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Today I realized that things are not going to just “get easier” for me again.
Those first few months after I started suboxone treatment were filled with the excitement of doing something new, plus the motivation of desperation. Now, the newness has worn off and I’m left here with myself and my habits and no easy way out.
So it is time for me to recommit myself to this process of healing. This point, right here, is the point where I usually quit. Where the inspiration has run out and the goal is still out of sight, I give up. I start in with the self-sabotage, craftily stirring up some kind of drama so that when I do quit, it looks like events have conspired to foil me, once again.
Now I’m going to go to bed and feel grateful that today is over. Tomorrow I’m going to see what I can do to refocus. I’ll keep ya posted.
After my big-ol’-whine of a post yesterday, I shut my laptop and burst into tears. A few mintues later, J came home from the coffee diva with a chai for me and I told him how I was feeling. He looked into my eyes, then felt my forehead and said: You’re burning up.
Seems I had a fever. Hmmm. He gave me some Advil and put me to bed, and I fell asleep about two seconds later. I woke up when my fever broke, all sweaty and gross but I felt so much better.
So I guess I was sick, but was interpreting it as feeling depressed? Or was just feeling down because I was sick?
I wonder if the suboxone makes me less able to tell that I’m physically ill? It is an opiate – and I do remember using sometimes when I was sick and I couldn’t afford to stay in bed. I think that’s something that I need to be aware of, especially since I tend to get really sick if I don’t take care of myself when I’m a little sick.
Today was a little better. I got up and got C off to school, then went back to bed for an hour. I went to work and did the grocery shopping. And now I’m writing this incredibly lame blog post, but wtf, we can’t all be Virginia Woolf now can we?
Erin left me this comment on my last post, but I want to put it here for every one of the 12 people who read my blog to see. Erin is awesome, and this bit of advice is getting tatooed on my forehead:
I think the trick to getting through is each night while you are drifting off to sleep you need to remind yourself that this day is over. No matter how bad or depressing or fucking irritating it was…it’s over. Tomorrow is a new day.
When you wake up in the morning remind yourself that today is not yesterday. Today has the possibility of being filled with happiness. You have to make a conscious effort to turn your mood around. If it doesn’t work and your day is shitty…you go to bed at night repeating the same notion from the night before… today is over, tomorrow is a new day.
Sometimes that’s all we can do really, just hang on till tomorrow. And I know she’s right. Whatever this funk is – be it virus or the phase of the moon – it will pass and I’ll wake up in the morning ready to rock the house. Until that happens, I’m trying to find some pride and some comfort in the fact that I do go on, even when it hurts.
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.
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.
Like a stubborn puppy who refuses to be dragged about on a leash, the part of me that resists change (especially of the beneficial-to-myself variety) dug in with all four paws today, trying to defeat my meager motivation to go to the gym. The Val-Pak mailer coupon for a free 2 week pass was expiring at midnight, so I really needed to get down there and I decided to go. My mind went a little haywire, throwing up too many objections and obstacles at the same time: it’s raining, I have a headache, laundry needs folding, I think I’m coming down with a cold. Anxiety started to grip my chest and I tried to pick a fight with Mr. B to distract myself from the prospect of going. Woo! All that, and I wasn’t even planning to work out, oh no ho!, just to go down and collect my 2 week pass and come home.
After about 25 minutes of alternately wringing my hands, whining, folding a few shirts and berating myself, I put on my shoes and drove down there. The club is Swanky! Fancy even, with a hot tub/sauna/steam room, scented with eucalyptis, right in the women’s locker room. I got my pass and wandered around for a few minutes, picked up a class schedule and fled back to the saftey of my home. Yaaaayyyy!
Maybe understanding why it’s so hard for me to make these kinds of changes, take positive steps in my life, isn’t as important as it is for me to just go and do the thing. Maybe it will just get easier every time, until doing the good thing becomes a habit. Already, I feel like not using is becoming more of a habit. I even try harder to get a handle on my anxiety before I resort to the aniety meds, and I’ve been working on alternative treatments for my headaches before I reach for the $36 migraine pill. Sometimes, I do resort to chemical help, and I think that’s fine. But I’m interested in learning other ways to help myself, and I’m definitely interested in reducing the amount of prescription medication I take on a regular basis (right now, I have 6, SIX!, medications that I take regularly – 4 daily, 2 when needed).
