Very Strange Dream

I dreamed last night that I was a part of this group of scientists that was doing experiments on rats. We were trying to teach them enlightenment by nearly drowning them over and over again, only to give them a breath or two at the last minute. I have no idea what the theory was, only that there was one.

In the dream, I was torn. My mind said that the theory works, and we will have a bunch of enlightened rats. But my heart said, what we are doing is really cruel. Look at these rats suffering!

When I was in college, I worked for two years in a lab where we routinely killed mice and rats. Not for their benefit, but ours. No enlightened rats. Only theories about the neurotransmitters in human brains.

I woke up feeling a little strange, but less depressed.

I turned on the TV while drinking my morning coffee. Of course it is all about 9/11. Until today, it has been all about the floods.

I remember where I was on 9/11, as I'm sure everyone does. I was living in Philadelphia in grad school. Someone called me up to ask me if we were going to have class that day, and I asked, why wouldn't we have class? And then they told me. I ran to the TV. It was like looking at scenes from a horror movie, I couldn't believe it was real. My dad was in NYC that day, very close by. After the first plane hit, they kept going with their meeting. After the second hit, they stopped. It took him all day long to get home to Brooklyn.

I had a NYC psychiatrist at the time. And he didn't think I was sufficiently traumatized from 9/11- but then he could never read me. He told me it was because of some medication I was taking that had been shown to protect from PTSD in some study. I can't remember which one now.

I was traumatized, but I think not like New Yorkers. And I think that was why he wasn't seeing what he expected- I was living in Philly. Also, I tend to keep my emotions inside a lot. He didn't see what was there.

OK, So I Didn't Make it to the Gym Today

I am depressed today, the first day in a few days. But I'm handling it. I went out for lunch, got a fast food cheeseburger and shake, and sat in my car in the sun and listened to music on the radio. It helped, and I didn't cry.

Now I am home and just want to curl up in bed. And eat chocolate ice cream, which I don't have.

I'm trying to stay in the moment, and not wonder if I will still be depressed tomorrow, and think about potentially how long this depression could go on. Maybe this is the onset of my fall depression, despite my light box. Don't go there. Maybe this is because of going off of the Abilify- don't go there. I'll find out soon enough if this is a trend.

So the mindfulness people, and my therapist in particular, say that when you are feeling bad, it is enough to be feeling bad in that moment. Don't project into the future. But at some point, don't you have to make plans, make decisions? Like am I going to be too depressed to do the things I have planned for tomorrow? And should I make adjustments? Should I cancel anything?

Nothing is simple, not even mindfulness.

But for today, I will try to accept what is, and hope tomorrow is better.

Abilify is Not Good for Me

I have been feeling like I have ADD on steroids recently- which is why I went off of Abilify the first time. I can't focus, I can't sit still, I have a lot of irrelevant and obsessive thoughts racing through my head. It is horrible. It took me a little while to realize that it was happening again.

So on Friday, I didn't take my morning 5mg dose. I have been so much better. So far, I am still taking my nighttime 5mg dose. I don't know what to do about that, only that I shouldn't go off it right away, if I do want to go off of it. Which I think I do.

I think that the Abilify does help with the depression, in some ways. But, at quite a price. If it makes me stupid- that is too high a price. Because I was starting to get depressed over how out of it I was feeling! Really depressed. Because I started feeling like I couldn't even function, and that is depressing.

Sometimes the problem is the medication.

I can't for the life of me understand why we are putting so many people on antipsychotics who are not psychotic. Now when I went on zyprexa, you could have probably made the case for it. But the Abilify was just added for depression. There were other things to do. There are other things to do. Abilify was just an easy thing to do, especially because I had a slightly agitated depression at the time, so there is always the fear of triggering mania. I had mentioned going back on wellbutrin to my doctor, but he suggested going back on abilify, and I agreed. Silly me. Next time my depression cries out for pharmacological intervention, I am going back on Wellbutrin. No more Abilify. One antipsychotic is enough.

A Little Bit Better Today

I feel a little bit better today- not a lot. But enough that it makes a difference. I function a little better at work, I don't drown so much in the paperwork. When I remember, I say my "loving kindness" mantra to myself.

But it is still bad. And I come home and collapse in front of the TV, and I do nothing. I eat comfort food. I know that what my body needs is to exercise, but I don't. I am disgusting. Dishes pile up in the kitchen.

I know that it is never going to be easy to do the right thing, to do the things that I need to be doing- but today it is just too damn hard. I don't even try, beyond work. That is enough for today.

I didn't cry in my car at lunch. That was an improvement. I wanted to, but I didn't. I did yesterday.

