Things I Love Thursday

Being the person people confide in - Let me tell you, it has been a truly awful week for several of the people I love and, as per usual, most of them are nowhere near where I can get at them and hug them until they feel better. But they tell me how they feel and I think I'm pretty good at being that person. I'm also incredibly grateful that I'm feeling enough in control of my own mental health to be able to be there for my loved ones.
Restaurant week - I have a reservation at my favorite Chicago restaurant on Sunday and I am going with two of the loveliest friends a person could ask for and I cannot wait to dive into their ridiculously tasty food at a veritable steal compared to the usual prices I pay there.
Being heard - I've had this ongoing saga at work for several years now. Positions being eliminated or reclassified and a whole lot of extra work getting put on me. Along with disrespectful superiors who were lazy or flat out verbally abusive. My former dean quite often treated me like a Freudian hysterical housewife who just needed to take a nap and get over it but also promised me multiple times over a three year period that he was working toward reclassifying my position to get me a promotion for all of the extra work I was doing. Tuesday afternoon I met with an HR representative and, for the first time in the past six and a half years, I felt like someone finally heard what I was saying and validated my feelings. They're going to meet with my supervisor to discuss who communication style to hopefully alleviate some of the constant attack I've felt like I've been under since she started. I also found out that my former dean never even told HR about all of the extra work I was doing or did anything to attempt to get me a promotion. They're going to be reviewing this new information and getting back to me soon.
My new gazelle - Not the animal, that elliptical you've seen on infomercials. It's no surprise to anyone that I've been struggling with weight the past few years and last spring topped out at the heaviest I have ever been. Even with a gym membership I couldn't manage because my depression and social anxiety were so bad that I couldn't get myself to walk in the doors where other people I didn't know were. So this week I bought myself an elliptical. It's so much easier to work out when I don't have to worry about all of the other hassles involved in leaving the house. I can put on the news while my dog eats dinner and get in a half hour and it keeps me motivated for the rest of the night. Here's hoping it's a plan I can stick to and improve upon as I continue to feel better.
Sergeant Awesome - It's been a rough time since he left for his last few months in Germany and he's been getting kicked while he's down a lot. I know he's going to come through the other side even better than before but he can always use a little extra encouragement and love (send it if you know him). Just a few more months and he will be back in the states and headed to further greatness.

Things I Love Thursday

I find it very necessary to revive Things I Love Thursdays. When looking back at the past year and all of the crap I've been dealing with, the one huge difference was a very obvious lack of writing. Very important to the processing of making steps forward. So here we go, what I love this week:

• being cymbalta free - Let me tell you, cymbalta withdrawal is no joke, it is some seriously scary shit and I hope to never have to go through anything like that again. The physical symptoms are gone and it's finally starting to feel like my mental state may be stabilizing. For the first time in a very long time, I don't feel like the entire world is a pool of jello that I'm trying to walk through.
• grad aps out the door - I'm still waiting on some procrastinators that haven't sent in their letters of recommendation but everything that I had control over is done and sent. There are still interviews and financial aid and logistics and moving to deal with but, for the moment, I am in a lull where I can just wait, breathe, and enjoy my free time.
• Bernie Sanders - My little socialist heart flutters wildly for the senator from Vermont and I will fight anyone who puts him down in my presence. This guy gets it and really wants to make some serious changes to how we treat the people at the bottom of the ladder. If everyone really gets their asses out there and votes in the primaries and again in November, I have no doubt he could kick ass and take names.
• Friends - Don't get me wrong, I love my friends, but in this case I'm talking about the TV show. I've been so emotionally drained that having something that just makes me laugh and doesn't require me to be super emotionally involved is a real relief.
• Saturday classes - Yeah, they completely suck up a large part of my weekend but they're only 5 weeks! This week will be my third week and I'll be taking the midterm and over halfway through the course by the time I leave to go to a character information session for TBD.
• my mom - There is no possible way I would be able to get through any of the incredible amount of shit of the past year without my mom. And this past weekend she came up to stay, brought groceries and wine, made me tacos and pancakes and eggs and panko crusted chicken. She took me to Ikea and bought me a stuffed pig just because I thought my stuffed frog needed a companion. She dragged me through store after store at Woodfield Mall even though I was so depressed I could barely walk because she was determined to get me some pants that I felt comfortable and pretty in after all of the weight gain I've been struggling with. Turns out she got me two, a sweater dress, and a sweater. I think she kind of loves me.
• having the tough talks - I've had a lot lately and it's not something that comes naturally to me. I'm a listener by nature and being an advocate for myself has always sent me running in the other direction to avoid confrontation. I have panic attacks, I stutter, and it's really difficult to keep my thoughts straight. But I stood up for my mental health, my career, and myself to multiple people in the past two weeks. It's far from done and there are still many tough talks and much hard work to be done but I'm moving in the right direction.
• a realization - Speaking of my little socialist heart. I've been having conversations lately about social advocacy and writing personal statements for grad school and discussing women's rights and worker's rights and human's rights A LOT. Yesterday, I was telling the soldier about how Emma Goldman is my idol and how the thing the world really needs right now is another her. And then I realized, my career goals are sending me in the right direction to shake things up and be the crazy, socialist, humanist woman I've always looked up to.