Which is not to say that I think drugs are necessasarily bad. I still don’t have a goal of total abstinence and I still don’t know how I feel about addiction and recovery, or if I even think of myself as an addict. I know that some would say this is “denial,” but I don’t know. Maybe I should talk about it with my therapist. The way that I see it is that I started using opiates to treat my untreated pain, and then I became physically dependent, and psychologically dependent as well. Since suboxone treats my pain so effectively, and wonder of all wonders seems to be a remarkably effective antidepressant, I haven’t wanted any vicodin or oc. And it’s been around, available to me.
My emotional/mental problems long predated my opiate use. And I’m really willing to work on developing skills to help me cope with my depression, to learn how to manage it. And I’m willing to work on myself physically, in the hope that I can lessen my pain and lessen my need for drugs. So does this mean I’m an addict? Is it really true that I’ll never be better until I accept that framing of my problems, and that I’ll never be able to heal until I admit that I don’t have the power to heal myself?
Whatever the answer to that question is, I know for a fact that I’m not ready to claim the label. I will go to therapy, I will find non-drug and alcohol related social activities to do, I will take my medication and I will stay away from other recreational substances for now, because that is what I agreed to do in order to get treatment. Hopefully, that will be enough to get me healthy.
Today was a good day. I had my first dose of suboxone and I felt amazing all day. Amazing. It was a good day, but a long one too, with another long day to follow and I don’t have much energy to write. I wish I had it in me right now to sing hosannahs about my suboxone experience, but I’m wiped. So we’ll count this post as obligitory and hopefully I can whip up something a bit more poetic next time.
My secret fear: that this can’t last. That the good feeling, the normal feeling, the feeling of being me will wear away – because it’s drug-induced, then is it real? But I will take this day, today was beautiful both inside and out and at least now I know that I had one more good day left in me, which leads me to suspect that there might be quite a few more.
I just put little Cappie to sleep, and she is just so lovely and amazing. I love the smell of her hair, and the way she curls into my body, the tenderness of her skin and the little twitches of her muscles as she finally succumbs to sleep.
She has been my tether to this earth. In her I see all the things that I lost somewhere along the way, and I wonder that I’ve been entrusted to steward her through this life, and to help her to hang on to those things for as long as possible. I hardly know if I’m equal to the task, but if I’ve ever applied my every resource to anything, it’s being her mama.
The things of which I write: innocence, self assuredness, joy, openness, unselfconsciousness, freedom. It’s the way she moves in her body with such grace and spirit and when she falls down she gets right back up again. It’s the songs she makes up to express both her joy and her sadness. The way she negotiates the intensity of her feelings and then, as soon as the storm fades, it’s like it never happened. The way she forgives and lets go, the way she tries to take care of me by leaving me with her favorite stuffed animal in the morning.
I look at her, and I see myself as a little girl, skipping down the sidewalk in front of my house, singing Joy to the World at the top of my lungs. Wonderously out of key, the breath and the sound filling my whole body and ringing out, up into the sky. I remember roller skating on that same sidewalk, with those metal skates that fit on over my shoes, up and down and up again, every time I fell, brushing myself off and getting right back to it. I remember being very young and thinking: I was born with my heart and my hands open to the world. I want to fill the world with love love love.
So much happens to us, and it’s a rare person who retains that kind of innocence. But it’s still there, just buried. I know it is, because it sees itself in Little Cappie and it stirs. All children bring it out in me to some extent, but my own child really touches that place in me where that happy yelling singing skipping little girl still lives. She’s been there all along, buried under my fears of not fitting in, my painful awareness of being “too smart” and the ridicule that brings, my shame at my own failures, and my failure to live up to everyone’s expectations of (or hopes for) me.
