How bad, how good does it need to get?

Hello.

My name is Michelle and this is my blog.

I really love it here.

I may have given the impression that I DON'T love it here, seeing as how I've been gone about ten months. 

But I've been trying desperately to come back. It's like I was on the other side of myself, trying to break through to the real side where my life was. 

I have lots to talk about. When I dropped out of things here, it was initially because I went back to The Place, for about three months this time. Saw some old friends there from last time. Apparently multiple visits is a thing.

I moved in January, and then Dwayne got sick and was in the hospital for three months. 

And now I'm here and I feel like it's time to go back to my favorite mental health facility.

My doctor did change my medicine again a couple of weeks ago so hopefully my mood will change. I like to write hopeful posts, not hopeless posts!

I got more but I'm done boring you. Here's some fluffy notes of things I've liked this month:

1) Chuck (on Netflix): I haven't watched regular TV in years. This show is so great!
2) Leverage (on Netflix): Same thing. Awesome show!
3) Avengers: Age of Ultron: Great movie! Why watch any other movie when you can be watching something Avengers? 

I meant to put five but I forgot. Love you all, goodnight!

With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair...

I was in my neurologist's office, talking about the increase in my migraines. She hemmed and hawed and finally said, "Michelle, I think you're depressed again."

Something about chronic pain and depression feeding off of each other, blah blah, and all I could think was, I KNOW, I've been here before, but I got better. Aren't I still better? Plus, my psychiatrist seems to think I'm okay... But all I could really do was start crying and say, "It's been a really bad week."

It didn't seem to matter; she said I was as dysphoric as she's ever seen me, so now I have to go to therapy again. I hate therapy - my secrets are perfectly fine hidden down deep where they belong.

...

We buried my grandfather almost two weeks ago, right next to my grandmother, in our family cemetery in Blackwater, Kentucky. It was humbling, to see the number of people who drove 180+ miles from Louisville to a tiny place that's not even on the map, a holler in the Appalachian foothills - all to attend the graveside service for my grandpa.

I heard several people say it at the funeral home, but I always feel like I said it first - Popa was the best man I've ever known.

You couldn't ask for a better legacy than that.

...

Popa's oldest son and I were in Popa's hospital room when the nurse came in and suggested we should start calling people. Pretty soon we had four more in there, plus our preacher. It was so crowded, and I just wanted everyone to leave - all I could think was, is Popa somehow hearing all this noise?

But there's really no tactful way to kick your own family out of the room.

So we waited, and Popa's breathing got more and more shallow. There were conversations going on around us, but my eyes were glued to Popa's chest - as long as he was breathing, he was okay. I noticed my brother doing the same thing. 

My brother and I clash a lot. We're extreme opposites, and also extremely similar, sometimes.

My grandpa's breathing stuttered a few times, which I had read was normal. The Hosparus wing that my grandfather was in was such a helpful, wonderful place. They let us know what was happening and what to look for, every step of the way. We were prepared.

Then, Popa took a breath, and then half a breath, and then he didn't breathe again.

I wasn't as prepared for it as I thought I was.

I'm not giving up, I'm just giving in

Chelsea helped me with my room yesterday. We're packing this week, among other things.

When I learned of my grandmother's cancer, back in 2009, that's kind of when things went south for me, and my room reflected that. 

We got through piles of books, DVDs, CDs, papers...the stuff on the bottom was stuff that I'd last seen 5 years ago. It was kind of like an archaeological study on depression symptom #2: not having the energy or the interest to take care of things.

I'm much better now. In the past year, especially, I've come a long way from the dark place that landed me in the hospital back then. I think I've finally hit the right combination of medicine, I have figured out coping mechanisms, I know my triggers...

But this month, I'm desperately wishing to be anywhere else. Isn't that awful? I want to drown my sorrows in something...check myself in the hospital...just lay under my covers and hide forever!

