Category Archives: Assumptions

Because I Can

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I’m finally letting myself show anger, even rage, call people on the bullshit they hand me, their lies, singular or repeated, all of it.

Because I can.

I purged an old, dead email account of its contents the other day.  What (at the time) I felt was a stupid move was reading a bunch of those emails first.

I was aghast.  I saw myself being emotionally and psychologically abused to a horrifying degree.  Had there been a physical analogue, I would have been the woman in the ED who “fell down the stairs”, “walked into a door”, or was “just the clumsiest woman ever, you won’t believe what I did to myself. . .”  And I would have ended up there daily, until eventually I landed in the ICU, on life support.

Reading those emails was something that needed to happen, though, because it wasn’t just one relationship, and it hadn’t been just with guys I was “involved” with.  I took a long, hard, painful look at the woman I have become, and I’m angry.

I’m angry at myself, but I’m also angry at all of the people who had a big hand in turning me into this woman.  Because I never used to be this way.  You swung at me, I ducked and hit back twice as hard.  You lied to me, I called you on it straight out and gave you the option of being honest henceforth or getting the fuck out of my life.  You treated me badly, or took advantage in any way, I walked and never looked back.

I entered treatment for my bipolar, and slowly, but slowly, I began to wear down, and people took advantage of that.  Even though I knew I was doing everything possible to be well, and that I had never taken my illness out on others — except for a few, a very few, bursts of shouting and tears — I felt like I was a burden just being in people’s lives, and I had to do everything I could to compensate and please others.  This belief was reinforced when friends I’d known for years started backing away; the mother of one of the children I nannied for started distancing herself and telling me how disappointed her child was when I didn’t show up for something because I was curled up in my bed, sobbing, unable to even move (yet I always at least gave her notice that I wouldn’t be there); and finally, my sister, with whom I had always been very close, and my best friend of 20 years both decided to cut off all contact with me, basically telling me that they couldn’t handle “my drama”, and other behavior that was completely beyond my control — even though I was still working my soul to the core trying to prevent them or anyone else from being negatively affected.

Clearly, there was something wrong with me beyond my illness, as a person, and I was lucky to have anyone still in my life at all, so I had to (and did) do anything and everything to keep them.

FUCK THAT.

A sister who walks out on you when you are at your lowest is not a sister.  For a long time I have been compassionate, because she genuinely didn’t get it.  She couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting well.  But you know what, it doesn’t matter if you understand or not; you love someone, you support them.  You do not call them “a black hole”.

A friend who uses her children to hold you hostage — consciously or not — because you know they are little and they love and need you, and that if you call Mommy on her lies and bullshit and manipulation she will cut off the contact you have with them, I don’t even have a word for that.

Friends who back away because you are as contagious as a leper, and even if they know that statement is true, who don’t want to deal with the fact that you have to fight constantly to keep your head above the swells while they can get up and live their lives every day are not friends at all.

And new people in your life whom you will put up with, excuse even, all manner of garbage from, all while hiding or making light of how bad things have really gotten, because you’re desperate for someone, anyone, to “support” you and show you kindness. . .  Well, that one is on me, but I never would have gotten there without the concerted efforts of the people above.  Yes, they had every right to make a choice to remove themselves from my life, but they were cruel and weak and cowardly to have blamed me, instead of having the guts to admit that they couldn’t deal with being spectators to the struggle I was living and the constant pain I was in.  Because, had they done so, they would have had to admit to themselves that what I lived every day was an enormous struggle, and so unspeakably painful, and they were cutting and running, abandoning me when I needed them more than I ever had.

For years I have searched for the reason I let my former psychiatrist lie and manipulate and force me into electroconvulsive therapy — I can finally use the word FORCE, for the very first time, and you don’t know what a triumph that is — and at last, I have found it.  It was the result of a long line of abandonments and betrayals and manipulations and lies by those I loved and trusted most.  I had been made to feel like less than nothing for so long that I had come to believe it as gospel truth, and who cared that the old me, the real me, had been firmly and unwaveringly against ECT with all of her being for three-and-a-half years?  She wasn’t standing guard any more, and my opinion didn’t count.  How could it, when I didn’t count as a person myself?

That’s something I get to carry with me always.  The permanent brain damage, and the post-traumatic stress I have from being anesthetized, having electrodes hooked up to my head, having a current, a shock pass through my brain to induce a seizure in me — sixteen times over.  I blamed myself for that, too.  Up until about an hour ago.

