How did I get here?

I am the face of depression. 

I am the face of mental illness.

I am the face of mental health.

I am the face of recovery.

I am the face of emotion.

I am the face of misunderstanding.

I am the face of change.

I am the face of passion.

I am the face of humanity.
I am the face of generosity.

I am the face of frustration.

I am the face of negativity.

I am the face of a wife.

I am the face of a mother.

I am the face of a sister.

I am the face of a daughter.

I am the face of family.

I am the face of your friend.

I am the face of creativity.

I am the face of a nurse.

I am the face of reality.

No longer can I hide. 

No longer may I crawl away.

I started writing here two years ago, when I felt like I found buried treasure.  My writing voice tucked away and safely stored.  My passion, masked by the veil I so proudly learned to cover my inadequacies.  My feeling, my soul, my longing for more, all gradually reappeared as I looked inside myself, as I honestly asked, and stubbornly demanded answers.  I have some now.  I will hear more soon.  I’m on the path of redemption.  I am serving penance for my missing years.  Years began a lifetime ago this month.  Years I was granted by God and years I lived unconsciously, mind and soul split into pieces, like torn paper floating downstream.  I was lost and now I’m found.  Or something equally dramatic and less prophetic.  How did I get here?

my so called lifeline

October 4, 2010

My doubt, self doubt, grows exponentially with my silence.  When I tell him that I don’t think I can satisfy him, what am I really saying? Am I asking him for help or asking him to bail?  He’s heard this over and over and it’s ingrained in his thoughts of me.  He says he needs me to tell him what I want. Now.  He needs me to tell him that I want him or that I don’t want him.  That I want to fight for this relationship or that I won’t fight for it.  He wants and needs to hear me include myself in the fixing of this partnership. Or he needs to hear the alternative.  He wants to stick.  God tells him to.  

I am confused.  I am hurt.  I am sad. I want so many experiences and I don’t feel close to my partner.  Did we ever feel close?  When did we think the same and dream the same dreams?  When did we share our desires?

I know I am growing and exploring who I never got to be.  I have consistently been the work-on-it gal.  But maybe my work hasn’t been for the good of closeness.  Have I been working toward strengthening our togetherness or our separateness?  What are my goals now?  What do I have the capability of working on?  Toward?  What do I want to work on?

Testing my limits by going to school and listening to him doubt that I made the right choice without him.  
Testing my mental health by submitting to illogical expectations of a psychotic boss and resigning before she canned me.  
Testing my self confidence and if he is right about my nursing ability.
Getting blindsided by my own confidence.
Feeling like a fool at the mercy of strangers.  
Falling into similar traps at a job without foundation.  
Exhausting myself to please and push for more and to fit in.
Ignoring the signals of security as I watch the walls crumble around me.
Running away before the explosion begins, setting myself up for self implosion instead.

How did I get here?  Where did I come from?  Why do I think this way?  Where is God?

I have felt lost in the last year or two, crying because I was hurt when he didn’t think well of me.  I recall the times he told me that my way of thinking is wrong, that my way of expressing my thoughts is wrong and inefficient and is not worth his time.  So I shut up.  I stopped expressing myself to him.  I stopped trying to explain myself and where I was coming from and how I felt and what I wanted.  I gave up.  After all, I did not want to hear that the man I loved thought negatively about me.  I did not need him to reinforce my self doubt.  Why put myself in a position where I knew I would hurt?

Our conflicts became broken records of despair and futility.  One negative word or head shake or rolling of the eyes or fuck you,  and I’m gone.  Out the door.  Out of the house.  Out of the city.  Out of my mind. Out of reality.  Out of myself.  This is the truth.  I’ve been living outside of myself.

Depressed enough to give up my license.  Depressed enough to say I’ll work for minimum wage.  Embarrassed enough to tell him he was right about me being a nurse.  Frightened enough to lie to myself and hide from the truth.  Until the sunshine blinded my insecurities for a brief moment of clarity and WTF-ness.