But I can't, because I'm stronger now. My brother has cancer and the pill he takes makes him sick and my grandfather had brain surgery again and he's in the hospital and I have to divide my time between packing up my life to move this week and visiting my grandpa in the hospital.

My grandfather also has cancer again, and this time they can't do anything with it. They're giving him six months to a year.

My mom and my aunt, wimps that they are, sent my brother to tell me the news. He was very no nonsense about it, much like he was when he told me that he himself had cancer.

I just want to cry.

Well okay, I have. But only in my room, late at night. 

I just can't even express how much I hate cancer.

I hate boxes, part five, or, We'll have the days we break...

At The Place, I learned there was a reason for my odd, anti-social behavior. I didn't have to be this way.

I even have a label: Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

The label comes with a list of symptoms, all of which I had.

I fought against it at first. Why me, and not my brother?

Because in families of alcoholics, we fill roles. My brother was the 'hero'. I was the 'lost child'.

Some people have said to me, "I don't believe in that stuff, Michelle."

That's fine, you don't have to! I can only tell you what I know:

1. I know that I am an extremely repressed person. I've never been able to let go and have fun, ever, ever, in my whole life.
    
2. I know that I keep my friends at a distance. I love them, I appreciate them, but I won't answer the phone and I won't return their phone calls. If I do talk to them, they invite me to lunch, I'm always vague...and then I can never make it.
   
   
3. I know that I define the term socially awkward. If it shouldn't be said, I will somehow say it.
   
   
4. I know that I'm a disappointment as a girlfriend. Dwayne's boss had a giant party on his yacht every year, and as a foreman, Dwayne was expected to be there, with...me. Only every year, I wasn't there. I was D's Snuffleupagus.
   
   
5. I know I've suffered from depression and anxiety since I was old enough to know what it was called.

These are all things I can work on, things that I can take medicine for. The big thing was identifying the problem and knowing the issues.

I haven't been as successful as I hoped to be since I got out. I had visions of being even better than my old self; not only being busy, but having real friends and not disappointing people for once.

That hasn't happened.

My depression has slowly eased back, I think. I also think the massive doses of TWO different anti-anxiety meds are doing the trick in regards to public places, because the concert was almost not that bad at all.

But I still don't leave my bedroom much except to go to work.

I just need to push myself out the door.

Just...go.

I hate boxes, part four

The two months I spent at The Place were hard. The people there - not only the staff, but my peers, the others like me - held me accountable. They required me to make an effort, every single day, to get better. I had work to do. 

These day-long sessions would be split up in 1- to 2- hour increments, because they could get very intense. We would take a break, maybe go do some art time or meditation time, and then come back for more peel-back-the-layers of yourself time.

Sometimes all I was required to do was listen and offer encouragement. I usually felt relief...the microscope was off of me and I could relax. But as the days went by, I actually found myself offering up pieces of my past that I had never told anyone before, when I thought it might help. 

The people who came and went while I was there were from all walks of life. People were there for anger issues...two very different people there had matching arm casts for hitting a wall with their fists. Suicidal ideation, auditory hallucinations, depression, referrals from the court. Two of the guys were convicts - one had served time for forging checks, the other for manslaughter. 

Meeting anyone and everyone at The Place challenged me and reminded me not to make assumptions. Deep down inside, every single one of us that came through the doors of The Place had the same issues - we were afraid. 

There was something inside all of us - a scared ten-year old girl alone in a foreign country, an eighteen-year old boy who killed someone in self-defense, or a twenty-year old girl who developed a chemical imbalance - that had set up barriers on top of barriers in order to insulate ourselves from feeling. 

We had all come to a point where we were completely incapable of dealing with anything at all, because we were so busy protecting that something inside of us.

I was at The Place longer than most people. I saw a lot of my friends come after me and go before me...some before they were ready. 

I wasn't exactly better when I was finally released to 'real life' again, but I had a much better handle on things. 

I knew why I'd struggled with depression most of my life. I knew why my grandmother's death had been such a trigger for me. I knew how to recognize if I was falling again and what I should do if it happened. 