And still, I put up with bullshit and manipulation and being treated as less than a person by people I love, because it is all I know anymore.  Almost three years to the day of my first shock and seizure.

Now, three years and fifteen days after that first blast of electricity, arguably the lowest point of my life, it ends.  I’m done.  I’m worth more than that, a hell of a lot more.  I am often a hard person to have in your life, and that has always been so, it has very little to do with mental illness.  But I am the best friend you will ever have, if you are willing to accept me, all of me, and give back.

I am smart.

I am compassionate.

I am intelligent.

I am strong.

I am creative.

I am resilient.

I am supportive.

I am loving.

I am beautiful.

I am selfless.

I have a strong moral compass.

I am patient.

I am understanding.

I am honest.

I am accepting.

I am forgiving.

I am idealistic.

I am open-hearted.

I live my beliefs.

And I once again believe that I am worth it, that I am worth more, much more than I have been given in the past six years of my life.  From friends, from lovers, from family.

So I will live my life accordingly from this day on.

Because I can.

“I ain’t a soldier, but I’m here to take a stand. . .”

~ Jon Bon Jovi/Richie Sambora/Billy Falcon


© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Crazy People DO Get Sick, Too

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I should be asleep.  Something woke me up in the middle of the night, in spite of my exhaustion, and since I can’t figure out what specifically it is, we’ll say that it was this.

Yesterday, my dear friend Laura — who is a doctor – published this post, Crazy People Get Sick Too.  I know that links are thrown into posts all of the time, but you really need to go read this one to understand fully what I am about to write.  I am completely in earnest about this.  I have a few little things I can get done while you read it, so please, go ahead.  I will happily wait (though I suggest that you don’t read it while eating, otherwise you should be fine).

Have you read it now?  Truly?  Thank you for that.  I don’t think in the whole year-and-eight-months I have been writing this blog I have ever pushed, really insisted that you read a post, so you have to know that Laura’s post mattered to me a lot.

The part that really grabbed me and started the tears was this:

He firmly emphasized to his small crowd of followers that it was nothing short of criminal to instantly brand every human being who presented to the ER (or anyplace else) with a medication list that included psych drugs, or was delusional, or disoriented, or hallucinating, or even violent, as being a “crank,” and ignoring the possibility that this person might be physically ill, just like anyone else.

That med school professor certainly deserves a “Hell yes!”, but why did it start me crying?

The thing that I don’t want to write, because it makes it too real, the thing I have been avoiding up until now: my own doctor.

Long before anyone knew I was crazy

Long before anyone knew I was crazy

My doctor has been my doctor for more than half of my life.  That’s approximately 17 years, my loves.  I followed him from practice to practice to practice to practice because he really was that good.  He was an ER doc as well, so he was quick on his feet, and saw many things that regular primary care doctors aren’t familiar with.

I really fell for him, though, the first time he uttered those three little words:  ”I don’t know.”  You may or may not have noticed, but doctors don’t ever like to admit that one.  They will do everything possible not to have to cop to not knowing.  My trust in him became complete (relatively speaking) when he told me, “I don’t know, but I know someone who does.”  He always had a wonderful specialist up his sleeve.

Fast forward to now.  Every appointment I’ve made in the past eight months — probably longer, but I was too out of it to notice — I have gotten the same response.  It doesn’t matter what symptoms or complaints I have presented with, he has told me, “If you don’t feel better in a week, call me.”  And for a long time, I let it go at that.  I was frustrated, but I had put more trust in him than I had ever put in any doctor.

Finally, I got to the point that I wouldn’t even go see him.  Recently I was twice into the urgent care, that was where my mononucleosis was diagnosed.  I was miserably sick for more than a month before I made an appointment with my doctor.  Even then I only did it because I already had a diagnosis.

After I had been branded "crazy". Can you spot the difference?

After I had been branded “crazy”. Can you spot the difference?

Of course, at that point, I already knew what his diagnosis of me was: hypochondriasis.

I was crazy, so my word could no longer be taken.  In spite of the fact that in late Spring I told him I thought I was hypothyroid, he said I wasn’t, I insisted on a test, and lo and behold, I was right!  And then in Summer I told him I needed thyroid supplementation, and he told me I didn’t, and once again, I was right.  There are more stories like this, but I think you get my point.