I didn’t want to be Rainey anymore.  Rainey is not taken seriously.  Rainey is a baby and frail and frustrated and fragile.  Rainey doesn’t know how to stand up for herself and speak her thoughts and commit to decisions or make and pursue goals.  I want to grow up and be L.  I want to make my own decisions and speak my mind and joke in public and cheer loudly at the games and talk about passionate subjects and tell my family what I really mean and not take their shit anymore.  That includes him.  No more shit sandwiches.  No more crybaby.  No more sulking in the corner.  No more caring what they think.

And I landed softly.  I landed safely.  I carefully caress my nursing career in the home of mental health.  And I feel confidence anew.  I am a nurse.  I am helping and learning and teaching and growing.  And God is with me.  The dance of life continues in the next room.  Please join us.  Please take off your shoes and get comfortable for this ride.  We welcome you back.  We missed you. Now get to work.

What I believe is truth in this room are lies inside the other room.  How I perform here is different than what I perform there. The train tracks switch in between and my mind does not always follow.  Which way do I turn?  Which way do you want me to turn?

I’m taking my meds.  I’m writing and sorting and releasing stress my way.  My way may be the wrong way.  Wrong for this family.  Wrong for these kids.  Wrong for my parents and his.  

He tells me the way I should do this.  Live.  Relate.  Speak my mind.  Listen.  Form goals and work toward them.  Parent.  Partner.
He suggests and helps when he notices my confusion and frustration.  He advises me to do what he does, because it works for him, has worked since he was a kid, 12 or 13 or 14 years old.  Good for him to be confident in his habits and confident in his patterns and with his goals reached and processes of getting there.  Good for him to rely on consistency.  Good for him to keep him afloat through the dark ages.

When I was 12, 13, 14, I was watching my parents split up for some unknown reason and placing me in the arms of a stranger without skills to know how to relate with him.  Placing me in a different world, switching scenes without telling me I had to follow.  Changing the expectations and allowances of my pre-adolescent hormonally developing mind and soul and heart.

Choices stripped.  Opinions banned.  Extraction from comfortable and forward momentum.  Forced into unknown and unsupported.  Doubted and divided.  Slapped and insulted.  Stifled and censored.  Ignored and injured.  Where am I going?  Where are you taking me?  What am I supposed to do now?  Who is leading me?  Where am I?

And I ran.  Toward acceptance of the negative sort.  From strangers who barely knew me and who I didn’t have to reveal myself. I didn’t have to hold back my passion.  And I flew.  Into trouble and insecurity of the adolescent kind.  The trouble of who do I like and how do I deal and what if I’m rejected?  Trouble of trying to ignore my home life long enough to feel like I could be happy otherwise.  Pretend to like yourself or don’t and pretend others do.  Release and reject.  Revive sanity temporarily.  Act two roles.  Isn’t that what I was taught?  Be someone you’re not in order to survive?  Be what they want you to be in order to be accepted?  In order not to get hit or hurt or doubt yourself more?  
Don’t ask questions. Don’t lead with ideas.  

 
August 8, 2011  (10 months later)

Full circle.  Right back where I started.  I’m at it again.  The last paragraph is my story.  The only one.  The missing link in my lifetime of sorrow.  No rusted links, only shiny like new, strong as ever sharp, cold metal connections, from my ten year old happy-go-lucky fourth grader to my presently fucked up self.  Breaking hearts and taking names by accident.  The accidental tourist of my own life.  45 years take away ten real good ones and 35 links later, I’m the expert avoider.  Just call me super sucka!

Therapist on board.  Not holding back from the fears thrown at me.  I’m taking strikes until my bat makes contact, until I feel the spark of energy, the mass of force pushing me through the motion by the release of weight off my shoulders.  When I watch the homerun ball soar above us all, it’s arch predetermined by my positioning, and see the open sky smiling, I will know. I will know.

And since I have no idea how that Babe Ruth-esque moment will feel, or when clarification will arrive, I’m grounded in my garden dugout, watching weeds pop up out of nowhere and wishing a giant hand will reach down to pull me up too.  

panic at the disco

I had an anxiety attack today.  In my own home.  With my family present.

