wethegrayrainbow-blog

[wethegrayrainbow-blog]

Reblog if you’re chronically ill, support chronically ill people, or you fell over putting pants on this morning

[wethegrayrainbow-blog]

I feel like shit. I hate today. My brain malfunctioned again and I'm unable to feel anything that isn't well defined under "depression." I don't care about grammar or skilled writing. I wish I did. I'd like to care. I smell bad. My hair is greasy. The sunlight is barging through the slats in my blinds like an intruder. I don't want to get dressed nicer yet I'm staying inside because of how I'm dressed and look. I've been binge watching Golden Girls because they're my best friends when I spend my days glum and half-asleep. I want ice cream. But I'm coated in cat hair. My tank top is hugging my gut and why are women expected to wear bras? If I could buy ice cream without interacting with a person, I might do it. Today hurts. Breathing is exhausting. The pressure from the couch hurts my joints. I'm hot. I'm cold. I'm empty. Today is like watching a boring movie that you zone out on. I'm not the "me" that I like today. I hate being me today. I know, people have it worse than me. I know people have it better, too, so there. I feel sad as if I'm in the midst of an argument with everyone I love. I'm a heavy vessel today. The magic inside died.

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Midnight Soap box

I want to kill myself. Not really, but my brain thinks that thought so casually and randomly like a healthy person thinking "I'm bored." Maybe it's my equivalent of being bored. Maybe I dislike being bored that much. Maybe old habits die hard. Maybe it's something we don't understand yet about the brain. Mental health has come a long way, but it's not enough. To be diagnosed, we have to "explain" our symptoms in the correct way, with the correct adjectives, with a sick brain. Yet, many physical problems and people with healthy thought processes can get a scan or test to "show" what's wrong. Why has research advanced so much more in physical health compared to mental health? With effort, it can catch up. I feel like I'm living through the mental health revolution, but it's still the beginning. Identities are being explored more openly. Depression screenings are offered more places. My city just held it's 3rd annual march for suicide awareness. Mental health affects all of us, just like we all suffer a physical ailment at some point. I fight for this revolution by being open about my depression, anxiety attacks, and suicidal thoughts. Mental illnesses take a team to fight, of medical professionals and everyday people for support.

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Failing is okay. I fail at many things, but I don’t fail at important things. I avoid the important things in which I can, like what I’m gifted at, and strive at what is below my skill level, to define my worth. I’ll try new things and if I fail, oh well, it’s not like I was ever good at it to start with. It’s the things that I know I’m great at, the things in which I excel, that I don’t participate in anymore. I’m finding it hard to write out specifically of what I am am talented at doing because it then becomes a high expectation. We all need our identity. If I realize that I’m no longer good at the skill that I am most proud of, then I’m nothing. 

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Outside: Talking calmly and rationally to my therapist and not being hypersensitive or emotional.

Inside: Why am I not freaking out? Am I wasting my time and money by being here? If I’m not freaking out, how are we ever going to work through my problems! *Finds comfort in the irrational thoughts*

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I disappeared.

I disappeared from social sites for several weeks. This isolation wasn’t from boredom or being too busy or anywhere on that spectrum. Isolation and detachment are just part of the life. Being fatigued didn’t help matters. A random thought of death came to mind today. A thought that used to be common but is fairly unusual post-medication. Perhaps it’s because of a missed dose yesterday. I suppose other people think of death occasionally. Never thinking of it would be denial of mortality. That’s a challenging part to these recent days, finding that healthy line between unhealthily obsessing and unhealthily denying. Part of what brought me back was a great article from NAMI. It was the first time that I had seen awareness brought to severe stress and living with fight or flight mode permanently turned on. Give it a read.

https://www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/August-2017/What-You-Should-Know-About-Toxic-Stress

#depression #mental illness #mental health #NAMI #Stress #isolation

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#doodlepost #tumblr doodles #draw me

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Outside: I try to find and keep the peace.

Inside: I feel angry. I feel ashamed to feel angry. Is it okay to be angry? How much is okay? What do I do with this anger? When someone disapproves of my anger, should that affect my level of anger? I feel guilty that I expressed my anger. Try to never express anger again, ever.

