Ariadnae

T.W. - Suicidal ideation I stumbled upon this tumblr recently, and boy was it a time capsule! In case there is anyone out there who followed my failure with TMS: I went on to try electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). And it kinda worked. I had 3 months of pretty little depression. It was a wonderful experience and taught me that I was capable of not feeling depressed all of the time. The drawback was, that I only responded to a relatively high dose to both hemispheres of the brain. That increased the likelihood of memory loss, and I truly did lose a lot of memories. I did ECT at the end of 2016 and don’t remember 2016-2014 very well at all. That includes my wedding, and all the books and movies I watched in that period, people who I talked to quite intimately (according to our social media messages at the time) I don’t remember at all. Like, their faces don’t look remotely familiar. I also don’t remember almost any of my students from that time. I was told things might come back, and perhaps a few did, but overall, I still have quite the gap. So that sounds rather dark, but the good news is still ahead- I continued to struggle with suicidal thoughts and motivation. Then my father suggested I look into a new kind of therapy - ACT, (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy - sounds culty, I know). I looked into it briefly, thought it sounded like it was based in pretty good psychology + neuroscience, so I looked for a therapist. And it has literally been a life changer. The ACT approach to handling negative thoughts, and challenging negative core beliefs, literally took how I felt about myself and turned it on its head. Rather than arguing with each negative thought (like in CBT and to a lesser extent DBT) ACT has you recognize negative thoughts and emotions without reacting to them. I used to feel like my thoughts were me, and if I had a negative thought about myself, that was some kind of truth about how I felt about myself. Now, if a negative thought pops up, I think “I had thought a negative thought about myself, and that’s ok. That doesn’t mean anything about who I am.” ACT also isn’t overly “just be positive” and actually has you do a lot of work facing and really feeling negative emotions. Leaning into them, and as counterintuitive as that might feel to some people, doing that actually loosens the grip that things like anxiety can have.  Anyways, I wanted this to be brief, point is, I’ll probably have a tendency towards depression for the rest of my life, but I’m so much better prepared for it now and I wish that I’d discovered ACT a decade ago. 

I’ve been doing TMS for five weeks and I haven’t noticed a change in my mood. If anything, the past few days have been harder since I’ve been losing hope that this treatment will have an effect. It’s terrifying to think that this is yet another option that didn’t work for me. I’m starting to be of two minds: on the one hand this could mean that I’m always going to be depressed and nothing is ever going to fix it, on the other hand, I wonder if I’m not actually depressed and it’s all “in my head/attitude/perspective” and that if I could just “shake it off,” I would be fine. It’s especially hard because I can’t really talk to my technician about how I’m feeling. He doesn’t seem to be terribly up to date on how to talk to depressed people. The other day he mentioned that “everyone has bad days.” Seriously? That’s not how to connect with, or gain the trust of someone who’s depressed.  One good thing that I’ve noticed is that the TMS doesn’t hurt as much anymore. There have even been some points where I almost fall asleep. That’s a big change from feeling like I was having my head pecked to pieces by evil magnetic woodpeckers. I need to talk to my psychiatrist about all of this to see if he can decide what to do next. He might say that I just need a longer treatment, which would kind of suck since I want to visit my parents for Thanksgiving and in December I want to go on vacation for Christmas. I also just feel like there isn’t any real reason to think that just doing this more will have a different effect. If I had started getting better by now, but just needed more time, that would be one thing, but I just don’t feel good at all. I feel like there aren’t any more options for me, and the thought of having to fight this hard for the rest of my life is exhausting. 

