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Today I read this great post by Erin at What Winners Do. It is becoming obvious to me that Erin is spying on me somehow, as she writes with stunning frequency and consistency about the very dilemmas with which I find myself freqently struggling. It’s almost like she’s me, only a year or so in the future. Fancy that. I’m at once comforted by this and also somewhat humbled by the regular reminder of just how unique I am not – but I will try not to get hung up on that for the moment.
The post linked above is about her transformation from pill-queen to domestic-diva. Erin has a gift for admitting things about herself that no one wants to admit about themselves, in a way that completely disarms me and makes me want to join her club. Today’s refreshing slap to the head was this:
The best thing I was ever told by a therapist was that I wasn’t lazy when it came to running my home…I was actually overwhelmed because I didn’t know how to do it correctly. Bam! That opened my eyes.
There is nothing wrong with not knowing how to do something correctly. The only problem would be if I was unwilling to learn.
Ah-HA! The first thing I thought was: Jeesh, I wish my therapist would say something that useful. But then I gave it a little thought.
A big part of my problem(s) always has to do with perception, and this thing with the chaos in my house is no different. I’ve been struggling with it, and a significant part of that has to do with remembering that I have had times in my life where my house was clean, organized and I even liked all of my furniture. I was busy with school and work and a social life and yet not so overwhelmed by dishes as I am now. I thought that when I started Suboxone treatment that state of domestic-goddess grace would just descend upon me again and my home would once again reflect the zen-like tranquility of my mind. And Why Isn’t It Happening NOW!!!11!1!!! I mean, I got off the drugz, it’s been almost 4 months, why isn’t everything in my life reverting to it’s former level of perfection? Ahahaha-ahah-hahahahhahhah.
Upon closer examination this little fairy tale that I’ve been telling myself is revealed as the revisionist-history delusion that it really is. I have always been disorganized & prone to messiness. If my home was neater in days gone by, it was because I had a neat roommate who would not tolerate my crap and/or way less stuff to keep track of/take care of. I was also single, and didn’t have a child, and I was in better physical condition – pre-fibromyalgia. Even with all of those variables, the organizational state of my life fluctuated greatly depending on my level of depression.
Realizing all of that means that I can shed a lot of guilt and bewilderment at my current incompetence at managing the housework. There is no past standard to live up to, and there is no shame in admitting that I need to learn how to care for my home (and my life) in the context of my current circumstances. Today I’ve been thinking about what that means, and how I can try to set my home/life up so that things work for me, not against me.
To help me overcome my confusion and overwhelmedness, I signed up at the FlyLady’s site today. She has a step-by-step program for the organizationally challenged, and since my friend FreeFromItAll is always talking about her I thought I’d give it a shot. I have to admit that I had to overcome a wave of embarassment at signing up for this service, and then another wave of embarassment because I started to feel kinda excited about it, and yet another one when I told J about it, but seriously, WTF? Is anyone really too cool to care about the state of her home? Do I really want to be that person?
The first step was to shine my kitchen sink. A step meant to provide a feeling of accomplishment, a tangible symbol of my newfound enthusiasm, my sink now gleams like a beacon of hope. Jazzed about my success with the sink I also did a bunch of dishes, some laundry, and even cooked a healthy dinner (including broccoli!) for little C tonight. I also paced myself, rested, read and enjoyed my Sunday. Fuckin Aye! Tomorrow the goal is to get up and get dressed and ready for the day right away, and keep the sink shined.
I can handle that.
Getting my house clean and organized is not the most glamourous goal, but I’m realizing that it is a fundamental step in this process of creating the life that I want. And I can chose to view the process as drudgery, or as an opportunity to grow. It’s like this little Zen story, which one of my former roommates was fond of quoting:
- A monk told Joshu: “I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me.”
Joshu asked: “Have you eaten your rice porridge?”
The monk replied: “I have eaten”
Joshu said “Then you had better wash your bowl”
Maybe it really is that simple. Maybe if I just focus on the humble tasks that need to be done, I’ll find my way into the life that I want.
Bipolar Recovery is a fantastic blog. Jane is the author, and her blog details the process she used to cure herself from bipolar disorder. She also has videos on YouTube.
I ran across Bipolar Recovery a couple of days ago, and I’ve been reading a lot there. Jane’s story is both heartwrenching and inspiring, and after a lifetime of hearing that mental illness is incurable, it’s also a very welcome breath of fresh air.
Today was a beautiful day. There’s no school this week, and we spent the afternoon at the park. I packed us lunch, and we ate and climbed trees and played tag.
Some reading and some thinking, mixed with fresh air and sunshine, made me realize how I’ve allowed my focus to drift to the negative lately. I don’t know if it’s a habit, or some inherent part of my personality – maybe it’s a little of both – but my compass seems to point that way. I see how it can be so easily corrected – if I just stay conscious, stay grateful, stay focused on what’s good. The past couple of weeks I let my head slip under, but I came coughing up to the surface today, and I plan to stay.
