Maybe things aren't so bad after all

Today I paid off my rent. A couple of days ago I'd finally taken over the first part and left a note explaining that I'd been dealing with depression and anxiety problems, but that a friend (Zabet) was helping me deal with my finances, so I should be on time from now on. It's funny, I've never just told a creditor that that was the problem. I spend so much time denying stuff to myself that after awhile I start believing that it's just a temporary problem that will get better. I'm so embarrassed by the fact that it's so hard just to answer my mail. I've done the same for a friend with depression. I never thought less of him because he was feeling so overwhelmed. I knew that it wasn't just a matter of trying, but rather a problem with brain chemistry. But unlike my friend, I wasn't curled up in a ball inside a house unable to go to work or school. I was still functional, right? Hah. It's all been an act, and as I've peeled away the layers and have begun dealing with the problems inside, it's been harder and harder to function. I can't describe how hard it is getting up sometimes. When I do take pleasure in life, it's usually something to do with nature around me--a flower blooming, the bubbling of a creek, or my dog rolling in the grass. It reminds me that I'm still a part of the world, that I haven't managed to shrivel up and die yet. But interacting with people--that's harder. They don't call it social phobia for nothing. :)

So it was kind of surprising when I brought in the rest of the rent and Mary, our office manager, told me she was sorry to hear about the problems I'd been having with depression. She'd had panic attacks to the point where she'd go to the emergency room thinking she was having heart attack. A little bit of her understood. I've found that talking about the depression or OCD or how I'm doing on Paxil, as I have with a few, almost always opens them up and makes a connexion. I think maybe all of us feel a little crazy sometimes, although most of us don't ever say so, at least in our modern Western way of life.

Tonight on the season finale of CSI I was able to put the pieces together almost instantly, not because it's particularly predictable, but because I understood something most people would not even think of. It was the story of of model who'd died, apparently tortured. It looked liked her face had been carved up. There was a homeless sister who'd also been a supermodel who was a drug addict who was also paranoid schizophrenic, who seemed to be obsessed with her sister and the fact that she'd taken her place, the life she'd had. But in truth both sisters snapped under the pressures of modelling. The homeless girl had become addicted to cocaine to keep her weight down. The sister had body dysmorphic disorder, when someone becomes obsessed with some aspect of their body, in her case symmetry and perfection of features, and weight. She'd been both bulimic and anorexic, which was shutting her system down to shock, destroying her organs. But she'd died from septicemia, because she'd been inflicting the wounds on her face obsessively, tweezing, picking, digging, etc. Horrific, isn't it? Not only in the sense of the wounds but that anyone would feel such despair that they would harm themselves, torture themselves.

One of the breaking points that led me to get into therapy and on medication was that I increasingly became obsessively anxious, hoarding things, checking doors, checking the stove, counting in my head--and tweezing eyebrows, pulling out hair, and picking at my skin. Any blemish was picked at until it scarred. I always had to obliterate it by messing with it, but then it would get worse. I would do something really great, like give a kick-ass presentation where people were singing my praises and then would go home and go into this cycle of self-hurt, ultimately leading up to abusing myself sexually, or sometimes striking myself. In a way I was trying to feel, after years of dissociating at the slightest thing, so that all the emotions were shut down. In a way I was degrading myself. And I was angry, and scared, and all hurt inside, so when I'd spend time with other people my emotions would spin out of control, and I'd send all the same feelings I had for myself out at them. I'd put them down in the same sort of sarcastic way my father did to me, and would hurt myself because somewhere deep inside I believed I deserved it, that I was nothing; I'd believed the lies he told me, and when he wasn't around to hurt me any more, I found my ex, and then when I had a moment of sanity and left him, I became my own abuser. Not to the degree that the girl on the programme did, but enough that I was hurting myself, and I could not escape from myself. I'd done a pretty good job of hiding myself away. My friends knew about the hoarding, of course, but not the rest. I finally admitted it to one friend, whom I'd known for 13 years and who had thought he could read me like a book. He'd known I needed professional help, but despite the shock, I think he realised if I didn't do something soon it would escalate until I'd get myself killed. I wasn't so much suicidal per se as I was not caring if I lived or died, with occasional bouts of obsessive thoughts about running away from everything or crashing my car, etc., thoughts so strong they'd spin inside my head until I'd just want it all to stop. I'd gone to great lengths to make myself look incompetent, silly, a failure, etc., trying to live the image my father had given me of myself. Funny, I'd always been able to see others wasting their potential, but never myself. Instead I was trying to run away from myself, though, and there was nowhere to run.

I'm slowly getting better, I think. The Paxil helps, and I've been in DBT now for seven months. I've examined a lot. I've gotten a good handle on what's wrong, and I'm making peace with myself. But every day is still a struggle. I have to focus on the fact that I'm still here, I'm not to the point of the girl on the TV show, who admittedly, is fictional, but the people who inspired her are not. You never know just what's going on in other people's lives, in the homes they go to after work, etc. The person who serves you coffee may throw up regularly to keep her weight down. The guy on the plane may never be able to believe that his wife isn't going to abandon him. The fellow grad student may think the government's out to get him. When the news reports someone who's been reported for having a hundred dogs, we think of the animals first. But I think of the people. I know how they feel. I know it's a sickness. If you've never dealt with mental illness, maybe this won't make sense to you, but you'll remember it if you have someone you love in a similar positon. And if you're fighting your own daemons, all I can say is keep it up. Every day is a struggle for some sense of normalcy, but every day here is a battle won. Everytime you can see snow on the TV, or feel the wind on your face, or smile at a child, you win another battle. Eventually the war may be won. I have to hold out for that hope, anyway. I hope you can, too.