So I’ve had two days of the TMS. The first day was difficult. At many points it hurt so much that I wanted to ask them to stop. I sat there going over and over in my mind the reasons that I want to get better. Turns out that your brain hears the sound of the machine near your head and decides to interpret the noises as someone knocking on your skull and throws in some pain messages just for funsies. Thankfully, as your brain starts to realize that nothing bad’s happening, it relaxes and doesn’t worry so much about making sure the pain receptors are being activated. It was still unpleasant today, but not nearly so close to the side of being unbearable.  Statistically, I’m probably only going to start feeling better at the 4 week mark. I’ll keep paying attention and see if I notice anything before then, but I haven’t in the past two days. I am grateful that I’m not in the half of all patients who report having headaches after treatment. I really have a lot of hope that this will work. I was more cautious before I went for the treatment, but the technicians seem so confident about their past successes, that it ends up being kind of contagious. My main technician is from South Africa and speaks with a heavy South African accent. I wasn’t sure at first if he was from New Zealand or South Africa, but when he started talking about Afrikaans... Anyways, he is cheerful, but he forgets that I’m wearing earplugs and keeps talking to me in a normal voice. If he’s in front of me and I can sort of read his lips, it’s ok, but when he’s off to the side and I can’t turn my head, I often just give up trying to tell what he’s saying. I thought about mentioning it to him the first day, but now I feel like it’s too late to admit that I’ve missed everything he says that isn’t right in front of me.  Mood-wise in general, I haven’t been terribly good for the past couple of weeks. I don’t really know what to do about it. I keep trying to reach out and find ways to make friends and connect with people, but none of it seems to make any difference. (or at least not a difference that lasts longer than when I’m actively in a social situation). I was talking to my therapist today about coming up with self-soothing techniques, but I realized that right now, apart from eating and sleeping, there doesn’t seem to be anything that I can turn to that makes me feel better (in a soothing kind of way). I bet that if I were to be surrounded by a mountain of puppies, that might also work, (though the thought of sleeping with said mountains is even more appealing). I just keep feeling empty and useless. It’s very frustrating, especially since there is a logical part of my brain that says that I must have skills, there must be things that I can do well, that would contribute to making the world a better place, but right now I just don’t feel like they exist. I think I’ll go and look online for some ideas of self soothing techniques that don’t involve eating and sleeping.

Tomorrow I’m starting TMS. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. There are many reasons why I’m anxious about it. It will be one more thing that I’ve tried to fix my depression. So far I’ve been on many different medications, done CBT and DBT and EMDR, and had more than a decade of therapy. Once I’ve done TMS, I will have one fewer potential option. There is definitely a chance that this will make a huge difference and I’ll be able to get a good handle on my depression. I’m just afraid that if it doesn’t, I will be one step closer to realistically having no more options. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is still on the list of things I haven’t tried. I’m not sure how I feel about it. There is potential memory loss involved. I feel like that would be a little upsetting, on the other hand the constant weight crushing me and making any movement require immense amounts of energy is also “a little upsetting.” For the TMS, as far as I understand it, I will have magnets sending electromagnetic pulses across my brain for about an hour a day for six weeks. That means that I will be done (given everything starting well tomorrow) on November 23rd. I will have to get touched up every few months, but after the six weeks it isn’t nearly as intense.  I’ve been having a really rough time recently. I feel particularly weak and empty and working on any of my projects just feels too tiresome. I hope that I am able to be helped by the TMS and that I will be able to report improvement soon. 

TW: suicidal thoughts, issues around food I don't want to be here. I don't want to be alive. I'm just super tired of all of it. I'm tired of breathing. Everything feels hard. I just read what I wrote and I was about to say that I was just being melodramatic, but I actually feel that way. I actually feel as though just doing things like breathing is difficult and takes so much effort. I am breathing shallowly, and I think that's why. It just feels like it is so much effort to breathe. I don't know what exactly I'm having so much trouble finding the energy to do. I just really don't want to do anything. I don't want to be awake, I don't want to be around anyone, I don't want Z to do anything. I'm just tired. I'm tired. I'm so fucking tired. I want my head to stop hurting. I want to sleep until everything goes away. I ate too much and now my stomach hurts. I really wanted to have black beans for dinner. (It took forever to even settle upon black beans, but once I did, I knew that was what I wanted). I really wanted them. And then when they were ready I felt like I couldn't stop eating them. Now I want to throw up. I know that won't make me feel better, because the bile will hurt my throat and my teeth, and it will taste awful, but I want the beans out of me. I want to feel light and empty again. I feel full and heavy and lethargic. On the other hand, I think that if I threw up, I would just feel exhausted and empty, no lightness or energy would come out of it. I don't know what to do about any of this. I'm just so fucking tired of life. I know logically that I want to go to Iceland and that I want to go on the camino with J, but I also just want to forget about all of that and turn into a bear and stop feeling all of these stupid human feelings. I'd take being a bear at a decent zoo. I don't care. I just want to stop hurting like this. I want to stop feeling like I'm a piece of shit (I logically know that's not true and I recognize that I have value and am loved, but I feel that way). I want to stop feeling like I can't do or accomplish anything of value. I feel like I'm stuck in a bad dream (and that's not fair to Z, because he is a wonderful part of my life and I wish that I could have the feelings of joy and happiness that his love should be giving me). I wish that I could throw myself into life and take advantage of the fact that I'm not working. I guess it's a good thing that I'm not working because otherwise the TMS would be really complicated. I guess I'm on medical leave from life. I just wish it didn't feel like my entire life has been out-patient work. I wish that it didn't feel like I have nowhere to go from here. I wish that I felt like I was worth something and I wish that I could reach out to my ex-professors and in a not pathetic way, ask them to reaffirm that I was a worthwhile student and that they respect me and really hope for the best for me. I just feel so stupid. I feel like nothing that I've ever done has mattered. I look at other people who are living and I feel like I'm in another parallel universe looking into and trying to guess what it is like to be them. I'm not delusional, I know that other people suffer and have difficult lives, but I wish that I could be someone who felt like they had something worth giving to the world. I feel like all of the things I hope to do, the translation, the children's books, the illustrations, all of it is bullshit. I feel like I can't barely hold onto anything. I feel like I can't barely hold onto myself. I wish that I had a firmer grip on what it means to live as me. I wish I had a firmer grip on the thought that I am worthwhile.

