Warded

So there have been a lack of posts here, specifically because Thursday night I attempted suicide. I spent Friday in the ER, and Saturday to Tuesday in a psychiatric hospital. Wednesday was spent at an acute partial treatment program, which I'll discuss in another post.

I've been thinking long and hard about how to describe my time in the ward, and for now I'll keep things simple--I'm posting this from my Blackberry, so a long, in-depth post isn't going to happen today. Tomorrow, maybe, or the next day. Not today.

I went to the ward willingly. I knew I needed it, and I did well there. I was incredibly unwilling to leave because of the support I got from the other patients and the fact the staff kept a safe environment in which I was able to cope with things better. The doctor, however, was terrible, disrespectful, and the type of man who I do not think has any business around people with mental health problems. I think there requires a certain level of respect and understanding a psychiatric doctor needs. By no means do I think they should treat patients with kid gloves, or coddle them, but just because I suffer from depression does not mean I am stupid, nor do I think it's appropriate for a doctor to purposely try to upset a patient, which was what this doctor was known for.

For the past month my depression has been well-recorded by various mental health professionals, who have been nothing less than respectful, taking what I safe seriously and creating a safe space to speak my mind. In this psychiatrist's office there was no "safe space", and everything I said was thrown back at me, with the intention of getting me upset--which, admittedly, worked, and when I got upset the doctor threatened to keep me there as an involuntary patient (I went in as an voluntary) and then informed me he did not think I actually had depression or suicidal thoughts, that instead I just thought this was a game. That crossed the line for me. I yelled. We fought, and I demanded to be discharged because I no longer felt like I could manage well in a place where he was a doctor. I was.

My time in the hospital was primarily a positive experience, but the doctor was the one dark spot on my stay.

If Winter Ends

For the record the title isn't meant to be a pun on my name for once.  Although it could work as one.

Since my breakdown I have only felt okay once.  One single time in what has almost been a month, enough that the low points are just getting lower, and it's impossible to breathe sometimes.

I want someone to reach out, but the only person whose touch I will accept doesn't want me anymore.  The longer my ex and I are broken up the more it seems to leave its marks on me.  We love each other, and it shouldn't have come to this.  The one person I trusted turned my back on me because I messed up.  I just feel like, if the one person who loves me won't stand beside me, why should I try?  I have no one else I trust, and I don't think I can do this alone.

My problem is I have so much trouble connecting with people.  I didn't truly connect with someone until I was seventeen, and it took me two years after they betrayed me to find someone else who I was comfortable with.  I can't wait two more years.  I don't think I can wait two more weeks.  I didn't want to write posts like this on this blog--I wanted it to be more about recovery and introspection than misery and pity, but right now it's like I'm living in a Bright Eyes song:

"I give myself three days to feel better
Or I swear I'll drive right off a fucking cliff
Because if I can't learn to make myself feel better
Then how can I expect anyone else to give a shit?
And I scream for the sunlight or a car to take me anywhere
Just get me past this dead and eternal snow
Because I swear that I am dying, slowly, but it's happening
So if there is a perfect spring that's waiting somewhere
Just take me there and lie to me and say it's going to be all right"

I'm giving myself more than three days, but if things don't get better by the time my anti-depressants should be working fully, I'm either taking my things and going west, or ending things.   I can't take another month like this.

I've tried discussing this with the people at my "Intensive Outpatient Program" but their inpatient program is only for suicide intervention, and they won't help me look for better inpatient programs.  I just don't feel like I can get better in any outpatient program, because it's about trying to get you back into your life, and most days I can't even leave my bed much less think about my life.  I used to be one of those girls who woke up early, got dressed perfectly, did my hair, my makeup and went.  I get out of my pajamas now only for therapy, it's too much of a bother to even put my contacts in.  My therapist says it's good I at least get dressed for therapy, but if that's all I get dressed for I'd hardly call that progress.  I want to switch to a psychologist, someone who can tell me why I act this way and how to prevent it, but it's such a large job to find one.  Therapy is about pushing past, avoiding, getting a life together and getting drugs and ignoring everything you did to hurt the people around you, ignoring the problems that caused the breakdown.

I just can't do this.

Faith and Loss

One thing I realized during my breakdown is I had lost my religious beliefs.  Whether this had happened before or because of the breakdown, I can't say, but it happened.

Before the breakdown I was a practicing Asatruar--a careful reconstructer of Norse beliefs and traditions.  I wasn't obsessive with it, but it was there.  I wore a Valknut, a symbol of Odin and all he encompassed.   Not the most common religion, but it was mine.  That necklace was integral in my realization I no longer have any faith.  That a key necklace, both of which I wore daily.

I had originally stopped wearing jewelry because it made me physically ill to remove my necklaces and realize I didn't have the third in the trifecta of necklaces I always wear--the owl necklace given to me by my exboyfriend.  I had given it back to him when we broke up because it hurt me to wear, and it made my stomach drop whenever I realized it was gone.  After a week or so I realized I had no desire to wear anything with meaning to me.  When people fall on hard times they fall to their beliefs, and this I have none.  I discussed this slightly with my ex the other day, as well.  He has faith in something more, and I wish I had that.  I wish so badly I had that.

On my drive back from my psychiatrist's today I thought about going to a church one day this week.  My family was never the God-fearing type, and I know I'll never be a Christian or a follower of a monotheistic belief.  I was always more of a mystic, I suppose: I read tarot, I believed in ghosts, now it just seems as thought there's nothing there.

"I want to believe" is the poster Agent Mulder has in his office in the television show The X-Files (my favorite show).  That's the only way I can describe how I feel right now.  I want to believe, but I can't.