I'm still working on the rest. 

Pretty sure this will be my last of The Place posts...I think, anyway.

Thanks for listening y'all. 

Annie's Song

My beautiful Annie

I've rarely talked about my Annie in this blog, maybe a mention here or there...I've been remiss!

Every family has a black sheep, one who bucks the status quo and does her own thing, and that's my beautiful cousin Annie. I was always the oddball they didn't understand, but I was malleable. Annie, malleable? Never!

We have a family event every two weeks or so, or at least once a month. All 14 of us are expected to attend. The first time Annie didn't show up, I was shocked. You mean not showing up was an option?

Annie has tattoos. An ankh on her back, a huge tribal tattoo on her arm, a panther on her leg. I made the mistake of asking why she had a lizard tattoo on her leg and she didn't speak to me for hours. IT'S A PANTHER, NOT A LIZARD!!! 

Annie has a nose ring.

Only Annie is allowed any of these privileges. My grandmother would have spanked me with the yardstick for the second time in my life if I had showed up with a nose ring and tattoos. But I wouldn't, anyway, because long ago my grandfather told me I wasn't allowed. I guess Annie didn't get 'the talk'.

My mother and Annie's mother are sisters, so, due to the way my grandmother raised all of us, Annie and I might as well have been sisters, we grew up so close to each other. I was her maid of honor, and her beautiful little girl calls me 'Aunt Michelle'.

In the month that my grandmother died, Annie and I both ended up in the same treatment facility. Annie was admitted a few days before I was released. When I think back on it, our mothers had just lost their mother, and their daughters were in the hospital. We didn't make it easy on them, did we?

While my reaction to Moma's death was nearly killing myself by falling into the black hole of depression and never resurfacing, Annie's reaction was to dive deep into drugs to numb the pain.

We're both doing better now. I still have a ways to go, but I'm so much better than I was. Annie lives in the country in a bona fide farmhouse which is too far away for my liking, but she's become so capable, I'm so proud of her. She's a wonderful mother.

She'll be 29 in a couple weeks; and always my beautiful Annie.

I hate boxes, part three

I am a dust speck...

It was hard to talk in The Place, and that's all they wanted me to do...talk talk talk all the time. How did this make me feel, how did that make me feel, and what did I think about that?

And god forbid I slipped and said something personal...they latched on to that like a dog with a bone.

For some reason they kept going back to my childhood, wanting to talk about me growing up with an alcoholic father.

It took a very long time for me to even admit that much about my family... and going into detail about it? NO. NEVER.

But they just kept at me, and kept at me.

Denial is a funny thing. I always knew, objectively, that my family was different. When my dad was out in the field, my mom, my brother and I breathed easy - we were happy. It wasn't like that when my dad was home.

So even when my dad missed my high school and college graduations, and several birthdays, and dropped off the face of the earth for a few years - even then, I still couldn't quite admit to myself that there was a problem.

And then one December he showed up again, terribly skinny, full of apologies as usual, but this time, with a different story, something about crack cocaine.

I distinctly remember now how my mind skipped right over that part. I understand now - that's how denial works. You hear it, you can even repeat it back to someone, but you don't really believe it.

The next month, in January 2001, my grandmother received a phone call from my uncle. He was at the University Hospital trauma center downtown, and he was calling because my father had been shot.

My brother, sister-in-law, Dwayne and I rushed downtown to the hospital. Uncle Gary met us down there...he had no idea how it happened. We were sitting in the E/R waiting room when the detectives came in.

One of the detectives said, "Do you know anything about your father and his association with A? Your father was found with This Substance in his possession."

That's when my world came crashing down. I don't remember anything else the detectives said. I didn't care what they said. I was broken. I had just come to the realization that my father was an alcoholic and a drug addict.

So you'd think after an epiphany like that, something would change, right? But nothing did, really, except for maybe my perception of my world.

I sat in the hospital room for days, waiting for my dad to wake up. It took a very long time. The doctors said it took longer than it should have because they had to keep him sedated due to dt's.

