AfflictionAteHer

It’s been nearly a year since we adopted Faith, our newest furry family member.

It all began with grief. As soon as we lost Crunch Tator, my trusty old Wheaton Terrier, I started hanging out at the Town Lake Animal Center, our local animal shelter. I would highly recommend this type of therapy to anyone suffering from the loss of a furry family member except for one thing: it is impossible to do so without becoming fixated on adopting another dog. My own fixation was on Millie, a 40 pound Collie/Basset Hound mix with terrible manners and a clear tendency towards ADHD. Mainly because she had a big nose. My husband was opposed to getting a dog while I was in the throes of fixation, so we compromised on getting the dog of his choice, who happened to be Faith, an 80 pound German Shepherd/Chow Chow mix.

Faith was well mannered, but aloof. I didn’t immediately take to her. While she, also, has a big nose, she did not present it for kisses; in fact, she showed no interest in me at all. And yet, I consented to her adoption. I suppose out of Hope. And maybe a little Charity.

We’ll skip the part where we brought her home and I immediately told David we’d made a mistake because I was terrified of her, and we’ll move right along to the commitment I made to her the next morning: “I will not allow my fear of you to define our relationship.”

This seemed to work quite well. I read some Ceasar Milan books. I started walking her twice a day, every day. The walks were long and controlled – short leash, no stopping unless I said so, sit at every curb, etc. I even used a doggy backpack, which was handy for carrying water. Faith became somewhat affectionate towards me and I gained a lot of confidence in myself. I grew to look forward to our long walks, and I decided we’d picked the right dog for us after all the first time she sat down next to me and I was able to throw my arm around her big, round haunches as if she was a human being. Or maybe it was the first time she laid her head on my lap and looked up at me with her big, brown eyes. Actually, I think it was the first time I laid down next to her on the floor and laid my head on her side. Big dogs rock for comfort and snuggling, let me tell you.

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The stopping medication thing is falling apart, bit by bit. First off I got the flu (or whatever it was) that didn’t respond to anything other than Hydromet. Insomnia set in… and then my asthma took a turn for the worse. So, more albuterol than normal plus the occasional, desperate puff of Symbicort. Then the diagnosis of severe gerd causing inflammation in my larynx so I was back on Protonix, full-strength (40mg 2xdaily) for a few days.

And now I’m back on 100mg a night of Seroquel.

For now.

I do have an appointment to meet a General Practitioner, this Saturday. I’m nervous about it. I’m trying to figure out exactly what to tell him I need help with, so I’ll be practicing here over the next few days.

Today’s take: The Triangle.

“It’s like this, doc: I have asthma, GERD, and Bipolar Disorder NOS. All 3 have had a major impact on my life, and all 3 are – individually, at least – well controlled by medication; but the medication I take for one has a negative impact on another, and this goes on and on in a vicious circle. I keep finding myself at a place where I’m taking huge prescribed doses of these strong medications and things are going downhill with all 3 diseases and then – wham – one doctor will want to add even more drugs to try to fix things. The last time that happened was last December, and I decided to try to get off everything to get a better fix on what was what where the illnesses are concerned, and here I am. I need help managing all of this and I have a feeling it’s going to require some time – more than 15 minutes every six months, for instance. The symptoms of the illnesses are getting much worse (I think – though I’m not sure), and the side effects have become well-neigh intolerable and, I think, dangerous. Help!

And then I can whip out my spreadsheet of afflictions.

Comments?

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I’ll make this quick, since my shift ends in 10 minutes and I don’t have my own computer at home, anymore.

That’s right. I sold my computer for $950 to help cover some of the money we lost by my being out sick without sick leave for 8 days.

