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The miserable thread

  
  

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miss wonderstarr
18:40 / 04.12.06
I also have a bit of trouble convincing myself that I should feel this bad. I kind of thought I'd get over it a while back. (The ongoing eye stuff... the fact that the eye is fucked and needs more ops is maybe one of the main factors that refuses me any closure). I mean, a guy I know saw his wife die this year. I walked past his office, with the door ajar, and saw him in there on his own on my way out of work. Whenever I see him, I think he's dealing with something way worse than me. I know it shouldn't work on a scale, but things like that make me resist the right to feel sorry for myself, or proud of myself for, you know, surviving at all.

And because I've been trying to deal with it, I think people around me mostly think it wasn't such a big deal, too. Which is what I wanted, cause I got tired very soon of people asking "how are you DOING" and not wanting a quick "fine!" but a full update. I don't want to be viewed as a victim. But the other side of that is, everyone outside my very immediate circle thinks I'm probably over it and dealing with it incredibly well, and that maybe it wasn't such a huge thing in the first place.

Well... clearly some thinking to do about this. I guess the doc will look at my form and accept that I'm a genuine case, and then I'll have to wait for some medicine or counselling or both.
 
 
Olulabelle
21:28 / 04.12.06
Whenever I see him, I think he's dealing with something way worse than me. I know it shouldn't work on a scale, but things like that make me resist the right to feel sorry for myself, or proud of myself for, you know, surviving at all.

I think instead of viewing it as 'worse problem, easier problem', the best thing to do is look at it personally. For that guy you work with the worst thing was his wife dying. For you, right now, the worst thing is all the stuff that's happened to you. The death of someone is no more of a problem than being attacked, per se, it's entirely about how it affects you directly. Your problem and his problem, well they're both the same. They're fucking shitty things you are both having to deal with and each one is no more 'viable' no 'worse' than the other.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
21:43 / 04.12.06
You see what I mean, though.

Thanks I feel bad that Mr Austin's post above was ignored too, chin up Mr Austin.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
21:56 / 04.12.06
I also have a bit of trouble convincing myself that I should feel this bad.

Stop trying to convince yourself (that's not supposed to sound brusque, I just can't think of a better way to put it). And stop trying to do down your own right to feel the way you do just because other people have it worse. It's guilt you really don't deserve, and you really don't need on top of everything else. When I was being treated for depression I probably really irritated my counsellor by constantly telling her how stupid I felt feeling that bad when my life was a metric shitload better than most peoples' in the world.

Yeah, yeah, it's easy for me to say it, and it's not exactly something I was ever good at myself. But you do have to give yourself permission to feel the way you're feeling, otherwise you're just beating yourself up all over again, and it's really not warranted.

One thing I found helpful was promising myself that I'd find time to worry about how much worse things were for many other people once I'd got myself back to a state where that could actually be useful.

And remember- bad shit has happened to you. You're perfectly entitled to feel bad about it. And letting people help you with it is about as far from a sign of weakness as it's possible to get.

I would say "huggles", but I seem to remember you hate that, so I'll say "good luck" instead. And maybe throw in a "we're on your fightin' side" for good measure.
 
 
Princess
14:12 / 06.12.06
Hey Barbelith, me again. I wasn't really sure where to put this, but I want to put it somewhere and here will have to do.
I've just been to the doctors and he has said that I almost certainly do have depression. More than this, he's said that I quite probably have a personality disorder too. I'm not at all sure what to do with that. He gave me a form (quite possibly the same one you have MW) and said that if I went any further down I should fill it in. He stressed "if" because he's pretty sure that the depression is only feeding the main problem (which he suspects, as I said above, is a personality disorder).
I'm not exactly miserable about this. I'm just not really sure what to do with it. I'd expected him to drop the word "DEPRESSION" like some giant mental health bomb and suddenly everything would have been ok because I would have known what that was and I could have started to see myself as a good person suffering from bad stuff as opposed to a fundementally flawed person.
But my self-harm, apparently, suggests that it's not depression. This came as a shock because I thought self-harm and Depression formed a sort of dysfunctional marriage. I'm wrong apparently.
My boyfriend still isn't replying to me and I really need him too right now.
And apparently my little brother is joining the board. Which is strange because he know who I am. Needless to say, what happens in Barbelith stays in Barbelith young man, and if I find any of my posts leaked to our mother or youngest sibling I will break your tiny emo body. Also, welcome aboard.

Gah, a strange hour this has been.
 
 
Princess
15:49 / 06.12.06
Holy crap. I'm going to have to tell my Mother aren't I? God. Holy freaking god.
 
 
Triplets
16:03 / 06.12.06
Hey, Swash. One step at a time. Knowing what's wrong doesn't mean a cure, no, but now you have a better idea of where to find it. Proper healing begins now.

