For my Abnormal Psychology class, I'm reading a memoir of a woman with bipolar disorder. She's also a renowned psychiatrist. Her book is very sterile; I empathize with her, but mostly just on a cognitive level. Ironically, a book about roller coaster emotions is rather unemotive. So I want to share with you a glimpse of major depression. I hope that by the end, you'll be able to *feel* it as well as just know it.
Allow me to set the mood. Turn out all the lights in your bedroom and put a heavy blanket or drapes over the windows. Only whispers of light should enter the room. Crawl into bed and pull the blanket up to your chin. Curl up into fetal position. Pick a spot on the wall, and stare at it. You're really too lazy to look away anyway. It's about 9:30 in the morning, a lazy Saturday or Sunday. Or maybe it's a Tuesday and you decided that you simply cannot pull yourself out of bed to go to work or class. So you stare at your place on the wall. You're extremely thirsty, and decide to get out of bed for a glass of juice, but then your mind starts going through the motions of what you'll need to do: it's exhausting. In your mind, you pull back the covers and brace yourself against the cool air rushing onto your skin (your apartment is just warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing, but not much more.) Then you have to uncurl yourself and slide your legs out of bed. Already you feel out of breath from the exertion, and here comes the worst part. You will have to pull your head from the indentation on your pillow and actually sit upright. There's a slight melancholic tugging on your heart; you want a drink, but are having second thoughts whether it's worth the effort. Stand up and immediately start walking before, in one motion, you lose momentum and fall back into the respite of fetal position under the comforter. You drag your legs, which feel more like fins, across the carpet. It's only about 10 feet from your bed to the kitchen, but the distance seems to stretch indefinitely. You pour the juice, and as you sip, are vaguely aware of the smell of trash you haven't taken out in close to two weeks. Your former pristine place has now become the host of large amounts of decaying matter and possibly biological weapons grade bacteria growing on the counter tops. You can't even remember when the last time was you did the dishes; but you see a slight film on the water of the bowls sitting in the sink. The cold, dark apartment with its musty smells of rot only depresses you further (is that possible?) and you seek refuge in the only place you know. Before you can think it, you're back under the covers.
Of course, none of this really happens. Remember, this is all in your mind--you figuring out the steps required to attain this much coveted glass of juice. Your tongue is sticking to the sides of your mouth. You contemplate calling your mother, who lives 20 minutes away, to come over with the spare key and pouring the juice for you. Sadly, it's not the inconvenience to her that stops you from calling, but the fact that she just had major back surgery and can, in fact, barely walk for more than 3 minutes at a time, much less climb stairs, drive, or completely dress herself. So you set in bed, staring at the wall. Another thought comes to you: maybe you don't really want juice anyway. You want a latte. In your mind, you fast forward past the getting out of bed, putting a coat over your pajamas, walking down the two flights of stairs and across the quarter mile of parking lot to your car, to where you actually pull into a parking spot at the local coffee shop. You envision yourself standing in line, your armpits slightly moist and forcing your to remember when you last took a shower. You apologize silently to the people around you for your surely offensive smell and just pray that the baristas are quick with making your beverage. In your mind, it's your turn to tell the cashier your order. You look into her earnest, cheerful eyes and open your mouth to speak. You choke on the words. In bed, your eyes well up with tears, which quickly begin to spill over onto your pillow already warm and slightly damp with sweat. You're embarrassed and you pull the covers over your head to hide your shame from the shadows of your room. In the dark, you cry freely for a minute when, just as inexplicably as they begin, the tears stop. Deep breath.
