faretheewell good friends; safe journey; safe home

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I’ve been feeling for a while now that Phylor’s Blog needed a sabbatical, if not retirement (not only based on computer usage pain). There is no theme, no focus – odd bits of poetry or prose prompted by carry-on Tuesday or a blog carnival. Efforts to participate in November’s month long blog fests hampered by pain and feeling like the power has gone from my writing. I feel like red penning my blogs with comments such as I gave to my students in my former life: “you’re trying too hard, just let you ideas flow in your own words; you have a story to tell”. “Be more clear and concise; you might have all the best ideas in the world, but if I can’t understand them, then they are lost.” “Don’t run your essay through a thesaurus or rely on the jargon, run the words through your mind as well as your heart and soul.” “You’ve got great ideas there, but focus, concentrate, hook me into your story with an opening line that draws me in, and make each paragraph hang on the other (like a game called barrel of monkeys well before your time) drawing me further and further into what you have to say.”

Writing about alternatives to traditional treatments for chronic pain turned into writing about descent into dementia. Life had me write about death, depression, and whatever the current blog carnival theme was. I have pages of poetry, prose, commentary, rants, musings, and yes, even the occasional haiku that have never seen the white and black of a computer screen. I have a novel (and 3 sequels already laid out) that cover five plus note books, chapters and stories in random order. I have ideas for creativity projects: some to do on my own, and others to involve the chronic community.

And, now I have more than just chronic depression to beat; I have bipolar II – yes, the lesser form of the condition, only recently recognized as more than persistent chronic depression that didn’t respond well to antidepressants. With bipolar II, mania isn’t feelings of grandeur or happiness or power; it’s fury, irritability, frustration. My constant purchases at dollar stores of crafts for projects probably never to be made (no room in this house for that), my determination this summer to buy the stuff for me from what little was left after mom died. She let people use her and steal from her (and wouldn’t let me stop this from happening. So, a couple of high-end (for me) shopping binges, just like the emotional eating binges the stress of the last few years have caused. All caught up in the former anorexic/bulimic/alcoholic I once was.

What I thought was stress and my failures, were only half of who I was. Now I understand the fury that allowed me to kick the chair out from underneath a school bully – who became my protector and friend after that. Or pulling down a shelving unit of dishes, pots, and pans. Of screaming (inside and out). The negative voices, the “not good enoughs,” the lost friendships, the hostility and the loneliness. So Phylor, with her chronic pain and chronic depression, is only half of me.

The inept, uncaring staff the morning after my ER visit told me my husband had cancelled my previously booked appointment (he insisted they leave the 8:15 am appointment open; it was their idea I go to the ER) and that the next opening for an appointment was 3 weeks, I lost it. I apologized when, after camping out in the office, I did see my doctor. She said I had nothing to apologize for; you don’t let someone who had a mental breakdown to wait 3 weeks to have meds changed. She knew when they called to say I had gone ballistic in the office and was frightening the other patients and staff, that the usual composed, organized and compliant me was screaming at the patients who had taken MY appointment that the office staff were incompetent liars, then I was in trouble. She (with me who had slowly begun to wonder if I could be bipolar based on my summer “adventures”) can up with the diagnosis of bipolar II and the drug regime to follow. I still have to tell her that I’m not in a day program, and that like salmon, I’m swimming upstream and the rush of the water is pushing me back.

I have a very long journey ahead. The cold, uncaring day program admissions clerk at psychiatric day program the mental health crisis counselor at the ER arranged for me told me “You can’t be in our program; you take too many drugs.” As barbiturates were found in my system, every drug I used she accused me of was thus one – even a drug for acid reflux and another for nerve pain. Until I persisted, she refused to give me the name of some other psychiatric day program I might try, or how I could contact them. Turns out the one she gave me specializes in bipolar folks with substance abuse issues. I have mental health issues; substance abuse is not one of them.

There are over 120 day programs and self-help groups in my general geographic area. Not one provides transportation. Not one can I get to on public transit unless I walk at least 3 to 5 miles from the train station or bus stop. One organization I came across helps you start your own self-help group. Other than getting myself committed that may be the only why I can get treatment and the help I need. My experience with the mental health profession (except for the very kind, listening, and non-judgmental mental health crisis counselor at the ER on Tuesday) has been one awful. From psychiatrist who ignored my explanation that extended release antidepressants (or any ER meds) are of no use as the extended parts don’t release in my system, or the one who told me I had nothing to be depressed about (poor, sick, no job, and depression-plagued since childhood), just decide to be happy, and on through to the one who told me all I needed to do was join a team sport like soft ball or field hockey and I’d be cured. And, my doctor is moving her office (my fear was always she would close her practice or do like she is moving somewhere I can’t get to on public transport), so I can no longer rely on her to help me try and balance my unstable self.

