One Example of Telling your Mental Illness to Fuck Off

Today’s Prompt ^ Drive

It’s nearly 11p tonight and I want to go to sleep a smidge before the clock turns to 11, however I also had today’s prompt on my mind today, and would like to add a short post about it right this minute.

Firstly, it’s always tricky when I have set aside notebooks for the following semester’s classes, yet didn’t sticky note them with what class I envisioned them for, and then stumble upon them and not have a clue which class they are for–talk about sigh-worthy!

On the other hand, I picked out another notebook for my Stats class which starts tomorrrowwwww afternoooooon, gwah! I really have no clue how it’s going to be balancing schoolwork over the rest of this summer. :O D:

I have two books I need to read during tomorrow/Tuesday and pens and pencils to pack for tomorrow. And stationary. And fanfic writing. …. Yeah. *nods*

BUT back to the prompt, you silly wombats!

This prompt made me only ever think of driving in the sense of a vehicle moving from one destination to another. Which reminds me of this time last June 2015 where I was attending a partial hospitalization at MSE, which is when you go in during the day for treatment for a designated amount of time and then return home for the evening. While I was there at MSE, I was still getting my check-in phone calls from the insurance company, something that began in January/February and ended a few weeks into July. Case manager, I think is what their job title was.

Any who, I was having a tough time then and had been sitting in my car talking the tea party talk for a good hour after the program had ended. I believe I was stuck between throwing out a plastic bag I had or acting on a suicidal thought with it. Even though I wound up getting out of the car and throwing it away, part of me wanted to go rifling back in the trash bin to get it back. However, I stayed put with the OCD and the depression with me.

I told my case manager on the phone how I was sitting in the driver’s seat, with OCD in the passenger seat and the depression sitting behind me. I told her about how they were all chatting and coincidentally, I wasn’t going anywhere because of it.

She told me the best thing ever:

Why don’t you open the door and let the OCD/the depression out and you’ll see them again tomorrow.

It was the most literal interpretation of a metaphor and yet the absolute most perfect thing I needed to hear. I told her that that was a great idea, and it IS, and that I assured her I would do that when I was done with the phone call. After it ended, I did open up my doors and told them to get out and I’d see them later (maybe not the next day entirely but enough time for me to make it home at least).

Sometimes it’s the little things people say or suggest that can change around your whole outlook. That’s one of the great things about sharing helpful things on the blogosphere with you guys. We can witness the little things that made the biggest differences in our treatments and our Recovery journeys.

 

Hold on and look out for the little things. You never know what may become a bright lit beacon in your Recovery journey as time passes on. ❤ ❤ ❤

Sending you all warm hugs and mighty bro fists!

And as always, remember to….

Teachable Moment #6 | Art Therapy Series

Number SIX.

I’m doing this soon after #5, so as to continue plowing forwards. Don’t want to waste another few weeks with inaction P:

In this piece, we were told to create a footstep path from where we’ve been to better times, as well as write a little bit about why forgiveness is important (bottom right).

I accidentally mixed up my metaphors in this piece, but as it reads from this view, there is the fog, tears and yearning for freedom (symbolized by the flying birds) for the fall of 2014 when I was diagnosed with OCD. To footsteps leading to the ‘blackhole’ and shitty clouds and white space surrounding the area (winter/spring 2015). And then there are the footsteps leading to green hills and a sunny sky. 🙂

It would have been more appropriate to have the blackhole first and then the white blankness second. 😛 Ah well.

And for the writing bit:

Forgiveness is important for me to move forward. Forging meaning from my experiences means that I can grow in my understanding and empathy for others. To forgive myself is to recognize I’m human and mistakes happen. But forgiveness can be freedom, and I wish to be free and better again. Recovery is a journey not a destination.

 

I love the idea of forging meaning, and I got it from this TED talk, I’m not sure if I’ve linked it before, but it’s a good one.

 

Forgiveness is something I still need to work on, even now. I haven’t mastered it, by far. In fact, I haven’t really put it into practice to move emotionally forwards and onwards from what happened, all of it, in my dark times of 2015. I imagine that’s evident in all my projection issues. I do have ideas and plans to address these more in the future, for articles and blog posts. I actually want to work on some pre-written work for the semester for the school newspaper. That’s something I’ll likely embark further on in August.

