I am thinking about my relationship with my mental illness issues, after a conversation this morning in which my partner said that I was gone and he was waiting for the medication to bring me back.  I have been wanting to disappear, trying to sleep as much as possible, listening to books or watching tv to avoid thinking my own thoughts or feeling my own feelings.  I still don’t want to be me, here, now, but I’m aware of it - I can see how it tempers my perspective and I can negotiate the relationship between my mind and the world, a little better at least.

Politically, I’m tempted to reject the notion of mental illness as a rejection of the idea that there is a perfect mind or body and anyone different is a deviation.  If bodies and minds are all just equally valid points on a spectrum, then sick and well are just relative terms dictated by the circumstance, assigned to those who do or don’t fit the way they’re supposed to.  Maybe there’s biology that opposes this, but I don’t know if I’m concerned with a truth that relegates people to an inescapable position within a system they didn’t create.  At the same time, I think everyone deserves to feel whatever their version of good is - mine includes medicating myself to deal with a world I don’t like, rather than changing the world or unfixing my position in it.  

There is just so much pain in people, in me.  I don’t know which is more helpful, empowering, and ultimately useful: to act as if some people’s brains’ aren’t working quite right, or to act as if everyone’s brains’ would be just fine if they could truly be themselves and could be free to do them divorced from culture.  I don’t know anything, I don’t know how to be ok and I don’t know how to help the people around me.  I’m working on it, and I’m getting better, but I don’t know how to excise the scared part of me, or to teach her that she is safe and loved and strong, and she is me and sometimes she is all of me.

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Selfie self care

I am forcing myself to make plans, because otherwise I can’t imagine a future free from paralyzing fear and hopelessness and the sense that nothing is real and yet everything is a very real threat.

In a week I will have the results of my bloodwork.  I pray that there are answers in my blood.

In a week I will see my therapist, and I will be happy to tell him that I’m trying new medication and I’ll be nervous to tell him that I still haven’t joined the rock climbing gym or signed up to swim at the rec center or even taken the daily walks he asked me to.

In two weeks, I will have been off of Cymbalta and on Lexapro for long enough that the SNRI withdraw should be over.  By then, I might have my appetite back and I might sleep through the night and I might be able to focus enough to read a book or drive a car again. 

In three weeks I might try to take a week-long break from drinking, try to break my current habit of turning a beer with dinner into four or a glass of wine in the bath into a bottle.

In a month I’ll be almost 24 and I won’t be able to believe that I’m still dealing with this and the fear that I’ll never live unaffected, without the voice of my old pain and fear whispering all day to be cautious and careful and not to risk it, will sit in the pit of my stomach like it does every day.

astronomy-to-zoology:

Eastern Grass Shrimp (Palaemonetes paludosus)

Also known as the ghost or glass shrimp, the eastern grass shrimp is a species of freshwater glass shrimp native to the Appalachian Mountains, Louisiana, and parts of Texas and California. Eastern grass shrimp usually inhabit slow moving freshwater streams, ponds and lakes where they feed on algae, plants and small insects nocturnally.Their transparency acts as near perfect camouflage as predators can see right through them, they support this by manipulating their pigment granules to match closely with their background. Eastern grass shrimp have also become fairly popular in the aquarium trade as well.

Phylogeny

Animalia-Arthropoda-Crustacea-Malacostraca-Decapoda-Caridea-Palaemonidae-Palaemonetes-paludosus

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I’m going back on my medicine as soon as possible, I’ve been a monster without it.  I told my partner yesterday that it feels like he’s not supporting me and I don’t know if that’s how I really feel.  I’m angry at everyone, everything is a chore, I can’t tell which feelings are valid and which aren’t.  I wish I could see the situation as it is, untainted, and know, really, that I am being supported and cared for.  Halfway through a bottle of gin, I wish that I could die or go back in time or skip forward or otherwise not be me, here, now.  And, still drunk the next morning, I wish I could take back some things I said and I wish I could trust myself to learn from this.  

Somebody should start a blog about potential movie trigger warnings

fuckyeahfeminists:

callingoutbigotry:

gabbiegabstoomuch:

That reviews movies in a way that can help trauma victims navigate which movies they can watch without anxiety.

Like if there’s a domestic violence scene or casual rape jokes or dehumanizing racist comments. Etc. etc. Stuff that won’t be mentioned in the reviews.

It can take requests and submissions and what not.

I might start the blog, actually. I think it might be a good resource.

Someone plz make this blog

word.

check out http://www.movietriggers.com/ - my partner made it and it’s good but underused.  signal boostin could help us add a lot of useful content, plz consider.

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