So, as phylorsblog takes a rest (to be reborn, I hope, into several new blogs with focused themes, whimsical ideas, and a community-wide project), I wanted to say thank you to all of you who have put up with my downs, my rants, my bad poetry, and failing prose. Some will find a small package come their way: I have finally found a few magic wands and a sprinkle or two of pixie dust. I know some of you could really use it!

If you want to chat: phylorsblog@ymail.com will get you to my inbox. I will try and visit your blogs, comment, and maybe participate in a carnival or two. But, for now, the blinds are being drawn, not because I crave the darkness, but because I need to see the sparks of fairy lights. I rejoined facebook so I could participate in a gift exchange. All the materials are laid out on two rolling printer carts; this project, like finding help, I will see through to the end. The facebook page will probably be shuttered too. I need to look inward to stretch outward again.

Thank you, you’ll never know how much all you have  meant to me.

when the thread breaks: PFAM and curveballs

When the thread breaks 2

All my life there has been a thin thread that held the tapestry of my life together. Frayed around the edges, stained with tears, torn with anger, miswoven by impatience and irritability, it was all I had to show for years of trying. Of periods of intense emotional pain; of fury that send furniture and other objects flying across the room; of screaming inside my skull; and yelling and beating the air with fists, and beating myself up with memories, loss, failure and loneliness. But it was me; it was who I am. The tapestry, imperfect and never finished, held the threads of my sanity. No matter how strong the angry, the deep the hurt, the inconsolable the tears, I could still weave a new row, repair the damaged corner, catch up the threads and start again. Dark, twisted threads invoke the demon-infested patterns; others have spackles of mottled sunlight on dragonfly translucent wings. There are torn corners, yet to be mended, ripped by inability and frustration. Imperfect images plagued by impatience and irritability. Repeated images of a sad child alone in winter garden of bare branches and frozen ground. But it was my tapestry; I understood the despair and the balance. I stopped the drinking that made for breaking threads, shattered glasses, and off-kilter wharfs and woofs. I added, with shaking fingers, the lightning bolts of chronic pain; the deepening darkness that lead to shopping flurries and fury. But always it was my tapestry, my weaving, my choice of thread colo(u)r and imagery. Sometimes the tragedies of my life picked the placement: no tenure track job to go with phd diploma; no friends to join me at a summer’s eve picnic; no way to keep the butterfly wings of possibility alight. But, even if I hated to look at it, despised the person who wove it, I still claimed it as mine. Fatigue, depression, and pain slowed the loom; woven now by light of computer screen. However, increasingly, my energy switch was set on on – even hyper drive with frenetic and frantic activity, screaming in the skull and yelling on the phone. 72 hours awake, and though tired, sleep came only in shifts of two hours if lucky. Those days, my weaving was post-modern, Jackson Pollack, and without reason. .

Then one day, the last frayed thread broken, the tapestry began to ravel. No needle could catch the threads to repair; the meltdown couldn’t be refrozen. Then fury ripped the tapestry into shards; stained glass pieces of an unlived life. Pools of tears made the colo(u)rs bleed to grey; even the dragonfly wings were battered and shone with reflected light no more. Attempts at getting into day psychiatric programs to start to repair the tapestry have so far failed. I thought I was weaving a picture of chronic depression; I was in fact designing a life based on bipolar II. Within those two simple words are complex actions and reactions, new meds and need for professional mental health and self-help groups. Mental health professionals before have only served to dismantle the tapestry, not weave new and hopeful images. This time, I need to find people with strong needlepoint and weaving skills. I need help to fix the tears, to redye the wool from grey and black to yellow and orange. Somehow, we have to fight this; the mania and the depression are happening simultaneously and I can’t find the strength some days to sit at the loom. Hugs from my husband, and his attempts at overcoming his depression enough to help get me weaving again. (I always knew I had an evil twin sister – the bipolar twins.) He wants a tapestry we can hang on the wall; with colo(u)r and light, demons bested, sad child smiling in spring garden with friends picking flowers. I want that too.

Kathy, of FibroDAZE, for her hosting of the next PFAM blog carnival chose as her prompt:

when you have made some sort of peace and are coping with the chronic illnesses you do have and “life” throws you curve balls in the form of a new diagnosis, how do you deal? What are your coping mechanisms? How do you come to terms with the new diagnosis?

By looking for other weavers who need to find the balance; finding mental health professions who are conservators; meds that stabilize; and the strength to spin the wool, dye the thread, move with the clatter of the loom, repair the torn parts, and whipstitch the frayed edges. At least I know why depression didn’t make the pattern on its own; my tapestry and it’s many destructions and distortions make more sense now. Perhaps I can, like the Unicorn tapestries at the Closter’s museum create ones shot through with light, and whimsy. In mine, I’ll set the unicorn free. Maybe I can join him in the mystical mythical woods, and find the balance; make myself whole.