In good friendships, arguments help you understand each other. What the hell don’t some of my friends understand that?   

TW: Discussion of suicide I’ve been feeling really old. And yes, I understand that 24 (almost 25) isn’t objectively that old, but there’s a part of my that feels like 19 would be just as reasonable an age for me to be. Also- when I was 19- I always pictured being 24/25 and having things figured out. I pictured that I would be in a better place depression/meds-wise. I pictured that I would have an amazing creative job and would be traveling all the time or living in Europe. There are some good reasons my life is different: I got married to an incredible man whose PhD will keep him in the town I’m living in for at least 2 more years. I couldn’t be happier with our relationship. It is definitely worth the extra effort required to find adventure in suburbany America. But it can still be hard not to have access to the people watching, and art, and inherent adventure that can be found in a larger city.  The other aspect that I’m missing is the super-loyal tight-knit friend group. I want to stay up late listening to music and talking. I want to feel like I’m at home in other people’s homes. It’s not a fantasy. I’ve had that before, but it’s hard to build that in the US. People feel like they are so busy and they don’t know how to make space in their lives for friendships.The problem is that without space to grow, friendships (like goldfish), stay the same size. I’m not complaining about small friendships. They are important too, and fun to watch and play with (now I feel like I’m talking about the fish), but I’d rather swim with a dolphin than a goldfish. And that’s kind of the difference between a deep friendship and the pleasant small friendships that I’ve been able to make here. In some ways, Christmas makes all of this come to a head because people are thinking about and prioritizing people in their life. Christmas is one of my favorite holidays (well, I only care about two: Christmas and Halloween) but I’ve noticed that in the past couple of years it has been harder and harder to really enjoy Christmas. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’m older that I used to be and automatically have a harder time reaching for the child-like glee around Christmas. It could also be the depression. I look forward to Christmas because I remember how I felt about it and I hope that I will be able to feel something, anything, of what I used to feel, and when it turns out that I don’t feel anything, I get sort of crushed. The only time I attempted suicide was Christmas six or seven years ago. And it was exactly that- I had held out for Christmas and then when it came, it didn’t matter, I didn’t feel any differently. I’m not building Christmas up like that anymore. I understand that it’s just a day like any other and I can’t expect it to magically remind me of what it feels like to not be depressed. On the other hand, I also have a better focus on the parts of Christmas that matter to me: giving people presents, being around family, playing games, decorating cookies etc. And I am going to try hard to make sure that my energy goes into those things, and that I can be as present as possible with them.  So. Whether or not you celebrate Christmas, I wish you a grounding, satisfying holidays and I hope you get to be around people who care about you.   

