Meds

I picked up a 40 pound desk chair on wheels and threw it like I was throwing a baseball.  Pure uncontrollable rage.  That was more than ten years ago.  After that little incident I started taking Zoloft and I continued taking it for three months.

Depression isn't always chronic and it doesn't always look like sadness.  In my case it was situational and it reared it's ugly head in the form of anger.

I had lost my grandpa to cancer.  Shortly after that the man who raised me died.  I was living in a new city.  I had a new job.  I was in a new relationship.  Basically everything in my life had turned upside down. 

Some of the changes would without question turn out to be the greatest things to ever happen to me.  Despite that fact it was too much too quick and I just couldn't get it together.

Naturally those who love me are protective and have advised against me sharing the bit about the chair in fear that I will be judged as a violent person for one incident.  It's important though because it shows behavior far outside the lines of normal.  Behavior that was out of control.  That's how I felt back then and that's why I opted for help outside of therapy.    

Those uncontrollable feelings are back.  I'm not throwing chairs this time, quite the opposite.  I'm sleeping a lot.  I'm crying a lot.  I'm shutting down.  I can't seem to keep a positive thought in my mind for any amount of time.  I feel ugly inside and out.  I know what's happening and I'm consciously trying to stop it, but I can't.  The sadness and negativity are getting the best of me. 

I'm contemplating taking those little blue pills again (are they still blue?).  There's a stigma though.  I know because I've been depressed before and I'm judging myself now for not being strong enough to handle this on my own. 

People who have never experienced depression of any kind don't understand it.  To some it's not real.  Or it's something you should be able to snap out of.  There's nobody who knows better than I do what I've been going through (here, here) since January.  If I can't be accepting of myself taking meds to help get me though this, how can I think that other people will be?

Some thoughts going through my mind:

Why am I so weak?  I've gone through lots of ups and downs in life and I've almost always been able to manage on my own or with the help of meditation, a therapist, exercise etc.  Why is this different?

I want to take the "easy" way out.  I'm tired of feeling so down.  I want to feel normal again.

If I had a heart problem or diabetes I wouldn't think twice about taking meds to treat either.  Why is treating what I'm experiencing now any different?

Am I being a drama queen?  Is it really as bad as I'm making it seem?

I don't want to be anything less than my real true self.  Meds will turn me into a cyborg/robot etc.

Why is this so hard?

Maybe this will help me accept what's happening to me so I can get back to being the positive inspiration I want to be. 

The Uncontrollable - Part 2

I dropped my mat and water bottle on the bench like I had done a hundred times.  The effects of my workout were already apparent as I squatted down to open my locker.  My hand on the knob, I looked at the numbers, only there were none.  Not a single digit.  I sat and I waited.  Three, maybe four minutes later things come back into focus and I tried it again.

Veils of blurriness.  They're unpredictable.  Thankfully they're not an everyday thing.  They never last that long either. 

The first few times you experience something like this (veils of blurriness, flashes of light whatever) you almost don't believe they're real.  It's so abnormal that you start to think that maybe you're seeing things.  Maybe your minds playing tricks on you.  I know now that I experienced my first veil the afternoon I almost walked into traffic.  My first flash of light was in a dim stairwell at work. 

I'd give anything to go back to the way things use to be.  I think back to life before any of this happened.  I never once took my vision for granted.  When you have to fight as hard as I have to keep your eyesight, you just don't.

With that said, I NEVER for one second thought things would get any worse.  Things were stable for so long.  If I feared anything it was that I would at some point lose the ability to drive.  Going blind never crossed my mind. 

Maybe my mind was trying to protect me because the thought of going blind is real now and it scares the shit out of me. 

I've asked my doctors point blank if I'm going blind now and they tell me I'm not.  That I will probably never fully go blind.  I don't know if I believe them.  I don't know if I want to.  If I don't consider it a possibility now when will I ever begin to prepare myself?

That's it for today.  I want to thank you guys for your loving comments and messages.  It means so much to me to be able to get some of what's going on in my head out.  It's hard to open up to people in my everyday life right now.  They're worried about me enough already.  Some of these thoughts and stories would make them worry more and I really don't want that.  You're giving me a wonderful gift so from the bottom of my heart, thank you. 

