"O"!!!

"What is the message you have for me?" I asked this out loud, as I watched two crows fly over me. They fluttered to a landing spot directly in front of me; their glossy iridescent blue/black feathers shining brilliantly in the sun. As I stood there it seemed their message was to enjoy the company of others. Hmmm...

Later during this day a third crow flew down and landed in front of me. I asked again, "What message do you have for me?" He turned to me with an "O" in his beak...(maybe a Cheerio?), but an "O" nonetheless .

"O", I pondered. What does that mean?

I am making an effort to see differently than I have seen before. To listen to the messages. To see myself as part of the bigger picture.

That night I found myself still wide awake at 2:00am. For a week I had been eating a 1/4-1/3 of a marijuana cookie before bed to see if it would help me sleep. That night I had no cookie...and sleep was seemingly impossible.

I generally do not use pot. I had a couple bad experiences with it when I was younger...one that ended in my breaking my leg while fleeing pot induced "hallucinations"?/"visions". I was afraid to try it again, but in cookie form, and in small amounts I really am finding it helps my sleep both in terms of how long I stay asleep and how restful my sleep feels.

So, at 2:00am, laying in bed, with no sleep to be found I was feeling a bit desperate...so I ended up taking a BIG toke off a friends joint. Then I crawled into bed to try again.

As I lay there I began to feel like my throat was swelling up. I was finding it increasingly difficult to breathe. It seemed to be getting worse. I tried to get out of bed, but I couldn't move. It was like I was paralysed.

I began having "visions". Not hallucinations, but nightmare like thoughts...you know how while you are having a nightmare it seems real? Like that. I was being encased in a net like object? (or being?) that looked like thick mohair-like gray and black wool. It was holding me down on the bed.

I tried to call out to my boyfriend again and again, but no sound would come out of my mouth. I was unable to get up and help myself, my throat was swelling so much I was suffocating and I could not call for help.

My mind decided I was about to die. (REALLY!)...my brain thought this was the case.

I started to panic, but suddenly my brain said to me, "Death is inevitable. You have no choice. You wanted to die before. Let it go." Suddenly, I became so relaxed. I stopped worrying, let myself "die" . I felt incredible.

As I let go, stopped panicking, accepted my fate and my situation I felt myself able to breathe again. Ohhhhhhh...!

Stop fighting. Stop struggling. Accept my fate. Perhaps, this is the way; the path I need to follow. It seems so clear now that this is what the crow meant when it brought me the "O".

Lithium

The types of thoughts, and manner of thoughts I was having when I wrote the post, ""How are you? "I'm Okay."" seem to have slowed right down since I increased my Lithium dosage.

A few weeks ago I was having extremely rapid suicidal thoughts, mixed with a rapid self deprecating/loathing "voice" inside my head telling me how awful I was, and how my boyfriend was trying to leave me, and how I should just end it all. The best way I could describe my mind at the time, with it's "machine gun" like thoughts, is to say it was "manically" depressed.

Like the referenced post I had a piece of music relentlessly, rapidly and repeatedly playing over and over in my head. My thoughts were so distressing and so unforgiving I really wanted to just remove my brain from my head. I thought I was really going mad, so I increased my mood stabilizer: Lithium.

Almost immediately after increasing the Lithium I felt some relief. A few weeks later I still feel depressed, but I am having more moments of relief and the bad "noises" in my head have slowed right down. With the demise of all that negative energy I feel a sense of hope again. I feel like maybe I can feel better. This is a huge relief. Thank you god...whoever you are.

"Communication Breakdown"

On my way to my therapy session today I was thinking about how difficult is to be completely forthright, open, and honest with someone else, even my psychiatrist. I do not mean that it is difficult to try to tell the truth, or to try to open up. I believe I am as open/honest as I can be during each therapy session. I mean how difficult it is to be ACTUALLY completely honest with someone else, or even with myself for that matter.

Today I went in thinking I am going to completely let my guard down, and try to tell Dr. X. some of the things I have been deeply ashamed about doing, about allowing to continue, and about feeling. When I tried to get all the feelings and thoughts out in the open, they just sounded stupid as I heard them come out of my mouth.

Maybe it wasn't that the thoughts sounded stupid, rather that I sounded stupid for not valuing myself enough to put an end to some of the issues I am struggling with. Also, I felt really awkward, because as I blurted out what I needed to say it felt like what I was talking about, (what seemed so shameful), was no big deal. Why then was I so stressed out about what I wanted to say? I guess that "nothing" still seemed/seems, really painful to me.

I do not want to write the details about what is going on, because I need time to figure out my own perspective. It's complicated. It's about my relationship with my boyfriend, our difficulties communicating, the impact both of our mental illnesses have on each of our abilities and desires to communicate in a way that is meaningful to each of us.

It's about how our past experiences with trauma, physical, mental and sexual abuse, depression, drug abuse, and mental illnesses impact and affect our current lives, the way we think, the way we read and translate other people's body language, and how we interpret the actual words coming out of our partner's mouth.

Although I have always recognized the impact all the above have on communication, in my relationship now I am really becoming even more aware how even a simple sentence can mean so many different things depending on the context, the current state of the relationship between speaker and listener, the time of day, previous conversations, mood states, medication, lack of medication, sleep...and the list goes on...

Right now I am hoping I can improve my ability to communicate effectively. Maybe that will help both of us.

Loss and Loneliness

These past few months I have really been feeling an increasingly intense sense of loss; frustration, irritability, anger, sadness, loneliness, aloneness, abandonment, fear, terror, hopelessness...

