Wednesday, June 30, 2010

back on EMDR, and Springsteen's Thunder Road

Because my illness - my clinical depression - recently took a turn back to worse, or faced multiple 'troughs in an emotional waves' as my doctor put it, I am now back on EMDR therapy. To analyse, process and solve the bouts of severe depressive and anxiety episodes I keep having lately. Which is also why I am back on once-weekly doctor visits instead of once-monthly.

A funny thing came up during EMDR. I thought of Bruce Springsteen's Thunder Road. About how he sings to the girl to throw everything aside and head for a road trip. It made me feel better just hearing the lyrics inside my head while in the doctor's room.

Doctor taught me more again on how to battle the debilitating bouts of depression and anxiety that are happening so frequently now. Aside from the necessary medications - Xa*nax, Fluanxol, which treat the physiological distress a depressive episode or anxiety attack brings me; pain literally. Things like: Go for a run whenever it happens. Remember that it will not last forever. Do something else like a have a caffeinated drink, read or listen to music. It is normal to have a crash, especially in people who are artistically inclined. Where there are crests there are troughs (I replied to this by telling him it is so 'Men Are From Mars'. He responded by using other analogies of valleys and mountains and of sine curves).

I am glad I haven't been wearing much eye makeup to the doctor visits lately, because it hurts a lot sometimes when we resurface the pain to resolve it and I don't want to get mascara in my eyes when I wipe the tears off.

I told him that I already failed in my attempt to work only three days a week and that yesterday, supposed work day for me, I crashed into a storm of pain and despair, so much that I double-dosed on every medicine I had that would calm me. I ended up sleeping the whole day and not sleeping at night because I was so hungover from meds.

The subliminal message he has been trying to tell me is that is okay to fail, to let people down, to time-out when I have to, to do very little instead of planning to do it all and failing horrendously.

So I am going to relish today, a non-work day for me. And put Springsteen's Thunder Road on repeat.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

flowers light up my day

I think the value of fresh flowers in the home is underrated. These gerberas, pale enough to match my faint mood, pink enough to be cheery.

For a few dollars every now and then, a worthwhile indulgence - no, necessity almost.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

From now on, I need to bring my teaching down from 6 days a week to 3. I need to stop thinking I have to clean the house every day, but plan the cleaning for alternate days instead. Doctor says if I want to be perfectionist and have to do these things every day, I set myself up to fail. So now I must work only three days a week to get better.

I need to lengthen my exercise time.

I need to see my doctor every week now.

Meanwhile, aromatherapy helps. Clary sage is in the air. The storm of today has gone past, leaving behind its aftermath. I shall go to bed early and try to stick to my needed changes.
It's not really working. Writing away my pain, or cleaning, or reading, or hugging my purring cat who knows something is wrong with me. I try to sleep it away but I lie awake in the afternoon dark, curtains drawn of course. I think I just need to stop doing, and just lie down and stop escaping the pain. All those are useful distractions but also smokescreens for what lies beneath. Tears, I give you permission to express my pain now. Words and chores are not working at the moment.

resonance

of pain familiar
unending bleak
serotonin-crash
restless sleep

time creeps
tears salty
-unceasing

lost, in sorrow
awake, yet numb

- familiar resonance of.

more.
of burrowing
in covers, in pain
of wishing sun would set
of feeling almost-dead
of waking haven't slept
of death, of existing
of chemical imbalance
over nothing

a resonance of
glass splinters past
and pain baffling
of crazy voices:
 
'I never left.
Hear my echoes,
footsteps in glass
daggers of pain
everything crashing.
I resound through
chirpy efforts
daily chores
therapy,
your life.'

Like a well that never runs dry,
so you are, ever-trickling, so -
I always will have
a resonance of pain.

Monday, June 21, 2010

fix

I am in a fix.

Am so poor that I might not have enough to pay the doctor tomorrow for my monthly appointment - I still owe him money from last month's bill. I stew and worry about what will happen when the clerk shows me tomorrow's bill and -gasp- lo and behold I haven't got enough. My meds are running on empty or low, so I can't not go either.

I feel so tired that I can barely do chores let alone work. The kitchen floor is strewn with stray bits of cat litter because Scooter is sick with urinary tract infection, but I can't bring myself to sweep up. I don't even have the energy to take a shower.