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I don’t know my sexuality. It’s not a privilege that I had, getting to explore what style of person is best suited for me. Being a sex addict, my happiness was dopamine releases and approval of other people. I followed a path based off success defined by quantity and familiarity. Through the throws of addiction, the surrender to recovery, and serenity, I still do not know. Sometimes, I feel bothered not knowing something so intimate about myself. Other times, I wonder if sexuality is merely a cultural induced label to guide people to walk in step together. If so, that stride has broken with our younger generation’s freedom from the marital two-party system, male and female. Is this fluidity among sexes and genders and couplings (or polyamorous relationships) a trend or progression? Sexuality has become philosophical to me, someone estranged from intimacy and overly indulgent in sex, as I wonder about a question with endless answers: What is the meaning of sex?

#addiction #sex #mental health #mental illness #mentally ill #recovery #SAA #sexuality

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Outside: I had a customer say she wished she had lived the weekend I just had due to my large, glowing smile. Inside: I want to tell her how I was in a car wreck. I broke part of the seat with my back. I hurt. My car- don’t ruin the illusion, it’s working.

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“I can wait a lifetime for it.”

I thought that was admirable patience. My therapist thinks it’s denial.

Can we both be right or is that the denial talking?

#depression #denial #mental health #mental illness #mental disorder #therapy #addiction #patience

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Outside: Unemployed.

Inside: A person who wants to work, to be productive, and still uses a (non-existent) income and (non-existent) job title to weigh my own self value. Images of car wrecks, suicide by hanging, or self-inflicted gun shot wound leer in my brain while I was at work, breaking my mental well being into pieces. Upon opening my eyes, my first thought is no longer “kill myself” because I have put value into my life and quit working altogether. It is not a choice about work, it is a decision to live.

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The Outside: Functioning with a full-time job. 

The Inside: Before lunch, I would align my pens, leave no tasks half-way done, and any “reminders” necessary for the afternoon to go smoothly if I killed myself during my lunch break. 

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It’s the dark hours, where I am left alone with my thoughts and my fingers passing over the rough, pore-clogged mounds on my chin as if I needed another reminder about my imperfections. I wish my own suicide to no longer be a comforting thought for me. I want to rationally fear death and be comforted by living. I suppose, I do fear death. Does that mean that I fear life more than death? I only have those two options. There is suspended consciousness, a coma, but that’s like holding the pause button in the middle of horror scene. The ending will still come. 

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Moving from an abusive relationship to a less abusive relationship is not an improvement. 

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The Outside: I didn’t show up to final exams.

The Inside: Panic. Fear. Stress. Overwhelmed and singularly focused on the stress of exams and contemplated suicide. It became a battle of life or death, so I let myself off the hook of exams, and chose to live and fail then die from the stacking stress. I don’t fully understand what all I feared. Success, failure, performance? I am still on therapy, searching for that answer.

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The Darkest Hours

It's the middle of the night, the darkest hours. The light and objects have been sucked out of the room, only thoughts remain in here. I'm thinking about sadness and suicide. I've written multiple suicide notes in my life. The most recent being 13 months ago when I was working my last job. I wrote one, gritted my teeth, cried for an hour, and forced myself to drive to work. For the next week, my first and last thought was how I wanted to kill myself. Fantasies of hanging from the ceiling gave me enough relief to survive those days, while the pressure built up more. Days later, before work, I wrote another suicide letter. I cried and choked on mucus and screams. The inked letters blurred from the tears. A Glock, loaded with Hornaday home defense bullets, was clasped in my right hand. I imagined being found in pieces in a scarlet, wet puddle, stains everlasting in the drywall and carpet. I didn't want to be the cause of nightmares. Something very important did end that day. I quit working. Not just that job, but entirely quit having an income. It was a huge decision that I hate that I had to make, but I was about to die. I. Almost. Died. One set of muscle strands, pulling my finger, and my life would have been nothing but the darkness. But I didn't die. I'm alive with my youngest fur-kid sleeping with his head on my chest. Leaving the work force has been challenging, both financially and mentally. Without leaving, I wouldn't be alive to have the luxury of feelings, even if they are depressed feelings sometimes.