I hadn’t remembered that the weather affected me to this extent. I guess summer blocked all of that out. Not that I didn’t get waves of awfulness during the summer, but I did find more moments of physical pleasure (for example. tilting my face up to the sun and closing my eyes). Right now I’m looking out my window and all of the reds and golds of October are gone and everything feels just a little dead. Snow would make it feel magical again, but I don’t think we’re going to be getting much until later in the season.  I’ve been thinking a lot about organizing my life and finding ways to relieve the pressure that’s built up around my drawing. I feel like I’ve made everything I do related to art SO important that I can’t really breathe and just draw. Every sketch I make feels like it’s going to be the one that finally demonstrates that I don’t have what it takes to be an artist. I was thinking about everything and I think that I’m going to reach out a bit and try to connect with old translation contacts. Then maybe I could do a little translation work and build up a sense of competence- I know I’m got at translation-but I don’t have that automatic sense when it comes to my art. Anyways. There’s that. And I’m also trying to figure out the whole- how to make my friendships deeper and more meaningful. I don’t know how to convince other people that being vulnerable, even though it’s scary (or maybe BECAUSE it’s scary) is the best way to create bonds of support that we can really rely on. Americans just don’t get that. American friendships are all about pretense. You have to pretend that you’re life is doing well (because you don’t want to be a bummer) and you have to pretend to be happy (so that people want to be around you) and you can’t ever talk about anything of substance. I think that most Americans have very few FRIEND friends and most of the people they call friends are just “activity partners.” I can talk about my theories surrounding American personal relations styles later, but right now, I’m just sad I can’t be as open with my friends as I would like. 

I had a psychiatrist appointment yesterday and it went really well. I had been trying to get an appointment with someone in my insurance network for months. It was awful. Since I don’t have a car, I needed to find someone within walking/biking distance, which, in the town that I live, isn’t easy. The first place I tried demanded a referral from my primary care physician to even schedule an appointment. Then they didn’t receive multiple faxes and eventually after calling them over ten times, I gave up and looked for others. That led to me finding the place I went to yesterday and I’m very grateful. The psychiatrist who demanded the referral was over sixty, and, though I know it’s a generalization, I’ve found that older clinicians are less likely to want to experiment with new medications. I wanted someone who was more willing to use all tools available. And that’s exactly what I got.  The psychiatrist I saw was wonderful. Very up-to-date on research and for the first time in years I’ve started to really believe that it could be possible to feel better than this. It’s difficult to express how grateful I am to her. For the first time I’m excited to take my medications because they represent the hope for change. The hope that I might be able to fulfill more of my potential and live more fully. Live a life closer to what I’ve always felt I’m capable of. Another realization that I’ve had is that I’m not looking for happiness. I think that “happiness” (as it’s used by the American happiness industry) is such a poorly defined concept and way over-valued. I’m looking for what the Greeks called Eudaimonia. Less bliss- more fulfilled. I don’t need to feel good, I just want to be able to do the things I want without having to fight so hard. I want to get up and draw and exercise and accomplish the things I want. If my mood doesn’t improve, I don’t care, it would be enough to be able to do things.  

I haven’t written in a long while, but I guess that I didn’t have the space to deal with the feelings I was having and it just seemed too hard to try and put anything together into sentences.  I’ve been feeling really terrible about the fact that I’m not working. I know that work isn’t necessary for worth. I know that capitalism (particularly in the US) revolves around telling people that if they’re not producing things, they aren’t living up to their full potential. I guess I had always figured that I would work no matter what, even if it meant taking jobs just to make ends meet. Now that I don’t have to think like that- I feel lost.  It’s been hard for me to draw. I used to draw all the time, whenever I had a free minute, then I started thinking of myself as potentially becoming an artist and I froze- the manager in my brain just thought it was ridiculous and she began telling me all of the things that would go wrong if I started to take art more seriously. I do love it, though. And I feel like if I work on it, I could follow my dreams, but she thinks that is ridiculous. She reminds me that what I have going for me- what I’ve always had going for me- is that I’m smart. That’s it. I didn’t get academic awards for art. I haven’t even taken an art class since I was a little kid. And yet somehow, I think that I have a right to claim artist as a part of my identity. She reminds me that I can’t draw very well from my imagination meaning that a lot of drawings that I’m proud of are just me copying things either from real life or from photographs. 

