Sunday Mornings -
Sep. 14th, 2003 10:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kyburgAgain, lots like Saturday Mornings, just chibi.
Got up, lazed around yesterday morning, went out to Mitsuwa for lunch (always a plus) and then back home for naps. Got a phone call from Cedric to remind us that it was That Time of the Month and tonight was radio club.
In Chino.
*beep*
*sighs*
And my evening of doing housework so I don't have to do it alone tonight is toast. Add the fact I have to spend an hour in the car on the 91 and 57 through Orange County in a car. Each way. I swear, I feel like the crawdad tossed into the air by the herons in a Heather Alexander tune - "I live another day!" Why yes, yes I did call the Highway Patrol on the way there - some poor sod got smacked on the 57 going south and it was hard to say if they were going the wrong way or just over the side.
Jim likes the freeways because the traffic tends to be one direction and he doesn't have to be so concerned about the direction people are coming. Me, I prefer surface streets because at least the traffic isn't hurtling by at 90 mph, and half of it isn't heading for me.
I'd admit here that I never liked driving, but that would be a lie. I do enjoy driving - when I have plenty of space and no crowding. The fact I drove airport shuttle for two companies still makes me shake my head - both of them at LAX. The nutso capital for driving anywhere.
Which I guess speaks for my talent for bulling my way through things.
I was given space, growing up, for being weird. Which is to say, they looked at me like I'd sprouted horns and a tail and backed away. No, you're not staying home from school. No, you are not going to stay up all night because you're panicking. No, you are not going to get a single allowance for being depressed. And in the end, that was the one thing they did which was a kindness. It wasn't being kind; they were clueless - but it was the one thing they did which didn't make things worse.
I wasn't hospitalized. I wasn't drugged against my will. I was taken in for therapy and expected to use it. I was 8, I was 14 (and wasted years with someone who should have been a manager for a Del Taco) and changed hands at 18 when I stopped eating. Not to be thin. I was so anxious anything that went down, came right up again. It got so bad I got queasy at the sight of commercials on television. To this day, if I get whacked, my stomach rebels and it's the last thing to stop giving me trouble when the crisis is over.
I left home at 19 and lived alone until I spent the next summer as a camp counselor. Alone, in a place where I knew no one. I finished my Associates degree and then planned to transfer to my four-year school. Again, where I knew no one. I made friends - acquaintances, got work (worked two jobs all through school - didn't qualify for any financial aid, ever), got through school with a 3.0, made the Dean's List one quarter - most of that time living entirely alone. I moved 14 times - back home to work and save money in the summer, but every time I tried a living situation with other people involved, I got screwed over.
I was painfully thin all the time - struggling to keep my weight above 115. I was broke most of the time and was living on cartons of milk and candy bars. I wouldn't wonder that low blood sugar was partly to blame for the constant on-edge feeling I had.
I met George the last year I was in school, and he introduced me to chicken with herbs, stuffed with lemons - just lemons, quartered. Roasted. Yummy. And he introduced me to Cliff the last quarter of my last year of school.
Neither Cliff or I were doing well, to be frank. He had just broken up with someone he'd lived with for two years and I was the walking wounded poster child. Cliff needed someone to remind him to eat on schedule and take his medication regularly - and I quickly learned that when I was getting hungry, he was getting ready for a reaction. Co-dependant? Nobody quibbled. We were both out of our parent's hair and taking care of ourselves - nobody complained. When we married, we were each other's problem now - and not theirs.
Does this sound bitter? I can't say - both of us grew, matured and became more independent. We had someone who did what nobody else had - we had someone we could depend on to do what needed to be done, without getting weirded out by it. Cliff would take aspirin for headaches caused by insulin reactions he'd had at night, with his cornflakes and end up throwing everything up, plus blood. After I showed up, we'd have dinner, a snack and watching the insulin intake at night, he'd wake up hungry and ready for breakfast - with no aspirin. I gained weight, kept it on and mellowed out. I had one more huge depressive episode and it changed our relationship forever about two years after we married - not to push responsiblities back at him, but in that I wanted to be myself, not my role.
I can't say the marriage was a happy, uneventful one. But when the rubber met the road, neither of us would abandon the other.
I see many of my friends on LJ going through depression, much as I have. I keep popping up, saying some version of "I know that!" Well, yeah.
I can tell you in great detail what happened. When, and my version of why. I can relate all the diagnoses I've been labeled with over the years. Some were useful - some are laughable.