In bullet form, here’s where I am tonight:

• My manager made an exception and didn’t put me on final warning
• But I didn’t get the job I interviewed for because I was on second warning
• We cleaned the house and even got all the debris carted off by Bagster (yay!!!)
• My insomnia has been intractable and I’ve taken something to help me sleep about 2 out of every 3 nights
• On Monday I had a stomach ache. On Tuesday it turned in to intestinal distress, all-over joint pain, and a high fever. A blood test and urine sample at the ER (who can afford to take time off work for a dr’s appointment when they’re on attendance warning??) revealed nothing.
• I am now somewhat fixated on two possibilities: that I have cancer, or that I am pregnant. They are equally likely (which is to say, not very), but the fixation is driven by sleep deprivation and the side effects of whatever drug I took last night to try to sleep (Hydrocodone in this case – I didn’t sleep well but I certainly had interesting dreams; Benedryl two nights before that, and Trazedone and Benedryl the night before that).

Oh, and by the way, the rib pain I may have mentioned that incapacitated me last year around this time? It’s been hanging around again, like a suspicious-looking ex-convict.

This time, I keep promising myself… this time I will not rest until I find out what’s causing this. No more just covering up the symptoms, which I can push through if I try. I want to know what’s causing this stuff to happen.

Physical scheduled with a new (and potential primary care) physician for March 27.

Oh how I miss my computer lust after a new computer.

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Blogs are strange things to me. I was resistant to home computing for so many years (despite a career in technology that goes back to the mid-1980′s) that I didn’t even know what a blog was until my mother explained it to me a few years ago. And then I was suspicious of blogs – they screamed “look at me!”, a cry of wolf if I ever heard one. Little by little, though, blogs won me over. For one thing, they have taken over the Internet. For another, my personal diaries scream “look at me!”, even if only to myself, and I ultimately simply couldn’t resist trying myself out on a global stage. Still, they are strange. If nobody is looking at my blog, does it really exist? And if I am writing and nobody is looking does that mean that what I have to say simply isn’t interesting?

But what does that matter, really? I don’t know if I’m a better writer when I’m posting on my blog, but my experiment with this blog opened my mind up in ways that writing in my diary never really did. It’s easier to edit, for one thing. Easier to search through. Easier to type, I guess, than to write something out longhand.

At any rate, what I want to write about today is the state of our house.

When I left off writing in this blog several weeks ago my health was steadily improving. Ultimately, I lost 15 pounds after I stopped taking all my prescriptions. My asthma improved dramatically. My GERD disappeared. No more being light-headed, being dizzy, having such a dry mouth that I couldn’t swallow, having heart palpitations, having such a strong startle response that it impeded my ability to do everyday things. No more paranoia or hypomania or depression. It was amazing.

In fact, the only remaining problem was asthma and allergies. I would being feeling OK and then, as soon as I lay down in bed at night – wam! wheezing galore! And there was simply something about our bedroom that seemed oppressive to me. I didn’t really trust that bedroom. I felt certain something lurked in the ceilings, or behind the walls. Something that was triggering my asthma.

Pre-remodel Master Bedroom

Pre-remodel Master Bedroom

So one weekend several weeks ago we moved out of that bedroom and began the process of demolition. We tore the drywall off the walls in the bathroom, closet, and dressing area and discovered that the plumbing to the bath had, at some point, leaked. The leak had been fixed but nothing had been done about the woodwork that had gotten wet. The base plate for the partition wall behind the plumbing was covered with mold and was beginning to rot. Water had also leaked from the shower spray behind the tiles around the window, causing more mold on the framing around the bath.

Immediately following our discovery, I got sick. I wrote about being sick in my last post.

I’m certain I had a virus because I was running a fever and because all of my joints (and especially my back and the back of my neck) ached. On the other hand, it also felt like a severe allergic reaction… that lasted for weeks. I was too run down to dust and vacuum and that was making everything worse – although, weirdly, my asthma was fine the whole time. My mother came over last week and, bless her heart, cleaned house for me. She can’t imagine how much I appreciated that or how helpful it was.

Thus I was quite reluctant to proceed with our master bedroom remodel. Because the big remaining demolition had the potential to start an asthma attack that could send even a healthy youngster to the hospital: we had to remove the ceiling. We had to remove it because a previous owner had attempted to repair a crack that ran down the entire middle of the bedroom ceiling with roofing nails, wood putty, and spackle, and popcorn texture was falling off on to the floor (and underneath the texture were tell-tale signs of an old leak of some kind).