You wonder what time it is, but then, it doesn't really matter. Whatever you're supposed to be doing, you're not. Whomever you're supposed to be meeting will be neglected. Where ever you're supposed to be, you're not going to. You've given yourself freedom to hide in your cave indefinitely. Your face itches. When did you last wash it? Are you breaking out? Who cares, no one will see you. Now you have to go to the bathroom. How could you be so dehydrated and still have to pee, you ask yourself. You hold it. The warmth and carbon dioxide from your breath under the covers is unbearable, and you peek your eyes and nose out for not fresh, but slightly less stale, air. While you've moved this much, you decide that maybe you should just go to the bathroom and get it over with. This time, you actually get out of bed for real and try not to think about how cool the apartment is. You walk into the bathroom and turn on the lights. Only one of the eight lightbulbs is actually screwed all the way in, allowing for the least amount of light possible. You still look away from the brightness. Pee, and done. There's the scale. You step on and realize you've lost a pound since yesterday morning. For a fleeting moment, you're happy to have lost weight, but then you realize that you're not actually losing weight so much as wasting away. You're not getting thinner, you're decaying into nothing. Your eyes sting with tears again, and the choking feeling returns to your throat.
Back in bed, you stare at your favorite place on the wall. This eternity has actually only lasted about 8 minutes.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
I miss my binder
I might be one of the only post-op FTMs to say this (grrr, I hate the label "FTM", but at least you know what I'm talking about) anyway, I miss my binder.
Don't misread. I don't miss having to bind when there was something to bind. Rather, I miss that deep pressure, that security, I felt when binding. I think it's the same sensation that many children with autism experience and appreciate when they're feeling out of sorts. I didn't realize that I missed it until a few days ago. I found my binder in my undershirt drawer (yes, my underwears are separated by briefs/boxers, undershirts, and socks!) and was wondering if it still fit and what it would feel like to wear it now. Then this morning I was rebandaging up my tattoo (oh yeah, so, for anyone who didn't know, my top surgery, while it healed very fast and painlessly, also left a hideous scar more pronounced than many I've seen. So I got a tribal tattoo over it to hide most of the horror--the last part was done last night.) Hok, so I was rebandaging my tattoo and since the towel covers the left side of my chest, tiny bandages wouldn't have made sense to hold it, I just rolled some painting tape (relatively low adhesion) over the entire thing. It's holding pretty well--it isn't too tight or too loose. Anyway, I noticed that it's applying pressure to my chest in the same way the binder used to. And I also noticed that the pressure creates a very secure feeling. If I wasn't so squeamish about people touching me, I'd go for a deep tissue massage...
Don't misread. I don't miss having to bind when there was something to bind. Rather, I miss that deep pressure, that security, I felt when binding. I think it's the same sensation that many children with autism experience and appreciate when they're feeling out of sorts. I didn't realize that I missed it until a few days ago. I found my binder in my undershirt drawer (yes, my underwears are separated by briefs/boxers, undershirts, and socks!) and was wondering if it still fit and what it would feel like to wear it now. Then this morning I was rebandaging up my tattoo (oh yeah, so, for anyone who didn't know, my top surgery, while it healed very fast and painlessly, also left a hideous scar more pronounced than many I've seen. So I got a tribal tattoo over it to hide most of the horror--the last part was done last night.) Hok, so I was rebandaging my tattoo and since the towel covers the left side of my chest, tiny bandages wouldn't have made sense to hold it, I just rolled some painting tape (relatively low adhesion) over the entire thing. It's holding pretty well--it isn't too tight or too loose. Anyway, I noticed that it's applying pressure to my chest in the same way the binder used to. And I also noticed that the pressure creates a very secure feeling. If I wasn't so squeamish about people touching me, I'd go for a deep tissue massage...
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Another dream (maybe I should just start numbering them?)
I had this dream two nights ago (okay, so not last night or the night before, but the night before *that*.)