I think I feel better physically today. The past couple of days I have felt bad physically, like I was coming down with something. I was sneezing a little, I felt chills, but it didn't get any worse than that. And getting a virus is often enough to through me into a depression. Today I feel better, just tired, and with terrible heartburn. But I had pizza and a chocolate bar for lunch, what did I expect?

I know that I have a lot to be depressed about, if I look at my life from a certain perspective. I feel like I don't have the life I want, and I feel incapable of working harder to make a better life. I feel like I am stuck.

Then again, I am alive. I have a job, and they have not fired me. I have parents who care about me. I have a brother I love who is going to have a daughter this year. I have relatively good health, especially given how much I weigh (thank-you Zyprexa), and no diabetes.

I need to find ways of making some things in my life easier, so I can do the things that really matter. Like studying hand therapy. Like doing yoga and hiking and going to the gym. Eating healthier- but making it easy. Somehow, something has to get easier.

Today when I felt so bad, I tried to think of one thing that would make me feel better, that my body was asking for, and I decided that it was a massage. Unfortunately that costs money. But I get paid this Friday. Maybe it can happen. I could get massages every week, and it would still be cheaper than my Abilify.

Depression is Back

The last two days I have been very depressed. I even skipped my therapy session today because I was too depressed to go- I had to run home after work and go to bed.

I work in healthcare- basically in the service industry.Which is a hard place to work with a mental health issue, because it is not enough to do your job. You have to do it with a smile. And I understand with my patients- but with my coworkers too? I wish that I never got asked the question by a co-worker, how are you. That is a terribly personal question. I don't want to tell you the truth half the time, but I don't like to lie. So it is never a satisfactory response from my side when I feel like hell.

And that really is all too often. I am starting to wonder if I am in the wrong profession, but then I don't think that there is any right profession. I feel like I have to be so close to 100% every day to not only treat my patients right, but also to get my paperwork done, and treat my co-workers cheerfully. And I'm just not 100% everyday.

Is there a job where you don't have to be on top of your game everyday?

Is there a job these days that has no paperwork? Where you don't have to smile when you feel bad? When no one will ask you how you feel or how your weekend was, when you stayed in bed depressed all weekend? If there is, I want to know about it.

And yet, I love what I do. Just not all of the time. But I love being an occupational therapist. It is the best thing in my life right now. And the biggest burden. I guess that is normal.

When I am depressed, the one thing I have to do is work- I can let everything else go. But I have to work. So I wind up getting very angry about it, because it is so hard. But a girl has to make a living! I have been on disability, I don't want to go back there, assuming I could even get back on it. I have to make this work, no pun intended.

Today I have the running retrain "I want to be dead" going through my head, which I tried swapping out for "loving kindness." Did it help? Maybe some. But I felt bad that I was just using these words with such bad feelings, like they didn't have any meaning themselves. But I think it did help a little, and did make me feel a little more present with my patients. And I'm all about my patients when I am at work. I know I am there for them, no matter how bad I feel.

I'll feel better on Friday, when I get my next paycheck, and I can put a little more towards my new car fund and towards my credit card debt. I can't believe that it is almost the end of the month.

But for today, here I am bitching. Because in my day to day life, there is no place for this.

What Makes Us American?

The storm is over, and so I have been spending my time doing laundry and watching BookTV on CSPAN. One the the authors was Christine O'Donnell who basically said that the problem with socialism is that the state decides what role you should play, but the American dream is to work as hard as we can to get a good car and a good house. Somehow this wasn't very inspiring.

In American we have a limited social safety net, so we have to work very hard. We have to fund our own retirement, and increasingly our own healthcare. This makes it all about money, whether we want it to be or not.

How does it all come down to money? It is just a human construct, it is a make-believe thing. Why is it worth more some days than other days? I have sold my soul- or at least my time- for the make-believe thing. I go to work everyday. If I won the lottery, I would want to work just enough to value my time away from work. Maybe two days a week. That would be heaven.

Maybe someday. When I am done with therapy, paid off some debts, when all my meds go generic. Maybe I can work less hours. How un-American.

It's All a Little Disappointing

Yes my power did go off Saturday night- way earlier than I expected, but then it went back on by Sunday morning. I did get to test out my hand crank radio/flashlight, which is worked pretty well. But the storm itself seems not to be living up to the hype.

I don't know what I expected- Manhattan to float away? And I guess there is still the potential for a lot more flooding- now the rivers may flood. Which is more of an issue than the ocean where I live. But I think we dodged a bullet. Which is a good thing.

And yet the little kid in me says, is that it? After all that hype, is that it?

There are certainly enough people who are very effected by the storm, and for them, it is no small matter. But it seems that the buckets and pots and pans of water that I filled were filled for naught.