Apocatips for the Apocalypse

I talked to my shrink on the phone a few days ago.  It only took about a week for the novelty and luxury of staying with safe people to start to wear off, and I feel like I'm losing control really quickly.  I restricted enough to drop a few pounds, which hasn't happened in a while, followed by binging two days in a row, so basically I am a paragon of health and stability.  The self-injury urges and suicidal ideation have been sneaking back, especially after Mama and Papa are in bed and that loneliness starts soaking in.  My shrink and I talked about some of my self-care activities, and the phrase she said that has been reverberating in my mind since then is, "Remember, you're trying to choose life." Choose life.  That sounds like something that shouldn't be very hard.  I suppose I am lucky that I do have the choice to not die at this point.  The difficulty is that I am very, very sick.  I think suicide is a thought that has passed through the minds of man

CW: Suicidal ideation, side-effects, illness, death, mention of graphic hallucinations. It's getting late and I'm starting to get that feeling, that itch deep in my chest that means I'm probably not going to be able to sleep tonight, again. I get so mad about sleep sometimes.  There's no happy medium for me, not even with this stupid, simple thing that's barely above breathing on the scale of basic human functions.  And yet, I can not get a fucking handle on it.  I sleep three hours, or 15.  I sleep all day and then am through the ceiling by 2am.  Even when I sleep enough, there are times I feel like I will literally pass out if I can't take a nap.  A week ago I almost left in the middle of a church service to go sleep in my car, even though I'd just slept ten hours.  The only reason I didn't is because I couldn't bear to make a noise and have people look at me (thanks social anxiety, you're a champ).  I actually looked up the diagno

CW: Suicidal ideation, self-injury This is depression.  It's early morning and all my friends are asleep; I've already talked to half of them today anyway.  I am gut-crying, weeping into pillow, snot running down my face.  I am desperate.  My head hurts from crying.  My whole body is shaking.  All I can think about is making the pain stop; please, god, make it stop.  It feels like I'm breathing in water instead of air.  It feels like my organs are rotting inside me, but for some reason, I'm the only one who can smell the stench. When you have been depressed for 15 years, you run out of ways to describe it.  There are only so many ways to say "I feel sad for no reason" or "everything hurts" or "I can't take one more fucking second of this existence."  You know you're gonna come out of it but you also know you're gonna end back up right here, staring at the computer screen, thinking about all the ways you could kill yours

Yo. Yesterday's treatment was rough (see above).  It hurt a lot and I cried in the car later thinking about how many more I have to go.  Today, however, was much better.  I had an amazing tech (shout-out to Brooks) who managed to get the machine up to 100% without much pain.  I also did not get lost for the first time on the way to the building!  Hells yeah. I went on an adventure to JoAnn yesterday and I swear I heard angels singing.  There were five rows with yarn down both sides.  Five rows!!  What magic is this?  I would almost consider moving here permanently just to spend more time in that glorious store. Living with Mama and Papa has been great.  They do everything to make me feel safe and we can talk about anything.  Even here I find it hard to talk about my feelings openly.  I feel a bit wibbly-wobbly on the scale of emotions (my friend Betsy actually laughed when I told her I've been extra emotional lately; it's possible that "unstable" is a f

Content Warning: Self-injury, suicidal intent, sexual assault, eating disorders As these entries are currently focused on my TMS experience (that is going to be a new show on TLC any day now), it seems a few details about my past may be helpful for those who don't know me, or don't know me well, to understand what has led me here. I was adopted at birth and from all accounts had a normal, even idyllic, childhood.  I had good friends, a big yard to play in in a safe neighborhood, and a brother, Chris, who joined our family when I was four.  My dad was a small-business owner and served in the Air National Guard Reserves, and my mom stayed home with us for the first 15 years or so.  Though I never doubted that my parents loved me, they were very strict, and I remember feeling like I could never measure up to their expectations, even though I was an accomplished pianist, never touched a cigarette or alcohol, and graduated from high school with two years of college completed

Yesterday I had my first TMS treatment (see previous post).  The whole day was filled with lots of anxiety.  I gave myself an hour to drive what my GPS told me would take 45 minutes, had a panic attack about crossing a toll bridge because I didn't have cash (turns out they take a photo of your car and bill you, the future is amazing), got lost in downtown Seattle, and finally arrived in the parking garage less than 10 minutes before my appointment, for which I was supposed to be 15-20 minutes early.  You sign in on a little electronic keypad and sit in the waiting room to fill out a questionnaire, which asks you to rate different depression symptoms on severity and frequency over the past two weeks.  During this time, the woman sitting across from me informed me that the government was controlling me and it was too bad that I didn't have a choice, and an elderly man who was a very loud mouth-breather sat uncomfortably close to me. After I finished my paperwork, I was call

Yesterday I drove across the state to the Seattle area, where I will be starting  TMS therapy  in about 1.5 hours.  The basic principle of TMS, which stands for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, is to create a magnetic field within a specific section of my brain that will increase the production of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, the lack of which is thought to be the primary cause of major depression.  For the next 6 weeks I will be receiving 45-minute treatments 5 days a week.  The goal is that my brain will not realize it is being cleverly tricked and will begin to produce more of those sweet, sweet neurotransmitters on its own, thus lessening my depression symptoms and allowing me to experience a somewhat less exhausting existence. During my time here, I will be staying with my bio dad and his lovely wife, hereafter referred to as Papa and Mama.  They are safe, supportive people who are also a lot of fun.  I'm also hoping to spend more time wit

So here you are!  Welcome! Feeling anxious is perfectly normal.  But when that anxiety starts to spread and manifest and mess up your life, there are things you can do to lessen its grip on you.  Here are a couple of ways to start: Minimize Stressors A stressor is (dun dun DUNNN) something that causes you stress.  There are external stressors and internal stressors.  The internal ones are mostly based on your personality, life experience, and your various psychiatric disorders.  External stressors come from your environment, and one of the first things you want to do when you're experiencing a lot of anxiety is get rid of as many external stressors as you can. An example from my life has to do with my phone phobia.  I'm fine talking to friends on the phone, but I absolutely hate talking to strangers.  Getting new voice mails used to cause me so much stress and I would ignore them for weeks, which ultimately caused some problems (the landlady only gives you so many

Over the years, many people have told me I should write a book about my life.  My memoirs are coming along fairly slowly right now, so I figured in the meantime a blog might be a nice idea. My goal with this project is to destigmatize mental illness, show other people that they aren’t alone, and maybe share a bit of my story for entertainment value.  So if you want to know what it means when I say “I miss the kid I lost after I was raped because I see her sometimes,” stay tuned!