Forests of My Mind

I avoided posting this weekend because I simply felt strange.  It wasn't something I could blog about, or even form in words.  I still cannot think of words to explain what has been going on in my mind.  If I were to use the hole analogy, I suppose I feel like I have gained some objects for a way out.  However, in my own mind, in my own case, I do not think I am in a hole so much as I am lost.

I have always liked forests.  Hiking, or simply walking, looking.  I live by the Pine Barrens in New Jersey, woods and oceans are two things that make up "home" to me.  When I had my breakdown I began to use the word "lost", and that is what this is to me.  I am lost.  I used to know where I stood, and while I never was the type to follow beaten paths, I always knew where I stood.  When depression hit, it was like losing my bearings in the woods.  When this depression hit, it was like I was in the woods, my bearings lost, no compass, no water to drink or food to eat.  Lost, cold, starving, no way home and no way to survive.  This weekend was overwhelming in some way, but I feel as though I have some food and drink now, that maybe I can get the strength to one day search for a way home.

The hardest thing for me in this forest, however, is forgiving myself for everything I did and everyone I hurt on my way to being lost.  My exboyfriend says he forgives me; I've asked him probably one too many times.  I, however, cannot forgive myself.  The fact I can admit that now, however, is like my water.  I know what I need to do.

It just seems impossibly hard.

Losing Winter

One of the worst things I've come to realize about depression is feeling as though you have lost some integral part of yourself in the process of getting where you've ended up.  In trying to regain some sense of normality, happiness, and peace of mind, I constantly find frustration in the fact that even when some of my torment is relieved, I feel this intense sense of emptiness, like I am always going to be half of a person, instead of the full self I once was.

I think back to the last time I was truly happy with myself--around July--and the person I was then seems so far away compared to who I am now.  In many ways that person is a stranger to me, I don't know her, and I don't know how to get back to her.  I can't get back to her, because she existed in a time in which I did not carry the title of this disorder.  I was not a girl who has a breakdown in July, or even in September.  Now I am.

In some ways I think the label of "clinical depression" has replaced those important parts of me, filled those places where happiness once dwelled, once has the potential to dwell.  When introducing myself, either in real life or online, I find that trying to leave my depression, my diagnosis, at the door is all but impossible.  I may very well have better luck trying to leave my arm at the door when entering a room, than trying to un-associate my depression with myself.

It bothers me that things have come to this.  It absolutely horrifies me that I cannot go back to being the happy girl I was once.  Accepting that depression is going to be part of me for the rest of my life is hard for me to accept, even if I know it's true.  The uncertainty, the intense belief I have that I will always be a shell of myself, however, is worse.

All I know is more than nearly anything (because there is one thing that tops this wish) I want to be a whole, complete person.  I don't think that I ever will be.

How to Live in Holes

Today was about suffering.  Today was desperation, almost-hospitalization, no-hope, all-pain, nervous, uncertain, messed-up, fucked-up misery.

People often liken depression to finding yourself in a hole and needing to get yourself out.  What they don't tell you is depression is not just being in that hole, it's watching as the people you love fill that hole with dirt without knowing it, it's scraping your hands against the sides of that hole, desperate to pull yourself out, but all that's happening is is your nails are being pulled off as you bury your hands against the sides of the hole, as your skin gets raw and eventually you just lay there.  Struggling is too hard.  Getting up is too hard.  So you just curl up and close your eyes and breathe in the grime and dirt and let it choke you.  You let the dirt press against your ribs and chest and crush you.  You realize you can't see the way out, and you don't even remember what the way out looks like anymore, where to find it.

Today was about wanting to die and not finding the energy to even do that.  Today was about realizing you don't even remember what happiness feels like.

Finding Winter

This isn't me missing you. This is me missing the me I used to be.

This isn't me.

- "The Seconds Before the Launch", I Wrote This For You

Hello.  My name is Winter, and I suffer from clinical depression.

I suppose I've suffered it for as long as I can remember: high school, my "gap year" before college, and now, at twenty-one, and a college drop-out.  I can tell you that a month ago I had it all: I had a boyfriend who loved me (now I have an ex-boyfriend who loves me, but is suffering from his own mental problems so severe he broke up with me because he couldn't handle the added stress of a relationship), a full ride to a decent school (I stopped showing up weeks ago, am in the process of dropping out), a good home and a bed to sleep in (complete with an alcoholic father and a mother who was never much of a mother), "fun" job/hobbies in graphic design and sewing (more on that later).  I can tell you I was not happy a month ago, have not been happy since maybe July.  I can tell you the toll it's taken on relationships: pushing my boyfriend away, hurting him and causing him enough strength he would rather cut me out of his life than have me stand beside him during his own hard time, distancing myself so far from friends I feel as though I have no one to talk to.

I have a therapist at an emergency adult intervention program, where I am enrolled for one month.  I'm in my second week in the program, and I feel a million miles away from even being "okay" much less "better".  It feel foreign and strange to smile.  It feels foreign and strange in my own body, my own mind.

I realized in my first week in my program I don't know who I am.  "Find things you like," my therapist said; "Do things that make you happy," my ex suggests.  I don't know what I like.  I know what everyone expected me to like.  I know the stereotype of the smart, over-achieving art student that I had become, and I know how unhappy that has made me.

I keep a private, written journal, which I started a week ago.  However, what I have discovered in this past week, is I am not the only person out there trying to find some peace of mind, trying to find safety in their own thoughts which have grown so dark and dangerous.  This blog is not about self-pity, it's about trying to find the light at the surface of the water, and sharing that journey with whomever may be interested.