I want to let her out to the surface. Fuck being cool, sarcastic and ironic. Well, maybe not entirely – I actually like my sense of humor. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I want to bring back that girl who wasn’t afraid to try anything, and would do things she liked even if she wasn’t all that great at it. I mean, what little kid says “I’m not going to paint with you because it doesn’t come out good”? Exactly. Somewhere, things became about the finished product instead of the experience, and that blows.
There are so many things that I’ve been wanting to do, to try, but there’s always a but. I’m too tired, too sick, too poor, too busy, too much in pain, too depressed. I’ve stopped living, and that really bothers me. I miss me, the me that was spontaneous and free, who took things as they came and trusted that the universe wouldn’t let me down. Maybe I should write her a love letter, and see if she’ll give me another chance.
Here are some things that I’ve wanted to do, but (insert excuse here):
Take ballroom dancing with Mr. B, take yoga again, join a gym and start swimming, go on a writing retreat in Taos w/Natalie Goldberg, clean my house & get rid of all the shit I don’t need, Go to massage therapy school, finish college, find a therapist who doesn’t suck, take a drawing class (or just draw more), learn photoshop, do volunteer work, go kayaking, get up into the mountains and hike, go to poetry readings, write poetry again (hell, write anything again, build fairy-houses, make Christmas presents, take more pictures, take a dance class, take a cooking class.
And that’s just a sample. I’d forgotten how much of the world there is to enjoy, and that I do deserve to enjoy it. I do deserve to be happy. I just hope I can find my way.
I lost my voice. I was supposed to work today, but I guess I can’t do retail if I can’t talk. And I need to rest my vocal cords because Monday is a big day.
I am waiting. My screening appointment with the study doctor is Monday morning. They will ask me a bunch of questions, test my blood and determine if they can help me. If they can, I’ll start my induction onto suboxone on Wednesday.
I’m good at quitting. Or so I thought. I’ve done it enough – I’ve quit schools and boyfriends, cities and jobs. But I can’t seem to quit this pill habit.
It’s embarassing, really. Which is one of the reasons I need to write about it. I’ve got a lot of shit to come to terms with, the first thing being that I am a person who needs help quitting these pills.
I like to tell myself that I could do it, if I had the luxury of locking myself away for a month or so, of not being responsible for a job and a relationship and most importantly a child. If I could just lay in bed and not have to function at all for long enough, I could outlive the withdrawals and I’d be ok.
But that’s not going to happen. And I know that the pain, both physical and mental, that made the pills so appealing in the begining would just resurface anyway. I’ve been trying to quit, I really have. I’ve cut down a lot but I whenever I try to take the final step into abstinence, I get too sick.
That thing about dope sickness only lasting for 3 days, and then you wake up and you’re all better and the sun is shining outside your window and the birds are chirping and you’re so glad to be alive? That is not my experience at all. In fact, I call bullshit on that whole scenario. Maybe it’s like that for someone, somewhere, but I’ve never seen it.
I get sick and then sicker. I lash out at everyone around me. I cry and cry, scream and choke on my own snot. My muscles cramp and my bones ache, I shiver and sweat. And I hate myself for how ridiculous I am. Then I take some pills and go on with another day.
I went looking for help. I heard about a drug that can help people like me. I was told my insurance didn’t cover it. I tried to find a research study that I could get into, but I didn’t qualify. I quit looking.
Lucky for me, my good friend over at I Am Not the New Me kept on looking. She found a study that would accept us. She started her suboxone induction on Wednesday and already she sounds more like herself than she has in recent memory. I’m set to start next week, in a different branch of the same study.
We decided to keep journals of our experience, to help each other and for something to do. That’s what I think will be the hardest thing, once I don’t have the pills anymore. What will I do? I’m going to get myself a coloring book, write this blog, and hopefully get healthy. Great goddess, I hope this works, because nothing else has, and I am tired of being sick and in pain and depressed. I want a life that’s about more than my search for escape. I want to be free to do the things that I know I’m capable of doing. I want to be whole.
This will be the story of my experience. I have some back-up plans, in case I don’t get into this study, or – horror of horrors – I get the placebo. One way or another, I will try this drug. I have to. I have to quit.
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