I felt my breath revving up and my heart pounding.  Almost as quickly as the thoughts running criss-cross my brain.  Thinking was my enemy and I longed to erase each thought instantly.  STOP!! I yelled inside.  The tears came anyway.  SHIT!! I yelled out loud.  Don’t talk to me!  Leave me alone!  I have to get outa here!  Suffocating…

Trigger today?  Unsure.  De-escalation?  Forcing myself to do what I did not want to do.  Tough self-love.  A little air conditioning at Meijer helped also.  Damn, I hate humidity.   Let’s call humidity the trigger today, just for the hell of it.  If we come up with something better later, we’ll adjust.

So the sweat forming underneath my hairline suffocated my senses.  The interactions with my husband distracted my rationality.  The irrational thoughts of that which has not happened and may never, brought me to my knees.  Objectively watching the rerun of my temper tantrum…speechless.

My dog has panic attacks too.  She started last spring and they went away after we turned on the a/c for the summer. Hmmm. This spring she’s begun to scratch at the wooden screen slider door that my husband painstakingly repaired last week.  Yep, she carved herself a doggy door in our kitchen, and forgot how to bark or whine or nudge humans to communicate her needs.  Our dining room carpet sports a fro in one corner, ala ginger’s creative clawing.  I believe our 11 year old canine is adjusting to decreased senses, increased peripheral shadows, and amplified neighborhood noises through open windows. Not even the invitation to jump onto our bed with us will soothe her. I understand.  I want to crawl under the desk sometimes too.

Over stimulation.  Noise.  Noisy, negative thoughts inside my brain, amplified under stress.  Where is it from?  What do I do with it?  How can I get away?  If I cover my ears or close my eyes or scream, will it stop?  If I scratch at the floor or jump on the door or cower in the corner, will it stop?  I wish!  I stroke ginger’s head and her breathing relaxes.  I remain calm and reassure her I will always support her.  Sometimes I get pissed off at first, sure.  She can’t help her reactions, they’re instinctual.  She’s an animal.  I’m an animal.  Fight or flight.  Hang tight.  Look for the light.  Lighten up.   

to be continued, I'm sure.

I am the face of vulnerability

Outside, listening to U2 and the competing birdsong.  Winds colder than an hour ago.  No one home but g-dog and the neighbor next door.  Even an entire day of alone has rendered me speechless here.  My paralyzing fear of writing too little to feel relief or too much to scare, has ratcheted up my anxiety.   Yes, I am the face of anxiety.  And depression.  And unsure, unbalanced wife and mother.  This is where I tell the truth, here, in these words and commas and incorrect grammar.  Here in my head I wrestle with what should and what wants to spew.  Word vomit.  Shit sandwich.  Cursing.  Pitying.  Streaming my consciousness until unconsciousness takes lead.  I will burst open soon if I don’t confess.  And confessional in catholic church is not my destination. 

I am not angry today.  I am unsure.  I am the face of avoidance.

So much, too much is happening in my chaotic normalcy.  I thank God for the angel I found called therapist.  Therapist knows me,  instant understanding the first meeting.  She asked to read my blog within the first hour…she’s the first to ask to be let in.  How can this be any easier?  It’s hard.  As I’ve said to my clients while psych nursing, “it may become worse before it gets better,” or something versed more professionally.  You get the picture.  I choose to dive into my past to figure out what in the hell I’ve been believing and if I believe it now.  My investigative cap is on and I’m smoking my pipe.  In order to give myself fully to my husband and daughter and son, I choose to give myself fully to me.  I have heard the objections to rummaging in the attic of childhood and parental influence.  I have listened to the ‘today is now’ crew.  I feel both of you.  I feel like living now.  I just don’t know how…yet.  Foreign to some.  Others in my blog community will understand. 