But he was a good man, I believed.  If I just sat down and had a come to Jesus with him, I could break through all his pigeonholing of me and he would realize this wasn’t me being crazy, and that he had been treating me in an unfair way. . .

Well, I’m very sad to tell you that I couldn’t break through.  He is a good man, this I know, but he looks at me, and the word CRAZY emblazoned across my forehead is all that he can see.  He told me that “there are problems with the MonoSpot test”, and that I needed to get up and go out more, get back to kickboxing, when I was having trouble making it up the stairs.  Essentially, I didn’t have mono, I was just depressed.

Okay.  Okay doctor.

Please don’t get angry reading this.  I’m not angry.  I’m sad, and I’m a bit at sea.  I have to figure out how to end this relationship while my doctor and I both still love and respect each other.  Because I do love and respect him, in spite of things.  He’s a good man.  He was just raised in a time and school of thought where once crazy equals always crazy.  It may be hard to understand, but this really isn’t his fault.  It’s one of those things that is no one’s fault.  It just is.

And now I have to look for a new doctor for the first time in about 17 years.  It would have happened soon enough; my doctor is no spring chicken.  But I don’t relish the prospect.

I know, lots of people find new doctors all the time.  I’m lucky I had a good one for so many, many years.  But that’s what makes it even more difficult.  I’m not just changing doctors, I’m ending a relationship.  A relationship of more than a-decade-and-a-half, a relationship that I knew, no matter what else was going on in my life, I could always count on and trust.

You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.


© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Sometimes You Have To Stop With The Commenting. . .

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. . . and just write a damned post of your own, already.  This is something that often keeps my comments on other bloggers’ posts to a minimum, honestly.  A post will get me thinking more and more and I will try to respond in a comment and it will turn into such a long and involved soliloquy that I have to interrupt myself and say, ‘Ruby!  Five hundred words does not a comment make!  Write it up as a damned post, already!’

And so I will.

This post is brought to you by DeeDee, author of Disorderly Chickadee.  She has recently added her fiery and indomitable voice to A Canvas Of The Minds (if you don’t know what that is, then click!), and a question posed in her very first post, Where Do I Begin?, got me all excited to write.  The question in question was, “Where does my condition end, and I begin?”

I have a much more well-defined – yet still extremely nebulous – answer for this one than the majority of people carrying mental illness diagnoses, I suspect.  To the anxiety components, I have mentioned before (y’know, somewhere in the annals of this blog) that I come from a long line of bona fide worriers.  From my great-grandmother, to my grandfather, and on to my mother has passed this trembling torch.  None of them would ever be classed as having an anxiety disorder (I can speak with total certainty about my mother and my grandfather, to be fair I did not know my great-grandmother, but my mom did).  My mother has to take some Valium before flying, but that hardly counts.  At its very worst it would be a mild phobia, specifically pteromerhanophobia (good lord, now there’s a word).

For whatever reason, that torch exploded into an inferno in me.  But that isn’t something I want to focus on here.  I don’t embrace it.  Anxiety, in any form, I am learning to solidly kick the ass of.  Anxiety, even worry is never useful or productive.  Concern is something we should all have, but once it goes beyond that stage – pfft.

Let’s talk about bipolar disorder in the context of where it ends and I begin.

The first thing I will tell you is that I was here first.  BD came later, after I had myself quite well-established, thank you very much.  This is probably what has saved me time and again, by the way.  Having such an incredibly well-defined sense of myself since. . . I don’t know what age.  To hear my mom talk, and to rely on memories and other internal evidence, I was probably born with that.  Yes, I was so fortunate as to grow up in a house with a loving family who encouraged this sensibility in me, but there is something else, something inside of me that would still be there had I grown up otherwise.

In any case, manic-depression was an uninvited guest to the party that is me.

But maybe it thought it was invited.  Maybe it got confused.  Because the other thing that’s highly pertinent is that I have what is informally called “a bipolar-type personality.”  I don’t know how common this is in others who carry this diagnosis (or, for that matter, in those who don’t).  It certainly isn’t often heard of, or if it is, only in the context of confusion and what is me, wait, is this the disorder, I don’t know!  But I know.  And the people who have known me longest know.  And even my darling PCP knows that when I am not in an episode, when I am completely and utterly symptom-free (ahem, now), I am still wild and unpredictable and madly passionate by temperament.  Always have been, always will be.  That’s just Ruby.

