Feelings

Gideon’s Challenge

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Cuddly Goodness

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My little girl likes to snuggle.  Any time I lie down, she comes running to come curl up with me.  She might not stay long, but for at least a handful of minutes, she’ll cuddle up into me and knead while she purrs.  Usually, she seems to stay until I fall asleep, then wanders off.  Sometimes, she stays for hours.

It’s so nice.   I loved Meanie a lot, but she was never a cuddly cat.  She would lie ON me, but didn’t savor petting or want you to touch her in any way.   Luna, on the other hand, likes it if I pet her and often enjoys when I curl my arm around her when she cuddles in.

It soothes my heart and sometimes, when I ache, I take a few minutes to lie down just so that I can have those moments with her.

Gideon’s Challenge

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Puzzled

Have you ever seen a light bulb go dim instead of burn out?

It’s the strangest thing.   I use a 150 watt full spectrum light bulb in the lamp in my living room.  Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed that my living room seems more dim than usual.   Then today, coming out of the kitchen, it was really dark in there.

Yet, the light bulb was still burning.

I went and got a new one anyway, because I figured it couldn’t possibly be my eyes playing tricks on me when it’s such a marked amount of darkness.  And I was right.   I changed the bulb and it’s now bright in the room again.

The puzzling part is that the bulb never actually burnt out.  I’ve never heard of (or experienced) this happening before.  I wouldn’t even have thought it could… and yet, there you have it.

Gideon’s Challenge

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Resigned Irritation

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You see that fly up there?   The one buzzing around that young buck’s fuzzy horns?

That is my air conditioner.

At the beginning of the summer, the drone of this piece of machinery in my house is a subtle irritant.  It brushes, prickly and uncomfortable, over the backs of my upper arms and shoulders.  I fight to block it out, to ignore it’s touch upon my skin and go about my day.

As a child, I didn’t realize that not everyone could feel certain sounds.  Feel them like a physical touch on the flesh or a flavor on the tongue.   When I tried to express my discomfort or describe certain sounds, people looked at me like I’d lost my mind and my parents, concerned there was something wrong with me, took me to many doctors and I went through many tests.

I’m a synesthete, though.  And it simply means that the wires connected to certain senses are a bit “crossed”.   Sometimes, I wish that wasn’t the case.

Especially with the air conditioner.

Because by the end of the summer, the need for the air conditioner is still as strong as ever, but the sound of it has become more than just a subtle irritant pushed away to the back of my mind in an effort to ignore it.   It’s a roaring inferno of needle pricks along the backs of my shoulders and upper arms.  Painful and raw and constant.

My “slow crawl through hell” is almost over for the year, but I wish it was already gone.

Kaleidoscope (Part 6)

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Abandonment

With the last installment of the Kaleidoscope series, we come full circle to a sense of abandonment. Because… that’s where I ended up. By the time I came to you and told you that I thought that you needed to go and start talking to someone about your depression, I was alone… and had been for some time.

This should be apparent by the other kaleidoscope posts, and yet, it’s more than that.  It’s that clear and aching sense of being left bereft and alone.  An odd dissonance, because I was and am still in a relationship with you… and yet, I was also alone. Left alone to deal on my own. A situation that created a sense of betrayal and resentment, because without intention I had come to depend upon you.

Dirty Pacifier

That secure spot of comfort and safety was removed from my reach.   I had tried so hard in the beginning to not depend on it.   To not need it.   And then when I did, it was taken away like a handful of sand slipping though one’s fingers.

Two years passed while I slipped further and further beneath the surface of hurt and betrayal and loss and anger and resentment.  It didn’t happen all at once, but one fraction of a millimeter at a time, nearly imperceptible in the moment other than those few rare sparks of occasional awareness.

I had to bury that part of myself, that soft and vulnerable need.   I had to, to protect myself.   It only made this sense of abandonment worse to put that small part of me in a box and close the lid.

Abandonment is separate in the series because it is its own animal.  It’s own monster.  It stands on its own and feeds the anger in ways the others don’t.   That’s why its last and alone as I reveal it to the light.    At the core, my anger comes from here.  All the other hurts and slights feed this one.  It is the monster in the closet, lurking and ravenous, eating up every slight, every hurt and ache and sadness.  It swallows it all up and keeps the anger burning.

It is the beast that lurks in that ball of fear in my gut as well.  The one that reminds me again and again not to trust, the one that says its not over, that you’re not back. It is an insidious whisper in my ear, always there to remind me not just of where I am, but what happened to get me here.

