Not Enough To Go Around

Life isn't going so well.

I just started a new job and I tried to quit today. The only reason I didn't quit is because the owners, Andy and Cyndy, made me feel so much better. We sat down and talked about it and they were completely understanding.

I feel like a wreck. I had the worst day. Everything was going wrong. I just freaked out. I couldn't do anything right, everything was just so overwhelming I burst into tears over any little thing. I feel like I'm drowning. I can't seem to see a way out. Every time I think I've figured it out, something else goes wrong and I feel like everything is pressing in on me. I can barely breathe. I hate this feeling. I just want it to end. I was fantasizing about getting hit by a truck today. Why would I think that? That's not normal. I don't know what to do. I am afraid to talk to anyone. I have a really hard time telling anyone anything negative about myself. Even when I try, it's like I've got an invisible hand clamped over my mouth that won't let me speak.

I stopped taking my meds about a month ago. I don't think they were working any more. I started having panic attacks again, so why take the meds if they don't stop the panic attacks? My mom thinks that I should get a different prescription, but it's so hard. It took me over a year to find a psychiatrist who actually listened to me and did anything to help me, and then a month later he went out of business. I don't want to deal with it again. It was so hard. I hate psychiatrists. I hate counselors. They do nothing to help, they don't know what it's like. It must be nice to be normal, to be able to handle things without freaking out.

I'm sick of it. I don't know what to do. Everything is so overwhelming. If I could just get a few nights of uninterrupted sleep, maybe it would be ok. I don't know. I am gasping for air under water. What do I do???

--Dragon Read more!

Beginnings

September has always been a month of beginnings for me. Perhaps it is because I spent so much of my life in school. Not only that, but September is when the summer begins to fade and the light shifts from the hazy gold of August to the crisp blue of October. The time changes, the nights grow longer, and the wind begins to blow. I've never had the feeling in January that I do in September, the feeling of wanting to start again and make myself anew.

This September, especially, I want to be renewed. I feel as if I have been on hold for the past year, doing, being nothing. Last fall and winter I was far too messed up to even want to think of changing. I only wanted things to be the way they had been before. I spent most of my time locked in my room wishing I had the courage to slit my wrists. I stopped going to work, and spent the majority of my waking moments trying to lose myself in a game or sitting on the floor of the shower so no one could hear me cry. The rest of the time I tried to sleep, laying on my bed dreaming the surreal dreams of one half-awake.

After a few months of this, reality hit me and I had to pay rent and a slew of other bills I had accumulated. I got a job but lost it within a few weeks because I hated going to work in the morning. I got another one and the same thing happened. Since I was fired, however, I was able to apply for unemployment. I started looking for a new job but it was pretty half-assed. By this time I had gotten my license, so I was free to go wherever I wanted. Instead of locking myself in my room I tried to outrun what I was feeling. I would speed down the highway blasting music as loud as I dared as if it would drown out the demons.

The other benefit of finally having a license was that I started to get out and be sociable. I figured that perhaps I would forget to be miserable if I was around other people. I began going to Open Mic at a local coffee shop, which is where I saw Erik again. We had worked together before when I was the assistant manager at Taco Bell. I knew he had a crush on me then, but I was never interested. He was nice, but not at all "my type". This time was different, however. I thought that perhaps my problem was in going after guys of a certain type, and if I found someone completely opposite of that, I would avoid most of the problems that came with it, so we began talking on the phone and spending time together, and I started to feel a lot better.

Shortly thereafter I started dating, and I felt like a regular person again instead of the mess I had become. I started school and was doing quite well. Shortly after that, I got pregnant. I was so upset. I never wanted to get pregnant, and while I liked Erik, I didn't necessarily want to go passing on his genes to future generations. Call me a snob if you will, but I just didn't think he was necessarily a prime candidate for furthering the species.

Again I fell into that dark spiral. I tried to be happy about it, but all I could see was how this was going to completely screw up my life. I left school because I had started working again, and on top of that had to drive Erik everywhere because his car was broken. It was all too much. I don't see myself as a very strong person, contrary to what many of my friends and family believe, and I didn't think I was capable of taking care of someone else and having a job or going to
school.

At this point, Erik and I decided to get married. I don't know why I said yes. I never really felt like Erik was "forever" material. There were certain things about him that I knew I would not be able to live with for an extended period of time. Perhaps I just didn't want to be alone. The world was looking so big and I felt so incredibly small.

So we began planning a wedding. And more and more I felt like I was trapping myself. Living with Erik, I didn't feel like it was me standing together against the world. It felt as if I was all alone and he just happened to be there. I had to protect him and do all the thinking and planning and making sure everything got taken care of. This was not how I wanted to live my life.

Finally, after months of this, I decided enough was enough and I told him that I was tired of being the only adult, of making all the decisions and taking care of everything. I told him to either step up or get out. He didn't believe me. Of course, I was serious and I ended up asking him to leave.

Then my mom moved in and things got a little better. Still, it feels like one thing after another is going wrong. And I just need something to go right for once.

I started this year in a black hell that I managed to escape, if only part of the way. Things started to get a lot better and then I slid back. I couldn't take the responsibility of taking care of myself and taking care of Erik. Finally someone realized I was serious and said, "Gee, I think you're bipolar. Let me see if I can help you with that." Even though I had been looking for help for months, this only came after Erik called the cops on me because I was sitting in my car having a panic attack and threatening to kill him or myself. Gotta love the system.

(On a side note, one mental health worker told me that no psychiatrist would touch me because I was pregnant and there were no medications you could safely take while pregnant. She even suggested that if it was really that bad that I should just have myself committed until the baby was born. She tried to make me feel guilty for seeking help while pregnant and as if I had no right to life or sanity now that I was an incubator for another human being. If I ever see that woman on the street, I will beat her to a bloody pulp. She has no right to work in mental health and ought to be strung up by her heels and let bleed to death slowly. But I digress.)