I have no appetite. I ate a brownie and a bowl of instant noodles for the whole of yesterday. I have been having a runny nose for most part of the weekend till yesterday. Right now I feel like my stomach is so empty I can't chug my coffee for fear I will puke.

I feel bad that I turn down my students and push my writing deadlines because I am not capable of being productive every day.

Nothing will help fix this trepidation and extreme lacklustre level of energy. Accepting this to be true makes me feel better.
can't sleep
for residual anger
despite drugs
and alcohol
I'm only half asleep
I want to sleep
into oblivion
Deal with tomorrow
when the sun rises
will keep trying
to let the darkness
takeover

Sunday, June 20, 2010

fire at rubbish collection point below my block in Ubi

We smelled something burning. We checked our house. There was no fire in the house but outside, at the rubbish collection point of Block 306 Ubi Avenue 1. A fire-engine and fire-men were on site, with onlookers. What is Marine Parade Town Council doing in waste disposal management that is causing fire so near to our home?

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

train

I took the train yesterday. I haven't been in an MRT train for a long time. It was the circle line, which is new, cleanish and less crowded, hence I said yes to taking that train ride. I did okay. I sat frozen, kept counting the stops till we reached, and J was there to soothe me and tell me it was okay.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

it is happening again

The debilitating sadness, the panic attack, the crippling fear, the despair that sadness brings and the loop of disappointment and the setback it brings me. This pain is a waft of over-familiarity. I thought my tear ducts were dry by now but they aren't.

I can't even get myself to take a shower. I lie on the floor, or lean my forehead to the table, I can barely speak aloud. I call my doctor but he is out of town and have to settle for an email cry for help instead.

I want to stop crying but I can't. I don't even know what I am sad about, it is not a reaction to any sad situation, it is like my brain just short-circuited itself into severe serotonin deficiency again. It is happening again! Why!?

Must I always be in a life of leisure to keep this at bay? What about real life, where I have to work to pay the bills? I have to, but suddenly today, I can't, and I can't do anything about it. I can't teach while in the throes of a panic attack or in tears or sit across my student unwashed and barely vocal.

Like the fighter jet that wafts across the low-rise skies of my neighbourhood, the sound it emits comes and goes like a wail, and then no more, but the fighter jet still is somewhere out there, eventually returns to its military base nearby, but still remains.

It still remains. This incompetence of mine. The sudden ability to do anything that I ought to. Like work, like take a shower. Like be normal. I thought normalcy was returning but instead it is like my sky that has that fighter jet spit through it every so often as if beckoning for war.

War cries, like the pounding of my heart so hard that it wants to burst through my rib cage. Medication, and my cat coming to me and purring with her paw on my heart, all that is supposed to help but it ain't, yet, or perhaps never will properly.

Yes I feel a pain in my heart. From the physiological effect of a panic attack, from the sadness that is making me well up in tears. It hurts. I want to deny that. But I am supposed to acknowledge it.

I am lost and i don't know what to do.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

i'm getting this familiar feeling --

-- of feeling totally limp, unable. Where even walking is like dragging a boulder up a scraggly hill. It is so familiar, because this is how it feels, and felt, when I had to stop working a full-time job because of my depression because I simply couldn't do things. It doesn't feel too sad now, because I'm on my meds, but somehow this waft of inability to be ambulatory just comes along now and it feels so familiar, it scares me.

Shouldn't I be better by now? My depression seems to be chronic, like dysthymia, never really coming to an end proper, like a 100-episode long Chinese drama that is full of rubbish and anger and stupidity. My recovery is like a leopard-crawl I did when I was at home alone once and fainted; when I came to somewhat, I crawled with my forearms to the telephone to call J for help. Inch by inch and every inch takes so much more effort than normalcy would dictate. This time round my depressive episode is lasting many more years than the first one I knew of, not counting the childhood ones which I don't even know count as what. It is no longer an episode. It feels like Prozac Nation - dysthymia and the constancy of it.

Maybe I will really have to be on my meds for a lifetime, like some people. I hope I feel up and perky soon. But I know that for a long time I will not be able to work a full-time job again simply because of such days as today, when I simply fall flat face down on the table when I try to get going to start my teaching (no, my student wasn't around to witness that, I told her and the others scheduled for today that I can't teach today). It was at that moment, when my face felt the coldness of the marble-top table, that I realised this feeling of being nearly immobile felt so familiar.