Hey guys, I just thought I’d drop by with some updates and to spread a little love for Valentine’s Day. I know, another contrived commercial holiday. But it is a chance to tell people that you love them. We need to grab all of those chances that we get. You know, make it weird. It’s fine. We need more weird and more love. So to all my weirdos, even weirdos that aren’t mine- I love you guys.
Any who, I’m not even sure exactly where to start with all of my nonsense. I guess back in the summer when I finally decided to get some help for my mental health. Coming up on that two year anniversary of Mark’s death was a terrifying time for me. I honestly thought that I was just grieving all that time. Relentless grief that just wouldn’t let up. It was hard to wrap my head around the fact that this was it, this was how I was going to feel for the rest of my life. In retrospect I’m not sure if my goal was to help me figure out how to live the rest of my life with this grief or to actually help me work my way through it. It’s been a crazy few months but I think we’re starting to figure a few things out. Like the fact that I definitely was grieving but it was actually much more complicated than that.
I want to be open about my story, my struggles I suppose, not because I think my story is so unique but because I think struggles with mental health are so common and definitely not talked about enough. People have a hard time reaching out for help for a variety of reasons. It took me 2 years. Again, I thought I was grieving and all associated problems that I was having were just byproducts of my grief. I didn’t even want pharmaceuticals. I wasn’t depressed, my husband died. I didn’t need something to help me sleep, my husband died and I have nightmares. Of course I’m anxious, I’m grieving. You get the idea. I wasn’t having any of it. And honestly I wasn’t even convinced talking to a therapist would help.
We can fast forward to now for a minute just to clear all that bullshit up. It has taken some time to weed through all that but you can rest assured that the take home message from all of this is YES IT DOES HELP! ALL OF IT! TALK TO SOMEONE! TAKE THE DRUGS! WORK ON IT EVEN WHEN IT’S HARD!
Honest to god, I presented as a mental health dumpster fire. I was completely unaware of this. I’m sure that it was not lost on my providers though. I am deeply grateful to have a PCP that I trust and listens to me. I’m grateful for the gentle nudging to speak to a therapist finally. I’m grateful that a therapist was available to me. I know that there are a great many people without access to these things now more than ever.
So let’s start with things that I thought were normal byproducts of grief.
Insomnia. I’ve never been a great sleeper. I’ve suffered with insomnia of some degree my entire adult life. This was and again is some next level shit for me though. Most nights I’m up wandering around the house until close to sunrise. Flitten’ around like a fart in a mitten as my Dad used to say. That’s an old Maine expression that just means wandering around not accomplishing very much. Who knows where it came from but it seems fitting for my nights. Somewhere in the 2 to 4 hours of sleep range is a pretty good night for me now. That’s with drugs.
“Nightmares.” That one is in quotations because as it turns out what I was calling nightmares or bad dreams are actually night terrors. Who knew that lack of recall, waking up sitting bolt upright crying hysterically, tachycardic, sweating, and in full blown panic attack makes it a night terror? Well, the answer is mental health professionals, that’s who.
Eating disorders. I just thought it was hard to figure out how to shop and cook for one person. I didn’t even notice that I no longer felt the physical feeling of hunger. I was routinely going 24, sometimes 48 hours without eating. I thought I was just forgetting. I routinely wonder why I’m not feeling so great and then I have to figure out when the last time I ate something. Trust me on this one, my last self would want to throat punch me for even complaining about this. But in all seriousness it’s really not funny or healthy.
Panic attacks. I mean, my anxiety was so bad constantly that an occasional panic attack out of the blue for no reason at all really didn’t seem that weird.
Disassociation. Not gonna lie, does come in handy sometimes. Also not sure it’s a normal response to any kind of “feels.”
And then there are still the “bad days.” There aren’t as many but they still happened. Days I tell myself I’m just letting myself have a bad day. Of course I’m still going to have days that I can’t get out of bed, right? Days I’m not able to talk to anyone or they would know and feel bad for me. Days of laying in bed crying. Who knew that wasn’t normal grief after two years? You guessed it! Mental health professionals, that’s who.
I thought for a while and I think some other people did as well that I was self isolating. I really wasn’t. It was more that I only had so much emotional energy to give so I had to be very selective about where I spent it. That was self protective and necessary at the time. My almost entirely absent emotional energy was not normal though. In hindsight I’m pretty sure it was intentional. I controlled emotions that I was exposed to so that I could avoid feelings whenever possible. Not just actual people either. Books, movies, tv shows, every possible interaction with the outside world. I needed middle of the road. Not too happy. Not too sad. No love stories. Absolutely no sad animal stuff. The list went on but you get the point. I actually settled in to true crime and horror genres. No surprises. You know what to expect. An odd choice maybe but I stand behind it. It worked for me at the time.
This is all still unfolding but as it turns out all of these things are symptoms of complex post traumatic stress disorder or C-PTSD. It’s like regular PTSD but with a bunch of bonus prizes. I’m not making fun of it, guys. Trust me. It’s really not funny when you’re living it. You can google it if you want to read more about it. It’s a relatively new diagnosis as far as differentiating from PTSD. It’s mostly reserved for people who have been in combat, abusive relationships, that type of thing. Repetitive trauma over an extended period of time combined with other external stressors such as severe sleep deprivation, isolation, and lack of humanities such as personal hygiene rewires the brain. It changes the way you think, how you see other people, how you think other people see you, it makes you panic when you feel happy, it turns off hunger receptors. Basically it does some fucked up shit to your head.
I’ll get the full story out in pieces. It’s too complicated for one post. And of course there are layers to this story. I’m in the process of finding my next therapist for the next part of my treatment plan. I’ve had some personal shifts. Becoming more self aware. Starting to recognize my own bullshit like my control issues. Most importantly, honoring where I am in this whole fucked up story line. Guys, I’m fucked up and that’s okay. I finally feel okay. Definitely fucked up but okay.
Knowing what we are dealing with now is huge. It’s a huge step in the right direction. We have more of a plan in place to deal with this head on. Progress is not linear though. That is definitely making itself clear. Some days I feel like things are getting worse instead of better. Most days I know that’s not true. I know I have a lot of work to do. Some of it is going to be truly terrible and I’m terrified of that. But most importantly I’m more afraid of not doing it. I spent 2 years of my life trying to figure out how to live the rest of my life alone, an emotional hermit. Now I have hope that maybe that was the fucked up part of my brain telling me that was the best plan. Maybe we can get my brain re-rewired to not be afraid of happiness. Maybe.