We toyed with the idea of hiring someone to remove it. We toyed with simply covering it up – which is what we very nearly did. The problem wasn’t removing the drywall, it was the old blown-in insulation laying on top of it, most of which had turned to a fine dust over the past 40 years.

And yet, with finances dictating our direction we couldn’t afford to hire someone, and I couldn’t imagine trying to explain to a potential future home buyer why we decided to cover up a mess rather than repair it.

And then my husband, my hero, stepped in. Late Saturday afternoon he went down to Home Depot and rented a drywall lift. We donned toxic dust respirators, protective coveralls, and long gloves. We dragged out Mom and Dad’s old shop vac, and bought a box of extra-strength, 52-gallon construction trash bags. He climbed up the laddar, and the job began.

David would stand on top of the ladder with his head and shoulders in the attic, and I would hand him an empty bag. He used an empty dust pan to scoop the old insulation in to the bag until it was too full for him to hold any longer, and then I turned on the shop vac and held it on my shoulders so he could vacuum out the remaining dust from that section of drywall. And then we would take that section of drywall down. While he scooped the next bag I vacuumed the dust and debris off the floor. We finished removing the ceiling in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

What we found was eye-opening. In fact, before we even got very far I climbed the ladder to remove the vent cover from the air vent that feeds in to the master bedroom ceiling, only to discover that it was covered with mold. Once we got the first piece of ceiling down and David was able to take a good look around that part of the attic (which is not accessible via the rest of the house), we discovered the source of the “leak” on the ceiling: a large area that had been used like a toilet by a visiting possum. The area, which included both the wiring for our ceiling light fixture and the contaminated air vent, was about 2′x4′ and was filled with feces and urine. The urine had soaked through the drywall. It appeared to be quite old, as the feces (which was a lot like dog poop) was completely desiccated. As we continued removing drywall and made our way towards the dressing area we found a place where a rather major water leak has occurred in the roof. While the leak had been repaired at the roof nobody had bothered doing anything about the water that had found its way in the attic, and the drywall and rafters were covered in mold. Additionally, the possum (or some critter) had chewed all the sheathing off the electrical wires that ran to the light fixtures in the dressing area – light fixtures that just happened to be located directly beneath the leak.

This was a lot of work, I have to say, even though David was the one with doing all the scooping (he wouldn’t let me do it because he was afraid it would be too much for my asthma and allergies). My energy was good on Saturday, but come Sunday morning I was tuckered out. David, however, was just getting started. I helped him hang two 4′x12′ sheets of drywall on the ceiling before I gave out on him. He worked straight through from around noon Sunday until 6am Monday morning and finished hanging all the new drywall in the ceiling. The only break he took was to take our dog to the dog park. He is Superman!!!!

Now, before we started working on the ceiling I had it in my head that I was going to completely seal off the room from the rest of the house, and that I was going to make sure we kept the entire house dusted and vacuumed to keep as clear as possible of the construction dust we were creating – but I didn’t. In fact, our house is now terribly filthy. But you want to know something? Despite all that, I woke up this morning flat on my back in bed – and I wasn’t even wheezing. It was amazing.

We now have a few dozen big bags of filthy old insulation sealed shut and piled on our back porch; we have the old drywall leaning against a wall on our front porch. And we have all that contaminated crap (literally!) out of our master bedroom.

I am proud of us for doing the right thing. For cleaning out instead of covering up. It isn’t perfect, but it proves two things: 1) that DIY’ers can tackle the dirtiest of jobs, and 2) that there is hope for this old house.

I’m looking forward to putting our master bedroom / bath / closet / dressing area back together. But I can’t help thinking about the other rooms in the house with similar problems (we’ve had squirrels in our attic, in a different part of the house, for months). What’s nice is that I no longer feel helpless to deal with the major issues we’ve run in to here.

And maybe that’s what this blog is all about, really- not feeling helpless. If I can take the cover off the afflictions I have bowed to over the years; if I can understand what’s going on underneath my own drywall, then maybe I can fix it. It sure beats the sense of foreboding that staring at a mangled ceiling can bring.

