life update
It’s been a while since I actually posted about anything substancial, so here’s my attempt at that. Fair warning: I talk too much. WAY too much.
Things around the house have been up and down. Had a wonderful Friday/Saturday hanging out with Deb and getting some stuff done, but Sunday, something happened to disrupt that. I ended up running away to Miss Betty’s for the night, in order to avoid saying something I’d regret while angry. We have a couple’s therapy session today at 1:45, and I’m, as always, anxious about it.
Every time we go into a session it just feels like I’m constantly being attacked, generally for things I literally can’t help. My Asperger’s/ADHD combo is a son of a bitch in day to day life. Deb gets upset that I don’t just think of things to do around the house, because she says she isn’t my parent and she shouldn’t have to tell me. Well… I can’t change the way my brain works? What sucks is that I’m genuinely willing to do just about anything - but she has to ask. And she’s super hung up on that, which is hindering our progress substancially, in my opinion.
Another issue is that she still struggles with believing that my running away in a mixed episode was a personal thing, to do with her, instead of what it really was: I was out of my damn mind and working with an inhibited pre-frontal cortex, so I couldn’t process any potential consequences or tell “right” from “wrong.” I was more paranoid than I’ve ever been in my entire life, 100% comvinced that Deb was going to leave me if I didn’t leave her first.
I’ve tried to explain last Summer to Deb with more analogies than I can count. I feel as though I communicate best using them, because I have a hard time stripping things down to principle. I honestly feel like last Summer was a psychological manifestation of the “Evil Twin,” trope. It felt like I was invisible, riding in a car, driven by someone else inside my body. I tell Deb, “It’s like someone broke up with you without my permission.” She blows it off, which hurts. A lot. Another similar analogy I tried to use was that it was like some villain had hacked into my brain and was using mind control to ruin my life.
After a year, I can look back and analyze everything that happened so clearly, and it almost makes things worse. I do my best to stay out of ‘what if’ situations, but fail to do so more often than I succeed. “What if I had gotten help as soon as I became depressed, instead of waiting two weeks?” “What if I had just checked myself into the hospital instead of waiting on my psychiatrist to laugh in my face and tell me to ‘build my own psych hospital in the real world,’ when I told him I didn’t feel safe?” “What if I hadn’t given in to the irritability and trapped feelings I had in residential and had let them do my insurance review and keep me longer than 10 days?” What if, what if, what if. But none of those matter, because they didn’t happen. And at the end of the day, I can only change the here and now, which I am really, really trying to do.
I’ve been in weekly therapy for almost a year, for the first time in my life. I’m on medication, which I take correctly & as prescribed. I found a place for myself in an NA group, and was even elected into a service position (Group Secretary). I’m starting college back in the Fall, for journalism, because the state of Texas is paying for me to go, literally because I’m crazy and they think that if I have a degree I won’t have to be on SSDI for the rest of my life.
I’m literally doing everything I can to get well and stay that way. To make sure I never fall into an episode like that, ever again, Because not only would it destroy my relationship beyond repair - it would kill me. I can’t go back to being the person I was when I was drinking and using, because that person is slowly dying from the inside out, no matter what facade of doing well she puts on.
Sometimes, I think Deb actually listens to me, and believes that I do love her more than anything, and that I did learn my lesson last Summer, and that I’m not going to run away again. Unfortunately, these instances seem to be few and far between, though they are happening more often than they used to. Another demon we have to battle is Deb’s menopause, which makes it super difficult for her to sleep. And when she doesn’t sleep, she can turn into a holy terror. If we can just make sure she rests and eats on a regular basis, things tend to be fine. Here’s hoping.
Additionally, Jake, our German Shepherd rescue, has ANOTHER hot spot, and we’re struggling to deal with it because when we try to put Cortizone on it, he just licks it off. He didn’t do this with the last hot spot, so I’m frustrated and not sure what to do. There may also be something wrong with his ear, but I can’t afford an $80 vet visit for her to tell me he just has fleas or something, so the plan is to treat him for fleas/ticks/etc and keep an eye on him. If he keeps whining and pawing at it after that, I’ll take the plunge. It would be fine, except I just paid $40 to have him groomed, and gave the people running our Mirror Method training class $150. I think I’ve now paid $450 of the $600, so hopefully I can pay that all off and not worry about it until the advanced class starts in the Fall.
In other news, I’ve started modding an interactive Harry Potter facebook group, as their Slytherin Head of House, to relieve some of the stress of the other groups I’m an admin for. I’ve been modding Little Mentally Ill Things since November, and I’m so burnt out. We’re currently archived because all the mods needed a break. Running a support group for literally SEVENTEEN THOUSAND (17,000) mentally ill people is not exactly a walk in the park.
I have a lot of funny pictures I want to share with you, but I’ll put them in a later post, because this is too long already.