Special shout outs to Resa, Elise, Michael, Adam, and Elliott who listened to a lot of my crap over the past two weeks and were supportive and loving and everything I needed.

the lies your mind tells you

Let me tell you, the brain can make you believe some pretty ugly things about yourself. It tells you you're not pretty enough, not thin enough, not interesting enough. So when someone else tells you you don't work hard enough, you have to believe them because you've been telling yourself that for so long. And it gets even worse when you walk into a dressing room and stand in front of that awful full length mirror and try on endless articles of clothing that remind you just how much work you still have to do. By the time my mom and I left the mall yesterday, even though I'd walked out with two pairs of pants, a sweater dress, and a sweater, I pretty much wanted to walk into traffic. Here I am in the middle of the lowest low I have had in several years. While the physical symptoms of withdrawal are gone and the panic attacks and anxiety have gone way down, I still feel like I might as well be taking sugar pills for all of the good it's doing my depression. I have a boss that constantly treats me like an idiot, a liar, and incompetent even though I almost never get a lunch break, I've worked hundreds of hours of overtime I never got paid for, I have been covering work from several other positions that have either changed or disappeared without a promotion, and I am literally the only person who knows how to perform a great number of our office tasks. I am struggling through some really difficult weight issues and extreme loathing of my body and it's current capabilities or lack their of. I haven't spoken to my father since Labor Day weekend and I really don't know if I ever will again. It's been a horrid shit storm of a year and every time I tell myself "It can't get any worse", I get a new nightmare stacked on my plate. I'm exhausted and I'm angry. I can barely look at facebook these days because I see so many happy posts and I wonder if I will ever get a break from the awful. And still, through all of that, even though some of these problems would be big enough to shut down even the strongest of humans, I keep going. I clean the house, I walk the dog, I go to work and class and do homework and make dinner and pay the bills and owned the GRE and managed to complete three applications for grad school. Because no one else is going to do it. I'm tired and in desperate need of a win and still I'll get up at 5am and walk the dog and make coffee and eat breakfast and shower and go to work and do all of the things that have to be done because no one else is here to help and the truth is I wouldn't let them even if they offered. So the things that my mind tells me are lies, I just gave myself all of that proof that I'm no slacker. Even so, the next time I see myself in a mirror or am left alone with my thoughts too long, I still can't make myself believe that any of it really makes a difference and that I will always be not good enough.

the benefit of the doubt

My favorite bible verse has always been 1 Peter 4:8, "Above all let your love for one another be intense, for love covers a multitude of sins." I've always been a big fan of second changes and sometimes third and fourth ones too. A lot of people I know think I am a little too understanding and forgive too easily but I am a firm believer in the benefit of the doubt. I try every day to see the best in people and find their potential even when no one else can see it. People are so dreadfully flawed and so many of us are broken and struggling to find the tiniest glimmer of hope that we'll be able to put all of the pieces back together. It's such a beautifully human thing to fall short, to admit your flaws and failings, and to stand up and try again. When a person lashes out, it's so easy to assume that they're just not a nice enough person instead of that they're scared or pushing away because they've been hurt so many times before. When a person fails over and over again, it's so easy to assume that they're weaker than you or just not putting in the effort instead of realizing that sometimes fighting your inner demons takes all the strength you have and doesn't leave a lot left over for the purposes of the outside world. It's so easy to walk away when things get difficult and so very hard to stay and help someone fight their battles but I believe it's nearly always worth it. Even if things don't end ideally, there's always a lesson to learn and maybe that person will be strengthened going forward knowing that just that once someone was willing to put in the effort and share their burdens. Tonight, I completed all of the paperwork for my graduate school applications and even though I was already pantsless and it was cold outside, I managed to get up, put on my sweats, and walk to Walgreen's to pick up cat food. That might not seem like much to some but even a few weeks ago this would have seemed like an impossible task to accomplish and tonight, that is enough. Tomorrow there will be more hurdles to jump and steps forward to be made and yes, even steps back because the dance of life would be awfully dull without a little chacha. You never know what heaviness a person is carrying and how long they've been doing it all on their own.