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Is it possible to live happily ever after and still have afflictions?

Of course it is.

Which is why I am back, writing in this blog, many weeks after I decided to close the blog.

Things were going very well, if I do say so myself. I’d settled in to my job and my performance and customer satisfaction metrics were great. I was asked to interview for a position more relevant to my actual job experience, even though I haven’t been at this company for a year (a prerequisite for being hired in to a different position in the company). The “attendance warning” I garnered because of my oral surgery was just about to drop off… and then…

Well, first let me explain the “incidents” system at the company I work for. It goes like this: if you get 4 incidents in a 6 month period you are given a “First Warning”. If, while on your First Warning, you get another incident, you are given a “Second Warning”. If, while on Second Warning, you get another incident, you are given a “Third And Final” warning. If you get another incident while you are on Third Warning, you are terminated.

An “Incident”, as you may have gathered, is a point. You accrue incidents when you are late, when you leave early, or any time you have unplanned time off. It goes like this:

Arrive more than 4 minutes 59 seconds late: .25 incidents
Arrive more than 30 minutes late: .75 incidents
Leave more than 4 minutes 59 seconds early: .75 incidents
Leave less than 4 minutes 59 seconds early: .25 incidents
Call in sick: 1 incident (but if you miss up to 4 additional, consecutive days, they are all counted as the same incident so long as you do not come in to work)

I ended up on a first warning because I got sick two different times last summer and had to leave early: once due to migraine, and once due to something I don’t recall (it could have been mental health related). I was late one day (I clocked in 6 minutes 30 seconds late). I had to leave work for an emergency dentist appointment one day. And then I underestimated the recovery period following oral surgery and had to leave work my first day back. There must have been something else in there as well, but I can’t remember what. Net incidents, though, came to 4, and I was given my first warning back in December.

That first warning was scheduled to expire on February 19, and my incidents had started expiring, too: on February 1, I was down to 3 incidents, with another scheduled to expire on February 12. I was also scheduled to interview for that coveted position I mentioned earlier. But, alas, fate planned otherwise. The weekend before I came down with an upper respiratory tract infection, and by the time I got to work on Monday I had lost my voice and was running through Kleenex at the rate of a big box every few hours. I tried to tough it out and made it through that day and part of the next, (running a fever, mind you), before I gave up on went on home.

Throughout the week of February 1, I grew sicker instead of recovering. I was out for nearly 4 days, resting, doing everything you’re supposed to do to recover from a virus, but it wasn’t working. Finally, the evening of February 5, I went to a doctor. The doctor said I had a bacterial sinus infection and prescribed a heavy-duty antibiotic (Levaquin). Unfortunately, my recovery stalled, and when I returned to work on Monday the 8th I was still very ill. I was also presented with my “Second Warning” for having gone home sick the week before.

I worked through the entire week of the 8th despite being ill. Soiled Puffs tissues filled my waste paper basket and I talked in a near-whisper on the phone with my customers because I didn’t have much of a voice. My fever got higher and I felt worse and worse… but I did make it through the week.

The following Monday I suddenly became much (it seemed to me) sicker. I had a deep, loose cough and it was as if a fire hydrant had been turned on in my sinuses. During the prior two weeks I had tried the following medications to to relieve my symptoms and not one of them had worked: Nyquil, Benedryl, Claritin, Robitussin DM, Zyrtec, Hydromet, and Levaquin. And I must say that I looked very ill – total strangers were asking me how I was feeling and giving me their recommendations about treating the symptoms of flu. I was able to take a planned day off on Tuesday of last week, using one of my last 2 remaining vacation days (I have no more sick days), and saw another doctor. This doctor told me I did not have a bacterial infection and diagnosed a viral infection and allergies. I returned to work the next day but it was useless: I couldn’t speak, I was running a high fever, it hurt to walk, and I was so congested and snotty that I went through a big box of Puffs tissues in 6 hours. I finally had to go home, and was out for the rest of the week.