My brother and I had a visit while we were waiting...from Al-Anon. It seems everyone but me knew my father had a problem. They gave us literature. I was very excited but John said he wasn't going to any groups. Oh.

When my dad woke up, I told him about all the people who had visited and all the things they said. I explained his body was clean now and the hardest part, the dt's, was over.

My dad said he wasn't an alcoholic, he could quit whenever he wanted. He said he knew what an alcoholic was, because his father was one, and he was nothing like him. Oh.

So now my dad has a bullet lodged in his back, but he's otherwise recovered. We rarely talk. It's hard to talk to someone on the phone when their speech is so slurred from drinking you can't understand what they're saying.

My brother outright refuses to speak with my father at all. I've forgiven dad for what happened in our childhood. I don't think my brother ever will.

I don't know why The Place wanted to hear things like this. It's my story, but not really. It was just a turning point in my life...when the scales fell from my eyes and I saw some things as they really were.

I'm still probably blind in a lot of other areas.

Put up a fight...

Now that I'm in the process of getting better, I'm realizing I have no idea how to jump back into my former life.

I have no idea about my bills...no checking account...I'm not even clear on what I bring home every week, because Mom handles all my finances. How do I get that back?

I could call Britney Spears up, but I think her father is STILL handling her money.

OMG did I just compare myself to Britney Spears? Surely I'm not that crazy?

And now there's whispering in the back of my head...'no, you're WAY more crazy than she ever was!'

I just want to buy stuff on the internet, and be able to order pizza.

Okay, maybe she should keep handling my money a little while longer.

Driving? No. Music? No.

How can I want to get better and hold myself back at the same time?

Keep your head up...

Lollapalooza is streaming live this weekend...it's almost as good as being there.

Going to concerts, something I used to love to do, is a thing of my past. My life is work, home, sleep.

I feel like I live a false existence. I've always had a lot of things - I spread my interests around. Books. Art. Writing. Music.

But in the past few years, while my world crumbled, all of my things went away.

Who was I?

I'm not saying that we're defined by what we do or what we like...but it's been a struggle to stay awake when I bore myself to sleep.

I used to be able to sit in silence for hours...but that was my choice. When the choice was taken from me because my mind couldn't come up with anything, it was agony.

I've been building myself back up.

I thought books would come back to me first, because they were my first and greatest love. But books have been holding out on me. I can reread my favorites...and short stories are easy. But anything new that requires any deep thinking is still beyond me.

Art is a distant memory. My new self has shaky hands and blurry vision. I can appreciate art, but I can no longer create it.

The writing is coming back to me. It's unexpected...I thought I would be blocked forever. I don't know how long it will last, and I'm taking advantage of it while I can.

I miss my music. I miss it so much. My keyboard and my violin and my guitar all sit in the corner of my room, collecting dust. I haven't touched them in over two years. I CAN'T.

I would sit and play for hours. It seems like it's one of my biggest hurdles. How hard can it be to just grab an instrument and start playing?

I'm working on it.

Now I'm going back to pretending I'm at Lollapalooza... live feeds are wonderful things.

I hate boxes, part two

As I sat there and listened to everyone's stories, I silently judged them. ME, Michelle Goodman, the person who takes ten years getting to know a person and still keeps an open mind about them... I was judge, jury and executioner to the others in The Room.

• To the grandmother who was there straight from the hospital via her suicide attempt, I judged. How could she do that? What about her granddaughter? I conveniently overlooked that I very nearly came to them the same way, by drugging myself to sleep and never waking up.
  
  
• To the schizophrenic teen with Aspberger's who regularly mutilated himself, I had no sympathy. Grow up, I thought to myself, conveniently overlooking that when I was his age, my arms were covered with scars on top of scars, all self-inflicted. Twenty years ago, I don't think 'cutting' was something I had ever heard of, but I was doing it.
  
