Long time no write. I'm trying to remedy that. Blogging is hard, because I always vascillate between using a blog as a stream-of-conciousness warm up exercise when I spill everything that's running through me, or something I plan out better. Maybe a combination? A compromise? This morning it's going to be stream of consciousness because I need to write about something and if I think too hard about it I won't do it.
Is one depressed because they have another illness, or do they have another illness because they're depressed? The demons of my eating disorder have followed me in and out of the years since I was fifteen; they sometimes abate, but never, never, are they gone. I've found that it completely depends on what's going on in my life. Or not. Ha! Take that, huh? Maybe everything's amazing, maybe you're surrounded by love and comfort and possibility, and something in you, something in your pea brain, is bound and determined to destroy you.
That's all very dramatic language for something that will not, in fact, destroy me. I know too much, have too much practice in recovery, to let it destroy me. I've been in treatment, residential and outpatient. I've come around so many corners, dug out so many nightmares and skeletons and aired them for anyone to take a look at and examine, psychiatrists and psychologists and MD's and nurses and family and friends. I have been seen at my lowest, my . most rock bottom, and not just once. I am often nearly overcome by the guilt I feel; why am I doing this to the people who love me? Haven't I come further than this? Aren't I mentally more stable than this? At the end of the day, there is always a battle I need to fight, different tactics I need to employ, and it is never the same on any given day. Some things stay the same; I take my handful of pills every night before I go to bed. That's about it...other days I meditate, I'm a yogini, I'm a Child of God, I'm a responsible mother who's Staying In The Moment. I don't know what will work from day to day, what will keep me from using symptoms that make me crazy and exhausted.
I've been thinking about blogging my way through one of Geneen Roth's books. A change has to happen; I have too much to do, too much to breathe in and feel and love. I am now thirty years old. Will I ever recover? I don't know. But I have to keep working, and working means recovery.

Anger

I hesitate to write about my anger because I want you to think I'm nice. I don't want you to think I have "anger issues." I don't want you to think I'm...less. Less...female? Less...hm. Something. Some personality ideal I've created in my head. Because I want you to like me! Really, really LIKE me!

And I am not likable. It is painful to write, but it is the truth, and in facing mental illness, you've got to be truthful. That sucks. It requires that I look ugly and mean.

This particular anger is ugly. It was touched off by an event, a real ocurrence, something that truly does call for feelings of hurt, of betrayal, even rage. It saturated my life to the point of choking me. It finally forced me to open my eyes a bit, and it lifted that gray veil just long enough for me to say, "Fuck. We have a problem."

The first night I thought it just might not be "normal" was after I'd stuffed myself to the gills with McDonald's and Dairy Queen, and possibly also pizza, although by that point it was impossible to remember. Funny thing, all that food hadn't fixed the searing hole in my chest. I bounded off the couch where I sat in a stupor, ripped open the freezer, yanking the icebox violently out and chucking ice cubes as fast and furiously as I could into the shower. I screamed epithets, called names, and plotted sociopathically.

Ugly.

This wasn't right. This wasn't me. I'm not morally superior to anyone else, but my better Self knew that my brain was somehow betraying me, that this was a piece of my puzzle.

I am better. Not perfect, but I am better. I breathe a lot. I mean, I watch myself breathe a lot. I do yoga; there isn't a way to accurately express how much a yoga practice alters your mind and body, your entire outlook. Just the act of making appointments with therapists and doctors had the effect of lifting the guilt of self-damage, and added hope to hopelessness.

And I keep swimming.

Eating on the exchanges system is something I learned in treatment. The Emily Program usues a chart, usually printed on brightly-colored paper, (because EATING IS FUN!!!) with the number of servings from each food group that the body generally requires. You can fill in what you've eaten or will eat, and then just scritch! make a little checkmark on the box under the category it falls under. At the time, this seemed to me an enormous amount of food. Eating all my exchanges left my stomach distended and I was MIGHTILY uncomfortable. At the same time, it was very comforting to have a clear system, tidily set out in front of me, and all I had to do was put the food in my mouth, chew, swallow, and keep it in my stomach.