Because this dream was further back, my memory has a few more gaps. Well, my accessible memory does. Anyway, I was a mentor or a Big Brother or something in my dream, and I was working with various children. Some of the kids were from where I work, but others were from out in the community. Anyway, in the first part of my dream, I was working with two incredibly overweight women who would just sit in chairs and eat and gossip, even though they were supposed to be helping me watch all these kids. (Please don't hate me for judging these women... they were in my dream and I don't think my conscious self would ever intentionally criticize or judge a woman's weight or eating habits. I know how hard it is...) For some reason, we were watching all of them at my parents house (I have no clue where my parents were) and the two women were sitting in lawn chairs on the deck. The kids were just running around and I was really worried about any of them getting lost since we have a dense wood behind our house. So I'm running upstairs, downstairs, inside, outside, all around trying to keep the kids happy and occupied. Fortunately, the weather is beautiful (summertime!) outside.
I guess something went wrong, despite my efforts. I was back in Manassas near my own apartment and I had just bought a kid an ice cream or something before I was to take them back to their parents. The kid seemed really happy and I didn't say/do anything wrong... but then he (or she?) suddenly turns and shoots me in the stomach. I fell to the ground and the kid ran away. I knew I wouldn't die, but as I lay there curled up in a ball, my first thought was covering up the wound so no one could see it. Now, this isn't really easy to do when you're just wearing a t-shirt and jeans cause it's summertime (as opposed to the billion of layers in the winter) but I think I managed for a little bit. I walked some more, past a group of youngish boys playing near the road. As I passed, one of them shot me too, but this time in the chest. Both core shots (think target practice outlines) and the loss of blood should have killed me (maybe the caliber was too small?) but it didn't. I wasn't even particularly afraid of dying. I was just embarassed of being shot and didn't want anyone to know about it. I ran the rest of the way home, clutching my chest and stomach so no one would see me bleeding to death.
Because this dream was further back, my memory has a few more gaps. Well, my accessible memory does. Anyway, I was a mentor or a Big Brother or something in my dream, and I was working with various children. Some of the kids were from where I work, but others were from out in the community. Anyway, in the first part of my dream, I was working with two incredibly overweight women who would just sit in chairs and eat and gossip, even though they were supposed to be helping me watch all these kids. (Please don't hate me for judging these women... they were in my dream and I don't think my conscious self would ever intentionally criticize or judge a woman's weight or eating habits. I know how hard it is...) For some reason, we were watching all of them at my parents house (I have no clue where my parents were) and the two women were sitting in lawn chairs on the deck. The kids were just running around and I was really worried about any of them getting lost since we have a dense wood behind our house. So I'm running upstairs, downstairs, inside, outside, all around trying to keep the kids happy and occupied. Fortunately, the weather is beautiful (summertime!) outside.
I guess something went wrong, despite my efforts. I was back in Manassas near my own apartment and I had just bought a kid an ice cream or something before I was to take them back to their parents. The kid seemed really happy and I didn't say/do anything wrong... but then he (or she?) suddenly turns and shoots me in the stomach. I fell to the ground and the kid ran away. I knew I wouldn't die, but as I lay there curled up in a ball, my first thought was covering up the wound so no one could see it. Now, this isn't really easy to do when you're just wearing a t-shirt and jeans cause it's summertime (as opposed to the billion of layers in the winter) but I think I managed for a little bit. I walked some more, past a group of youngish boys playing near the road. As I passed, one of them shot me too, but this time in the chest. Both core shots (think target practice outlines) and the loss of blood should have killed me (maybe the caliber was too small?) but it didn't. I wasn't even particularly afraid of dying. I was just embarassed of being shot and didn't want anyone to know about it. I ran the rest of the way home, clutching my chest and stomach so no one would see me bleeding to death.
Dreams again
I wrote the last post this morning about a dream I had last night. This post is about a dream I had the night before.