In fact, it started when you had the guts to make a doctor's appoinment. Go you!

And, yes, you're under a strict Barbeconfidentiality agreement, Tiny Emobuckling.

As for your mother, I don't know, but if she's anywhere near decent you could do with her support.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
16:04 / 06.12.06
You don't have to tell her until you're ready.
 
 
Spaniel
16:37 / 06.12.06
Princess, I hope it helps to know that there's a lot of love for you hereabouts, because there is. Same to Wonderstar.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
16:38 / 06.12.06
It seems those depression forms are quite "on-trend" at the moment. After seeing the doc on Friday with my form I am going to buy some clothes, have a manicure, see if I can get a massage, because after all that's what I'd tell a friend to do if they were going to the doc about depression. Oh yes.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
07:12 / 08.12.06
ha ha the doc has read my form and referred me to a "walk-in clinic" in the area of South London with the 3rd highest level of muggings, stabbings and shootings. Then I walked away from the doc's muttering to myself "fucking mental health...I'm not a fucking mental health case" and wanting to hit myself in the side of the head with my left fist, the one with the ring on ~ until I realised I looked exactly like a mental health case, and laughed so hollowly it was like falling down a well.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
07:12 / 08.12.06
If I feel less mental in an hour I will still go shopping.
 
 
Ex
08:12 / 08.12.06
But my self-harm, apparently, suggests that it's not depression.

I am no pro, but this seems odd to me also.
If you feel up to, it might be worth taking notes in appointments, and asking the person you're talking to to check if you've got the main points. If possible, and possibly, reading your medical notes as well would give you a fuller picture of what's informing the doc's decisions.

Not because the leeches are Not To Be Trusted, but I find these situations are so stressful that I only pick up a few keys words and they're not much help. Oh, and once, I remembered the biro diagram of how Prozac works.
I didn't do any of the things I just mentioned, and I usually came away from appointments with a load of fragments, which didn't help much. I seized on the things that seeemed helpful or incongruous and blanked large parts of the rest. And rather different stuff had been put on my medical notes, which might have been more help with understanding.
 
 
Ex
08:13 / 08.12.06
Sorry, I forgot to say good luck - good luck!
 
 
miss wonderstarr
13:29 / 08.12.06
I ordered something pink from Pink, but it felt like pretending. Every time I plan something for the new year I feel I might not be here for it ~ that I am going to skip out and not be around to collect on it. Today I can muster up a front of positive energy for ten minutes at a time. The rest of the time I felt I was walking like a ghost. Dressed entirely in grey, though I only realised that later; it wasn't planned. Walking through malls. Walking past Christmas displays and people. Thinking about walking off a bridge into water, or in front of a train. Feeling like I was already dead.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
13:37 / 08.12.06
I almost wanted to cry in the grey cavern of a tube station (and I never cry). I wanted to curl up in a cinema and lie down until I was discovered. I am in fog. My new passport photo, stuck with me for the next ten years, obviously features my fucked eye. My curfew starts about now every day, at 3.30. My outside world ends about now.

Sorry but I just don't have anywhere else convenient to write this shit down.
 
 
Papess
13:44 / 08.12.06
Starr of Wonder, is there someone you can call right now? You sound like you need some really good company. Please do not hesitate to ask someone for it, and please don't do any of those things you were/are thinking about.

The small, but realistic comfort I can give you is that everything passes. Everything. Maybe a dose of that speech, you know the one: "if it doesn't kill you it makes you stronger...". Although, those things don't mean much at the time bad-shit is happening to us.

Please take care, Starr.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
13:59 / 08.12.06
Wonderstarr, have you thought about giving up on referrals and seeking therapy out yourself? I'm not sure you have time to be referred, you're obviously having a fucking awful time and it's probably going to be prolonged by the way our health system works. You can still get referred but maybe in the meantime some of us could help by giving you referral numbers to call- it will cost money but it might be worth it.
 
 
*
17:14 / 08.12.06
Wonderstarr, I'm really concerned for you. It sounds like things are really tough and you feel at your wits' end what to do about it. Are you considering suicide? Do you have any plans?

I enjoy your contribution to the boards so much, and I have been hoping to have the honor of meeting you one day soon. Please, get some help. There must be a crisis centre you can check into, and it sounds like that could really be an enormous benefit to you. They can provide you with company and someone to talk to when things feel so overwhelming like this.

Will you please promise me that you'll stay with us long enough to get some help? I really want you to live.
 
 
Princess
19:00 / 08.12.06
Hey MW. Not really sure what to say at all, you sound like your having a really rough time of it. My advice giving skills in this situation are near nill, and I can't think of anything to type that won't come across as horribly twee or insincere. But please be sure that if I was a better writer and thinker and all round human being, then I would be using those skills to say perfect things of great insight and support.
As it is, I just hope you know that there are people thinking of you and that there is a large number of people out here who are rooting for you.

