Free

One the major downsides to having a mental illness (besides, you know, having a mental illness) is the way it affects every other aspect of your life.

For example, one's physical health. I've struggled with my weight for the better part of 10 years now, and I know that there is a vicious cycle I tend to get trapped in. If I eat healthy, and work out regularly, it not only makes me feel better and gives me more energy, it also makes me feel better about myself, and in turn, I am happier in general. But when I get depressed one of the side effects is that I want to sleep all the time, and am completely unmotivated to do anything. That includes standing in front of the stove for 10 minutes to cook a healthy meal. And once I start eating crap, it makes me feel sick, bloated, and disgusted with myself for having done so...which sparks yet another bout of depression.

Like I said, a vicious, vicious cycle.

It also contributes to how clean or dirty the house is at any given time. Laundry is never a problem; I love doing laundry, and never let more than three loads pile up at once. Occasionally I'll even rewash stuff just so I can have a full load when I have a craving to do some laundry. (Yes I get cravings to do laundry. Yes I also realize this makes me one very strange individual.) Other things, though, tend to get left by the wayside when I'm depressed, mainly dishes that have to be washed by hand and cleaning random spills in the kitchen. It's gross, but when I can't really muster the strength to care about anything else, the kitchen really gets the brunt of it. And, again, the thought of how nasty it looks/is can be so overwhelming that it sends me over the edge again.

I'm pretty stable right now, as (hopefully) evidenced by my ability to articulate both a rational and coherent blog post. Unfortunately, it will not last forever. I wish it would, I really do, but I have no illusions about my disease; it is not one that can be cured, and it is certainly not to prone to just...disappearing.

For the time being I will do what I can; I will treat myself well, feed my body what it needs, and hope that it prolongs this time of mental peace. I'll avoid my triggers as much as I can, take things in stride, and not overwhelm myself whenever I can help it. I'll do what I love, what makes me truly happy, and not worry about what anyone else thinks or says. I feel so free right now, and I want to keep this.

plagued.

Sometimes the world is just too much, and I just want to not exist for a bit.

My head gets clouded with thoughts, and they're messy, disconnected, and overlapping, and I can't make sense of anything. I can't focus. People's voices mix with the words in my head, and I get overwhelmed. Silence is a distant memory, and the more I try to clear my head, the more thoughts clog it up.

I start to feel like I'm falling down a deep dark hole, but I can't ask for help. My heart burns and aches but my brain turns on me and tells me that I'm not worth one minute of anyone's time, and that I shouldn't bother people. I want to call someone, anyone, and just talk, tell them how I feel but my mind won't let me.

It says that I have no one, and that people won't understand. They'll think I'm crazy, or over-reacting, or just trying to get attention. It feeds on my low self-esteem, reminding me that I'm invisible, a nobody, a faceless statistic amongst a sea of people drowning in mental illness. I start to believe it.

I doubt my self-worth. I wonder what kind of impact, if any, I've ever had on anyone's life. I speculate how long it would take before people didn't even remember my name. How long before my animals stopped wondering if I was coming home.

I feel so alone, so trapped in this illness that lies, and breaks me down, and makes me hate myself. I want to tell someone, and I want reassurance, to know that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, but so often I don't get it. Instead I hear "just stop being sad" or "stop crying, your life is good." I know my life is good, that's not the issue. And I can't just stop being sad. This pain is real, these demons are real; I've got the scars to prove it.

I'm tired of feeling stigmatized because I can't always control my emotions. I'm tired of having anxiety attacks. I'm tired of living with this disease, and I'm tired of feeling tired all the time. I just want to...rest.

Midnight Confessions

There is a pile of rose petals under the kitchen table that have been there for approximately a month. I have yet to vacuum them up because there is a piece of tissue paper directly in front of them that I can't risk vacuuming. Clearly I could just pick up the tissue paper, and the problem would be half solved, but...I just haven't.

On top of my kitchen table (which, by the way, is actually a folding table...but a fairly nice one) is our humidor, the bag that holds all the pet treats, and Orion's travel backpack. Under the table are two coolers and three empty cardboard boxes.