Thankfully, I haven't struggled with "food fear" (as we say in the biz...) for several years now, (Several years! Awesome!) but in a depression, it still helps me to "track my exchanges," (more jargon). Mostly, I follow Intutitive Eating guidelines; I eat when I'm hungry and I stop when I'm full, using a hunger-fullness scale of 1-10. (For another blog...interesting subject!) But I figure, why not give myself a leg up here? Depression can be greatly helped by proper nutrition, vitamin supplements, etc. (yet another blog post, The Chemistry of Joy, by my former psychiatrist, Dr. Henry Emmons!) Since depression simultaneously suppresses my appetite and/or makes me want to numb myself with food, tracking exchanges for a bit is an easy way to to be mindful of what's going in, and how hungry I am at a particular time of day.

I will be at a wedding in Iowa this weekend, but I wanted to write before we took off. Have a great weekend!

(inner)Peace,

Kater

Out of the Bell Jar

To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream. ~Sylvia Plath

Every year, millions of people suffer from depression, and I am one of them. Depression. Such a stupid word, a wrong word, for what it really is. A "bell jar" really is the perfect descriptor. Thank you, Sylvia...I wish you had escaped from yours. To add to Ms. Plath's image, maybe weakly, I say, "It is to live inside a gray bubble." That is one variety of my experiences with depression. In the middle of my darkest times, I have felt searing pain, right around the solar plexus, wild for anything that might ease it. Utter hopelessness, the airless need to cease existing.

Along with desperation, there is sheer numbness. Sluggishness. Your very own endless Minnesota winter, right inside your head, and you are slodging through waist-deep, heavy snow, soaking your jeans and sneakers, and you've forgotten your winter coat. You are in freezing misery.

The good news, and I truly believe there is always good news, is that there is very real light at the end of each tunnel one passes through. I am at the point now with my depressive episodes that when I feel that black hopelessness, I can recognize it, even though I cannot control it, and there is something comforting in that. It is part of the process, and it will end.

I'll attempt here a brief sketch of my history of depression, if only so you will come back to find out more. I have had mental illness, by my memory, since a very young age. Eleven? Six? Hard to say. I have used food to self-medicate since relatively shortly after I knew I was miserable in some way. At the age of 15 I became anorectic, and by 16 I was bulimic. By my freshman year of college, the eating disorder was no longer staving off the hurricane of my mental illness; I had my first major depressive episode. I spent many subsequent years attempting to treat the symptoms of my E.D. , and after hitting bottom in 2005, I entered semi-residential treatment at The Emily Program in St. Louis Park, now also in St. Paul. After much giving up, hard work, giving up again, and sheer jackass stubbornness, Ed (I call him "Ed"...he's a real dick, believe it.) and I have a bitchy but mostly comfortable relationship, like an abusive ex-husband I still need to deal with sometimes. He tries to visit occasionally, especially when I am not caring for my depression, but mostly he lives on the coast, probably in jail.

My depression is technically diagnosed as "dysthymia." At age 19, I was mis-diagnosed as "cyclothymic." Through many uninteresting adjustments to different medications and many years of episodes, job losses, and general crappy experiences with my dysthymia, I was finally hospitalized at my very very rock-bottom during the summer of 2008, after the birth of my daughter. I spent a week in lock-down in Fairview/University of Minnesota Behavioral Health. Not exactly the Hilton, I might add; no mints on the pillows. Or keys to the bathroom.

Since then, I have been on a pretty steady road to recovery, with the exception of a recent event-induced episode that let me know in no uncertain terms that severe anxiety is just another course in the delicious banquet that is my depression. Since I am "in the shit," as we speak, I thought it may be an interesting time to begin a blog on depression. I am on Day 2 of Prozac, a depression classic. Like Coke Classic, only people are still buying it.

So that's the idea of this blog: sharing my struggles and triumphs with this nasty beast. I don't know exactly yet what it will look like...my writing muse is capricious, to put it mildly. I am sometimes called to talk about my day to day "FEELINGS!" (all caps!) including my relationships with my faith, my loved ones, my work, my writing, being a parent, (although for obvious reasons I cannot, nor do I have any desire to, reveal personal information about my loved ones), and I am sometimes inspired to write in a more journalistic, informational tone. I will do my best to present information here from the most valid resources available, and will cite said resources.

Mental illness is a subject that I am passionate about sharing in some form, and I invite you to read, comment, and share your own stories and struggles.

Peace

Kate