The Uncontrollable- Part 1

I’ve lived my entire adult life believing that if I made all the right decisions, if I was responsible, if I worked hard, if I planned and I prepared that barring death, there really was nothing I couldn’t control,.  Every move calculated, every scenario worked out in my head.  Type A control freak all the way. 

I’m starting to realize now that for a long time I’ve been lucky, that’s all there is to it.  I always joke about the bullets I dodged in my college years.  How did I escape a DUI, pregnancy, arrest, teen marriage?  I didn't realize it until last year when Poochie died and Dar's sister got cancer, but that luck had extend well into my thirties.  Not to say that my hard work and good choices didn’t help me, but when it’s all said and done, there are so many things we have absolutely no control over. So many things we can’t plan for or foresee.  Things we don’t even think about.  These are the things I struggle with the most, the uncontrollable.

Since January 4^th I’ve been in and out of doctor’s offices.  I’ve been completely fucked up, living in fear and feeling completely unsure of myself because of something that’s happened to me.  It makes me sick to my stomach and it brings tears to my eyes even writing those words, something that’s happened to me.  In my head, those words signify weakness and victimization.  There are no positive connotation.  I've conditioned myself into believing that things don't just happen to you. 

Let me backtrack.

Twenty fourteen was coming to an end!  Thank god!  A new year full of hope and promise.  An opportunity to right the wrong.  The bad juju from the previous year would somehow magically die on December 31st.  Four days into 2015 and BAM, I’m leaving work abruptly and am waiting in the waiting room at my eye doctors until they can see me. 

The night before I went to bed with tired eyes.  That's nothing new, I mean we all stare at our computers/phones/TV’s for far too long.  There were a few specs flying around my right eye that night but I brushed it off and went to sleep.  

If you haven't read this post, please read it now, Legally Blonde, I Mean Blind. 

The next day at around noon the spec reappeared, only this time it was huge.  I did what any normal person would do in this situation and I panicked.  I knew something wasn't right so I called D and then immediately drove myself to the doctors.  To give you an idea of just how huge this spec was, while driving myself to the doctor’s office I thought I hit a dog.  Thankfully I did not, but seriously that’s how big this thing was,

I won't bore you with all of the medical lingo but I will give you the gist of what's been going on.  All of our eyes are full of what's called "vitreous gel".  This gel helps our eyes keep their shape so that they don't collapse (scary).  Vitreous gel also helps hold our retinas in place, very important because if our retinas detach or tare and they're not treated immediately, we'll go blind.  The long and short is that in typical fashion my eyes are aging faster than normal and the vitreous gel started to separate from the back of my eye (posterior vitreous detachment) causing what is referred to as a vitreous floater.  I've also started to experiences flashes of light.  Imagine someone standing 6 inches from your face and taking pictures of your eye with a flash camera, fun. 

If you look closely, you probably have a floater or two.  Peek up at the sky or look at a white background, that's when they're most prominent.  The problem for me is that the vision in my left eye is so low that I rely very heavily on my right eye.  Anything in my sight line is incredibly distracting.  

In the last 4 months:
I haven't driven a car.
I've upped my eye meds which have left me feeling very sick.
I almost walked into traffic.  Thanks for the save M.
I've been swatting flies from my face only to realize that there's really no fly there.
I've cried myself to sleep.
I've been angry.
I've felt cheated.
I've isolated myself.
I've felt incredibly alone.
I've been shown unconditional love.
I've been told I'm strong and brave.
I've felt incredibly vulnerable.
I've seconded guessed all of my decisions when it comes to the treatment of my eye conditions.
I've called my doctors office in complete panic at least a dozen times.
I've sat in a dark house bothered by the light for weeks.
I inverted my computer screen and iphone so that I no longer had to stare at a white screen
Things have gotten better and then worse.

One last thought before I leave you today.  I promise there will be more to come but the subject matter is incredibly draining. 

So that final thought.  Over the course of the last 4 months there have been several time where I've experienced this false sense of acceptance.  Just when I think I'm out of the woods and adapting, it'll be time for another doctor's appointment or something new will arise (like the flashes of light).  It has never been lasting but I know deep, deep down that somehow someway everything is going to be ok.  With time I will find peace.

Thanks for reading.