It's been close to two months since the trash can lid has actually been on the trash can.

The living room fan is pretty extremely dusty.

We finally, a year and a month (to the day) after moving here, went and got our Arkansas drivers licenses. We did not get the car registered, though, because my dad is the co-signer and the title says 'AND' instead of 'OR' which means he has to sign stuff. Luckily he'll be here in three weeks. I feel slightly less bad about it not being done now.

We typically eat meals off our TV trays, even if we're not watching TV...because of the table situation. Also, because we're low on chairs.

Sometimes I like living like this. We have a lot of open space because we don't have much furniture, and since it's just us two we don't really ever miss it. I'm not too sure about Josh, but I grew up with a brother who worked evenings, and a dad who worked nights, so my mom and I usually ate alone or everyone ate at a different time. No one ever made a big deal about eating together, or family meals or anything. It's not that we weren't close or didn't spend time together, it just didn't center around meals when we did. And now that Josh and I are on vastly different sleep schedules (his due to work, mine due to insomnia) it's even less reason to try and get the table back up to table standards.

Despite the fact that I got through part one of The Plan (for putting away my fabric) my craft room floor is still not visible. I really do need to get on it, though, since the in-laws will be here this week for Thanksgiving.

I hate that I get overwhelmed so easily. I hate it. I would love to hold down a full time job, and have a clean, organized house. I wish I could go shopping and browse through things normally, without panicking and losing my focus if too many people get near me. I would love to wake up and face every single day knowing that I was going to get stuff done, without having to worry that I might have an anxiety attack at any given point, and shut down for anywhere from a few hours to a few days.

No matter what I do to keep it clear, my counter constantly piles up with useless, non-counter related stuff. And it's typically my stuff, so I can't even blame anyone else.

I have, however, gotten better at making sure I go outside, play with the dog, and run around and get some fresh air every day. Even while I was sick I would at least go walk the perimeter of the yard and get the mail.

I really need to do something about my hair. It's terribly uneven, and bulky because the short part underneath is kind of puffy, and sometimes it sticks out through the longer strands. (Although it's not that obvious here, but you can at least see how uneven it is. Also, please excuse the post mini-anxiety attack face and smeared eyeliner.) I think I need to make Josh take pictures of the back and write a whole post on what I did to it.

I'm really bad about 'liking' and commenting on people's stuff on facebook. And then I feel bad when they like stuff I post because I'll remember that they posted something neat four days ago, but I forgot to 'like' it then, and if I go back and do it now it'll look like I'm only liking it to compensate for them liking my thing. Or whatever. I don't know if that even made sense. But if anyone from facebook is reading this, and thinking to themselves 'that Amanda, she's such a horrible person who expects everyone to like her stuff but she never likes my stuff' - I'm sorry. I just...it's just like everything else in my life. I have good intentions, but I get distracted, or, for whatever reason, just don't do things when I should.

That kind of does make me a horrible person, though, huh?

Some days I want to just delete my facebook and twitter profiles entirely, but I did that once and it did not end well. The repercussions are still being felt. On one hand I feel like it's stupid, so stupid that something that...trivial as a facebook page could really cause so much drama, but on the other hand maybe things would have just been simpler if I had just...not done it. It was hard enough adding people again once (I actually deleted my page and made a new one, rather than just reactivating the one I had) and I don't want to go through all that again.

I feel constantly as though nothing I do is ever good enough. The sensible part of me knows that that is my depression talking, but the sensible part of me is quieter and less aggressive than the non-sensible, self-punishing, depressed part of me. Unfortunate, because on those rare days when my head is clear and my heart is free, I really feel like I could do something spectacular.

Lately my depression has been affecting my eating...as in I'm never hungry. I know it's bad, but I haven't tried to do anything about it. When I get into these weird, transitional funk periods, the last thing I'm worried about is food. I'm just trying to keep it under control as best I can, not stress myself out, and hopefully get through having company without having an anxiety attack in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner.