In Princess related news:
I'm feeling numb and silent and empty. It's completely disquietening. I'm just entirely at sea right now and I'm not sure how I should even be thinking. I've ended up telling my Mom, which wasn't that bad once I'd started, but now I'm dreading going home because there will be an awkward conversation I just can't be arsed with. I feel like everything that was living about me has just slowly dripped out and now I'm just sat listening to the echoes in the shell. I'm like a Qlipoth of a person. I'm just some elaborate simulcra. Almost everyone who I've told about being depressed has said that I don't seem depressed. But how would I tell them this? How can you slip into a conversation that you feel you are losing touch with reality? What polite way is there to reveal a near constant desire to self harm and just feel something?
People have actually gone as far as to tell me I'm not depressed, and that I'm just stressed. This upsets me so much. By saying that, it turns all these thoughts I'm having into some weird personal drama I'm making up. And what the fuck do I ahve to be stressed about anyway? I wish people would stop telling me how I'm fine when it is absolutely fucking obvious that I'm not. I'm not ok. I know it's an emo sentiment, but I am just not ok. There is something serious going on and I can't get my head around it and the doctor seems to have no fucking clue, and what really doesn't help is people who are close to me telling me that it's all just some drama I've come up with so I can get out of work.
I'm also starting to get worried that my sex-drive has been all but completely swapped for a desire to self harm. I used to be ridiculously sexual, anything less than three orgasms a day was considered odd. But now I find myself entirely devoid of sexual feeling, I just want to sit and cut.

Shit, I don't even know what I'm thinking. I don't even know what is going on in my head and the stuff which I do get is impossible to decipher. If I could give in, then I would. But I don't even know what it is I would be giving in too.

I have no fucking clue about what is happening to me.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
23:22 / 08.12.06
Thanks for those posts and sorry if I caused an awful lot of concern. I was going through a low, and like I said, there is no other obvious place for me to get it out ~ I don't have a blog or anything and I don't find it as easy to tell anyone around me. It comes out too upset or angry at them, and I usually feel more frustrated because I can't quite make them understand or get the response I wanted.

I have certainly experienced a slump in the last week. This ironic result, after 3 weeks of patiently seeing the doc, that my "prize" is a walk-in mental health clinic in an area I'd far rather avoid ~ that the early morning surgery appts and the questionnaire won me the right to join anyone wandering in off the street ~ knocked me down further. And the whole passport photo business was just like seeing my current moment frozen as "me" for ten years.

I have felt like hitting and hurting things including myself. I found myself looking at knives and suddenly realising in surprise that I'd been idly considering how I'd stick one in my stomach. I've never done that kind of thing before so I have no history of self-harm and it's a line I wouldn't cross lightly, but it is certainly coming to mind as almost a reasonable-seeming thing to do now.

But... I haven't posted much on here when I feel OK. I have only been posting when I feel a need to spill the bad stuff. What I wrote above was like a dip to minus 8, when I'm normally at something like minus 4 (with minus 10 being despairing, zero being more like my old self).

So it wasn't invented, exaggerated or entirely exceptional, but it wasn't how I feel all the time. I don't think I am genuinely on the brink of harming myself. But I really am in some kind of psychological trouble, I think. It's really quite astounding the way this thread bears detailed, real-time witness to my decline, through various little landmarks ~ from the day after it happened, to all the minor disappointments, hardships and unpleasant surprises that have sent me further down. My posts on this thread describe the disintegration of someone whole and happy into this undermined, semi-disintegrated state I now occupy.

I did want to express how I felt, but I didn't want to really worry anyone. Well, maybe I did want a bit of attention too, and maybe that was irresponsible. I feel more stable and alive now, though of course sub-normal, as usual. Anyway I will read the thoughtful messages to me above, properly, and consider what you've said.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
23:24 / 08.12.06
a near constant desire to self harm and just feel something?

I really didn't understand this impulse before, and now I really do.
 
 
Char Aina
23:28 / 08.12.06
running for an hour hurts more, and you get free endorphins too.
run like fuck until you cannot run any further.

then run some more.
if you cant run, substitute any other exercise.
i think the more you get out of breath the better, but i'm not sure it really matters.
i have a friend who used to harm, but turned it into running instead.
ze is now ninja-fit.


remember to warmup and stretch(thats a satisfying pain in itself) first, and then go for your life.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
23:32 / 08.12.06
Also thanks for the private msges, which I will give the thought they deserve.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
23:58 / 08.12.06
wonderstarr and Princess! Good grief. I'm so sorry to hear that you've been feeling like this. I'd second toksik's advice about excercise; I know neither of you is really up for a run but ten minutes of gentle excercise can give you just enough lift to get you thinking rationally again. I can usually manage a bit of a swim, unless it's one of those days when I'm totally immobilised, and being submerged in the water does seem to help.

