal.

Necessary Roughness

We all have so many more choices then we realize.
It’s not should I live or should I die?
Am I moving forward or going backward?
Should I take meds or not?
How do I stop suffering?
It is not what do I do.
It is one second feeling awful and at the edge
and the next second feeling so in love with what is going on in front of you
and knowing there is no way to quickly get rid of the awful
and to get the joy to stay.
This disease.
Is it a disease, a malfunction,
a misunderstanding between different parts of my brain?
I don’t know.
I am trying to solve, to define, to understand.
But its about living in the problem, acknowledging it,
being okay with suffering, and shit, and pain
without having solutions, or tools, or answers
Answers are never as permanent or meaningful as they seem.
They make it feel like something is taken care of, they make others comfortable with your pain.
But pain is uncomfortable, uncertain, and moving slowly through it sometimes not moving at all, it is necessary.
And it feels awful.

Let Go

 Anger turned inward is depression,
anger turned sideways is Hawkeye”
– Dr Sidney Freedman, MASH
Let go of it. Be at peace.
These words have been said to me a lot in life and I bristle every time. Fuck you, I wanna say.
How do you let go, what’s the magic recipe for being at peace?
I ask and ask.
I am a do-er. A doctor, a friend, someone gives me advice and I will try it.
I beg this doctor to tell me what to do. She won’t.
“You are filled with a lifetime of anger,” she tells me “and the only person you let it out on is yourself.”
“SO WHAT DO I DO?”
No answer.
So I have been trying to figure it out on my own. Last night I was angry and I said to myself what do I do this. I chose to express it with sarcasm and humor, with some passive aggressiveness for good measure. It felt good for a moment, I’m not gonna lie. And then I felt like shit. (I’m sure there is some sort of food metaphor I could put in here but I’m gonna skip it.)
So then the regret and self-blame sank in, all in this big feeling I have  a lot in life:
I am uncomfortable and I can’t change this and I want to kill myself.
As you can probably guess, it’s the last part that causes some problems, so I sat there frustrated, thinking, how do I let this go, how do I feel at peace.
And what I assume many others have figured out in life, and maybe I even had heard before, hit me differently and helped me.
I realized letting go, making peace, doesn’t mean you get rid of the uncomfortable, it doesn’t mean not being angry or not being in pain. It means being okay with feeling all that awful shit and knowing there is not one fucking thing you can do about it, and like a fucking wound, over time, the negative feelings will lessen, but they will always be part of you, so you better fill yourself with the good shit, the fun, the wonderful people who lift you up cause the scars from the wounds will always be there and, joy and good, that’s the only way for them to feel less a part of you, that and admitting they’re there, and it sucks, and you can’t fucking change that.
And that is what hit me last night, and man, I wish that meant all is good, but anything better is better, and I’m liking the idea of exploring what this all means for me.

Hope Springs/Spring Hopes

What do I hope for when I talk about mental illness?
I know what I don’t hope for.
I don’t hope that people will think I’m saying my life is harder than theirs.
It is not.
It is a different struggle, one that I want to help demystify.

I hope that by sharing my struggles it will help me to understand what is going on even more.
I hope that it will make those embarrassed to live with mental illness, feel a little more comfortable.
I hope that it will make those who don’t fully get it, get it a little bit more.
I hope it will make people ask questions, reach out, reach into themselves.
I hope it will remind myself that we don’t need permission to be vulnerable, that it is not a deficit, that being vulnerable doesn’t mean you’re being a victim.

I hope that people will understand while it is nothing I’m ashamed of (most of the time,) it does not define who I am, and I can’t wait till it is less a focus of my life.

I hope that people get that mental illness is not a personality trait, that it is a disease, cause as personality traits go, I’m a pretty fun time.

And for myself, I hope that I can believe all of this, that I can let go of people not getting it or opportunities lost because of my openness, because there is so, so, so much more in the win column of sharing

Ankle Deep

I sprained or twisted my ankle an hour ago. It is all swollen. It is no big deal yet immediately you can see the effect it had on my body. There is proof!
 
So different from the depression which isn’t even the right word for all the other stuff going on with my brain myself. Depression, what a stupid word.
 
The beauty and validation of an ugly, puffed up ankle. Even the pain it is causing feels good in a way, it is a pain understood, it is acknowledgment.
 
This week has been beyond awful in a year of worse and this ankle thing is the littlest deal in all of it, but it easier for people, myself included, to know what to do with, to accept, to say it deserves treatment.
 
My son brought me a stuffed animal and his monkey pillow. He wants to takes care of me, something I would never ask for, let him do with the brain stuff.
 
Something to think about.
 
What do I want him to know, and what is too much, what will help him understand and what is more than a child should bear?
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