I’m returning to work this morning feeling better, though still a bit ill from allergies (more about that interesting topic in my next post), but I feel scared. I should get my 3rd warning today for the time I took off last week – if they don’t simply decide to let me go instead (which they might do – it wouldn’t be unusual so far as I’ve heard). Although it was clear to everyone around me that I was sick, including the manager I spoke to before I left (who advised me to go home and who told me she was well aware I’d been sick for the past two weeks), my actual manager was out all last week and most of the week before.

And besides, it’s just damn embarrassing. I don’t want people to think of me as high maintenance or unreliable, or that I’m not tough enough to tough it out at work.

Mostly, though, I’m just worried about what we’re going to do if I lose this job. I don’t know if I can find another one of any kind in this business environment.

Welp, only one way to assess the future and that’s to step in to it, so here I go: off to work.

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This blog is officially over.

When I began afflictionateher.com last October, I was trying to come to grips with the idea of being disabled. I felt very sick, and I had given up on trying to get back to the “old” me that seemed to have slipped away with time. I certainly didn’t imagine this blog would lead me somewhere new – I thought I was creating a blog to lead people to information about mental illness.

My withdrawal symptoms from the Neurontin, Lamictal, and Seroquel are all but gone. I’ve learned to stay away from Symbicort and Protonix. I’m clear headed, and I’m sleeping well (naturally). I’m breathing easier than I have in years – and for the first time in years, actually, my Albuterol “rescue” inhaler lasted for more than a month (for 60 days, actually). I’ve cut back on caffeine by half or more, and am limiting myself to a couple of diet sodas every day.

If I had to sum up the conclusions I’ve drawn in the past 8 weeks, it would be that each of the pills I stopped taking was causing the specific symptoms I thought I was taking it for. Ironic, eh? And while it may seem that my conclusions would be attached to new beliefs about the evils of the drug industry and the shortcomings of the medical profession, they are not.

I’ve lost 12 pounds – or had, last time I checked (more than that, maybe, since then). I’ve lost congestion. I’ve lost dizziness and wobbly legs. I’ve lost paranoia and disorientation, sudden grief and sudden fear. I’ve lost chronic indigestion and nausea. I’ve lost feeling like I have a jackhammer in my chest. Chronic dry mouth and sinus problems are likewise lost.

I’ve gained breath. And life.

The story of what all this means to me is one I haven’t written, yet. This is the first time since 1996 that I have been so medication free, and I’m not even sure why I was able to pull it off this time. I seem to be moving forward in to a new chapter in my life; moving forward in a way I probably have relatively less control over than I would like to think.

Affliction did not eat her, after all.

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Before I forget, and because I want to come back and write more about this later…. but mostly because I don’t want to lose this resource, here is a link to a wonderful booklet from The Icarus Project: Harm Reduction Guide To Coming Of Psychiatric Drugs.

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In the middle of cleaning out the cat room last weekend I moved a box of old diaries in to my office. These were some of my less-interesting diaries, and I hadn’t read thru them in quite awhile, but I pulled one out this morning and thumbed thru it.

The diary was written exactly 8 years ago. At the time, I was living in an apartment and working as a Lotus Notes web developer for Tivoli. I wrote in my diary every day, and what’s most notable is that I was writing the same thing 8 years ago that I write about today – with one important exception.

“Is my insomnia a compulsion, or do I feel compelled to watch the 11pm NYPD Blue because I’m bipolar? And is bipolar what the tight feeling is in my chest or is it stress? Does stress cause all this or is it simply magnified by mental illness?”

“I feel physically revved up, but too tired and unmotivated to do anything about it. The physical feeling is in my chest – it feels like adrenaline.”

“… I found some references on the web this morning I wanted to think about. Each referred to potential problems with med’s I take a lot of every day – Neurontin and Benedryl. They can cause hypomania. It could explain a lot. Mine’s gotten worse since I began increasing the Neurontin last October. And the problems — songs stuck in my head, lip and jaw biting, racing thoughts (when I wake up, especially), and grinding my teeth — have just gotten worse and worse.”