how we talk about ourselves and how we talk to others

As I sat working on my resume for grad school aps this week, I discovered something that I've never been quite able to put into words before. While I have no problem talking about things that are normally stigmatized like mental illness or bodily functions (i.e., I am perfectly comfortable talking about what's going wrong with me), I am nearly incapable of talking about my accomplishments. This makes so many things so much more difficult than they should be: writing my personal statement, my resume, even personal relationships that tend to see only what's going wrong and never get to hear about what's going right. I surround myself with confident people that get up and say "I am awesome and let me tell you all of the reasons why..." Even better, they're willing to say to me, "You are awesome and let me tell you all of the reasons why..." I can't even begin to find that within myself. The truth is, though, I don't think it's all my fault, I think, quite often, the way others in my life (partners, friends, family, coworkers) have chosen to speak to me about any form of conflict has made it difficult for me to remember that I'm not always the problem. So I'm going to try here to remind myself about some of the things that make me extraordinary because I seem to need reminding.

• I am an incredibly loyal friend and I will drop anything if someone I love needs me
• I'm going to quote Amelia on this one but I am "the Katharine Hepburn of pie making"
• I may have gotten a D in Ballet in college but I will kick your ass on the dance floor when swing music comes on
• I haven't met a recipe I couldn't make and make well
• I may not have a lot of experience yet but I'm pretty damn awesome at judo and archery
• After 7 years of telling myself that I would never be able to afford to go back to school, I am about to graduate from a kick ass university and go to grad school
• I have been self-harm free for over a decade now
• I have single-handedly brought this entire office into the new millennium (sometimes dragging others kicking as screaming as I go)
• I may prefer to spend most of my free time in a tshirt and workout pants but I look damn sexy when I femme up (now who's going to be my date to see Deadpool on Vday?)
• I'm a really good supervisor, I never wanted to be the in charge person, but I can get things done and keep up morale when I have underlings
• I'm a pretty darn good actor and singer (one day I will make my voice over demo)
• I am a great listener, I always know when it's time to shut the fuck up and just hear what's being said

And the most important, I am enough. You are enough. We are all doing the best we can and don't ever let anyone tell you different. And do everyone else a favor and keep telling them that. As a recently said to a very dear friend, "Go to the mirror right now and tell yourself 'I am a wonderful human. I am loved. I am not my failures.'" And keep doing it until you believe it.

let's talk about stigma

"I am confused... So I don't take any medication, and in return I have evenings where I get moody and don't want to talk to people, get occasionally irrationally frustrated but cope, and find it harder to concentrate than most....
You have been heavily medicated, have regular panic attacks, sleeplessness, lethargy, low amounts of energy, and now are suffering similar withdrawal symptoms as a heroin addict... What am I missing out on?"

This is the conversation I was having at 1am one night this week. And they're not wrong. This past week has been one of the most physically and mentally awful experiences I have ever been through in my life and it's had me doing a lot of thinking about the way mental health professionals deal with their patients and how we as a society are so desperate for an easy fix that we will put ourselves through this awful process over and over again. How often does a psychiatrist just plug your data into the computer and tell you what it spits back out instead of really listening to what you're telling them? How many people would cope better from a good therapist instead of having heavy prescriptions that make you fat and miserable tossed at them with a reminder to come refill out your GIFTs every six months? And how many people have gone through these horrible night sweats, vomiting, numbness, tingling, heart racing awfulness over and over again just looking for the thing that will make them feel the least awful? And why aren't we talking about this more?
As I logged awful update after awful update, the one thing that became clear to me is that I am very much not alone in this experience but the stigma around talking about it in public is still very very real. Why are we so ashamed by our own brain chemistry? Why do we automatically assume it makes us weaker? There is nothing wrong with saying, "Hey, I'm a little short of spoons today, can I get some encouragement?" or delaying plans because you just can't handle doing anything else in public for the day or admitting that the horrible things you've experienced and seen have caused you mental trauma. By not talking about it, we are allowing it to become shameful and we need to share our stories if we can ever start to move forward.