I believe I am, after all this time, indeed coming back to life. I thought I was too far down to ever climb back out of that hole. Wow am I thankful I was wrong. It’s a terrible thing when all you feel is pain and joy is not even a distant memory. Okay, enough of that gush, even though I feel that way and wanted to say it. To feel joy is a precious gift.

Firstly, I completed my goals of setting up all my doctor appointments. The getting to them will be easier than the reaching out and calling to set them up was.

Then, after group today (as per my ambitious plan), I stopped at the YMCA. Wandered all about all on my own and finally found the cool equipment I was looking for. Even better said equipment shows how to use each machine and tells you which muscles it works (can you tell I’ve never been to a place like this before?) so I didn’t have to get brave enough to ask for help. I was set! Rode a bike that measured my heart rate til my legs gave out. Then I found the room with all the cool machines. So I used every one of them til my muscles felt like they’d had enough. I expected, with the state of my body, that I’d last maybe 10 minutes in there the first time. I was there for 45! We’ll see how my muscles feel tomorrow. My plan is to go the days I go to group since it’s right on the way. That will be Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m so glad I got the courage to actually do it. I just feel so much more competent already. This might be hard to understand for someone who hadn’t lost all that they were (or at least thought so). Yeah, I’m stoked!

Oh, and my therapist told me today he thought I was ready for the advanced DBT group. Wow, only took me two years to pass the beginner one I’m not so sure of course. I know the skills extremely well after all the repeats, but do I actually know how to use them? I feel like that is a big no. Part of the reason for that is being a total recluse and moving to a city away from my family and everyone I know, I have had no one to practice on (or would that be with?). If he thinks I’m ready, I’ll go for it, which is not something I would have agreed to 6 months ago.

All in all, life could be better, as in actually have friends and doing things, but that wasn’t possiible when I was filled with pain, self-hatred and shame. For now, I am happy and life feels fine.

Pink_Floyd-Coming_Back_To_Life.mp3

I’ve repeated my DBT class several times and here I am off the rails again. How the heck do I regulate my emotions!? Well, the answer is clearly that I don’t. This is out of order in the class but I needed a quick refresher course.

Understand Emotions You Experience

• Identify your emotion. Okay, that would be depressed, agitated. stressed out, frustrated, invalidated, doubting myself.
• Understand what your emotions do for you. Well, if it was fear and I was being chased by a bear that would be very clear to me. Are these emotions telling me I need a less stressful life? I’m already almost a complete hermit. I actually know a couple of the reasons I’m stressed but I can’t say to those companies, ‘leave me alone and quit picking on me, I’m too stressed to handle it’. So my feeling is these emotions are only hindering me.

Reduce Emotional Vulnerability

(oh boy, that’s the kicker)

• Decrease negative Vulnerability (vulnerability to emotional mind). Okie dokey, none of these are going to help me a bit. Treat physical illness, Balance eating, Avoid mood-altering drugs, balance sleep, get exercise, build mastery. Did all that, don’t feel a bit better. Gah
• Increase positive emotions.
• Short term: Do pleasant things that are possible now. Do one thing each day.
• Long term: Make changes in your life so that positive events will occur more often. Build a life worth living. I’m so far from that it’s laughable at this point.
• Be unmindful of worries. ………..

Letting Go Of Emotional Suffering

• Observe your emotion. Note it’s presence, step back, get UNSTUCK from the emotion.
• Experience your emotion. As a wave coming and going.
• Try not to block emotion. Try not to suppress emotion. Don’t try to get rid of emotion. Don’t push it away. Don’t try to keep emotion around. Don’t hold on to it. Don’t amplify it.
• Remember: you are NOT your emotion. Do not necessarily act on emotion. Remember times when you felt different.
• Practice loving your emotion. Don’t judge your emotion. Practice willingness. Radically accept your emotion.

Okay, I am over my head again/still. I just need to hang in here until I learn how to make this stuff work for me. I will never love feeling this way, of that I’m sure.

On my journey through this 13 year depression, which I saw no hope of ever coming back from, I have made huge progress. Sometimes you backslide again, and that old hopeless feeling hits. That is the worst part, that when you are in that place, you can see no hope, no surety that this is temporary.

The very worst moment I ever had, well it wasn’t really, but it signified all that I had lost, so I’ll recount it here. I left California to come back to Michigan, where I had already sent my kids since I was unable to work. Rented a huge truck, paid some people to load it up and drove across the country with my pets and everything I owned. I slept in the truck at truckstops since I didn’t have enough money for rooms. Got to my parents house and cleaned out my dads barn so I could put my stuff there. Then he told me I couldn’t. I wish he’d told me that before I brought it all the way across the country at that huge expense. I was at the end of my rope, had $20 left to my name and it was more than I could deal with. I came home because I was too far gone to work. So I got a couple of guys from 2 men and a truck to unload it (paid for by my friends who had my kids) and I told them to take whatever they wanted and throw the rest out in the horse pasture to burn. They thought it was Christmas and brought friends with trucks to haul away all my appliances and furniture (I still miss my beloved china cabinet). Then my dear father called his girlfriend (yes, he was still married to and living with my mother) and told her to come over and help herself to anything out there she might be able to use. The pile sat in the horse pasture for months and I was wandering out there one day and I found a Christmas ornament Melissa had made in kindergarten, made with popsicle sticks and her picture. I will never get over how I felt, finding that tossed out there like so much junk. That is when I knew there was no coming back from this one.

Well, I was wrong, you CAN come back from just about anything. I still waver between thinking my brother had the right idea with his suicide, because some of us aren’t fixable, to seeing hope for my future. I don’t know if I will ever reach a point to say that suicide is not an alternative. But for today, at least, it isn’t and that’s all I can hope for right now.

It has been slow progress these years and a great lack of any real help. Of course, when you are that far down I don’t think there is much they can do. I finally had ECT. Why it took them so long to decide on that I have no idea. I was in the hospital more times than I remember. But ECT was the beginning of the long road back for me. Even after that while I wasn’t actively suicidal, I saw no future or hope for the future. There were a few times I had to get it together; in 2003 when I had to make a decision about my growing brain tumor and successfully handled getting it scheduled at Duke and getting myself there, in 2006 when my daughter graduated and I had to move (the ssdi benefits for her cut off at graduation) and I could find nothing I could afford in Michigan, I looked on realtor.com and ended up buying a house I can afford (with nothing down!) in Indiana. But between those periods I’ve had many weeks of hiding in my hole as I call it.

So I suppose it’s not surprising that I went from functioning extremely well (for me) the last few months to a familiar revisit with my old friend depression. What was the trigger? Nothing that I can figure out except a 5 day migraine that is the worst I ever had. But doing nothing but lying around in pain and being able to do nothing but THINK about that pain was apparently enough to set it off. So here I sit, I won’t go out to get Saturday’s mail because there are always PEOPLE out there. I won’t go mow my front lawn for same reason. My dishes need doing, my house needs cleaning, my garden needs weeding and I need a bath. I stink and I don’t care, no one here to smell me anyway, right? It seems like it’s been much longer than a week since I saw my therapist, how’d I lose this much in a week? I hope I manage to drag myself in there tomorrow morning.

The memory of my recent steps forward haven’t faded yet so I am hopeful this is just a slight backslide. Maybe slighter than it feels since I’m actually putting it on here for the world to see. This is an image (contains nudity!) I did a few years ago. I actually posted it at 3DCommune at the time and had a critical comment and immediately deleted it. I have since reposted it as part of my story so to speak. I never welcome these visits but I know them like an old friend…no, an old enemy.