Journal From Sometime in March

After reading and typing into the computer my hospital journals, not to mention the day I’ve had, I just want to cry.  It would prolly be cathartic.  I don’t want to do this anymore.  And by this I mean being sick.  Plus, with Barb bringing up every mistake I’ve ever made, while other people may be able to just blame that on my illness, I can’t.  I feel guilty enough.  She has no right to judge me.

 

I just know how happy she is that I’m here (mindreading, I know).  She was right; I ended up back in placement.  Wrongfully, I believe, but yet I am here.  I just wish she wouldn’t have talked to me today.  It’s like picking at a scab:  It’s healing, but she just had to pull at it. 

I just want to fade away.  Imagining living 60 more years like this, going to placement every so often, is something I can’t (and don’t want to) do.  Thinking about it makes me want to make a bunch of bad decisions.  Not like hurt myself, but do something that makes me appreciate life.  It would be nice to do something that I really enjoy. 

But it doesn’t seem to matter what kind of decisions I make, they are the wrong ones.  Every move I make ends me up back in the same place.  I hope to make it a year this time before I have to go back to the hospital.  Perhaps the Latuda and Wellbutrin will last longer than that.  I wouldn’t bet my computer on it.  Being realistic and accepting the reality is what I’m working towards.  I’m trying to use my knowledge to help those around me to help me from falling too deep again soon.

It’s terrible how once I start thinking I can’t seem to stop.  Today the topic is loneliness.  I can’t seem to get by the logic of my illness.  My illness is a burden, period.  It’s a burden for me and makes me a burden for others.  That is pure common sense.  Men don’t want women with issues.  Nobody wants to date someone with so much baggage they would have to haul it with a semi truck.  I don’t want to date someone like that, how can I expect anyone else to be willing to do more heavy lifting for me than I want to do for them?  It’s not fair, and I know that.  When others tell me I’m not a burden and some guy would be lucky to have me they clearly haven’t thought the whole idea through.  I mean really, who would jump at the chance for dating someone who has got a past (and present) like mine?  People who are not right themselves, that’s who. 

While I have a tendency to take care of everyone, especially those close to me, I know that being in a relationship, even friendship, with someone I have to take care of is not good for me.  Sure, it seems fine while I’m healthy, but as soon as I start to slip (which I always do) they will expect me to continue playing mommy while I need to be taking care of myself.  Not only do I need to take care of myself when things get bad, I need someone who will be able to help me.  I especially don’t need them to cut-and-run while I have to face the music alone.  People think, “Oh, we’ll just put her in a nice place with people ‘like her’, that way we don’t have to lift a finger or even have to deal with the issue.”  The problem is that while I have a mental illness, which I do have in common with people in psych wards and RCFs, I am not like them.  Most of the people in these places are not high functioning enough to realize just how sick they really are.  From my perspective that helps them deal with their illness more easily.  Perhaps I’m just more perceptive? 

I try so hard to feed myself with information about what I’m dealing with, but I think it varies in whether or not it’s helpful or harmful.  I suppose most of it is both.  I have full realization (right now, at least) with what I’m dealing and what my future seems to hold.  I just wish someone (other than Nathan and Dr. Larsen) would have enough sense to understand.  Not only that, but I wish someone other than a fucking professional support would even try. 

But yet, even when someone is willing to do whatever I wish it is just too much.  It’s like I have to take care of those people too, just in a different way.  I have to coddle them when my illness gets too much for them and it’s like they’re scared to do anything.  God forbid they do something wrong, even if it is a trial-and-error game to find out the best thing to do.  Isn’t that in every relationship?  Everyone thinks they have to walk on eggshells around the fucking crazy girl.  Either they aren’t willing to be with someone who’s crazy or they think they can handle it, until that day…that one day when things get a little too real for them.

After doing some research, it seems that the all glorious Latuda is what is causing me have broken, restless sleep.  Living on two or three hours of nightmares a night is making me so emotional.  Not to mention how it has increased my pain.  Perhaps it’s the mixture of the pain and sleep deprivation that is causing me to start tearing up at the blink of an eye.  Not to mention adjusting to being in placement again.  I really don’t think I’ve accepted that this is going to be my life for awhile.  I put off calling Nathan, I think for that reason.  I am disappointed in myself for being here, and while I know Nathan never holds my illness against me, I didn’t want him to be disappointed too.

I’m starting to realize that not only am I disappointed that I have my illness, I also feel guilty.  I should write a book on guilt.  Being raised by a mother who parented by using sarcasm and constant guilt trips mixed with the guilt I feel over being a burden gives me the perfect credentials.  Maybe I should explain the burden part.  I bring it up so often (being a burden, feeling like a burden, other people treating me like a burden) that I’m pretty sure putting an explanation on the page would help me arrange my thoughts eloquently enough that I can share them, eventually.

I feel that I am a burden on mental health services, my family and friends, the hospital systems, and society.  I know what you’re thinking:  Mental health services are there for people with mental illness, so how could I be a burden to them?  Well, I feel that I should be able to manage my illness better, as I am fairly intelligent and self perceptive.  I have been fighting this battle since I was a child, thanks to my home environment and, as things progressed, my genes.  I should have a handle on it by now.  Yes, it’s true that the schizoaffective disorder is fairly new in my life in comparison to the depression and borderline personality disorder. 

The psychotic symptoms started about six years ago.  I really can’t be more specific on the timing than that. I don’t remember the first time I heard or saw anything out of the ordinary, or having some belief that didn’t align with reality.  I just remember that when I was nineteen I got drunk, smashed my phone, and confessed to hallucinations.  Not one of my finest moments, though it showed me who my real friends were (and still are today).  The depression was the beginning, however. 

As a child I always felt out of place and alone.  My parents who, after their divorce when I was ten years old, were both diagnosed with severe mental illness; my mother with bipolar disorder and my father with paranoid schizophrenia.  Abuse was rampant in my household.  I remember my mother telling me sometime after my move to a new town and school that I was not sick, that I was depressed.  That was shortly after their divorce.  At sixteen I overdosed on pills for the first time in an effort to commit suicide.  It was no surprise that shortly after I turned twenty I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, which one could say encompasses both of my parents’ illnesses.

It surprises me that throughout that history I failed to mention my brothers.  I am the middle child of three.  When I talk about being a burden to my family, it is them and some of my non-immediate family that I speak of.  My older brother had some problems with psychosis after he became addicted to meth (which he has been clean from since treatment).  To this day he takes no medication and, while he lives with some anxiety, is free from psychosis.  Though my older brother was supportive at the beginning of my illness, his support dropped off after awhile.  I know that I feel it’s because he’s disappointed in me for not being able to recover completely from my illness, as he did.  He helps me now when he’s forced to, like when he didn’t have a roommate for his two bedroom apartment and needed help paying rent.  Other than that, although he calls other family members regularly, he only gets ahold of me when it is advantageous for him.

As for my burden-ness with my younger brother, the well is much deeper.  My younger brother was diagnosed a couple years ago with schizoaffective disorder.  I feel I should be helping him through his problems with his illness, as I have the same diagnosis.  And I do help him some.  But my ability to help gets limited when I get sick.  It’s basically cut off completely.  I also feel that he has followed my example by overdosing on pills.  While he said it was not in attempt to kill himself, I still feel that he would not have had the idea to do such a thing, had I not repeatedly done it before him.