Which is not to say I cannot differentiate between symptom and personality trait. Actually, it is meant to say the exact opposite.  I certainly can, and with rare precision.  But having this temperament inherently made it much more difficult for me to do so, and made my disordered ups and downs infinitely easier for me to disguise.

It did something else.  It fractured relationships after I chose to seek treatment.  Not so many, but some very important ones.  It fractured them because people who loved me, people who wanted most desperately and tried so very, very hard to understand it all – through years, exhausting years of me trying to ‘get well’ – simply couldn’t.  Because now, things that I was putting forth as symptoms. . .  Well those aren’t symptoms, they’re just Ruby being Ruby.  She’s always been like that.

When in fact I hadn’t, I had just hidden the transition, the massive tectonic shift inside of me so beautifully, and not sought for help until more than a decade-and-a-half after the fact.

Oh well, right?  It’s no one’s fault.  These people didn’t want to lose me in their lives any more than I wanted to lose them.  It took me a while, but I did come to understand that.

And I wouldn’t choose to be any other way, or to walk any other path than the one I have.

Moral of the story:  ”And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” ~ John Donne

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

A Big ‘Ol Apology

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I should have written this some time ago, it just didn’t click in my head until now.  I am so sorry to all of you who commented on my post I Put The HOT In Hot Mess.  I made comments back to you that, while true, came from a place of frustration and anger, and most of all poor judgment.  I was in a place where I expected that somehow my words could convey feelings beyond any I could ever remember feeling.  And I expected all of you, my lovelies, to do what I cannot even accomplish oftentimes, which is live in my head.

jillnottelten, Sharon, Shelly and most especially my dearest friend, Lulu, I am so, so sorry for repaying your kindness with sometimes hurtful words.  You showed me support and I showed you one of the few sides of myself I am ever ashamed of.  James, you didn’t get it quite so badly (because I had been pharmaceutically settled down some by then), but I still apologize, because I was short and frustrated.

I try always to respond to comments readers make, because they are kind to take the time to make them, and in this case show such unconditional support and belief.  But I realize now that silence is sometimes the better choice.

Moral of the story:  Sometimes the best thing to say is nothing at all (discretion being the better part of valor).

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

My Very Favorite Weapon

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You don’t have to be frightened and call the cops to report me for felony menacing.  Not even a misdemeanor.  In all my vast arsenal of trusted means of contention against any enemy combatant, it’s my capacity continual propensity to have said enemy underestimate me that I like best of all.  So I do what a girl can, under the particular circumstances, to distract and misdirect and generally confuse to the best of my ability.  The best of my ability – as you might guess – is pretty damned good, after all of these years.

Speaking of weaponry and misdirection, I made a page a few days ago, Beauty Snob.  I’ve had these pictures of my beauty products and my makeup collection for some time, and have been trying to figure out where to put them.  But I think I had a sixth sense when I made that page that I was going to have to marshal the troops for battle on Friday.  And I did.

Incidentally, if you are brave and look through all of those pictures, you can see that the possibilities are endless.  Depending upon my mood and the situation, I can be an ingenue, a sexpot, a firecracker, I can look completely natural, like your best friend or your guiltiest fantasy.  And that’s just going from the neck up.

When people who don’t know me (especially men, but women are guilty of it too) see me, they see a beautiful face, lovely clothing, and drop-dead shoes.  Unless I’m running out for a Starbucks in my pjs.  And so most of them are caught off guard – or more frequently floored - by what comes out of my mouth when I open it.  The insightful, probing questions, the extremely intelligent, specialty-focused terminology, the constant demand to know the method behind things – not the dumbed-down layman’s method, but the ‘You might confuse me with another specialist in your field (except I dress much better)’ method.  I wrote about the psychiatrist who acted as though I had to be hiding an advanced degree from some prestigious university in my back pocket, as opposed to me having fled dropped out of high school.  Yeah.  It’s like that.

Even my primary still treats me this way on occasion, to a lesser degree.  Facts in this world are, unfortunately, facts.  People are intellectual snobs and they are taken in by looks.  I don’t happen to consider this unfortunate, though, because it means things are “Advantage, Ruby” from the get-go.  And by the time folks realize their error in judgment (if they do), I have usually left with that for which I came.

I know we’re all hating on the neurologist who wrote my assessment right now, and grateful though I am for that support, I may not have painted the clearest picture of him.

