Vigilence

I was sitting on the couch studying when an unnerving thought crossed my mind. As I stared at the Vicodin bottle on the table that I was prescribed for my ear problems, I started to wonder how many I'd need to take to pass out. My mind wandered to the kitchen, questioning if I still had that bottle of wine I never opened. Maybe if I had some Vicodin and wine together the mixture would knock me out. Maybe I could lay in bed all day in a groggy haze and leave this life behind for a while.

Just as the elaborate spider-web of thoughts was woven into potential plans, I swiftly knocked it down. WHAT?! I retraced my trail in an attempt to figure out how my brain got me to that point. Did I really want a drink? No... I don't even like getting drunk. Was I feeling depressed about Blake? Not particularly. Is suicide anything I'd ever considered, even in my darkest days? NO.

I freaked out! I felt like I had lost complete control of my body. The four days since I started taking medication for my ear, I had been eating non-stop, feeling anxious, and having the most depressing thoughts cross my mind. I thought back to a conversation I had with one of my best friends about how she was put on steroids and it made her gain a ton of weight. Oh my gosh... the Prednisone! I quickly looked up the side effects for the steroids that the doctor put me on. Sure enough, increased appetite, anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts were all listed.

I didn't know whether to feel relieved or mad. At least my weird behavior had an explanation. I wasn't regressing, it was just the chemicals in my brain telling me to do these things. But that just made me angry. WHY did the doctor not warn me that Prednisone causes suicidal thoughts? If I had informed him about the recent death of my boyfriend, I'm sure he would've thought twice about prescribing me something that could send me on a downward spiral!

I called my mom and dad sobbing, explaining to them that THIS was the exact reason why I have such a distrust of medicine. The fact that the doctor checked me out for less than 20 minutes and put me on all of these dangerous meds seemed disgusting. How could he do this to me? How could doctors everywhere do this to people every DAY! For all he knew I could've had an extremely addictive personality and the Vicodin he casually prescribed me for pain could have triggered a life long addiction. I hated doctors for me, for Blake, and for the whole world.

But after a while of fuming, my mom helped me see that it's the system that's broken. Doctors give advice about what to do to naturally heal, but people want medicine. If the doctor can't give them a quick fix, they'll move on to one who will. And people don't do the research necessary to help inform the doctors about what they need. How can doctors know all of the potential problems you'll have with a medication unless you tell them? It's our job as patients to be advocates for our health. If we don't guard our own bodies with vigilance, who will?

So I stopped being upset and changed my perspective. Thank goodness that I know myself well enough to catch these thoughts. I knew right away that I was not upset about Blake, so my depressive and suicidal thoughts were definitely abnormal. I don't like drinking, so there is no reason I'd be contemplating getting drunk in the middle of the afternoon on a Thursday. None of this added up to me, so I knew something was wrong.

I realized that it's not the doctors fault, my fault, or the pills fault. It's actually no one's fault. What happened this afternoon was a wake up call. I need to be the number one advocate for my mental, physical, and emotional health. Only I will be able to know when something is wrong, so building up my self-awareness is my best defense against potential problems. Just as I have been vigilant with this blog tracking and paying attention to my emotions, I need to do the same with my physical health as well.

Bed

There's a whole world outside of my apartment, things to do if I open the door to my room, books to read and clothes to organize just a foot from where I lie, but instead I'm trapped in my bed. My entire life becomes the dimensions of my queen sized mattress. Everything beyond it is just a reality out of focus. I know it's there, I can almost see it, but it's all just a little too blurred. Too confusing. Too much.

I like my bed. It's not fancy or unique, but it's mine. And when I'm in my bed, the only choice I have to make is whether I want to be asleep or awake. Sometimes I don't even have to make that choice. When I'm in my bed I can just lie there and let my body make that decision for me.

At times I feel like I'm missing out. It could be as simple as sitting up and putting my feet onto the carpet. With just a little effort I could stand, walk around, and explore the space within my bedroom walls. If I tried a bit harder, I could exit into the rest of my apartment. I could shower, visit the fridge, watch TV, or maybe even talk with my roommate. And if I really wanted to, I could unlock the front door and leave. Just open it and walk right through. Who knows what I could find out there if I did that!