So what’s different? What’s different is that this time I’m proceeding through my winter with the very clear understanding that the medications I take every day – and I have yet to have a single day where I don’t take something – are causing the bulk of my physical (and a lot of my mental) discomfort. 8 years ago I was still trying to use drugs to balance everything out – as evidenced by the fact that on February 26, 2002, I started taking Lamictal on top of the Neurontin and Benedryl that I already knew were causing mania.

I love my diaries. Love how I can look back through them and realize that something that seems new is actually very old, and see that I’ve been following the same path (even if only in a circle) for so long.

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After my fabulously normal, good-night’s sleep Monday night, and my good-day’s recharge on Tuesday, I found myself sleepless on Tuesday night. I was determined not to take anything to help me sleep – the problem was that I didn’t do anything practical to help myself sleep, either. I went to bed around 3am, then got back up and didn’t try to go back to bed until about 4am. Once back in bed I found myself once again short-sheeted by Stella cat, but didn’t kick her out, and I was way too hot but didn’t bother getting up to push back some of our covers. Instead, I laid in bed and tossed and turned and sweated and didn’t get much sleep.

So I was really sleep-deprived, yesterday, but more than that I was overwhelmed by allergies, again and – the worst, really – that racing heartbeat/too tired to do anything feeling I get when I’m low on sleep. I tried to take a nap but couldn’t relax. Once I finally did start to relax (by late last night) a skin allergy suddenly kicked in. This is the kind of skin allergy that causes intense itching all over my body, a kind of non-stop, non-specific traveling itch that’s impossible to satisfy. I didn’t want to take anything but it finally became too miserable to bear (and there was no way I was going to be able to sleep in the midst of it), so I took 100mg of Benedryl and rubbed spray Benedryl on my arms, legs and neck. An hour and a half later it finally started to calm down, and I was able to go on to bed around 2:30am. This time, I kicked the cats out of the bedroom and removed some of the extra covers that had threatened to suffocate me the night before.

What I’m finding, off other sleep aids, about sleeping is that I go to bed, get very comfortable, finally begin to drift off and then, just as I’m about to slip over the edge in to actual sleep it’s as if a switch gets thrown and I am suddenly wide awake. Not just wide awake, but irritable and anxious, as well, because I’m afraid I’m going to toss and turn all night, and because it seems as if a great night’s sleep has just been snatched away from me. I did finally manage to fall asleep, not sure what time (around 3:30, probably), so at least I got a few hours in. It sounds awful and it’s very uncomfortable but, again, I’m actually still getting more sleep than I was when I was still taking Seroquel, Lamictal and Neurontin; before I stopped taking them, I was going to bed around 3am and getting up a few hours later – I may not have tossed and turned on my way to sleep, but I wasn’t getting much sleep, regardless.

A couple of thoughts about sleep and me. First off, let me say that I think I sleep better if I don’t take anything at all (Benedryl included) before bed. All medications have side-effects, and that includes antihistamines. Second, the next thing I need to work on about sleep is simple sleep hygiene. It’s been years since I had to worry about drinking caffeine before bed, or about sleeping in an environment that’s really conducive to sleep. Seroquel always knocked me out no matter what. I don’t have something that’s going to “knock me out no matter what” anymore, so I’m going to have to help myself instead.

Still itching a lot this morning, but not as badly as last night. I have a feeling this itching episode was caused by taking the Trazedone and Seroquel last weekend – really, it feels exactly like withdrawal, even though it’s been weeks since I stopped taking those medications. The only other culprit I can think of would be Symbicort, which I casually used more than usual the day before and night of.

One of the bloggers I follow made a post recently saying she was thinking of getting off her Seroquel. Her dose is four and a half times higher than my highest prescribed dose ever was, and she seems to be in the midst of a crisis the likes of which I haven’t had to face in a decade. I wanted to respond to her post by encouraging her to follow my lead, but I don’t feel qualified to make that suggestion. On the one hand, in reading her posts it seems clear that the physical and mental effects of the medications she’s taken over the past few years are worse than the crises that preceded them. On the other hand, I may be projecting my own personal experience in to any suggestions I make. I am beginning to feel quite strongly that psychopharmaceutical medications are bad, bad news and that we’re all (in the mental health blogosphere) suffering from the delusion that we are mentally ill – a delusion supported by drugs that make us feel more ill than we would if we had never taken them. But that may well only be my own experience. Maybe these other bloggers are suffering from a disease I only ever imagined I had – maybe I only think I can relate to them because we’ve taken the same medications and suffered the same side effects.