The niche I’m making for myself as a psychiatric nurse is rewarding and fulfilling and vulnerable.  Vulnerabilities are shining in neon purple behind my eyelids.  My doubts are surfacing through the scum covered pond called denial.   With each client I serve, each story they tell me of abuse, neglect, depression, mania, hallucinations,  family issues, eating issues, med compliance, denial….I hear parts of my stories.  Inevitable.  Not all bad.   Not all hopeless.  I find parts of myself at work.  Lost parts hidden or parts unknown.  I am a medical professional.  People look up to me to lead.  People ask my opinion.  People welcome me into closets full of skeletons.  I am humbled, thankful, proud.  My supervisor and I discussed my performance yesterday and I was offered a raise.  I’m here.  I’m at a fork in the road, at the point on my lifeline labeled ‘career.’   Goal set and reached.  Dreamed and lived.  My idea nurtured into my career.  This is a milestone for me.  A first.  Something people around me doubted until recently.  Doubt, the reason I isolate.  The reason I waiver.  The reason I am anxious. 

When I was a little girl I roamed our safe suburban neighborhood with other children.  I enjoyed my sleep-overs and lunches at neighbor’s and sharing our backyard pool.  I enjoyed family time with brother and sister and parents.  I learned to trust.  My mind holds those first ten years as primary colors and pleasant smells.  I remember conversations had with kids and teachers in elementary school.  I remember memorizing Shel Silverstein and cross-stitching patches for our centennial year quilt.  I remember the time my dad took me to school late because he and mom were arguing.  I remember standing in line to see the principal during lunch recess because I was caught throwing a snowball…I feel the nervousness as I stood in line, fearful of being in trouble, yet ballsy enough to walk out of line and back to class unseen.  I was a good girl.  I was a happy girl.  I wore two braids everyday, my mother’s doing.  I held a house key and unlocked the house after school in fourth grade for little bro.  The round kitchen table hosted family conversations of dad’s business and birthday cakes with marshmallows in the frosting.  I liked my childhood.  I belonged there.  I was happy.  I was me.

Depression found me soon after we moved into a different suburb.  Soon after our parents divorced.  Soon after we became dad and three kids.  Soon after I began questioning.  Soon after hormonal changes and scary new school and being teased for braids and crying at school.  Soon after I became best friends with the cool girl who I thought hated me.  Again a few years later when best friend moved out of state.  Again after stepmother number one and step sister number one moved in.  The colors faded and the aromas unrecognizable.  I don’t blame.  I remember.  I have to remember myself.  I’ve tried to forget and avoid and pretend I’m ok now.  That isn’t working well.  I confess.

I’m grown up and responsible now.  I have an obligation to know myself.  I want to know myself.  When my husband asks me what I want in my life, what I aspire to do, what I feel compelled to accomplish and succeed at and share with him and the kids…I cant answer.  I have not allowed myself to explore these answers.  I have not looked inside for answers.  I have used outside influences to right my wrongs and lead my decisions.  I have followed stronger personalities  toward destinations of their choice.  This must change now.  Thus I seek professional help, remind myself to pop that Zoloft pill each day, write to relieve the pressure, shoot photos to expand my sight line, and close my mouth more often so I may hear more life music.

Wilco and I have a strange relationship, speaking of music.  Their music moves me.  The old stuff, the new stuff, it’s all good.  Poetry in motion.  No matter when I listen to Wilco, no matter what decade the writing, I feel connection.  I’m not obsessed, just impressed.  And thankful for each experience to enjoy other human beings’ talent and creativity.  To know that these men write for and share their innermost thoughts with strangers is comforting for me.  The years they practiced playing their instruments, reading music, composing, fighting personal demons, living relationships, feeling tired after touring and recording and transitioning through personnel changes…and helping little ole me feel happy.  Thank God for creative, compassionate souls. 

My turn to give, create, share, add value.   I am the face of creativity.  Peace.  ~L

tired

heard the words, not sure of the meaning.  a decision must be made and I am involved.  cannot be avoided any longer.   what do I think of the idea?  oh, my turn to think?  sorry, not able to form complete thoughts right now.  can you come back when my brain catches up to my heart please?  feel the throat dry and the lungs stiffen, eyes sting occasionally and I keep my mouth shut.  for now. 