But the majority of the time, I prefer my bed. This is mostly because when I'm in my bed I know exactly what to expect. I know it'll be just me, my thoughts, and my laptop. There won't be any pressure to care about what's going on around me, to do anything I don't want to do, or to feel any certain way. In my bed I can hide.

I know I'm just isolating, separating, disconnecting, and avoiding. All of the -ings that only serve to postpone the inevitable. The unavoidable reality that there is a world just a foot from where I lie, beyond the door to my room, and outside of my apartment. A world that I belong to and love, but am not ready to fully embrace yet.

I toy with the idea of joining the world again and sometimes convince myself that I'm already there. But every so often I fall so deeply back into my bed that I get stuck. And while I'm here my point of view is that for me, reality is just a bit out of focus. I know it's there, I can almost see it, but it's all just a little too blurred. Too confusing. Too much. So for today, I choose my bed.

Another Full Day in Bed

Paralyzed.

When I try to describe how it feels when I wake up and want to quit the day before it even starts, the best word for it is paralyzed. Completely and utterly paralyzed.

This morning I tried to craft a text explaining to my partner that I couldn't come in to work today because there was no way to compel my body to move. How do you even describe that to someone? I attempted to illustrate it the best I could to help her understand, but who knows if she did. I hoped she didn't hate me for burdening her; I sincerely felt awful for not coming in. But I didn't even wait for her reply. I just closed my eyes and drifted back to sleep.

There is no way to wrap your mind around how the body can just reject directions from the brain if you haven't experienced it yourself. Until Blake died, I had always taken for granted the automatic nature of the mind-body connection. If you want to pick something up, your brain tells your hand to reach, open, close, and lift. Simply because your brain sends the signal, your body reacts accordingly. But not when you're paralyzed.

I don't want to be insulting to people who actually have medically diagnosed paralysis, but I do believe grief and depression can legitimately have similar (but transient) effects. This morning my brain feverishly sent signals to my legs, but they refused to move. It tried again with my arms, but they lay limp under the covers. After working on overdrive sending signals and screaming at my body about why we needed to get our shit together and GET UP, my brain finally accepted that it lost. I remained in bed the rest of today.

Instead of beating myself up over this, I can only kindly ask myself why? This feeling of being paralyzed hasn't taken me over since the weeks immediately following Blake's death. What I experienced on my birthday yesterday and again today jolted me back to that black hole I was in before. It was terrifying to re-experience that crippling, but indifferent sense of mental defeat when I thought I put behind me. Why was this happening again?

I honestly don't know why. What I do know is that I need to develop better strategies to help myself if this happens again. There are only so many times that a text about my "paralysis" will be accepted and unpunished by a person who was counting on me. Because the reality of the situation is I'm not paralyzed. Even though sometimes it feels that way, my body has full ability to function in whatever way I want it to. I guess what I need to work on  now is truly wanting it to.

Ruining My Own Birthday

It started this morning as the messages from well-meaning friends rolled in telling me "Happy birthday. I hope it's the best!" and "Happy birthday, I hope you're doing great!" and the worst "Happy birthday, I hope all of your wishes come true!" I thought to myself that clearly it's not going to be "the best." It's very obvious that I'm not "doing great!" And how could all of my wishes come true when no wish can bring Blake back? Did people somehow think that just because it's my birthday that my life would magically get better? If anything, today being my birthday put more pressure on me to feel happy when I. Just. Don't.

I started getting mad at everyone. How dare they wish me happy birthday like it could actually be a happy birthday. I'm not sure what I'd rather them write to me though. Maybe I didn't want them to write anything at all. I just wanted this day to disappear. I just wanted to disappear.

After I allowed myself to fume for a while, I started seeing things from a different perspective. Of all the million other things these people had to do today, they decided to take the time to write or call me. When they didn't have to, they made the effort to let me know I was on their mind. I realized it didn't matter what they said, it was the act itself that was special. So from that moment on, I made the decision to respond to each and every message with gratitude and appreciation.