I was depressed in an age where medication wasn't an option except in a hospital setting. Prozac wasn't invented yet. (And to this day, the only Prozac that ever was good to me was a little blue parakeet one of my therapists had - little bugger adored me.) Anyone who works in the field - or has worked in the field more than twenty years - will tell you than any depressive illness will break on its own in five to ten years, without treatment. Depression is fatal if you kill yourself, but it goes away on its own - all the work, drugs and therapies are means to hurry that process along.
It's as old as human history. You can go back and find the hints of what was tried (and everything in the world has been touted as a depression cure, from vibrators to snake skin) to treat everything labeled "bad humours" to "hysteria."
I was depressed at 8. I was treated with talk therapy and jelly donuts. Nobody got down to the bottom of the problem, which plagued me each and every time I had a depressive illness. Today, they'd diagnose me with PTSD - I had a father who died when I was nearly 7 of a drug overdose after abusing the big offenders of the day for a year and a half prior.
I didn't learn of this until I was 31. I didn't know. I was terrified of him. I didn't know why and I was chided each time I expressed this.
He was unpredictable, violent and I hid from him. That's what I remember. I wished him dead - and all of a sudden, he was. Just like that.
I was in my thirties before I knew why I was a piece of shit. Or why I thought I was. After my last depressive phase, after years and years and years and years and years.
I tell you. There is something - something unique to you - and sometimes it is so subtle and well-ingrained it's hard to discern. I was trained out of my self-hatred with cognitive therapy. Learning its source, I doubt I will ever be depressed again - the experts say once you have it, it tends to cycle in ten year intervals. Well, 8, 18, 27 - but now I'm nearly 43. And survived Cliff's decline and death without a relapse.
I tell you.
I'm no expert; my only gift is insight. But I tell you. You're not crazy. You're not sick; sick is how you feel. And you can do something about that. You have a born right to be here - you are not a mistake. Being alive is not a mistake. Being anxious is a sign something hasn't been thought through to its end - you fear the answer, but there is nothing to fear. And that hasn't been learned yet.
I was told I obsess too easily. I'll take it - I'll also take that some people are more biologically inclined to this and medication "fixes" it. I believe children of abusive homes can have lingering biological changes in their brains. I believe retraining your thinking process can fix that, too. I've seen it. I've felt it.
Depression and anxiety are not forever. Being aware of it is forever.
All you have to do is ask and I will go in more detail. I will tell you what I know.
After having the truth withheld from me all those years, you can understand why I have no problem discussing anything. Ask![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
silverkun - or varna. I will discuss anything - anywhere.
It's the least I can do.
Got up, lazed around yesterday morning, went out to Mitsuwa for lunch (always a plus) and then back home for naps. Got a phone call from Cedric to remind us that it was That Time of the Month and tonight was radio club.
In Chino.
*beep*
*sighs*
And my evening of doing housework so I don't have to do it alone tonight is toast. Add the fact I have to spend an hour in the car on the 91 and 57 through Orange County in a car. Each way. I swear, I feel like the crawdad tossed into the air by the herons in a Heather Alexander tune - "I live another day!" Why yes, yes I did call the Highway Patrol on the way there - some poor sod got smacked on the 57 going south and it was hard to say if they were going the wrong way or just over the side.
Jim likes the freeways because the traffic tends to be one direction and he doesn't have to be so concerned about the direction people are coming. Me, I prefer surface streets because at least the traffic isn't hurtling by at 90 mph, and half of it isn't heading for me.
I'd admit here that I never liked driving, but that would be a lie. I do enjoy driving - when I have plenty of space and no crowding. The fact I drove airport shuttle for two companies still makes me shake my head - both of them at LAX. The nutso capital for driving anywhere.
Which I guess speaks for my talent for bulling my way through things.
I was given space, growing up, for being weird. Which is to say, they looked at me like I'd sprouted horns and a tail and backed away. No, you're not staying home from school. No, you are not going to stay up all night because you're panicking. No, you are not going to get a single allowance for being depressed. And in the end, that was the one thing they did which was a kindness. It wasn't being kind; they were clueless - but it was the one thing they did which didn't make things worse.
I wasn't hospitalized. I wasn't drugged against my will. I was taken in for therapy and expected to use it. I was 8, I was 14 (and wasted years with someone who should have been a manager for a Del Taco) and changed hands at 18 when I stopped eating. Not to be thin. I was so anxious anything that went down, came right up again. It got so bad I got queasy at the sight of commercials on television. To this day, if I get whacked, my stomach rebels and it's the last thing to stop giving me trouble when the crisis is over.
I left home at 19 and lived alone until I spent the next summer as a camp counselor. Alone, in a place where I knew no one. I finished my Associates degree and then planned to transfer to my four-year school. Again, where I knew no one. I made friends - acquaintances, got work (worked two jobs all through school - didn't qualify for any financial aid, ever), got through school with a 3.0, made the Dean's List one quarter - most of that time living entirely alone. I moved 14 times - back home to work and save money in the summer, but every time I tried a living situation with other people involved, I got screwed over.
