I'm feeling paper thin
I had a really rough day in therapy today. I’m not too sure why this is the case. I guess my weekend was just traumatic and I didn’t really deal with it over the weekend. So here I am, a sobbing girl in group therapy, trying to explain why it is that i’m crying… what it is that happened… why it is that i’m so forgiving… and what it is that’s changed. man. what a wreck. so i cried. and cried. and cried.
in addition to crying because of the weekend and because i was somewhere that i could cry without anyone asking too many questions…. in part, i cried because i know that this is a disease i have to live with probably for the rest of my life. i remember being diagnosed with depression when i was 15. i cried. dr. saripalli said that a lot of times this isn’t a permanent thing. that it was something i would grow out of. i felt like my disease was being belittled. like i was unable to explain what i was actually going through. i felt like maybe she thought i was making it up. This isn’t the impression she meant to give me. That’s for sure. But at the same time… it was like… it felt so permanent. And I didn’t want to be told again that I was just sad because I was fifteen. So what. I was sad because I hate abandonment. I was sad for whatever reason it is that people get sad for. I felt so alone. And for the first time in my life I seriously wanted to die.
Now, I want this feeling to go away. But it doesn’t. It gets progressively worse. Depression which used to be indicated by restlessness, sadness, and feeling hopeless without reason is now an inabillity to get out of bed. A nearly complete loss of appetite. A hatred of my body. A feeling of hopelessness which seems to be permanent. A whole new wave of suicidal which I would never actually follow through on. Suicidal, to me, is an obnoxious desire to kill myself in new and creative ways based on every possible death-trap I see.
Anxiety which used to be an occasional panic attack or maybe more than the occaisonal panic attack is now this feeling of nausea whenever i’m in public. I am surrounded by my friends and I feel nothing. Sometimes I get happy and then maybe I smile a little bit… but more than anything I just feel empty. I am afraid of feeling anything but empty.
Mania which used to be occasional irrational decisions which happened as a result of medication is now something that comes unprovoked. A nighttime of conversations when I know I’ll hate the outcome but can’t bring myself to change the words I say or to speak as though I understand the consequences. I’m irrational. I’m rash. I spend money I don’t have. I’m impulsive. I hate it. Mania is a pseudo-happiness when you don’t remember the last time you were happy. It’s too awake to sleep with no consciousness of the potential next crash. It’s I-will-feel-good-for-all-of-it.
I laugh in therapy when I suggest that perhaps what was once Bipolar Spectrum and is now Type II will perhaps turn into Type I and the depression will fade. I am terrified that it will.
I do not want to be different. But I am. I do not want to be a disease, and so I will not be. This will be some strange part of my personality or my body or my brain chemistry that I handle in my own way without letting it control who I am.
Today. Therapy is a list of things I will do differently to take care of myself.
I am only writing this down because one time I read the blog of a girl who had disassociative identity disorder and felt relieved because I knew I was not alone. Because I knew that someday I would find someone who would recognize the manifestation of my mental illness before I did and knew when I was back before I did. So maybe someone finds this and feels a little bit better. Fuck.
I feel scared and distant from God. Please pray for me.