I don't typically dream that I'm floating anywhere (some people do, but in a more abstract way. My dreams tend to be very detailed and realistic.) Anyway, in this dream, I'm in the ocean. The water is very blue and clear and quiet. I'm probably about 15-20 feet down... deep enough that it's starting to get dark, but not so deep that I can't still see the sun rays refracting through the surface. I'm swimming around and I look to my left and I see my friend (whose name I will leave out for her sake) swimming next to me. I didn't notice at first, but come to realize that she is completely naked. (Think art, not eroticism, please.) She is completely genderless--her body is not male or female (though I keep using the female pronoun because, in real life, she's still a girl.) She has an intensely serious expression on her face and I get the idea that there's something I'm supposed to know, but I don't. I start to get really scared... not because I'm afraid of drowning, but because of the darkness that so closely surrounds me and that there's something I'm meant to know but I can't understand it. I feel afraid and also a bit like a failure for not knowing.
I told my friend (the one from this dream) about it and she gave a few possible meanings, but mostly she asked me what I felt. I told her that I mostly felt afraid and ashamed. Then she asked me what I looked like. To my surprise, I didn't know. I hadn't thought of it, but in my dream, I didn't have a gender either. But more than that, I didn't have a race, ethnicity, religion, height, weight, or maybe even a physical body. Mostly, I didn't have an identity. I was just an existence, swimming in this ocean near where the darkness begins, feeling afraid and ashamed of something I didn't know.
I don't typically dream that I'm floating anywhere (some people do, but in a more abstract way. My dreams tend to be very detailed and realistic.) Anyway, in this dream, I'm in the ocean. The water is very blue and clear and quiet. I'm probably about 15-20 feet down... deep enough that it's starting to get dark, but not so deep that I can't still see the sun rays refracting through the surface. I'm swimming around and I look to my left and I see my friend (whose name I will leave out for her sake) swimming next to me. I didn't notice at first, but come to realize that she is completely naked. (Think art, not eroticism, please.) She is completely genderless--her body is not male or female (though I keep using the female pronoun because, in real life, she's still a girl.) She has an intensely serious expression on her face and I get the idea that there's something I'm supposed to know, but I don't. I start to get really scared... not because I'm afraid of drowning, but because of the darkness that so closely surrounds me and that there's something I'm meant to know but I can't understand it. I feel afraid and also a bit like a failure for not knowing.
I told my friend (the one from this dream) about it and she gave a few possible meanings, but mostly she asked me what I felt. I told her that I mostly felt afraid and ashamed. Then she asked me what I looked like. To my surprise, I didn't know. I hadn't thought of it, but in my dream, I didn't have a gender either. But more than that, I didn't have a race, ethnicity, religion, height, weight, or maybe even a physical body. Mostly, I didn't have an identity. I was just an existence, swimming in this ocean near where the darkness begins, feeling afraid and ashamed of something I didn't know.
Dreams
I haven't posted in a while, and I'm sorry to just sorta jump into a topic without explaining my prolonged absence. Really, I've just been too lazy to write. Lazy and uninspiration are a lethal combination for the scribically inclined. (Scribically? Did I make that up? That's fucken awesome...)
I am somewhere between narcolepsy and insomnia right now. I sleep, but only because I drug myself into doing so, and I wake up frequently in the night due to a combination of highly psychologically intense, mellow, or straight up scary-as-shit nightmares (those are usually the times when I've stopped breathing while sleeping... yes, sleep apnea. No, I haven't been to a doc about it. Give me $25 copay and I'll get back to you.)