Speaking of, this reminds me of the other day when I ate breakfast outside on the swinging seat, and I thought about how one is meant to rejuvenate themselves over a summer break. It’s a good question, isn’t it?

How do you help to rejuvenate yourself? What goodies do you do for yourself when you need a break, a hiatus or just some basic self-care?

I also think that forging meaning from my experiences is useful so as to share my story and how I’ve worked towards Recovery and how that may help someone out there, too, who is struggling and walking on the path of Recovery. It’s neat when you think about it to imagine each of us soldiers walking together in unity on our path of Recovery. 🙂

I also think that forgiveness to myself means letting go of the bad decisions I made and using humor to be able to talk about them, share them and let them sit out in the open light rather than feeling ashamed of them or hiding them.

Which reminds me, too, I want to include more talk about my suicide attempts in my IOOV presentations and in a few other writing places. As of right now for the presentations, I only slightly if at all mention them, but they play a larger role than that. I’ve thought and imagined how I would tailor my presentation if I presented at school. :3 I want to keep working on and improving my story and go after that FLOW I so dearly want it to have. When I can achieve that, I will be even more confident in my abilities to present and be ready to go after my TED talk dream. 😀

Just gotta keep practicing and working on it until then!

I’m mildly distracted writing this one up again. But I hope I have covered some basics here. And that my musings are amusing, at least. Again, I don’t have all that much experience yet with forgiveness and how it’s impacted my journey thus far. I will set it aside as another prompt to return to and think about and journal about. As of right now, my brains are scattered and do not wish to cooperate. XD

 

Anywho, stay safe, once more! ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤

Teachable Moment #5 | Art Therapy Series

I don’t know what it is about this fifth teachable moment, but I’ve been avoiding and pushing it off for the last couple of weeks 😛😛

So, here I am now, hoping to just get it done, down and over with!! Let’s jump right in!

So, in this assignment above, we were asked to create an umbrella under which positive actions and attributes are safely dry and tucked away, whereas negative actions and attributes are assaulting the top of the umbrella.

Here is what the negative stuff over the umbrella says:

Despair. ‘wanting’ to die. Nothingness. Not talking with people. Loneliness. Invisibility. Pain. Secrets. Isolation

And what’s below:

Therapy. Being seen. Being heard. Coping strategies (positive) Talking to people. art. Holding onto things: abstract and physical.

As well as having the concept of my TRUE SELF clinging onto the umbrella, and the hand rest of the umbrella is filled with SUPPORT.

The umbrella features a blue background with green and purple polka dots and yellow smiley faces. 🙂

 

I don’t know what it is about this teachable moment, but I’ve struggled with getting it done for ages now. I guess part of it feels like it’s so simple, basic and understandable, and doesn’t require further thought, yet I’ve waited as though hoping further thought could be established to it. It’s odd. Allow me to share some more of my thoughts on certain aspects of this piece.

It only happens once, after all.

 

First, the ‘wanting’ to die and why that’s in quotations. I think, and I hope I’m not speaking out of terms with the state I was in at the time, that I didn’t want to die per se, I just wanted the pain and the desperation to stop. This is often common with people who feel suicidal. There’s that quote out there about jumping from the burning building, it’s like that, you don’t necessarily want to impact the ground, but you jump because it feels better than dying from the flames. It’s really being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

At least now when I feel like I want to die, it’s more often just wanting a break, a pause button from life and reality. It’s me thinking that I can attain that somehow, in a negative fashion, when really, I can’t. Not without risking greater consequences.

Back then, a good year ago, I was seeking freedom in the wrong places. I didn’t want to live the way I was living because it was so dark and all consuming. However, I was also aware that it may not always be like that–that by living another day there is hope that life will get better. That suicide only ends the chances of life ever getting better again. And to give up feeling bad, you also have to give up any of the good feelings. And, I was unsteady about giving up the good stuff, even while I felt I was being swallowed up by the nothingness.

I talk about that in my IOOV presentations, how depression (and the OCD driving factor of the depression wagon) was this vast whiteout, where there was no perspective and no concept of future, past or present. Everything was just white, which reflected all the snowstorms we had then, and how those storms kept fucking up my therapy appointments.

And I really want to put an emphasis on NO perspective. When people asked me what I was going to do the next day, hell even later that day, let alone YEARS from then, I genuinely had no idea. I was making it up minute by minute, and even just cradling the seconds because that’s all I could bear.

