09/30 Biochemical disorder
I was gonna title this post "Mental Illness" but I'm no longer sure that there's any such thing as "mind," so the concept of having one, and it being ill, doesn't really mean much to me.
However, I got through the day by repeating "Mental Illness" (and "Relapse") to myself because it was infinitely more comforting than responding to the voices in my head.
For the first time ever, I think I've managed to separate state from cause while I'm in the state. (I still am, by the way, so warning for unreliable narrator here.)
I almost wish I could say that something serious happened, because my current state would make more sense if I'd been in a car wreck or been exposed to violence or danger.
I haven't. There was just a string of tiny shakeups that culminated today in a breakdown situation. A sounder person would have been unfazed by the things that brought my hair-trigger out of hibernation and then pulled it.
I thought I'd become a sounder person. I have become a sounder person. It's been almost two years since I was anywhere near this condition which used to be my baseline. (God, how did I survive?) Still, feeling the state slam into me again after a long period of peace was extra-shocking.
In the past when it has hit I've focused obsessively on the pointless, chaotic and cruel swirl of mental sewage that is unleashed in the breakdown and masquerades as its cause: memories of things said, done, experienced, omitted, all tainted by the biochemical toxins of the breakdown condition itself. They mean nothing. It's taken me forty years to understand that.
Today, somehow, reason got a few words in edgewise. "Look at the state," it said. "Only the state." So I did. I kept dragging my thoughts back up from the neurochemical shit vortex to focus on what was actually happening.
If you'd seen me you wouldn't have noticed anything wrong. (Unless you were the nice man behind the meat counter at New Seasons--then you might have wondered what there was to cry about in six bratwursts and a pound of ground beef. By the time I got to the checkout I was able to say, "Excellent, thanks, and how are you?" and not actually give voice to the "Liar, liar, liar" part shouting in my brain.)
Maybe it would have been better if, in the past, the state had rendered me non-functional. I might have been forced to get more help than I got. But it virtually never did. I could always hide it, more or less, and engineer a life and mythology for myself to help keep it hidden.
Today, I managed a real day. I got some groceries. I had a visit from my sister (she didn't suspect a thing, go me). I rearranged some furniture and tidied a bit. I ate lunch, I'm pretty sure. Watched a movie. Did some knitting.
The shaking hands come and go in waves and I didn't even break anything this time--just dumped a tray of ice on the kitchen floor, not exactly billable property damage.
My disorientation wasn't that much worse than usual, and if I had to take the long way home from the store because for the life of me I couldn't figure out the short way in the neighborhood where I've lived most of my life, well, nobody knew. So I forgot half of what I needed a few things. Big deal.
And I really did kind of need the new table lamp that I suddenly, absolutely, had to make a separate trip to go buy, right-now-today. It's not like I ran up a credit card for it.
There are a few obvious physical symptoms of the state: my hands hurt; the pain comes in waves (according to one therapist, this seems to be unique to me and may be related to a specific trauma--I don't know); there's a sensation in the middle of my body like being unzipped and having my heart and lungs grabbed; I'm at the edge of tears for hours at a time, and when they come they come in an open-the-sluice-gates kind of way--extra-wet, extra-voluminous; there's a buzzy, fizzy feeling in my hands, arms, and mouth. I lose my appetite. I feel a great need for sedatives and will take them if I can get them.
(I couldn't get them today, so I fell back on a cocktail of magnesium, calcium, L-tryptophan, ashwaganda and ibuprofen. I know...)
Now that I've written all this, I'm feeling the sewer-overflow recede. Ten hours, one chocolate bar, eyes not too swollen--not bad! By tomorrow the chemistry will be heading back to normal.
It would be so easy to let it go at that. But I think I need help. I can't survive many of these. They just cost too much.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth, where there are
comments.
However, I got through the day by repeating "Mental Illness" (and "Relapse") to myself because it was infinitely more comforting than responding to the voices in my head.
For the first time ever, I think I've managed to separate state from cause while I'm in the state. (I still am, by the way, so warning for unreliable narrator here.)
I almost wish I could say that something serious happened, because my current state would make more sense if I'd been in a car wreck or been exposed to violence or danger.
I haven't. There was just a string of tiny shakeups that culminated today in a breakdown situation. A sounder person would have been unfazed by the things that brought my hair-trigger out of hibernation and then pulled it.
I thought I'd become a sounder person. I have become a sounder person. It's been almost two years since I was anywhere near this condition which used to be my baseline. (God, how did I survive?) Still, feeling the state slam into me again after a long period of peace was extra-shocking.
In the past when it has hit I've focused obsessively on the pointless, chaotic and cruel swirl of mental sewage that is unleashed in the breakdown and masquerades as its cause: memories of things said, done, experienced, omitted, all tainted by the biochemical toxins of the breakdown condition itself. They mean nothing. It's taken me forty years to understand that.
Today, somehow, reason got a few words in edgewise. "Look at the state," it said. "Only the state." So I did. I kept dragging my thoughts back up from the neurochemical shit vortex to focus on what was actually happening.
If you'd seen me you wouldn't have noticed anything wrong. (Unless you were the nice man behind the meat counter at New Seasons--then you might have wondered what there was to cry about in six bratwursts and a pound of ground beef. By the time I got to the checkout I was able to say, "Excellent, thanks, and how are you?" and not actually give voice to the "Liar, liar, liar" part shouting in my brain.)
Maybe it would have been better if, in the past, the state had rendered me non-functional. I might have been forced to get more help than I got. But it virtually never did. I could always hide it, more or less, and engineer a life and mythology for myself to help keep it hidden.
Today, I managed a real day. I got some groceries. I had a visit from my sister (she didn't suspect a thing, go me). I rearranged some furniture and tidied a bit. I ate lunch, I'm pretty sure. Watched a movie. Did some knitting.
The shaking hands come and go in waves and I didn't even break anything this time--just dumped a tray of ice on the kitchen floor, not exactly billable property damage.
My disorientation wasn't that much worse than usual, and if I had to take the long way home from the store because for the life of me I couldn't figure out the short way in the neighborhood where I've lived most of my life, well, nobody knew. So I forgot half of what I needed a few things. Big deal.
And I really did kind of need the new table lamp that I suddenly, absolutely, had to make a separate trip to go buy, right-now-today. It's not like I ran up a credit card for it.
There are a few obvious physical symptoms of the state: my hands hurt; the pain comes in waves (according to one therapist, this seems to be unique to me and may be related to a specific trauma--I don't know); there's a sensation in the middle of my body like being unzipped and having my heart and lungs grabbed; I'm at the edge of tears for hours at a time, and when they come they come in an open-the-sluice-gates kind of way--extra-wet, extra-voluminous; there's a buzzy, fizzy feeling in my hands, arms, and mouth. I lose my appetite. I feel a great need for sedatives and will take them if I can get them.
(I couldn't get them today, so I fell back on a cocktail of magnesium, calcium, L-tryptophan, ashwaganda and ibuprofen. I know...)
Now that I've written all this, I'm feeling the sewer-overflow recede. Ten hours, one chocolate bar, eyes not too swollen--not bad! By tomorrow the chemistry will be heading back to normal.
It would be so easy to let it go at that. But I think I need help. I can't survive many of these. They just cost too much.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth, where there are
comments.