Archive for December 3, 2009
>Taking a deep breath…
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It’s been a tough week for me. Emotions have run high and I have felt a lot of anxiety. It was a busy week and I tried to simplify it as much as possible and when I woke up this morning and realized I was depressed, I canceled my appointment with Social Services and they will send me a new one for next week. I hoped that by taking the pressure off this way, I would feel better, but as I got dressed to walk the dog, I realized that I was completely down and out and that I just didn’t see any way out of my mood. I considered calling my psychiatrist to discuss it and to maybe make an adjustment in my medications, but then I thought that I ought to try and search for the cause of my depression myself and as I walked the dog I thought about everything. I had become progressively worse over the week no matter what I tried to do to make it easier on myself and I realized that what I really was not looking forward to was this coming weekend with J. I had tried to tell myself that it was a golden lining on the dark clouds of my week, but I came to think that maybe it was a big dark cloud itself and that it was not a golden lining at all.
Once I admitted that to myself, the rest was easy and I thought of how I was looking at the weekend as a huge mountain that I had to scale and that the very thought of it made me feel tired and defeated before I had even started. I realized that I really didn’t want an intimate relationship with anyone, because of the emotional energy it required and that I did not have any spare energy to invest in it. I also realized that I liked my time on my own and didn’t really want to share it that intimately with another person and be “on” all the time. To be kind and thoughtful and amusing and attractive and lovely and all the things you are required to be when you are in a relationship with someone. I wanted to be the opposite and to be ornery and anti social.
So, here I was feeling totally depressed with that weekend looming over me and what to do? Cancel it, of course, but it would be hard to do, yet I could not let it happen feeling the way I did. How can you be totally depressed about having someone come see you and have that someone expect to have a nice weekend with you and you don’t want it to happen at all? Especially when that person has to travel 4 hours by train to get to you. I could not let it be. So I wrote a kind, but truthful email explaining myself and called the whole thing off and afterwards I felt a sense of relief. I do admit I feel bad for the person involved, but I feel that I have to honor my own feelings and that I can’t go though with something that feels so very wrong.
I don’t want to have an intimate relationship with anybody. I am not ready for it, nor do I know if I will ever be. I was such a mess this week that I even considered self damaging and I think that is going too far. I need to be alone. Just me by myself living my own life without the interference of an other person, however restricted it is. I don’t want someone to show up on a regular basis and have expectations of me. Someone for whom I will have to perform. To be thought good enough of. I don’t want that. I am good enough by myself.
So that’s the way it is. That’s me really simplifying my life. I’m taking the complications out of it and making it as smooth as it can be. I don’t want to be depressed and stressed out anymore.
Ciao,
Nora.
>Wednesday late at night.
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I just woke up from a long nap on the sofa. I slept for two and a half hours, so that is really more than a nap. That is a state of comatose existence. I woke up because the dog needed to go out. The poor dog who I took to the vet today and who turned out to be sick and got an antibiotic shot and antibiotic pills for 6 days. He’s got a bacterial infection and was running a fever. I just gave him his first pills hidden in a slice of salami and that worked well.
I slept well last night, except that I had to get up when the dog had to go out urgently. He was making a lot of noise so I would wake up. Still, he had an accident in the spare bedroom, but I went straight back to sleep after that and woke up to the alarm clock and very grumpily made myself a cup of coffee and sat on the sofa and tried to wake up. That took me about an hour of drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Then I quickly got up and got ready and walked the poor dog, who was in not such good shape and I resolved to take him to the vet at 1 pm.
First I had to go to my last Wednesday class and that was a little bit hard. Some of the people there I’m going to see again at the SPC, but others I may never see again and it was tough to say goodbye to them. You almost can’t allow yourself to get sentimental about it, no matter how much you like them, because you know you can’t form lasting attachments in that world. It’s rare if you do. In the end we all go our own way. I wanted to get closer to some of the people, but everybody has their little privacy wall up and keeps their private world separated from the clinical world. There’s one woman there I like so much and she is such a great artist and I really am going to miss seeing her, but she had her privacy wall up very much. I hope I run into her again. I hope she knows what a great artist she is. I think she doesn’t realize it, although I always let her know.
People had brought things to eat with them for by the coffee and I had a piece of apple cake, but there was much more, which I couldn’t eat, of course. There were even Negro kisses, which is a round wafer cookie, topped by a white mousse, covered in dark chocolate. I think we’re not supposed to call them Negro kisses anymore, because it’s not politically correct, but I don’t know what they are called now. Nothing derogatory was ever meant by it. It was just an innocent name, but alas…
I brought all my artwork home with me rolled up in a tube and I have to have a good look at it and decide if any of it is worth keeping. Some things may be worth framing, but not all of it. Some of it is just plain silliness and can go. I wasn’t always serious about what I was doing there. Some things were just experiments.
The shot of antibiotics seems to have done the dog a lot of good. He has done nothing but sleep all afternoon, except for the times I’ve let him out. He even ate most of a white bread sandwich. The vet said that he was probably feeling sick to his stomach and that is why his appetite was down. He is drinking a lot of water, so that is good. He is not dehydrating. When the dog is sick, it brings out all of my maternal feelings and I get very motherly. I’m overly concerned about him and watch him like a hawk. It’s just like having a sick child and only the best is good enough for him.
He just ate 150 grams of some very good dog food and he ate it with pleasure. I think that is good enough for now. It means he’s feeling better.
In the meantime, I’m sitting here enjoying the late hours of the night again. I don’t have to get up early in the morning. I have an appointment with Social Services at 1 pm and I’m not looking forward to it very much. They’ll want to know what I’m doing in my life and if I’m ready to be reintegrated. Obviously I’m not and I have to let them know that in a half hour appointment and that is causing me to feel some stress, although I have to say that my case manager there is a reasonable man and has been very kind in the past. I have to assume that the appointment will go well and all I have to do is tell the truth without embellishing. Still, I worry, because I don’t know how well I can represent my own case. I suppose a certain amount of worrying is normal, because it will help me prepare myself for it. There’s a fine line between worrying and feeling anxious, though. Feeling over anxious.
Right, I think I had better go to bed now. I will take my medicines and have something to eat and put my pajamas on.
I hope you all have a good night’s sleep and a good morning. It never did rain here like it was supposed to.
Ciao,
Nora
Another Splendid Day 