For invisibility, I think of my friend Shouting from the Mountain Top and her update on her life and the pain she’s going through in The Invisible Knife. She talks about how mental health issues are like an invisible knife shooting into you, and that really can be the case. For me, invisibility was feeling unheard and unseen, having crises when no one knew about them and sobbing uncontrollably during them. About getting stuck anytime I sat down from one location to the next, and having to have friends or others come to ME because I couldn’t get up to go to them. The worst part was when I’d both WANT people to notice my pain and also NOT want them to notice me. But it always felt worse when no one noticed. It was really like I didn’t even exist, then. I couldn’t acknowledge my own pain, and relied on others perspectives, but they weren’t there to give it, which put me into some dangerous situations, left to my own devices.

 

 

On the FLIP SIDE:

Holding onto things was a major part of the beginnings of my Recovery journey. It reminds me of the song ‘A Better Place’ by Jay Putty where he sings:

You know you’ve been told / You’ve gotta find something to hold on to

And I distinctly recall being told that on the way home on some rainy day with my Mom in the car, telling me I had to find something to hold onto.

Holding onto something is about, well, holding on through the dark days to get to the better days. It doesn’t matter what you hold onto, it only matters that you hold onto something.

For me, I held on to my stuffed animal dog (which will appear in the final assignment of this series), I held onto hope, I held onto my true self even when I felt she lay in tatters, I held onto the people I knew and had yet to meet, I held on for the sake of holding on, even if that felt silly and trivial. I held on for a better tomorrow. And when I couldn’t hold on any longer, I’d often wind up in the hospital, getting the help I needed so direly.

And for the true self bit, that’s the core of who you REALLY are. All that you are but more so, all that you have yet to become. Your true self occupies your values and is there for you through thick and thin, NO MATTER WHAT. Even when I thought I lost my true self, I never really did. She was still there waiting for me to pick up the pieces again and plow forwards in Recovery.

 

She’s what led me…here. I suppose this wasn’t so bad, huh? 😉

TO THE NEXT PIECE! Eventually 😉

 

Stay safe, peeps!! ❤ ❤ ❤

Pssssst…guess what today is?

Marp!

It’s nearly 9:30a here. It’s a Sunday, and you know what that meaaaannnssss. Doggy playtime yay!!! I won’t be bringing my camera this time, but I do have photos from last Sunday that I can go through and upload here for you all 🙂 😀 YAY!

I’ll be there for a few hours today, and likely be reading throughout the evening as well as doing some more blogging and LEGASP I forgot to scrapbook on Scrapbooking Friday :O Maybe I’ll do some art stuff. I’ve had a couple of ideas the past few days.

AND I have that couple piece to finish, gasp!

Crap, I gasped too much, now I have the hiccups XD

I have a book review to do for you guys, and I’ve decided to bring back that procrastination book so I can take it out again another time and read it, since I won’t be able to get it done by tomorrow. I have another book I can read for Tuesday

 

Annnnd tomorrow is Monday, the first day of my Statistics class!!! :O O_O

I’m not sure yet how taking the course will effect my blogging, but I’ll do my best to juggle. 🙂 School will come first though. Well, second really, I come first. 😉

I also have a meeting with a professor on Tuesday for the directed study I want to do over the fall semester 😀 Yay!

Then I have therapy and more class on Wed.

This coming Saturday we’ll be having the funeral.

I’m just listing out stuffs I have in my brains now…

I got a DESK! It’s snazzy and my room’s been rearranged. I’ve put some of my stationary in the little drawer 😀

I’m currently listening to this creepypasta: Can’t really tell you what it’s about but it’s good background noise 🙂

What else….what else…

I’m feeling like myself again! 😀 Yesterday my Mom and I were doing my room so I wasn’t online much, and then we went out for dinner at IHop and to the stores too, so I also didn’t have much time to blog in the evening.

I want to get up a few teachable moments too, as well as an update on #RecoveryHome for you all. :3

 

For now, that’s all I’ll say. Gotta get ready for doggies, and take my meds! 🙂

Hope you guys are doing snazzy, and if you’re not, here’s a cup of sparkling SNAZZY for you to cheer up even a smidge. 🙂

Stay safe!!! ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