I was painfully thin all the time - struggling to keep my weight above 115. I was broke most of the time and was living on cartons of milk and candy bars. I wouldn't wonder that low blood sugar was partly to blame for the constant on-edge feeling I had.
I met George the last year I was in school, and he introduced me to chicken with herbs, stuffed with lemons - just lemons, quartered. Roasted. Yummy. And he introduced me to Cliff the last quarter of my last year of school.
Neither Cliff or I were doing well, to be frank. He had just broken up with someone he'd lived with for two years and I was the walking wounded poster child. Cliff needed someone to remind him to eat on schedule and take his medication regularly - and I quickly learned that when I was getting hungry, he was getting ready for a reaction. Co-dependant? Nobody quibbled. We were both out of our parent's hair and taking care of ourselves - nobody complained. When we married, we were each other's problem now - and not theirs.
Does this sound bitter? I can't say - both of us grew, matured and became more independent. We had someone who did what nobody else had - we had someone we could depend on to do what needed to be done, without getting weirded out by it. Cliff would take aspirin for headaches caused by insulin reactions he'd had at night, with his cornflakes and end up throwing everything up, plus blood. After I showed up, we'd have dinner, a snack and watching the insulin intake at night, he'd wake up hungry and ready for breakfast - with no aspirin. I gained weight, kept it on and mellowed out. I had one more huge depressive episode and it changed our relationship forever about two years after we married - not to push responsiblities back at him, but in that I wanted to be myself, not my role.
I can't say the marriage was a happy, uneventful one. But when the rubber met the road, neither of us would abandon the other.
I see many of my friends on LJ going through depression, much as I have. I keep popping up, saying some version of "I know that!" Well, yeah.
I can tell you in great detail what happened. When, and my version of why. I can relate all the diagnoses I've been labeled with over the years. Some were useful - some are laughable.
I was depressed in an age where medication wasn't an option except in a hospital setting. Prozac wasn't invented yet. (And to this day, the only Prozac that ever was good to me was a little blue parakeet one of my therapists had - little bugger adored me.) Anyone who works in the field - or has worked in the field more than twenty years - will tell you than any depressive illness will break on its own in five to ten years, without treatment. Depression is fatal if you kill yourself, but it goes away on its own - all the work, drugs and therapies are means to hurry that process along.
It's as old as human history. You can go back and find the hints of what was tried (and everything in the world has been touted as a depression cure, from vibrators to snake skin) to treat everything labeled "bad humours" to "hysteria."
I was depressed at 8. I was treated with talk therapy and jelly donuts. Nobody got down to the bottom of the problem, which plagued me each and every time I had a depressive illness. Today, they'd diagnose me with PTSD - I had a father who died when I was nearly 7 of a drug overdose after abusing the big offenders of the day for a year and a half prior.
I didn't learn of this until I was 31. I didn't know. I was terrified of him. I didn't know why and I was chided each time I expressed this.
He was unpredictable, violent and I hid from him. That's what I remember. I wished him dead - and all of a sudden, he was. Just like that.
I was in my thirties before I knew why I was a piece of shit. Or why I thought I was. After my last depressive phase, after years and years and years and years and years.
I tell you. There is something - something unique to you - and sometimes it is so subtle and well-ingrained it's hard to discern. I was trained out of my self-hatred with cognitive therapy. Learning its source, I doubt I will ever be depressed again - the experts say once you have it, it tends to cycle in ten year intervals. Well, 8, 18, 27 - but now I'm nearly 43. And survived Cliff's decline and death without a relapse.
I tell you.
I'm no expert; my only gift is insight. But I tell you. You're not crazy. You're not sick; sick is how you feel. And you can do something about that. You have a born right to be here - you are not a mistake. Being alive is not a mistake. Being anxious is a sign something hasn't been thought through to its end - you fear the answer, but there is nothing to fear. And that hasn't been learned yet.
I was told I obsess too easily. I'll take it - I'll also take that some people are more biologically inclined to this and medication "fixes" it. I believe children of abusive homes can have lingering biological changes in their brains. I believe retraining your thinking process can fix that, too. I've seen it. I've felt it.
Depression and anxiety are not forever. Being aware of it is forever.
All you have to do is ask and I will go in more detail. I will tell you what I know.
After having the truth withheld from me all those years, you can understand why I have no problem discussing anything. Ask
silverkun - or varna. I will discuss anything - anywhere.It's the least I can do.