  
• To the two people who were in there by court order and had monitors strapped to their ankles, I was merciless. Hitting your wife?! Drinking and driving?! I conveniently overlooked all of the terrible things I'd done and decisions I ever made in my life...it was too easy to focus on someone else's.

I was content to sit there in silence, listen to everyone else, and silently judge; and then the tables were turned and it was my turn to speak.

And then I remembered how I got there. And all of the judgment that I'd been using to hide how I really felt drained out of me. And I started talking.

I hate boxes, part one

She said, "So, as the adult child of an alcoholic, you probably don't have any close friends."

Wow. You go through life thinking you're unique, that no one can understand your pain, and then you're pigeonholed in one sentence.

There's lots of other things I learned at The Place:

• A LOT of the people who ended up there grew up with an alcoholic parent.
  
  
• I wasn't the only one who no longer handled my own money.
  
  
• Self-harm was not just for young teens.
  
  
• Auditory hallucinations were not uncommon among the mentally ill.
  
  
• Alcohol and drug abuse, along with other addictions, went hand in hand with mental illness - the addiction temporarily masked the pain.

The most important thing I learned is that I was never alone. Not only were there others out there with similar issues, there were also others out there who wanted to help.

To be continued...

Straight Talk: The Fight Against Depression

I AM getting better. Every day. But there are still some things I'm working towards.

I don't drive anymore. At all. I've lost my confidence.

I don't play any of my instruments anymore. I just can't. I've lost my music.

I don't handle my money anymore. It goes to my mother, who pays my bills for me. I've basically lost my adulthood.

Just putting these things down on paper make it seem a little overwhelming. I really put myself in a deep dark hole to climb out of, right? And these are just the highlights.

But still. I am getting better. I really am. I'm getting up every day. I'm going to work. (mostly.) I'm doing something besides sleeping.

I won't be dragged back down. I am getting better.

I'm always dragging that horse around...

It's hard to keep your spirits up when your head hurts all. the. time.

I fondly remember back when I didn't have a headache. I think it was last year sometime?

Things are bad right now. I know I have it within me to make a positive change, but I can't seem to move because of the paralyzing pain.

I hope I still have a job when I go back to work.  And I hope my family is still talking to me.

I wish I could just be me.

Such a lovely place

So it was about this time two years ago that I melted down completely and went into the mental hospital.  Here's some advice if you ever find yourself in the same situation:

1. They're tricky. You're saying, I know, I don't feel good, blah blah blah, and next thing you know you're locked into a psychiatric hold and you can't leave.  
TIP: Be prepared.

2. They put psych patients in with the drug addicts and the alcoholics.  Guess who's considered the scary ones in that bunch?  You could always tell who the psych patients were in the room because no one would be sitting by them. And I can't blame people.  I spent most of my time staring into space, sleeping or crying.  One of the other psych patients in there with me tried to escape.  From a voluntary check-in!  
TIP: Stay away from the psych patients. Unless you are one. Then, sorry. :(

3. The days go by with excruciating slowness punctuated by meetings, doctor visits, group therapy, checkups, yoga, meditation, ART TIME.  I stayed in my room and slept through meetings, therapy, yoga and meditation, until they finally put their foot down and said I had to go to art time.  Which was fabulously fun.  Or just may have seemed that way when you've been beaten down by life and staring at the walls of a treatment facility for a few days.  Whichever, the point is, art time lets you see grown adults coloring diligently around a table WITH an instructor and helps you get at your inner self. TIP: Don't miss art time!

4. The place where I stayed had a very nice kitchen.  I didn't know this at first, because I refused to leave my room through two mealtimes before hunger finally drove me downstairs for supper.  My fear of crowds made me very uncomfortable, but the food was great.  
TIP: Be ready to face your fear on a daily basis if you want to eat good.  Otherwise, you'll be eating crackers.