The most important thing to me, my entire life, has been my family. I would do anything for anyone in my family. I feel my connection to family has slipped away, and almost disappeared, since my Mom died. The disconnection began before she died. As my mental health deteriorated, and hope of wellness began disappearing, my family started distancing themselves from me. In the past year my sisters have really pulled away, and my Dad has taken on a detached attitude...not replying to my e-mails, or making sure our calls are short.

I understand why. I get that it is overwhelming to be around me when I do not feel all up and bubbly. I just really miss my family connection. I miss being a part of the family like I used to be.

I miss me. So far I have lost my young and middle adult years to this illness. Looking forward all I see is being old and even crazier. The future seems unbearable.

Believe it or not, before I became ill I was a person people wanted to be around. I was a bit wild, full of life, ready for love, open to new things, was passionate, compassionate, (I think and hope) kind and caring. I was active, always had tons of energy, was inquisitive, questioning...though often a bit naive and gullible...mostly because I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings by questioning their motives.

I loved all kinds of music, loved to dance, go to concerts, loved school and lectures, was passionate about learning, read everything I saw, swam like a fish, sang like a manatee, rode my bike everywhere, campsites were my favourite resorts. I really loved to canoe, hike, and rollerblade. I felt one with nature, one with the world, the universe, my friends, my family. Basically I absolutely, positively and actively LOVED LIFE and all it had to offer.

Now, today, this year and last, and the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that...etc., etc. , I feel disconnected, disaffected, disillusioned, dismissed...pretty much destroyed.

All day I felt like painting a big banner that says, "I HAD POTENTIAL..." and unravel it as I hang myself from the bridge. I feel like because I am mentally ill and not "recovering" like everyone else seems to, like all the literature and studies say I should, like my family expects me to, I am blamed, or dismissed, or left to fend for myself. It is as if no one knows, cares or understands I need love, care, help. I feel really really really hopeless and alone.

Do You Ever Feel...???

(Please note: I the following post I use the words, "crazy, insane, mad etc. loosely in describing only myself. I in no way intend, or even ever feel, that others having similar symptoms are anything but beautiful, though at times tragic), examples of the breadth of human experience). I'm just exhausted and weirded out and scared, and probably bitter and angry, about my own experience)

Do you ever feel like it doesn't really matter how you feel, because you are fucking insane, and everyone thinks you are crazy, so no one "really" listens anyways? And even if they did, the way you are would make absolutely no more sense to them than it does to you?

I feel like I am losing touch with reality. Yet, how can I be losing touch with reality if I know I am losing touch with reality? I am seeing more and more things around me, and inside me that are passing me some kind of meaning filled message/s...(though can't quite figure out the message/s...), that are making me feel like I am being sent messages, or things are showing themselves to me in order that I find some deep meaning in their presence.

(Eg., mood switching up after going to the front of the church and praying every night, mystical animals (crows) appearing when I need them to appear, pictures of wolves falling off my bookshelves, another wolf appearing on a torn out page of a children's book, right in front of me on the sidewalk, and then the terrifying wolves showing up in my nightmare, then the number 3: three pictures, the 3 nightmares, each nightmare made up of 3 parts)

Thing is, although my mind really does believe this "messages are being passed to me" idea pretty deeply...I can also see that maybe I'm crazier than I thought or something is happening whereby things just "happen", or "show up" at truly random times and places and for some reason my brain is seeing all these things as signs or patterns of meaning that I am MEANT to see??? God help me...

Since I got out of the hospital I have been severely depressed, almost more severely than when I went into the hospital...except last Wed evening my mood started to rise and I had a really great week. All week the rapid onslaught of negative and suicidal thoughts completely stopped, and I felt hope again. I felt like I was cared for, had tons more energy, felt talkative and social. I pretty much felt like I was on the mend. In fact, I felt sure I was becoming well.

...Until Sunday at 5pm.

You read that correctly.

Somewhere around 5pm on Sunday the voice inside my head returned with no warning and no reason behind it returning. {note: Although for the two nights prior, I had really two really bad nightmares, the likes of which I haven't had for a long time (and last night my wolf returned to me in another nightmare}

Just as I was entering the 5 rd bridge the voice/thought, (It has no sound...so it is not really a "voice", but it seems external), said to me:

"You have failed everyone. You have disappointed your dad so much, what a waste of life you are". And I started to cry.

Ever since then the voice has been going on and on about every bad thing I do, or mistake I make, how everyone really is sick of me, how I am not really loved by my boyfriend, how he is pulling away from me, how I have disappointed him and destroyed our relationship, etc.,

Then the voice switches to telling me how fucked up and wrong my thinking is, and how I am just imagining all this stuff and if I would just stop thinking it would all go away...but either way the voice goes on and on and on...maybe it is two voices?? I don't know anymore what is real, and what is my brain having crazy talk.

These thoughts/voices intensify and speed up or slow down. I believe they are magnified when my anxiety gets worse...as I have been having really bad anxiety/panic attacks. It may be though that the voices/thoughts are causing the anxiety as they begin to race faster and faster, and seem to be pushing me to change or die...whichever.

Either way there is an OCD like quality to them...including having a song I have recently listened to play relentlessly over and over and over in my head, as a torturous accompaniment to the thoughts that continue, and often race, faster and faster, harder and harder, over, and over and over, and over. Unstoppable. Unrelenting.

Sometimes I get so much "bad energy" inside me that the voice starts to speed up and it talks at me, over and over and over, at mach speed; incessant, punishing, shame inducing, and guilt producing. Often the voice has suicidal plots and plans, and reasons to die . Lately this is much much worse than any time I can remember before. It is like the thoughts are trying to push me.

If I wasn't crazy before...something inside me is aware I am crazier now. This is not right. I can see I am having strange thoughts...but my brain cannot seem to stop thinking (and while I am having them), believing these thoughts. Please, help me!!! Am I completely losing my mind?