I know it’s a process. A practice. I see the things I haven’t been doing, and the things that I have been doing that have led me off course. And still I’m suprised at how easy it was to make the switch back to gratitude and joy, when just yesterday I felt profoundly fucked.
I am still committed to keeping a lower dose of Suboxone for the time being. I have been treating some of my pain with trigger point therapy, and it is starting to really pay off. I have a date with myself at the gym tomorrow (yay yoga!) and I think I’m due for a new, inpirational-type book. I cleaned (most of) the kitchen today, and now I’m getting ready to watch a movie with some friends. Life is, indeed, good.
I’ve been struggling with questions of faith recently. Not faith in a higher power or in any religious sense, but faith in this process that I’m going through.
A deep sense of apathy has come over me, and I don’t like it. I haven’t felt like writing, or going to therapy, going out with friends, or cleaning the house, or playing with my kid, or dancing, or anything really. And there’s no reason for this feeling of apathy to appear in my life right now, when I’ve been working so hard and doing so well, right? But here it is, as pervasive and funky as the smell of unwashed dishes in my kitchen.
Something tells me it’s one or more of the medications I take that’s causing this feeling. Along with the apathy, for a while, I also had a crushing fatigue that drew me back to bed every day for one or more naps – but that seems to have resolved as my body has healed from its recent traumas. The apathy lingers still.
Surfing around the intertoobs I find myself repeatedly drawn to websites and blogs about withdrawing from psychiatric medications. I’ve been reading stories and stories about people like me, people with a long-term psychiatric diagnosis and a long history of medication. People who are getting off their meds, and finding a way to be well in the world, undrugged. I devour these stories, as well as stories about people who have successfully treated pain issues similar to mine with trigger-point therapy. These stories are the only things that stir me lately.
I want off of all of these medications. Well, maybe not the thyroid medication – but that’s the only one that I can get a blood test and see that I really need it. I want off, and I am afraid to talk to my healthcare providers about it. Afraid that they will agree, afraid that they won’t. These drugs, I curse them even as I clutch at them like the security blanket they’ve become. Afraid that I’ll fail, unable to do it, afraid that if I succeed I will have to live my life without the handy excuse my “mental illness” has provided for my repeated fucking up.
The tapering process has already begun. It started quite a while ago, when I stopped needing to take a muscle relaxant every night before bed. Starting Suboxone treatment also decreased my anxiety attacks and I’ve decreased that medication significantly. The past 4 days I’ve cut down my Suboxone dose pretty drastically – which I was probably able to do because I was on too high of a dose anyway. Cutting down the Subxone doseage made me feel better, more connected and engaged – but I tried to go down too fast and ended up with some physical withdrawal symptoms, so I bumped myself up in tiny increments yesterday until I got comfortable and stayed with that dose today.
Probably I will stay at this dose for a little while. Something deep inside is pushing me to get off the drugs, but I don’t see much point in making myself sick over it. This is a difficult decision to make, as I have long been told that my desire to get off the meds is merely a “symptom” of my “illness”, which is pretty fucking perverse I think. Nothing like a lifetime of psychiatrists to make me doubt my own inner wisdom. Fuckers. Well, I guess the apathy is giving way to anger a little anyway.
I’m not making any promises, to myself or anyone else. I’m not going to tell my doctor. I want to see how this goes first. Who knows what might happen if I say I want to lower my dose, and I don’t know this new doc well enough yet to even try to predict.
This past week has been a strain. Only half of the kidney stone, as seen on the CAT scan, has vacated my body so far. Pain has been pretty manageable – just some strange cramps in my kidney (I guess) and a diffuse ache in my lower back. What I don’t understand is why I’ve been so tired.
My boss and coworkers totally rock – they’ve covered all my shifts since last Friday. I’ve had plenty of time to rest, and yet I’m profoundly tired. Sitting quietly and trying to listen to what my body needs has led to many naps, and not much else. Somewhere in my recent internet surfing, I came across an article about health. It was an interview with a naturopath, and while I don’t recall the exact subject of the interview, this one statement stuck out: If you have a global problem; look for a global cause.
I wish I knew how to implement that wisdom in my self care. Some days, it seems that I’m just suppressing one symptom after another. I was wondering why, when I think that I’ve been working so hard at taking care of myself these past few months, I would suddenly get another kidney stone, and then have such a hard time recuperating. I wonder if all I’m doing has even been good for me at all.
In Care of the Soul Thomas Moore talks about how what most psychologists consider symptoms of pathology, he considers evidence of the soul’s attempt to be acknowledged, to have its desires fulfilled. He also talks about the lessons that we can learn from so-called “mental illness”, and about the need to honor what are minds and bodies are trying to communicate – instead of just medicating everything away.
While his writings interest me, and at times even really resonate with me, I feel lost when I try to think about how to implement those ideas in my life. I feel like finding the “global cause” of my health issues is somehow key to this as well, and again I feel stymied when I try to take steps toward figuring out this puzzle. Hell, I feel stymied just trying to figure out what steps I could take, let alone actually taking any.