He is a genuinely nice guy, a slightly shy guy, a very easily led and distracted guy.  I think it’s a combination of a genuine fascination with the brain – such that he was happy to just let mine do its thing and not redirect it, because he wanted to know where it would go (and I truly appreciate that novelty of perspective) – combined with the above factors.  Advantage, Ruby.

I had my follow-up consult with him Friday.  I know I said next week, but I realized with enough time to spare that I had the date wrong.  I wore my Gunmetal Primer Shadow, a dash of Venus eye color, and a Dark.  Black.  Eyeliner.  Many people reading this (especially the men) may be confused by that.  After all, black eyeliner is black eyeliner, right?  Ha!  It is to laugh!  There is black eyeliner and then there is BE Black Diamond.  That one has the most incredible effect on men, I don’t know why.  The last time I wore it was Whoring Myself For Charity - and “If you have to ask, you’ll never know.”  If you are a man and I am wearing Black Diamond, it’s because I’m there either to slaughter or seduce you.  In either case, be very afraid.

My poor neurologist never saw it coming, he never had a chance.  I was running him ’round in circles before we even made it to the consult room.  At one point during the appointment, and only one, he did actually stop me to say, “Wait, you’re throwing out all of my ideas and suggestions before I can even make them!” (as in I was throwing them out into the conversation, not dismissing them).

Poor guy.  He really did want to help me.  And as I briefly mentioned, it’s very nice and refreshing to have someone who is as completely fascinated by my brain and the way it works as I am, and who is not trying to keep me focused so he can move on to his next “case” (in his report he actually referred to me as “this interesting woman,” and I wasn’t insulted, I was complimented).

And I gained some insight from this process.  Not much, but some is better than none.  I could write about it here, but it gets highly technical.  It isn’t that I don’t think you all could grasp it, you could, but wasn’t the above account thoroughly more interesting?

Moral of the story:  There are all sorts of ways of being smart.  And I am.  ;P

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The Eagle Has Landed, And She Ain’t Real Happy About It Yet

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Okay, I guess I’m lucky in that traveling went as smoothly as traveling ever does.  My aunt (the one referenced in a previous post who drives me insane pretty much all of the time) and I were on the same connecting flight, but not sitting together, so that helped me to stay a little more relaxed.  As it happens, our connecting flight was coming in from Pensacola, and I really – as much as I wanted to see my grandfather and come back – really wanted that plane to magically fly me back from whence it had come.

My aunt and I had an hour talking before my mom’s flight got in, and it actually wasn’t so bad.  We chatted and I thought we were getting along alright, and the only unpleasant part was when she called my grandfather and had to Play Pretend as to why O.D. wasn’t coming.  More on that later.

No, actually, more on that now.

O.D. decided she couldn’t handle being here if I was, even for a couple of days, even with separate accommodations.  Whatever, I thought at the time I heard it, and just moved on.  Actually I told my mother that O.D. needed to get her shit together and come out for a long weekend on her own, because my grandfather needs to see her.

My family likes to Play Pretend with my grandfather on a lot of things.  I’m not as bad off as I am, as far as my mental differences is one.  Another is that the reason O.D. doesn’t come to visit is because she’s busy at work, or it was too last minute, or too expensive.

The thing that apparently only I can see is that – as much as I know that they’re trying to spare him the conflict and worry – my grandfather may be 92, but he isn’t senile.  I started to write a post after my last visit here, but the experience was still too raw and I deleted the little I had written (which I don’t ever do).  In any event, last visit my presence at his house was kind of hit-and-miss because of my moods, as it may be on this trip, we’ll see.  I’m not sure what my mom told him about my absences – or how much she has told him in general about what goes on in my life – but as we were leaving, I gave him a goodbye hug, and no one saw it save me, but a tear trickled out of his left eye as he let go and looked at me.

I have never, in all of my life, seen my grandfather cry.  I didn’t share this with anyone, not until now.

But the thing is. . .  Yes, my grandfather is 92.  Yes, he worries a great deal.  No, we don’t want to go into the goriest of details and give him more cause to worry than is necessary.  But he isn’t a child.  You cannot hide from him the fact that something big is going on, nor explain it away with silly cover stories.  He obviously knows there is much more going on with me than my mother lets on, and judging by yesterday, he also knows that the reason O.D. doesn’t come out to visit is because of something to do with our relationship (or lack of one).  You can see the sadness in his face, and you can hear the disappointment in his voice, if you bother to look or listen.  But I guess I’m the only one who does.  Or maybe just the only one who knows how.