Last night I had a dream that I was in an academic building, and whenever the professor of the classroom I happened to be in said something disturbing, I would get up (like a ghost) and wander the halls and stairs of the school. I say like I ghost because, while I don't remember being able to go through walls, I had an inexplicable feeling of being invisible... and probably intangible. Finally, I wandered to the mental health clinic because one professor had implied that I should go. Again, my physical (conscious) body wanted nothing to do with this, so it was up to ghost body (or, perhaps another personality?) to take me there. The mental health clinic was in the basement of the building. I tried to be as discreet as possible when entering; fortunately, people politely did NOT stare at me and play Guess-the-Psychosis with me when I stood at the reception desk getting the forms I needed. I sat down near a few guys (because I just absolutely DO NOT sit next to females in an otherwise empty room anymore.) I noticed that the guys I was sitting next to were actually young, emotionally disturbed boys between the ages of 14 and 22. Chronologically they were much younger than me, but I'm not sure that that's relevant since physically (and probably emotionally/psychologically) we probably weren't that far apart. I think that the reason these boys were there wasn't so much that they needed help (they did) but because they needed to learn to ask for help... to identify when areas of their life were impaired by their mental health and to be able to do something about it before they hurt themselves or others. (Shit... and I hadn't even read my psychology book in weeks!) Then, there was one guy who looked about my age (24) who was apparently leading this sharing session. I hadn't realized that actually all the boys of this group had to read what they were feeling and experiencing to the group. Everyone was scared about being judged by the other boys, but somehow, they all knew this would happen so they just sucked it up and were honest (I think) with the group about what was going on with them. I didn't share mine because, like with the professors before, I turned back into a ghost and listened to, but did not interact with, the group for a few minutes. Then I started to leave. But one of the doctors or nurses yelled for me to come. How did she see me?!? I pretended not to hear, but she told me that I had manic depression and, if I didn't stay and get help, that it would morph into the most severe kind of depression (implied: the kind were the only 'recovery' is usually suicide...) Damn.
I woke up as I pushed open the doorway to the stairs... ignoring the nurse's warnings.
I am somewhere between narcolepsy and insomnia right now. I sleep, but only because I drug myself into doing so, and I wake up frequently in the night due to a combination of highly psychologically intense, mellow, or straight up scary-as-shit nightmares (those are usually the times when I've stopped breathing while sleeping... yes, sleep apnea. No, I haven't been to a doc about it. Give me $25 copay and I'll get back to you.)
Last night I had a dream that I was in an academic building, and whenever the professor of the classroom I happened to be in said something disturbing, I would get up (like a ghost) and wander the halls and stairs of the school. I say like I ghost because, while I don't remember being able to go through walls, I had an inexplicable feeling of being invisible... and probably intangible. Finally, I wandered to the mental health clinic because one professor had implied that I should go. Again, my physical (conscious) body wanted nothing to do with this, so it was up to ghost body (or, perhaps another personality?) to take me there. The mental health clinic was in the basement of the building. I tried to be as discreet as possible when entering; fortunately, people politely did NOT stare at me and play Guess-the-Psychosis with me when I stood at the reception desk getting the forms I needed. I sat down near a few guys (because I just absolutely DO NOT sit next to females in an otherwise empty room anymore.) I noticed that the guys I was sitting next to were actually young, emotionally disturbed boys between the ages of 14 and 22. Chronologically they were much younger than me, but I'm not sure that that's relevant since physically (and probably emotionally/psychologically) we probably weren't that far apart. I think that the reason these boys were there wasn't so much that they needed help (they did) but because they needed to learn to ask for help... to identify when areas of their life were impaired by their mental health and to be able to do something about it before they hurt themselves or others. (Shit... and I hadn't even read my psychology book in weeks!) Then, there was one guy who looked about my age (24) who was apparently leading this sharing session. I hadn't realized that actually all the boys of this group had to read what they were feeling and experiencing to the group. Everyone was scared about being judged by the other boys, but somehow, they all knew this would happen so they just sucked it up and were honest (I think) with the group about what was going on with them. I didn't share mine because, like with the professors before, I turned back into a ghost and listened to, but did not interact with, the group for a few minutes. Then I started to leave. But one of the doctors or nurses yelled for me to come. How did she see me?!? I pretended not to hear, but she told me that I had manic depression and, if I didn't stay and get help, that it would morph into the most severe kind of depression (implied: the kind were the only 'recovery' is usually suicide...) Damn.
I woke up as I pushed open the doorway to the stairs... ignoring the nurse's warnings.
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