Every time that I felt as if things were going ok, I felt prohibited from doing anything that would make me feel remotely useful, because I would just have to stop when the baby was born. I was too tired and overwhelmed to even try.

But now, September is here again and I no longer have to worry about giving something up or having to quit because I'll have to take care of the baby. Now, he's here and I can try and have a life. I plan on starting school in January to get an AA in Computer Information Systems, and I have a combination of 8 weeks maternity leave and 12 weeks CFRA (California Family Rights Act) Leave, so I won't have to go back to work before then. Which on the one hand is a good thing, but on the other, I don't know how I'm going to last almost 4 months without working. My mom and I are going to make a bunch of mei tai carriers and swaddle blankets (yep, I can sew. Pretty damn well, too.) and sell them at local street fairs and the farmer's market, etc., so at least I will be doing something productive.

Hopefully things will be different now. The September breeze brings change, I can only hope it brings it for me.

--Dragon Read more!

It's Better To Face These Kinds Of Things With A Sense Of Poise And Rationality

Whenever I want to write about something that I think makes me look crazy I'm afraid to. I don't know why. Not very many people read this. And no one who knows me even knows this blog exists. I guess I'm afraid this will come around and bite me in the ass some how, someday.

The past few weeks at work have completely sucked. It's been really stressful, which I can generally handle, but on top of that the fact that I have to spend 6-8 hours a day standing in pretty much the same spot has been killing me. My legs and feet really hurt afterwards. Let me say that I am a complete wimp when it comes to pain. I cannot tolerate it at all. When I get off work I can barely walk and it's difficult to climb the stairs (I live on the second floor of my apartment complex). It's gotten to the point where I start freaking out and crying and getting really upset about an hour, hour and a half before I have to go to work most days. They're not like fullblown panic attacks (and believe me, I know those quite well), but I can feel the potential for these episodes to develop into panic attacks.

Sometimes I would purposely show up to work late in hopes of getting sent home or suspended. It's gotten so bad that I started imagining things I could do so I wouldn't have to go in to work. Bad, dangerous, drastic things. Like purposely tripping and falling down the stairs so I end up in the hospital.

I tried explain the pain and how much I hate it and dread going to work to my midwife. She said that unfortunately, it doesn't qualify as a threat to the pregnancy and I can only go early disability if it is a threat to my pregnancy. I was afraid of telling her the things that I've begun imagining. I didn't know what to do. Finally I told my mom what I was thinking and feeling, and she told me to quit, that we would find some other way to get me on early disability. I called my boss and told her I wanted to quit and explained why. She told me not to come in that night and asked me to come back the next day and talk to the main manager and see if we could work something out, considering my leave date is only 3 weeks away.

I still didn't know what to do. I was afraid to talk to the main manager, and I need the money. I couldn't just go on unpaid leave. I decided to try calling my midwife again to tell her the way I was feeling, thinking that anything would be better than going back to work. I had to leave a message and didn't want to explain it all to the receptionist, so I just asked for her to call me back regarding my maternity leave. She didn't even bother calling me back, and when the other receptionist called me for a completely unrelated reason, I asked about it. She told me the same thing that the midwife told me yesterday. I just started crying and told her everything, and she said she would get the midwife right away and explain the situation to her. So she did, and they called the main doctor, who approved early leave starting today. I guess they realized how urgent it was, because they called me back within 20 minutes and told me that it was approved and I wouldn't have to go back to work.

I am so incredibly relieved. I don't know how I would have made it for another 3 weeks. I don't think I could have.

I don't know why this is so hard. Why is pregnancy so incredibly awful? I've hated it from the moment I found out. It only seems to get worse. Is it going to be this bad after the baby is born? Do I just suck at life?

--dragon Read more!

So Tired

I feel like I've forgotten where I've been. It's not as if anything of note has happened to me the last few weeks, but it seems as if I'm walking through a cloud. Perhaps it's because of the utter exhaustion I can't seem to shake. I feel like I'm constantly going and going all day long every single day. Even on days I purposely try to do nothing, I still end up feeling drained. Is this because of being pregnant? Perhaps a pre-baby exercise in exhaustion so I know what to expect? Maybe it's because I can't seem to get a good night's sleep. I wake up about every 2 hours to go pee (effing bladder... I can't wait until all my internal organs are back in their proper places), and I can't get comfortable. My lovely soft bed feels like a rock. I fear my medication isn't working because lately I've been getting so overwhelmed by things. But I haven't felt a panic attack coming on or the heavy depression either. So maybe it's just me. I don't know. I can't wait for it to be over, but at the same time I'm absolutely dreading it. I don't know what I'll do. I really don't think I'll make a very good parent. I'm a terribly modest person and I can't stand the idea of people poking around down there or poking and prodding at me like some kind of farm animal. Especially since Erik and Sara will be in the room with me. And the worst part is the not knowing. I'm such a control freak. I like everything to be planned out and to have all the details in order before I do something. You can't exactly do that when having a baby. You just kind of deal with it. I don't think I'm dealing with it very well. I keep thinking about it and for all the planning and lists and organizing I do, I still can't control the situation. It's so hard. Especially because I'm afraid that he'll be born early. I had a dream he was born August 15th. The thought scares me to death. I keep thinking "but I don't have a carseat! But I don't have a carseat!" I know. Silly thing to think about, especially since i live 2 blocks from the hospital. If all else fails, we can walk. It hasn't even happened yet and the whole thing makes me tired.

--dragon Read more!