I’m not playing the game any more.  He’s going to worry and be more upset if he imagines all of these scenarios about what could possibly be going on, and has no chance to process the reality and make his peace with it than he will if given that opportunity.  Now that’s not to say I’m going to drop the whole sordid affair solidly in his lap, but if I can’t go to his house because I’m depressed, I’m not going to hide behind a vague “not feeling well.”  And if he asks me about O.D., I will tell him straight out that I have no idea about her or her life, as I haven’t been a part of it in more than a year-and-a-half.

He may not like to hear it, and as I said, it may hurt, but he is a grown man and he is quite capable of dealing with the truth and he deserves the opportunity to do it on his own terms.  It is showing a complete lack of faith in him to treat him this way, and I will no longer be a party to it.  He has lived through more than my mother seems capable of conceiving, and he will live through this one, too.  I’m through with Playing Pretend.

Moral of the story:  Don’t underestimate the people whom you love and respect.  It’s an insult to them to think they “can’t handle it.”

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Two Roads To Walk Down And One Road To Choose

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So many people I know who deal with mental differences frequently discuss to concept of stigma.  The term has been used with such frequency, and me being a pain in the ass stickler for semantics, well certain things began to ring false to me.  Not deliberately or maliciously or even consciously false, but false nonetheless.

Stigma is very interesting, speaking strictly from a linguistic perspective.  Merriam-Webster calls it “: a mark of shame or discredit,” but also (and with equal weight) ”an identifying mark or characteristic; specifically : a specific diagnostic sign of a disease.”

So how do you choose to define it?  If you apply the second definition to your mental health diagnosis, it is completely, totally, and 100% true and accurate.  Unless you’re me, but I also refuse the label of my mental wiring being a disease or an illness.  Not coincidentally, I don’t feel stigmatized in my life.

It seems to me that the term stigma has turned into a convenient catch-all for many who carry a diagnosis and choose to call themselves “mentally ill.”  Individuals apply it to negative reactions, all and any they receive from someone who finds out they carry a mental health diagnosis.  Individuals use it as a shield when they become symptomatic and then, after the fact, are unable or unwilling to cop to things they may have done or said in the midst of their episodes.  Individuals use it as an excuse, a type of fear, The Big Bad Wolf that they are hiding from – stigma is what is preventing them from disclosing their struggle, otherwise they really would.  Individuals also use it to demonize behavior that is completely justified – professionals withholding strong prescription pain pills from a self-confessed addict, or anyone seeking to involuntarily hospitalize a severely depressed individual who has a history of repeated suicide attempts or self injury.

Easy for me to say, of course, because I don’t fall into these categories.  Don’t I?  And even if I don’t, I know and love numerous people who do.  Whether or not you believe it, it’s actually much easier for me to find flaws in and fault with and blame myself than it is someone I love or care for.  I screw up once, I should have known better and I beat myself up to within an inch of my life.  Someone I love screws up repeatedly, over a period of years, and every single time I calmly discuss with them the whys and how they got to that point and how they’re going to keep from getting there again.  There is no, “Too bad, hon, you fucked up, you deal with the consequences.”

Obviously that happened to be the application of stigma that lit a fire under my ass today.  As to the others:  You may have people who know your diagnosis reacting negatively to you because they’re having a bad day, because you’re behaving like a shit and you’ve provoked it, or a million other reasons.  It may be your diagnosis, but honey, let me tell you – more often than not, it isn’t.

As far as applying it to the things you may have done or said that hurt someone while you were symptomatic, yes, one would hope people would have enough human decency to understand that sometimes your behavior is beyond your control.  One would also hope you would have enough human decency to talk to people and explain and apologize when necessary.  Just because you did something that was out of your control, that’s in no way an excuse or a justification, and it doesn’t make it right.  Most of the time both of those hopes will be dashed unequivocally.  Just so you know.

As for feeling like stigma is The Big Bad Wolf in your life, someone I know said it before and said it better:

“One of the nice things about having voices across the spectrum, people who have roles in all walks of life – personal and professional – is that we can really get some different input and perspective on the question about being open with our mental health diagnoses.  Is it so wrong to hide it (sic) from people?  Does that silence ultimately contribute to misunderstanding and stigma?  If you want to be an advocate, are you in any position to be one if you will speak and discuss it anonymously online, but will not fight the fight and “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” in your daily life, amongst people whom you face every day?

“Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his life for his beliefs.  Would you?  What about for your children?  In case you haven’t heard, if you are diagnosed with a mental health issue the odds of your child having one increase quite considerably.  What will you say to your child when you tell them that depression is not anything they should be ashamed of, and they look at you and ask, “Then why did you hide it from people, Mom?” (from the post To Out Thyself Or Not To Out Thyself, by my good friend Always).

Moral of the story:  Choose your words carefully.  They might just come back to bite you in the ass.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Inspiration To Take On Yet Another Project (Of A Sort)

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Or, ‘I Know, I Do It To Myself’

Some interesting things happened while I wasn’t paying attention.  I got older and so did my babies.  I’m not really that old, I’m roughly around the third decade of life.  And my babies – well, they’re eight and eleven, which to me is hard to wrap my head around as I met them when they were days old.

In case you missed it, my babies are neither biologically nor legally my own.  I was a nanny, but they are the only kids I will ever have, and I love them every bit as much as I would had I birthed them.  Trust me on that one.  Also, because it’s relevant, they’re both girls.

Thing is, even though I don’t have them in my care full-time anymore, I still want to do everything I can to help them navigate the challenges life throws at them.  And I also think I have a very unique and special opportunity to play an important role in their lives, because we have a bond that is similar to parent/child in some ways, but now that they’re older it’s turned a lot more into a friendship.

Do you have any idea how immensely beneficial that could be?  For them to have an adult in their life who has known them forever, whom they trust and are comfortable talking to, who won’t judge or punish, who will keep their secrets, who will talk with them openly and honestly, and whom they might feel more comfortable discussing certain things with than they would their parents?

I am not trying to take over the role of parent or make Mom or Dad obsolete.  I hope that they both feel they can always turn to their parents, first and foremost.  But let’s face it, different adolescent and teenage girls have different comfort levels talking about certain things, there are different dynamics involved when you talk to a parent than someone you think of as a friend (albeit a much older one), and I am not so old as to have forgotten there were definitely things I was never comfortable mentioning to my parents.  That’s just how it goes.

The other part is that a general paradigm shift occurred as my girls and I got older.  I went from being the typical, bugged by teens as a group and their perceived lack of awareness of the world around them adult to a curious observer who was intrigued, and wanted to know what they thought and what they faced in their lives and what interested them and distressed them and made them happy.  I want to know about pressure and insecurity and role models and how they feel about the lives they live.  What is their relationship with their parents like?  How young do they really start to think seriously about sex, and when and why do they have it for the first time?  What about fashion and media and trends and everything?

But how do I go about finding this kind of stuff out?  I don’t want to get a degree in psychology and become a counselor, I just want to talk to teenagers, especially the female ones, in groups and one-on-one and figure out their world.  But you can’t just go up to a group of teen girls and introduce yourself and say, “Hey, tell me all about your most secret dreams and fears and hopes and desires.”  Creepy much?

I don’t know a single teenager.  I need an “in.”  I did some cursory surfing of blogs here on WordPress and didn’t find much.  So tell me, what do I do?  How do I go about this?  Does anyone reading this have any resources for me?  Do any of you have teenage or tween daughters (or nieces, or cousins, or anythings) that you could send this link to?  Are any of you who are reading this serendipitously teenage girls?

Help me out, for me and for my babies.  And if you are a parent or a counselor or anyone who could direct me towards groups for teenagers or even a single individual but want reassurances that I’m not a weird, creepy troll, email me at mywonderfulabnormalmind@gmail.com.  I will forgo certain rules I have on this blog as far as anonymity in private correspondence if you can help me to help be a resource to my girls.  Ask and I will answer.

Moral of the story:  Sometimes the best way to find help is to flat-out ask for it.  I know, novel concept.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Why Feminists Are Stupid

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I read something the other day, written by a neo-feminist (you will find that I like to preface many labels with “neo,” because the feminists of today are not the feminists of decades past, just as those with pretensions to being “hippies” nowadays seem to know nothing about freedom and non-conformity and Draft Cards).  At first I rolled my eyes and sighed, but it got me to thinking.

Neo-feminists belong to that very special group of individuals who, either through ignorance or stupidity or a rampant desire to shoot themselves in the foot by proclaiming they want to bring about change and then spouting the same words uttered by women for thousands of years (just in different languages) – well whatever their convoluted reasoning, they do their “cause” much more harm than good.  Mostly I think they have a deep-seated need to be able to identify with someone or something, to have an “ism.”

