Mental Illness

I am so afraid. I keep saying that but I’m slipping. I can’t seem to get a grasp on anything. I have a call in to my therapist, I took Xanax which I have been advised to take to get through this acute period, my friend Noni is coming by in a little while and Rachel is coming tomorrow. I am in a bad way and I am scared.

When you live with mental health issues every day is a balancing act, you have to be vigilant about self care practices and professional help. I take care of all of these things with great care and am fortunate to have family and dear people who help me but I don’t want to be a burden, I don’t like to have to call on people all the time, and yes they are happy to help but it is having to deal with this slippery slope where I know I am not okay and I’m not sure when I will ever be okay again that feels too hard to bear. Rachel just said, “Mom we have just been through a hurricane, you were without power for a week, things were bad, there’s a lot to deal with. Please be gentle with yourself, it’s going to take time…”

But one wonders how many times in a lifetime you can lose your footing and keep struggling to hold on. The whole world feels so fragile, so unsafe, so not okay. And I hate to keep writing about this here but there is nothing else for me to write about just now if I am going to show up and keep doing this and right now this is what I’ve got, it’s where I am. I am coming into the final days of my 365 day search for happiness having just survived a hurricane and trying to figure out how I am going to survive life. This is not where I thought I’d be. This is not the way I wanted this to end, but this is what it is, it is the truth of what has happened and is happening. I can’t help the fact that in the last 10 days of this project we were hit by a natural disaster that turned our whole world upside down and from which it will take a very long time to recover from just physically with our homes and surroundings. What it did to me and other people like me who struggle during the best of times is some very serious damage. I trust that I will get through this but I swear to God in this moment I don’t see how.

I have tried, through the years, when I wrote about my mental health struggles, to have some kind of positive thought to hold on to. We can do this, we can make it… And I’m sure there will be a way. One way or another there is always a way. But these are not good times and there’s no way to make any of this easy.

I don’t know how to teach again. I don’t know how to manage household things. Today the trash people came. Last Sunday Rachel helped me dispose of all of the food in the refrigerator and freezers. We double bagged everything in big trash bags because the pickup wouldn’t be until today. They picked it up but when I wheeled the barrel back it stunk so bad it was unbearable and when I opened the lid swarms of flies came out. This means maggots will be infesting it too. I wheeled it back outside and sprayed so much bug spray on it and into it I couldn’t stop. I was hysterical. I didn’t know what else to do. I shut the garage door and ran inside. I started searching what to do. Boiling water, bleach, vinegar? I didn’t know how I could do it and it all seemed too much. And we are just at the beginning of dealing with a thousand things post hurricane.

I realize that for many, most, of the people in this town who are dealing with the same things and even worse this is a hard time, devastating for some, a terrible inconvenience at the very least and for those of us who have potentially thousands of dollars of damage to deal with without the income to do it it is terrifying. But daily there are a thousand out of the ordinary things to deal with and I am just not dealing well at all. I am ashamed. I feel I should be doing better. But then Helene just called.

Helene is my amazing therapist. She said it is completely understandable that I am in the state I am in, that I should take the Xanax every day if I need it (To give you an idea of how little Xanax I take I took four mostly filled bottles into my med appt on Monday to ask him how to dispose of them because they were getting old. I am not at risk of abusing the medication. He said he had never seen anything like it. People pay good money on the street for what I have and don’t take and am disposing of! But I am using my new prescription at half a dose each day just now. Both Geoff who manages my meds and Helene my therapist both want me to take it now. I have no choice.) Helene talked to me for quite awhile and if I am not better by Monday wants me to come in and see her.

The Xanax is kicking in. I am moving along that spectrum of out and out uncontrollable hysterics to a quiet calm. The medication helps, I am not alone, people care, and I have help. This is all good, it is all deeply appreciated, but this is one day, one night, one medicated period of time. I don’t want to have to live like this. For now I have no choice.

I will keep writing here. I will move into the next 365 days and I will keep writing there. For the foreseeable future I am not sure I can do much else. I hope that will be enough. It has to be.