Pick a destination
By spinning round and round
Throwing pennies at an old map
Held on the floor
By your old broken beer bottles
Where will they land
When they finally come to rest
North South East or West
Which way shall I start to drive
And where shall I start anew
At last on my own
On and in my own time
To the place I will flourish
Alone without you
And those broken beer bottles anymore
JGR 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
My name is Jennifer and...
Usually my posts are funny, light or humorous. Containing quips and stories of ironies happening in my day. But something happened recently that has made me change the tune of this post to be more of come to Jesus/reality check, sit with me for a while and listen to my life while I tell you about some deeper stuff. So please feel free to stay and listen. It won't be soap boxy, I hope. But I do ask that you understand that, in the end, you take away with you the idea that depression affects more people than you may realize, even in your direct circle of family and friends.
I suffer from depression. I feel like I am in group... 'My name is Jennifer and I suffer from Chronic Depression.' Ever since I was about 10 or so I have been bounced back and forth in therapy of one sort or another, even before I truly understood what therapy was. I don't know when it started, the depression, or how, what the trigger was, or even if there was one. All I remember is that it was always there. Chronic. Constant. Growing. Omnipresent. Like a cancer eating away at me. Always. When I hit puberty things went nuclear. Hormones combined with pre-existing depression together triggered an altogether new experience of lows I never thought were possible and I entered the world of medication. Back in the mid 80's depression medication was not as sophisticated as it is today. There wasn't a lot of choice. It was Prozac or Prozac, at least as far as my Psychiatrist was concerned.
It was also very difficult to 'prove' my depression to my Physician to even get referrals to Psychiatrists in the area. I had to go to my Physician on an actual 'I can't get out of bed bad day' to actually show him I was crying out of control, was near suicidal, was having a panic attack, can't breathe, am stressed with anxiety, etc. before he would actually believe me. He had to see it to believe it. To believe me. When I went on a good day, he actually dismissed me out of his office, telling me I was fine and just hormonal. A mistake which could have been deadly had I gotten to that point, which I thankfully never did.
So aside from feeling like an outsider, as every teenager does already, I felt even more so with the label of Chronic Depressive hanging over my head, and in my file. I did the talk therapy thing for years while I lived in New York, stayed on the same medication while I was in New York and everything seemed ok. Then I moved to Atlanta.
With that move came new Doctors, Therapists and Psychiatrists. Some even provided new diagnosis, to which I didn't think I needed any, but they were the ones with all the medical schooling so ok. New medications were given for a condition I didn't have... at all. And after 18 months of monstrous doses of medications for bi-polar disorder, (from Zoloft alone to super high dozes of Depakote, Trazadone, Seroquil, Rantidone, Xanax and Wellbutrin) which bring down manic episodes in people who suffer from mania, but in depressives make you more and more depressed as it did me, and @2007 I had a total and complete and utter breakdown.
I was sitting on the bathroom floor with a bottle of pills when I was found. Silent. Not speaking. Crying my eyes out. Unable to stop. Unable to communicate. At all. I was catatonic. I was brought to the ER under lockdown and was brought immediately to a Psychiatric Treatment Center some 30 miles away where I was also admitted under lockdown. Just me, my journal, a pen, hairbrush, some clothes and some underwear.
I didn't speak. I actually couldn't speak. To anyone. Not the nurses, doctors, therapists, group leaders, NA or AA team leaders, no one. I just wrote in my journal and listened. Wondering why I was there. I wasn't an addict. I wasn't an alcoholic. And I cried. I cried a lot. They redid my medications, weening me off the heavy doses of the wrong pills I was on and putting me on the right doses of the correct medications I should have been on. I had been sleepless for over a week before being admitted and I was sleeping now. Sleep was good. And I wasn't holding a pill bottle in the bathroom to kill myself, it was a bottle of Tylenol PM because I was desperate to sleep but I was up to 6 pills a night and they weren't working and I couldn't stop crying. And that's when I was found.
Sometime during the first four days I started really listening in all of the group meetings, of which there were a lot of. And I had an epiphany in one of the Narcotics or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings they made me go to, I forget which. And that was the realization that I really wasn't as different as I thought from any of the addicts or alcoholics in the center with me. The only difference was that in my depression, I didn't reach for a drink, the pills, the crystal meth. I punished myself in other ways though, and in my past I had indeed reached for other things to numb my pain. And that made me realize we really weren't so different after all. So I started listening more. And eventually I started to speak.