Gideon’s Challenge

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Gratitude

Mental health issues are not a joke.  Nor are they something you can ignore and hope will go away.  You cannot “wish” them away, nor can you force them better with positive thinking and “will power”.

Most of them also cannot be cured.  They can be managed to a point, both through therapy that can teach you coping skills and techniques as well as with medication… but for many, managing is the best you’re going to get.   Honestly?  That’s a hard one to swallow, even for the patients let alone those that have never experienced mental health issues, and yet… there it is.  The glaring truth is that like one’s physical health, those with mental health issues are required to do regular maintenance to keep things running somewhat smoothly.

  • Major Depressive Disorder  (Although, I have a feeling if I were to be re-diagnosed while on my medication it would be changed to Dysthymia with Major Depressive Episodes.)
  • General Anxiety (at times with social triggers and panic attacks)

These are the issues that trouble my mental health and have since I was a teen, as diagnosed by a psychiatrist and treated (on an ongoing basis) by a psychologist.  And possibly, more recently, a bit of undiagnosed PTSD.  Although, how do you know when you’re cured of that?  It IS curable, isn’t it?  I’m pretty sure it is… unlike the others listed above which require treatment to “manage” them, but cannot be “cured”.

In my life I have tried many different medications for my anxiety and depression.   Some worked.  Some sort of worked.  Others didn’t work at all.  These type of medications work differently on different people, and you don’t know how they’ll work or even IF they’ll work unless you try them. But even with the ones that seemed to work well on my depression or anxiety, there was one constant through them all.  What never changed and never faded was my suicidal thoughts and urges. (Yes, they are different; thoughts are just thoughts, whereas urges are a need to act on those thoughts.)

And then entered one wonderful, miraculous, magical (not in the metaphysical sense) pill.

10mg Prozac

I was so lucky.  And I am so grateful for that luck that inspired the doctor to prescribe me 10mg rather than the usual 20mg starter dose.   I was so lucky because it turns out 15mg is my “magic” number.  It’s a child’s dose, not even the starter dose for an adult.   And yet… it manages my depression and anxiety beautifully.

That’s not the most important part though. What is the really miraculous part is that with this medication my suicidal urges… disappeared.  The thoughts are so rare now, and passing at most.  The urges are completely gone.   Urges that were once my constant companion, with me when I went to bed and when I woke up in the morning.  With me every third minute of the day.   Constantly there, no matter how hard I tried to push them away or bury them.

And with a child’s dose of a pill that I avoided taking (due to reputation) for YEARS… suddenly, those thoughts are gone.

They come back when I’m bumped up to the 20mg dose.  As does the crippling, unmanageable depression.   And yet, 10mg isn’t quite enough to find a good balance.  I take 10mg a day alternating with 20mg…. averaging out to 15mg a day in my body’s system.

Is it perfect?   No.   I still have to go to therapy.   I still have anxiety and mood fluctuations that dip into clinical depression.  But, none of it is as severe in the years I’ve been taking Prozac.

And I am so very grateful.

Gideon’s Challenge

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Frustration

I have had my tires slashed so many times I’ve lost count, although the police have an accurate record of it, as I’ve made a police report about it every single time.

It has happened at a location as far away as 3 hours from home, and as close as just down the street.

I5 Seattle

It has happened at…

  • the post office (local and up north)
  • the gas station (the one I work at, not yet at one I’m filling up at)
  • more than one grocery store
  • the park
  • while parked on the the street
  • a number of parking lots (where I have tried parking both among other cars or out in the open)
  • the mall parking garage
  • the airport
  • along the side of the road when I ran out of gas
  • while parked at a number of natural forest trail heads
  • twice at other peoples private residences
  • once while I was parked on the side of the road and sleeping in the car at the time

I have walked miles upon miles due to this, spent thousands of dollars replacing the tires on my car again and again.

It has been going on for two years now? Maybe three?

It isn’t rocks or stones, it’s a gash or puncture in the side of the tires.  Yes multiple tires, usually two on one side of the car or all four.

It’s not coincidental… it’s intentional.

I am always hyper vigilant of my surroundings, and yet I have not caught anyone following me. The feeling is there though. Even before the tires started happening, I could feel the unease of someone following me. Watching me. Thus why I’m so vigilant.

I’ve switched to public transportation when I can, and yet… it’s still happening. Tires are so goddamned expensive.

I am frustrated.

At least the EPA says that the air quality is supposed to be making its way back to a rating of “Good” by sometime tomorrow.