***Discussion of SHing here, may trigger***


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Sometimes SHing is the only outlet that'll work, and I think people should understand that and respect it as a choice. However, you might be able to circumvent actual harm by using other forms of intense physical sensation. Try taking a quick cold shower, snapping an elastic band against your wrist, or rubbing an ice-cube over the area you've been thinking about harming (you can add dye if you feel comforted by bleeding). Chewing on strong-tasting but non-toxic items can also be good, such as grapefruit peel or cloves. If you can't overcome the impulse, try and set limits before you begin. Decide how far you're going to go and stop at that point.


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***end of SH discussion***
 
 
miss wonderstarr
12:23 / 09.12.06
I feel kind of better today, thanks. Don't much know why. I did a load of exercise, press-ups like at cheerleader camp, and that "hurt" in a useful way.

Today I feel like if the stupid doc and mental health system is going to waste my time, I will just sort myself out. Next time I feel like I did yesterday, I think I'll just call Samaritans.

Thanks again for the care and support everyone ~ I know it's genuine and it surprises me (in a good way of course) that I'm enough of a presence here for people to really be concerned and want me to stay around. I'm more like on minus 2, today.
 
 
Papess
13:48 / 09.12.06
I feel kind of better today, thanks. Don't much know why. I did a load of exercise, press-ups like at cheerleader camp, and that "hurt" in a useful way.

I am so glad you have dealt with things in this manner and that it seems to have helped. Alright then, Starr!

As an added ripple-effect bonus: You have inspired me and I need inspiration today. I am going to do a workout and not let the gloominess overcome me.
 
 
grant
14:27 / 09.12.06
I always recommend two things that helped when I was at my bleakest. One was strenuous exercise. The other was a change of venue -- just getting out of town and sleeping on someone else's couch for a couple of days. Seeing how someone else lives a life that's nothing like mine.

I've got a guest room, y'know, but there's the small matter of the Atlantic Ocean. Not great for a weekend out.
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
15:23 / 09.12.06
Because I am a forgetful thing, I forgot to pay the mobile bill so I am unreachable at the moment.

This is bad because my mother is in Texas seeing my dying grandfather. I have no way to get a hold of her except emails with my stepdad. I was just informed that the priest has performed last rites. He may remain alive for two days or for two weeks. We don't know. I was told she understands if I wouldn't be able to make it to the funeral. I have to. I haven't seen him in nearly six years.

There's a lump in my heart and in my chest. And I feel so utterly useless.
 
 
Triplets
17:47 / 09.12.06
I suppose a U.S. Barbelither could give your mum a call for you, K. Anyone up for it?
 
 
Papess
19:26 / 09.12.06
If you need some help with that Kali, I would be more than willing. I may live in Canada, but I have an internet phone, and it would cost me nada. It is up to you, hon.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
09:58 / 10.12.06
Last night I watched Rambo: First Blood and actually identified with troubled depressive Rambo! (who is, I realised, a precursor of and probably major influence on Jack Reacher.) Like Rambo, I am going for a run today. I used to run the streets maybe five days a week, even after dark ~ I figured I was going with a power that would stop anyone from giving me any hassle. Since the "incident" I've only managed once a week, during Sunday daylight hours, but it is a run to and all around a park, including big hills, so I think it does some good. It keeps you in touch with the changing seasons and the shifts in nature, standing on top of a hill, tramping on cold mud, plowing through clouds of your own breath.

You know it struck me ~ before going to the doc I actually felt generally better. Since telling my family about the depression tick-list and so on, I get my mum phoning up all worried and about to cancel holidays so she can come and look after me, and making well-meaning but not-so-helpful suggestions. I don't feel better at all now I've been diagnosed depressed. Now everyone who knows is treating me like a china-doll case. "You're ILL, you have to get better!" Christ! Of course they mean it for the best, but being stuck in some national health marble-run or mousetrap-game, sent semi-competently from one agency to the next like a helpless patient, is making me feel more like a victim.

Nevertheless this is just how I feel at minus~two on my made-up scale.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
12:10 / 10.12.06
Exercise! the good type of self-harm!
 
 
Essential Dazzler
15:07 / 10.12.06
Today is my first day as a recovering alcoholic.

I never thought I'd be saying that at 21.

Oops!
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
15:37 / 10.12.06
I appreciate your help, Triplets and Electrix. My dad paid the bill last night.

In any case, my grandfather died last night at 9:28 CST. I am flying to Texas tomorrow for the funeral.

He was the toughest person I ever knew. It breaks my heart he will never call me mija again.
 
  

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