After a week and a half I went home. Found a new Psych & Therapist and went back to work. Life was good, then life threw shit at me. I keep going to my Psych and she keeps tabs on my meds. I need to find a new therapist though. I need to get back into talk therapy. That's a constant good thing to always have as an outlet.
Anyway, the point of this whole story isn't to say Hey I'm a functional Chronic Depressive, it's to say no matter who you are, everyone knows someone with some sort of emotional issues somewhere in their lives if they know it or not. What triggered my standing up and being counted today was one of my dearest friends and her 8 year old daughter. The other night she came home to a note her daughter had written and left on her bed, addressed to her Dad saying she wished she had never been born. Ever. And that she wanted to leave home forever and be left all alone forever.
It's not the first time her daughter had made statements like this and it's caught my attention every time. That's how I felt when I was 10. It always starts somewhere and we just need to recognize it so we can get that person help as soon as possible so they don't feel alone and so they know those feelings are OK. Most importantly so they don't feel alone. Especially at 8 years old. I'm thankful my parents did.
So, I'm not trying to be preachy at all, but please be aware when you hear negativity from children, especially from young children. Crying out for help can start at any age. Whether it stems from internal stress, anxiety, bullying at school... They look to us to help them out and sometimes they just don't know how to ask for help. That leaves us needing to know how to listen.
I suffer from depression. I feel like I am in group... 'My name is Jennifer and I suffer from Chronic Depression.' Ever since I was about 10 or so I have been bounced back and forth in therapy of one sort or another, even before I truly understood what therapy was. I don't know when it started, the depression, or how, what the trigger was, or even if there was one. All I remember is that it was always there. Chronic. Constant. Growing. Omnipresent. Like a cancer eating away at me. Always. When I hit puberty things went nuclear. Hormones combined with pre-existing depression together triggered an altogether new experience of lows I never thought were possible and I entered the world of medication. Back in the mid 80's depression medication was not as sophisticated as it is today. There wasn't a lot of choice. It was Prozac or Prozac, at least as far as my Psychiatrist was concerned.
It was also very difficult to 'prove' my depression to my Physician to even get referrals to Psychiatrists in the area. I had to go to my Physician on an actual 'I can't get out of bed bad day' to actually show him I was crying out of control, was near suicidal, was having a panic attack, can't breathe, am stressed with anxiety, etc. before he would actually believe me. He had to see it to believe it. To believe me. When I went on a good day, he actually dismissed me out of his office, telling me I was fine and just hormonal. A mistake which could have been deadly had I gotten to that point, which I thankfully never did.
So aside from feeling like an outsider, as every teenager does already, I felt even more so with the label of Chronic Depressive hanging over my head, and in my file. I did the talk therapy thing for years while I lived in New York, stayed on the same medication while I was in New York and everything seemed ok. Then I moved to Atlanta.
With that move came new Doctors, Therapists and Psychiatrists. Some even provided new diagnosis, to which I didn't think I needed any, but they were the ones with all the medical schooling so ok. New medications were given for a condition I didn't have... at all. And after 18 months of monstrous doses of medications for bi-polar disorder, (from Zoloft alone to super high dozes of Depakote, Trazadone, Seroquil, Rantidone, Xanax and Wellbutrin) which bring down manic episodes in people who suffer from mania, but in depressives make you more and more depressed as it did me, and @2007 I had a total and complete and utter breakdown.
I was sitting on the bathroom floor with a bottle of pills when I was found. Silent. Not speaking. Crying my eyes out. Unable to stop. Unable to communicate. At all. I was catatonic. I was brought to the ER under lockdown and was brought immediately to a Psychiatric Treatment Center some 30 miles away where I was also admitted under lockdown. Just me, my journal, a pen, hairbrush, some clothes and some underwear.
I didn't speak. I actually couldn't speak. To anyone. Not the nurses, doctors, therapists, group leaders, NA or AA team leaders, no one. I just wrote in my journal and listened. Wondering why I was there. I wasn't an addict. I wasn't an alcoholic. And I cried. I cried a lot. They redid my medications, weening me off the heavy doses of the wrong pills I was on and putting me on the right doses of the correct medications I should have been on. I had been sleepless for over a week before being admitted and I was sleeping now. Sleep was good. And I wasn't holding a pill bottle in the bathroom to kill myself, it was a bottle of Tylenol PM because I was desperate to sleep but I was up to 6 pills a night and they weren't working and I couldn't stop crying. And that's when I was found.