5. Families were allowed to visit on certain days.  I never missed my family so much as when I was locked in and couldn't get out.  I had no laptop, no cellphone, no ebook; so I stalked my family on the public phone as much as I could.  I had to take my turn, though, because everyone else was doing the same thing.  The important thing was they had to come visit me on my allotted day, and bring money.  Because I missed them, and snacks.  
TIP: STRESS to your family how important family day is, because it's really disappointing if you're one of the ones whose family doesn't show up.

So that's all I've got for now...I'll tell yall later how the next two months went.  Really a short time in my life, but it'll stay with me forever.

...And yes, I said she tried to escape.  From a voluntary check-in.  Ensuring her spot in the IV chair at the nurse's station for HOURS and then the room with the 24-hour surveillance cameras.  There's crazy, and then there's CRAZY...

It's dark inside.

I hate when I get this twitchy feeling inside...like my nerves are jumping around and things just feel wrong and I want to curl up in a ball and hide from SOMETHING but I don't know what it is.

Even though I'm getting better, I still get this feeling often.

And I know I'm getting better.  It's taken a very long time to get this far, but I still have a long way to go.

I saw the movie `Silver Linings Playbook` tonight.  My co-worker lent it to me for the weekend after he watched it four times in a row and gushed over how awesome it was.

And it was really, really good.  It had our hometown girl Jennifer Lawrence in it, she was great...

But seeing it once was more than enough for me.  It just made me so exhausted, because I've been there.  I've been in that psychiatric hospital, and in those group therapy sessions, and on all those different medications, and fighting to be a `normal` person.

I'm glad I saw the movie, I just don't want to see it again.

Forward and back

I successfully made it to work I think six weeks in a row, before I slipped and missed a week and a half this time.  When I fail, I fail big.  My first day back was today.  It's interesting living life on the edge.

And I hated myself for not getting there...and taking that step backward...not to mention the disappointment I could feel from my mom and my daughter and Dwayne.  Oh, the waves and waves and crushing waves of disappointment...

The only time I left my room in the last week and a half was to go the doctor.

So I guess it was nice to get out today.  It was really hard.  Once you fall back into the pattern of never leaving the house, it's hard to escape.

Every day is a battle.  If I didn't have a family that loves me I would have succumbed long ago.  But I do and so I keep fighting.

I need a Speaker.

Ender was the first Speaker.  He didn't eulogize...he instead spoke of the intentions and hopes and regrets that made up the essence of an individual's life.

I need a Speaker.  I've become so lazy, self-centered, slow, dumb, uninteresting, vain, mean and a host of other bad things I can't think of right now because I'm slow and dumb...

I need a Speaker.  To explain all this away...

Just a little...unwell.

I've been chronically depressed since my teens, and taking medicine for it for the last ten or fifteen years or so.

But four years ago, my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, and not even the medicine could stop my mental breakdown.

I still don't know why I stumbled and fell, and others didn't.

I wrecked my car.
I broke my leg.
I went on a mad online spending spree with money I didn't have.
I landed myself in a psychiatric hospital.
I no longer drive.
I no longer handle my own money.
I had emergency surgery.
I no longer leave my house except to go to work.

I live for the weekends, when I can sleep.  And sleep, and sleep.

And trust me, I'm better than I was.  Two years ago, I wasn't leaving the house AT ALL.

I promise I'm trying.

Secrets

It feels like I've already lived my time, and now I'm just waiting to die.

I don't want to give in.  If my tiny frail grandmother could fight and fight and fight against the cancer, I can fight against this black hole of depression.

Hypocrisy is my middle name...no, wait...

1. My sweet adorable kitty is so cute, she follows me around like a puppy and does whatever I do.  But lately, she just lays around and sleeps all day.  Hmmm...

2. My shrink put me back on the scary medicine... okaaaaaay...

3. Did you notice it didn't get dark until 6 p.m. today?  The days are getting longer...

4. Today was my first of undoubtedly many missteps of 2013 - I called in to work.  I'm such a disappointment, I'm so predictable, yes yes yes I already know.  I just don't know WHY.

5. Hopefully the medicine will help.  If it doesn't drive me battier than I already am...

I feel so...stupid.