I’m not trying to be negative- it’s just a fact that I’ve been thinking about. A friend of mine recently had a genetic test done that showed her brain simply doesn’t process serotonin the way most people do. This therefore explains why she has never responded well to anti-depressants. I haven’t ever been particularly helped by anti-depressants and have recently been contemplating my future if this is how it’s going to be. Even feeling like this, my life is worth living and I find a lot of valuable moments every day. There is a lot I want to read and experience and learn. But perhaps I need to adjust  to the thought that it’s just going to be a little harder for me to be the kind of person I want to be. Perhaps I need to find ways to set my life up and my goals up so that I’m more likely to achieve them in the state that I am now instead of being frustrated all the time that I haven’t been able to get to another state. I wonder if that’s what people mean when they talk about being kind to yourself. Taking care of myself instead of constantly beating myself up for not meeting standards of “an ideal day” or “an ideal amount of productivity.” These past few days I’ve been watching a lot of television. I think it’s because I’m scared of all the things that an ideal me would be doing. Perhaps if I lower the bar as to what I can be proud of myself for, I will be more likely to take the little steps that will help be be healthier and more fulfilled.  For example, today I made little flowers out of leaves I collected outside. It’s something I figured out fiddling with leaves before class in college. I had collected a lot of leaves yesterday (and therefore should have been able to make a lot) but because I didn’t store them properly I only had enough leaves to make a few. And that’s ok. I can make more if I pick up more leaves.  I guess my point is that many people have lived with depression for a long time and I might be in this for the long haul and maybe if I start thinking about my life sort of in that context I will be better able to set up support systems that can help me live a more fulfilling life. 

As I learned in Russia, the Russian modes of friendship are very different from the common American modes. One of the things that have been bothering me the most is that it’s difficult to ask for comfort. The fear of appearing weak or a “Debbie downer” is really strong, but I’m on the edge of tears all the time. I’ve been turning my humor more hard-edged to keep myself from being too genuine or honest about how I’m feeling and to keep from breaking down in front of them. Perhaps I’m not giving my friends enough credit, but the thought of being a burden to them makes me feel sick. 

Trigger warning: rape I had a vivid nightmare last night and I couldn’t shake it all day. I was with a lot of former coworkers at a goodbye party (for me) and in my attempt to direct people to food, I formed a conga line and the guy who joined behind me doesn’t let me go and rapes me from behind. I get really mad and he stops but no one else who was in the line acts as though they saw what he did and everyone stares at me wide eyed when I yell and him and tell him to leave the house. I was furious that no one had paid attention. And even more furious that he kept saying I was overreacting. Eventually I chase him out of the house and throw rocks as he leaves in his friend’s car. Back inside, I could tell that people didn’t know what to say to me and one of my favorite coworkers even had to be convinced that it was actually rape. I was raped in college three years ago, but I haven’t had a nightmare about it in over 4 months. It was really vivid and the thing that stuck with me today was the moment of transition from everything being fine, to realizing that the guy behind me wasn’t just following me into the kitchen. The wave of panic, betrayal and anger was overwhelming. I tried not to think about the dream today, but any point when I wasn’t totally mentally occupied I would feel it again. The funny thing is that I’m not depressed because I was raped. I’ve been depressed for much longer (perhaps since I was a child- though some of my psychiatrists have said that isn’t technically possible based on their definition of depression). In thinking about it, feeling bad isn’t the worst part, it’s the inability to do all of the things that I want to do. If I could ignore the emotions and still do everything, it would be so much more bearable. I wish that I were able to DO more. I can handle negative thoughts. I just can’t stand the paralysis, and the exhaustion, the panic and nausea.  

Metamorphosis The frustrating thing about pain is that it turns me prickly to those I love. I dry out, a husk of who I was. And then I become skittish. Like anything someone says or does will crunch me   into a pile of dust and exoskeleton. I scuttle into dark corners and hide. I want to sleep, in the hopes that, like a caterpillar, I will melt my innards and weave them into something beautiful. Something that doesn’t hurt of anger and the loneliness of rotting dreams. When E tries to comfort me I become a scorpion, hissing like a cockroach, snapping at him with pincers, jabbing with my stinger. So we perform our old choreography. He tries to coax me into his open palm, I try to trust that it is possible to be touched without breaking. I know how we always end our dance: I become soft and helpless. My exoskeleton of pain morphed into a an amphibious membrane, excessively penetrable and oozing mucus  I will nuzzle into him, burrowing into the cool mud of his chest. I will try to convince myself that I’m safe. That he can protect me from the things that want to eat my heart. But mud dries and I am left wheezing on the caked earth. My skin hardens, becomes brittle, and I feel emptiness filling me with the hollowness of hope. I dream of flight, but no longer have the strength to check if I have wings attached to this shell. The sun glares down and I wait for rain.   

Evening- spend time with my friends/ go to bed by 10.  I’ll let you know how it goes.