I am often conflicted, in many areas of my life. I have lots of ideas, and I want lots of things, but at the same time I want different things...does that make any sense? Take, for example, the living room situation. Some days I want a nice couch, and a matching ottoman, and more bookshelves, and a new, bigger DVD shelf. Other days I don't want anything but my ratty old wing-back chair back, just as ratty as the day I threw it away. Some days I want a mansion, a castle preferably, rooms for days, and other days I want a simple house with just a fireplace and enough room for us and a few guests. It even goes for my style; sometimes I want to dress up really nice, wear designer clothes, and make-up, and go out in style, and other times I just want to throw on some 90s grunge.

We have way too many magazine subscriptions. Josh gets Details, Sports Illustrated, Time, and Cigar Aficionado. I get Lucky, Vogue, Whole Living, Better Homes & Gardens, and Guideposts. Plus we get two monthly local magazines. They really add up before you know it, and I rarely have time to read them all before the next one (three) are in the mail. I have a huge magazine archive in my craft room. I...I can't even look at it some days. There are SO. MANY. They partially contribute to the counter-clutter situation.

I really don't miss Austin. I never felt quite...right there. I mean it was a lot of fun, we had some crazy adventures and met a lot of people. I definitely miss the people; my brother, our friends, even the people I worked for. (I was a nanny.) But not Austin itself. I feel much more at home here in Hot Springs. It's just a better fit for my personality.

Well, I don't really know why I felt like confessing all of this to the internet, but it's done, and it's nearing 5 o'clock which means that the murderers are headed home for the night, and I'm tired so I'm going to wake up my dog and make him potty (he's not going to be happy; he's currently barking/running in his sleep, huddled under his comfy blanket) and then head to bed myself.

Anxieties

I've made no secret of the fact that I suffer from a severe anxiety disorder. I have a number of triggers that can set off anxiety attacks.

Some of them are the normal things you would associate with anxiety attacks; being in a closed space with too many people, and driving on a busy, undivided highway can both give way to panic.

Some of them are not as common, but are still explainable, as they are manifestations of traumatic incidents in my childhood, like my inability to be outside alone after dark, and how people driving past me with their windows down makes me uncomfortable.

Others, though, especially (for whatever reason) those that are focused on the night, are oddly inexplicable.

One of the strongest is a fear of closing the bathroom door. My brain, despite efforts on my part to convince it otherwise, has determined that if I close the bathroom door, and murderers break in while I'm in there, then I won't hear them and I'll walk right out and into their murderous plan. However, reason fails when it comes to understanding why having the door open, and them seeing me on the pot would save my life.

Another that stands out in my mind, and is equally lacking in logic is the idea that 5 AM is the magical time when murderers stop breaking into houses. If I get to bed before midnight, before Josh, or if we have company, this does not apply. (Again, this is not something I want to believe; these are simply things that my brain makes me believe, despite what I know to be true when I'm not in the midst of an attack, and can think logically.) I don't know why. I suppose all murderers have to be at work at 7 AM, and therefore they must do their dirty work before 5, so they can get home and get ready for their day job.

I'll share one more, and I don't know where it fits in exactly, because I've never really talked to other people with anxiety as severe as mine. I've read a few blog posts here and there, but it's not typically something people want to discuss, and I understand that, of course, but at the same time it's always nice to know that you're not alone in this horrible struggle. Anyway. The last thing I'll share is my fear of loud noises at night, or rather, what horrors those loud noises could possibly be covering up. Once it's dark, my TV gets turned down to the lowest possible volume I can get it and still hear what I'm trying to watch.

The rational part of my brain knows that these thoughts, these fears are ridiculous, and as I type them out I can see how silly they may sound to someone who's never felt the level of panic that I can feel over some of these things, but the truth is, when you're trapped in an anxiety attack there is no logic, no reason, it's just fear. Pure, unadulterated fear and panic, and those things are so very real in that moment. It's an awful feeling that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, but I feel lucky that I have wonderful and understanding people in my life who help me through the darkness on my worst days.