I don’t deny that inequality runs rampant among the sexes.  And it will until long after you and I are dead.  But these women are going about this whole thing entirely the wrong way.

If you want the same rights as a man, if you want to be completely equal, have gender reassignment surgery.  I happen to like the things that make me different, that make me female, that cause men to automatically assume I’m capable of less and therefore not much to be reckoned with.

And I don’t choose to shatter their notions (in most cases), either.  I tend to play into them, and use them to my advantage.  If a man thinks he’s smarter than you, he won’t ever realize that you’re manipulating him.  If a man thinks that because you’re gorgeous all you are is a sexual object, you have him by the balls (not too put to fine a point on it), and you can flutter your eyelashes and strategically cross your legs in a skirt and feed his ego and get anything from a free round of drinks to a puppy dog who will be grateful to do anything you ask of them (just don’t promise anything you aren’t willing to deliver, that’s called being something else entirely, and can be very dangerous).

If a man claims you’re being irrational, use gender-neutral logic to shoot him down.  If a man is being an asshole and will not lay off, turn on the tears and I promise he will either flee or stop (usually flee).

I’ll happily play into stereotypes on this one if they will get me what I’m after.

I love being a woman.  I love everything about it, from my beautiful body to my ability to knock someone down just by donning a pair of heels to my period (oh, there are occasions when I really, really love my period) to being able to create another human being inside my own body.  Just because I don’t intend to, doesn’t mean I don’t love the fact that I am able.  I also love my intelligence and my “feminine wiles.”

There is a great deal we still need to accomplish to be treated in the manner which we deserve (ahem, Walmart).  But running around being a man-hater is not going to get it done.

The fact is this, men and women are different.  And as far as I am concerned, ‘Vive la difference!’

Moral of the story:  You can trick more men with honey than you can with vinegar.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Effing PTSD, Effing Sleep, Effing Brain

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So I thought I had myself figured as far as sleep issues.  Usually it was pretty impossible, but once I finally passed out I would sleep extra-long so my mind could catch-up on shutdown time.  Occasionally I would have periods of sleeping 16+ hours a day.

My newest sleep problem has gone thus:  Woke up late morning Thursday.  Did not sleep at all Thursday night, Friday, Friday night, most of Saturday.  As in no naps, no drifting off, zip, zero, nada.  No mania or anything, just an almost complete brain shutdown by Saturday morning.

Late afternoon Saturday I got a bit of a reprieve.  I finally slept some, two-and-a-half hours, max.  Was up for a bit, then I got myself to the in between place, you know, drifting in and out but never going fully to sleep (thus in no way allowing my brain to recover).  Two hours tops there, not that it matters because it didn’t help at all.

I’m blaming the PTSD for this.  Lately, dramatic changes in behavior, reaction-sensitivity, and all things in any way tied to my mind (and often body) can be traced back to this, even if I can’t give an exact linear progression.  Also, I’ve been grinding my jaw horribly (bruxism), both while awake and asleep, which I have done while awake before, but never in my sleep.  That started with the latest post-traumatic stress episode.

My mind is completely blown (and not in a good way).  I have no idea what to do.  The only sleep meds left for me to try are barbiturates.  One doctor brought it up entirely on her own as a possible, my two regular docs (PCP and psych) had previously said no way, and I get why.  I may just try to get in touch with the one who suggested it.  I know the risks and certainly don’t want to develop TD (tardive dyskinesia, I’ll explain it some other time), but I am getting so desperate here.  I cannot understand why two doctors who know me and know bipolar well don’t view this with serious concern.  Even if I don’t go manic, sooner or later I will start hallucinating hard-core and progress to full-blown psychosis from lack of sleep.  In the meantime, my mind is pretty useless in general, and completely non-functional about the important stuff.

And this is really important stuff.

Also, I want to hunt down all of these assholes who publish anti-medication, anti-sleep med “articles” (none of whom I have found to be professionals – probably at anything) and who insist that you can manage everything “naturally” and that you just have to “reset your body’s natural rhythms” and make them spend a month with a completely unmedicated me. Let them see how insane and desperate I get, and how hard I struggle. Really I want to kick the shit out of them, but, well I was going to say seeing me in my deepest desperation would be more effective, but you can’t change the minds of ignorant reactionaries who are so used to listening only to themselves that they can’t hear or see anything else, no matter how true.

Moral of the story:  
“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;”
~  William Shakespeare, Hamlet

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.