Sleep is a terrible struggle for me right now… but I have to admit that I feel much more emotionally stable off medication than I did on it. I feel slightly less physically ill than I did while on the medication, too.

Speaking of which: I’m going to give myself another week or two of trying to figure out if the albuterol, Symbicort, and Benedryl are behind the rapid heart beat/shakiness thing. If I still haven’t figured it out by then, I’m going to take a deep breath and go back to the Heart Hospital for another full check-out. I worry about heart disease because it runs in my family and because that’s what these symptoms feel like. Paradoxically, I’ve expressed concern about these symptoms and heart disease for years and none of my doctors have been concerned (my asthma doctor thought it was probably Costochondritis, but I don’t buy it because the symptoms I actually experience are not the symptoms in the descriptions I’ve found online). I’d like to get to the bottom of this. If I didn’t have these final, lingering symptoms — rapid heart beat / shakiness / transient dizziness / chest pain — I’d feel like I was home free. Maybe it’s heart disease, maybe I’ve developed a super sensitivity to caffeine because I drank such huge quantities of it all the time when I was younger. Maybe I’m still going through withdrawals, in some ways, from the Seroquel, Lamictal, and Neurontin. Regardless, I am determined to get to the root of the problem and to eradicate the cause.

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Writing that post this morning was awesome in just the way I love about writing; that way that shows you something… not new, exactly, but true. That way that takes something I’m hiding from the rest of the world because I’m not sure it’s right and puts it in the light and makes me think, “well heck, sure that’s right, and what a relief.”

I’ve lost my entire readership. I haven’t been posting at other people’s blogs, and I’ve backed almost entirely away from writing about mental illness as it relates to myself. Instead, the past several weeks have been about an experience so personal that I doubt most people find it interesting at all. Cleaning house? Not feeling good? Where’s the exciting stuff?

But they’ve been exciting weeks to me – very exciting weeks, and in ways that I haven’t gotten around to trying to envelope in a story, yet.

But back to this morning’s post, and to the events of the weekend and yesterday that came before it…

When we were in the thick of cleaning, on Sunday, I found myself in a panic. It wasn’t a panic that was limited to the amount of cleaning everything about our house really requires at this point, and it wasn’t specific to my health. It was a generalized anxiety that had to do with having been so purposely quiet about the things I’ve been so quietly trying to resolve in my life, lately. How to explain to David that the mess our house is in isn’t something that just suddenly crossed my mind? How to confront the problems in my life that I have so determinedly ignored for so long? How to even take myself seriously about getting healthy again when I’ve done nothing about just that for so many years?

At one point, Sunday evening, David found me simply laying on my back, staring at the ceiling, in our new bedroom. He hugged me and kissed my cheek, and I said, “I keep telling myself this is just a start. We will keep cleaning. We will get the house fixed. We will get rid of some of the stuff around here that never gets used and that’s falling apart and just gathering dust.” It was such a relief to have him hug me and such a relief to say this when all the anxiety was threatening to yell and blame, instead. However… my words pushed him away as literally as if I had put my hands on his shoulders and shoved him.

“You’re only allowed to fixate on one thing at a time,” he said, standing up and trying rather unsuccessfully to smile.

“Wait, what do you mean?” I asked.

“You can fixate on cleaning. Or you can fixate on mold. You can fixate on dust. You can fixate on furniture. But you can’t fixate on everything all at once.”

“But it is everything,” I tried to explain (as he turned his back and left the room). “It is everything all at once. It’s too much,” I added to thin air, as he left me.