I wait to feel. remorse? alleviation?  heavy?  light?  nothin.  cant seem to describe much of anything.  I write about nothin.  like a lost Seinfeld episode.  and I write because the keys feel like old friends and I hope my strangled voice will somehow emerge within this post.  I need old friends.  I'm not ashamed to admit.  even when old friends may seem like false hope, reaching behind my present may help me understand why I need to reach at all.  despite the reality that other people live lives separate and distinct from where I stand, Lord knows I desperately want to be loved.  everyone does.  you do too.

distractions are required and also detrimental to my forward momentum.  my unstructured grace results in misunderstanding and hurt.  my out of focus thinking opens wide the windows to rote and trite dalliances.  and none of this can be explained...verbally.  verbose is my writing style and timid is my tongue.  why release stammered and stunted when expectations demand complete and precise?  just because I know how I feel in my language, emotional and flowery and slightly depressed, and I know the importance of this knowing...does not an orator make.  and occasionally made-up words appear, to keep it interesting.

Editing...a luxury of the typed word.  Not so for the spoken version.  I've lived a life full of uh oh's and oopsy daisy's.  when I was in 5th or 6th grade a neighbor's family experienced a tragic death and I became the bearer of incorrect news and eventual apologies to strange adults.  Learned lesson in humility.  first introduction to grief.  I may listen to your verbal garbage, explore empathic reasons, follow the tin can telephone line to the source, and look inside the horse's mouth.  I once phoned a relative to ask if the family rumor about him was true.  it was.  he was.  end of story.  next!

abrupt, outrageous, nosy, interested.  me.  I'll stroke your arm and hold your trembling hand.  you don't have to ask.  I'll pull you into my shoulder, inviting your tears to fall on me.  I'll sit silently and wait for your cue.  you lead this dance.  I catch you when you fall.  if you let me.  what I offer is not intellectual.  not prepared or managed.  me, I offer me.  what soul I possess is to be shared, releasing warmth through touch and whispered understanding.  tried and true I fall back on my graces and gracefully allow grief.  sorrow.  sickness and health.  When an acquaintance sought me out as springboard for her self doubt, mine suddenly became invisible.  Objectivity on auto pilot, I embraced her story as my own.  embraced her as my own.  calm, quiet, concerned, interested.  me.

I'm tired.  self-analysis tires me, wears me thin and grey.  I really should pay someone to do this for me.  so I may sleep and awaken.  I need a day off from this habit.  off of the merry-go-round of missed opportunities and mistakes.  time to stop spinning the cognitive wheel of misfortune.  my skull hurts. the pressure of self criticism and incessant questioning has overloaded my psyche.  I'm trained to doubt, trained to fear.  convinced to use other's opinions as litmus test of mine.  dangerous responsibility for an overworked mind.  no room for error.  no air to breathe.  no sight of forgiveness.

I'm afraid to stop.  I know no other way.  I trust this method, this process, however insane.  I want to break the chain and free myself from myself.  I will.  with help.  with patience.  with kindness from others.  I am scared...of the decision.

i love you all. 

thank you for listening.

peace~L

hoarding hope

giving with eyes open.  seeing the invisible dreams.  holding the hand that clutches hope.  bringing positive energy into negative noise.  making one step at a time move one minute closer.  all done in the name of God and humanity, through on the job training, unanticipated and unrehearsed.

I'm looking for the  litmus test, searching for a clue. am I doing right, giving enough, filling the voids?  what am I missing, cuz I feel a bit askew.  I realize my role is irregular, I realize my audience's diverse.  my heart lives on my sleeve, sensitive to the sounds of breaking beats nearby.  around my neck lies my hot pink stethoscope, an instrument played rarely, unable to measure levels of insight and initiative.  Mental ingenuity drives the assessments now.  Minds reading minds.  My mind peering into yours through conversation and cooperation.  Calm respite invites gradual renewal and gradual acceptance.  I must be patient.  I must temper my resolve.

all these years battling my inner demons and unrecognizable irrationalities have ironically taught me how to help other lost souls walk away from their precipices. One foot in front of the other and one deep breath at a time.  I remind myself to dig into my soul's treasures for lessons learned, and initiate my instincts upon impact.  Slow doesn't count in mental illness.  Horseshoes cannot be played alone.  I am nurse hear me roar!