Sometime during the first four days I started really listening in all of the group meetings, of which there were a lot of. And I had an epiphany in one of the Narcotics or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings they made me go to, I forget which. And that was the realization that I really wasn't as different as I thought from any of the addicts or alcoholics in the center with me. The only difference was that in my depression, I didn't reach for a drink, the pills, the crystal meth. I punished myself in other ways though, and in my past I had indeed reached for other things to numb my pain. And that made me realize we really weren't so different after all. So I started listening more. And eventually I started to speak.
After a week and a half I went home. Found a new Psych & Therapist and went back to work. Life was good, then life threw shit at me. I keep going to my Psych and she keeps tabs on my meds. I need to find a new therapist though. I need to get back into talk therapy. That's a constant good thing to always have as an outlet.
Anyway, the point of this whole story isn't to say Hey I'm a functional Chronic Depressive, it's to say no matter who you are, everyone knows someone with some sort of emotional issues somewhere in their lives if they know it or not. What triggered my standing up and being counted today was one of my dearest friends and her 8 year old daughter. The other night she came home to a note her daughter had written and left on her bed, addressed to her Dad saying she wished she had never been born. Ever. And that she wanted to leave home forever and be left all alone forever.
It's not the first time her daughter had made statements like this and it's caught my attention every time. That's how I felt when I was 10. It always starts somewhere and we just need to recognize it so we can get that person help as soon as possible so they don't feel alone and so they know those feelings are OK. Most importantly so they don't feel alone. Especially at 8 years old. I'm thankful my parents did.
So, I'm not trying to be preachy at all, but please be aware when you hear negativity from children, especially from young children. Crying out for help can start at any age. Whether it stems from internal stress, anxiety, bullying at school... They look to us to help them out and sometimes they just don't know how to ask for help. That leaves us needing to know how to listen.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Braker braker number 9, who's that calling 'cross the line?
I break things. I always have. I never knew how to protect the things I cherish most. I have clumsy hands. Usually i get in my own way. I trip over my own feet. As one of my favorite authors says, I'm an 'Idiot Girl'. So give me something fragile, something that requires care and love and rest assured i will somehow unintentionally break it. It will happen. Its unavoidable. It's what I do. I am a breaker of things
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Home Is Where The Heart Is.
I wrote a blog. I wrote an entire blog about my trip to New York. I read it and deleted it. It spoke of a long drive, a hotel stay, pancakes and Facebooking while driving (...I know Leanne). I wrote it and it was pretty lengthy, but it didn't say what I wanted it to. It had no message. It said nothing... a lot of nothing.
Yes, I drove 16 hours home, alone. Yes I drove from Atlanta to New York to visit with great friends and to see old friends where the stretch of time between visits had been vast and too far between and since. And yes, I am craving and striving for a change of scenery in my life at 39 1/2 years old and am recognizing home as exactly what it is. and always was... Home. But who wants to hear about which road I took at which intersection when and which place I ate lunch at in my hometown? Sure, if this was a travel blog, but it isn't.
The trip North was a 16 hour meditation, fueled by occasional pancakes, driven by fantastic music (thank you my music purveyor, you know who you are...) in a Northern direction. I took in the sights of the road as well as the sights of my past, embracing them as part of my here and now every step of the way. I drove with my eyes wide open, as if looking at everything for the first time or having never made the trip. And each step of the way once at my destination I relinquished control and gave into...
Pure happiness
Laughter
Unencumbered joy
Walking in the cold wind and the warm sun
Smiling from ear to ear until it hurt
Unconditional friendship
Giggling at all hours of the night
Speaking in funny accents for the hell of it
and Sleep Deprivation (voluntary and forced... thank you anonymous guest with sleep apnea)
I have not felt this full of vibrancy actually in years. I feel alive, younger and free to be myself while not being nervous at the risk taken by doing so. If you are not happy with who I am, who I truly am, well then move on, no more to see here ma'am/sir. I won't apologize for it now or ever and hopefully you will appreciate me more so for that.
Even during the drive up, the closer I came to home the more awake I became, as if I had been asleep for years, penned in by others ideals, constricted boxes of expectations in familial roles.
As Mother Nature does each season, I have stretched outwardly and welcomed in the positive energies and vibrations and positive influences around me. I can only hope to increase the exchange as time goes on.
Home tends to bring out the best in people or the worst. This trip has most definitely been the continuing of the beginning of an awakening and has brought me to the threshold of a pivotal point in my life. I guess the rest will be TBD...
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