And I did feel left. But I felt that it was all my own fault, too. I remembered our very first real date. We’d gotten together casually a few times, but this was the first date where he came and picked me up and took me somewhere. It was my first ride in his car. I remembered the first time I ever saw his apartment, and I remembered moving him out of the same apartment when we moved in together. I remembered the house on Avenue H. I thought about my own housekeeping habits and how they’d started to fall deeply apart a year or two before I met David, and I wondered if I have a tendency to hoard, and if I do or not why I picked someone who does. I thought about the fact that I’ve always gotten rid of most of the things I’ve ever owned and I counted (again, I’d been doing it all day) the things I could see in our home that are actually mine and not hand-me-downs or things that came with David: my clothes, my toiletries, my desk, my art supplies, my books, my boxes of stuff from my last real office, my boxes of diaries, my silverware, my small chest of drawers and 2 chairs from Pottery Barn. The rest – everything around us – came from David, or David’s mother, or my parent’s, or my relatives. We have no room for anything of our own because we are storing everybody else’s lives.

Sometimes I feel that I don’t have room for my own life. I am busy being what other people need or want me to be – and failing (I think, anyway, since they don’t seem happy or they are dead). Before my brother died I was busy trying to be what I thought a boyfriend wanted me to be – and failing (definitely failing miserably). I have a history of people rejecting what I want my own life and self to be. I have a history of people loving me for what I am willing to be for them, although they don’t seem to realize that’s what I’m doing. Sometimes I feel this way and then I feel guilty and weak. What woman doesn’t live her life for someone else? If I’d ever succeeded in having children my life would certainly be about what they needed me to be. And how could anyone ever be a partner without acknowledging and trying to fulfill her partner’s needs? What child wouldn’t want to help her parents in any way she could, even if she couldn’t (or didn’t) help them very well?

And who wouldn’t feel guilty, and anxious… who wouldn’t feel “But it is everything,” when she finally tried to open her mouth to explain that this all felt very wrong… even though she kept that a secret almost all of the time? Guilty because there’s nothing wrong with saying no. Guilty because there’s nothing wrong with saying yes. Guilty because there’s something totally dysfunctional and terribly wrong about saying yes but thinking no for years and years and years… and then, suddenly, saying no.

When I was cleaning on Sunday I felt all of this, and I said that thing to David that I mentioned and he reacted in that way that he did. And then I thought to myself that this time, this time I will not do what I know does not work. I will not sulk and sink in to an easier role as victim, and I will not yell and fly off the handle in to a temporary, injured snit. I will not expect the people I love to suddenly accommodate a frame of mind I have never communicated to them. I’m not sure what I will do, exactly, except that I will take it slowly and, as much as I can, considerately.

In life there must be yeses and nos all over the place. Not all one or the other and not silence. Life is a series of decisions and expecting to live without making them is like expecting to get to New York City without turning corners.

Expecting to change without changing – and without discomfort or pain, and without triumphs nobody but me even knows about – is like expecting to get to New York City without turning corners.

So I’ll have hard days and nights, but along the way I’ll also have days like the one I had today. I slept so grandly, so peacefully and deeply and well last night, and I awakened to bright, lingering sun and warmth. When I got to work I had an email from someone at work I hardly know who asked me to apply for a job that’s a step up from what I’m doing now – and my manager told me I could apply even though I haven’t worked there for an entire year, yet. My stomach cut loose in a way it hasn’t done in nearly two months. My sinuses began to clear. I scheduled a vacation day for tomorrow. And I visited the fabulous personal website I created a year and a half ago and fondly remembered all the technical skills I do still have that are actually in short supply, even though I don’t remember how to get a job using them anymore.

David seems rather withdrawn, perhaps a bit pensive but more like kind of angry in a slightly defensive way. I don’t feel angry with him and I think this will pass, so long as he doesn’t see me revert in to the sulking victim role I have when I’ve given up on trying to be happier in the past. I know my husband, knew him well when we married. It’s myself I’m trying to change here, and not him.

Along the way to whatever I’m changing in to I’ll have times when I’ll feel like I’m suffocating in the dust and debris of my life… and then days like today, when the world is bright and I’m breathing easy. I’m sure of it. Counting on it. Depending on it.

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