Dancing, for sure, is something that totally feeds my soul. And this past week, I wasn’t able to do any, and I feel that lack. Maybe this really is just fallout from the kidney thing. I don’t know. But I do know myself well enough to know that I need to stop dwelling on this or I’ll make myself anxious and depressed. So I’m going to work on accepting what is, for right now, and trying to trust that what I need to know will be revealed to me when I’m ready to know it.
I accept that I feel ambivalent about the regiment of medications I’m using to treat my self. I accept that right now, it doesn’t seem to be working. I accept that I am tired, and achy, and grumpalicious. I accept that none of these things are good reasons to stop taking care of myself, in the best way that I know how. I accept that anything can change, and I accept that it is entirely possible that I will find my way to health.
As I was driving home from work yesterday, I felt a sharp pain. Oh, it’s just gas or something. I thought, as I unbuttoned my jeans. (Yes, they are a little tight.) I was just exiting the freeway; J & I had just agreed that I would stop for takeout on the way home. But the pain persisted.
Some quick mental calculations – is it time for me to be ovulating? Could this be one of those ovarian cyst things again?
The pain is getting worse. I start breathing like they taught me in childbirthing class. I notice that my hands are going numb from gripping the steering wheel so tightly. I’m losing control of my breath. I start yelling. I’m afraid I won’t be able to get home – but I’m so close.
At a red light I find my phone and call J. Something’s wrong it really hurts REALLY FUCKING HURTS OHMYGOD….
J is understandably baffled, but figures out that it’s me and talks me through it until I’m a few blocks from our house and I hang up. By the time I park my car the pain is so bad that I’m wretching in the street, I’m shaking and my teeth are chattering.
Inside the house, I stagger to the bathroom. I feel like if I could just pee, I’d be ok. But I can’t. And I’m not. In fact, I’m feeling worse every second and I don’t know whether to cry or yell or hit something. But I manage to get it together enough to walk out to the car, and J drives me to the ER.
Lucky for me, I live 10 minutes from a really good hospital that is almost never busy. In the ER waiting room, I am literally writhing in pain. I can’t sit still and I feel like I’m going out of my mind. The pain comes in long waves, the bottom of the wave being merely horrible and the top being fucking unbearable.
Someone wheels me back into an exam room, and the intake questions begin. What hurts? Since when? How bad?
What medications are you on?
I’ve been dreading this moment ever since I started taking suboxone. What happens if something goes wrong and I end up in the ER, needing pain medication? What do I tell them? Will the pain medication work? Buprenorphine supposedly blocks other opiates from working, ya know.
Even through the incredible pain I’m feeling, I feel the fear of being judged by the ER staff. They have a label for people like me. Drug Seeker. Now is not the time that I need to be thought of that way. Fuck.
I list off all of my medications. All except Suboxone.
I know they can tell I’m really in pain. No one could fake what I’m going through, I’m sure of it. But I also know the stigma and the prejudice against drug addicts. I know how hospital staff unreasonably deny patients the medication they need, and I’m not going to risk giving them a reason not to help me.
A few eternal minutes later, a doctor appears. He asks me: Weren’t you just in here for a similar problem a few weeks ago?
What? I haven’t been here in a long, long time. This can’t be happening. Are they confusing me with someone else?
Lucky for me, J takes care of their misperception, and shuts me up before I say something stupid. The doctor examines me and says he thinks I have a kidney stone. He says they’ll bring me some pain meds in a minute. C comes and holds my hand, says everything will be ok mommy.
When they do bring the meds, I’m afraid that they won’t work, because that’s what the doctors tell you when you go on Suboxone – that other opiates won’t be effective. But they gave me a big shot of Dilaudid, and Toradol, and something for nausea. In a few minutes, I feel so much better I almost cry with relief.
The CAT scan shows a 3.6 mm stone at the place where my ureter meets my bladder. The pain is the spasm caused by my body trying to move the stone, and the backup of urine into my kidney. This explains why I feel like I recently received a kidney-punch on the right side. Is it just me, or does the doctor look relieved that there is something wrong with me? I hate feeling like everyone is suspicious of me, and at the same time I feel vindicated by the glowing white spot on the CAT scan print-out the doctor just handed me. My proof that they should treat me like they’d treat anyone else.
After a few hours they give me another shot of dilaudid and discharge me with a perscription for percoset. I fill it at a different pharmacy and pay for it. I don’t want any hassles from my insurance company, or from the pharmacist. I feel sneaky, and I don’t like it, but I’m also not inclined to suffering, so… I don’t like feeling like I’ve been reduced to this, but I’m also not stupid enough to think that people understand, and I’m not up to arguing my rights.
At home I pass the stone. It looks like a tiny lava rock. God, I’m glad that’s over. Now I’m just waiting for the other meds to clear my system before I take a dose of Suboxne. I’m feeling tired and washed out, but C and I are hanging out, watching the Goonies and eating Cheddar Bunnies and I think I’ll be just fine.
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