I let this consume me for the entirety of today. I became very obsessed with making sure that everyone knew how much it meant to me to get their message and how grateful I was to have them in my life. I spent so much time doing this that I forgot that the day was supposed to be about enjoying myself. But I didn't want to enjoy myself. I used gluing myself to the computer as a way to avoid all of that.

My dad happened to be in town for business, so he took me out to dinner for my first and only meal of the day. I shoveled burrito into my mouth as I cried to him about how much I hated this day and wanted it to end. I had a class at seven I was supposed to go to, but decided I couldn't let my classmates see me like this. They would want a happy, smiley birthday girl... the kind of birthday girl that I just wasn't able to be for them today.

I missed the cake that they bought to surprise me with. It was pink and perfect and most importantly, purchased with so much thought and love. They sent me a picture of the cake, a video of them singing happy birthday to me, and reassuring messages that they understood why I wasn't there. I cried more. Why couldn't I just be normal and let myself have a happy birthday?

I don't think there has ever been a lonelier 24 hours in my whole life. The worst part is they didn't have to be that way, I made them that way. It's nobody's fault but mine that I chose to be distastefully detached from my own birthday. I have never been more relieved for a day to be over. Thank God for October 11th.

Bargaining Each Morning

Most mornings I wake up feeling empty, hollow, defeated. You'd think that by now these feelings wouldn't come as such a shock anymore, but every time they hit me with excruciating force. Like a stack of weights, each negative emotion is piled onto my yielding chest. You're lonely. You're desolate. You're devastated. You're lost. The force of such a load pins me down. How can I lift my body from this bed? How can I get up when I'm battling against the weight of the world?

Every morning I am faced with a choice: do I give in to these feelings or do I fight against them? I would like to boast about my bravery and say I choose to battle with honor. That I find the strength within me to grasp onto these bricks of oppressing emotions and throw them off of my chest. That it is my conscious decision to stop them from holding me back, weighing me down, crushing my spirit. But I am not built with such admirable courage. I am not that brave.

Instead, I get myself up by bargaining. I talk to these bricks. I tell them that if they allow me to get up, fulfill my daily obligations, I will let them stay in my heart. I will carry them around with me if they can shrink just enough so that I can lift my body. They oblige because they believe this is a good deal. They are aware that if I really wanted to, I could hoist them off of me. I could leave them behind entirely and face my day without their strain. But I believe that I am not that strong. This belief alone makes me susceptible to their torment.

However, I soothe myself with the reminder that at least I am trying. Instead of making deals with these heavy emotions I could just let them squish me. I could give up entirely and allow them to hold me down with such a force that leaving my bed would be impossible. But I don't. Even by lessening them enough so that I can get up shows my power. Maybe I'm not at a point where I've internalized the full potential of my courage and strength, but this is evidence that it exists.

The loneliness, desolation, devastation, and loss are weights inside of my heart. They make me question my ability to get up and face the day and whether or not it's even worth it to try. But they are only with me because I allow them to be.  I must remember that no matter how brave they are, I am braver. No matter how strong they are, I am stronger. One day I will realize this fully and these weights will cease to exist. Once I allow myself to believe in the force of my own power, they won't stand a chance. But for now, I will give them permission to stay with me. For now, but not forever.

Denial and the Stages of Grief

My brain has been playing weird tricks on me lately.

Tonight as the usual highlight (and lowlight) reel of everything that transpired ran through my head, it almost felt like I was watching a movie. "Lifetime Movies presents: the tragic story of the girl who lost her boyfriend to heroin when she had no idea he was using." As the flashbacks continued, I experienced the usual feelings of horror, shock, and sadness. But strangely, it was like I was feeling these feelings out of sympathy for someone else. How awful for that girl. What a tragic experience for her to go through. Thank God that's not me. Not my life.

As the story continued to play out in my mind, I tried to get myself to connect to it. I couldn't. These were my memories, my life, my trauma, why did I feel so detached from it all? 

Was this all just a dream? Was Blake just that handsome older guy I barely knew from high school? Did everything between us even happen? 

It's terrifying how my mind seemed to be distorting my reality. Why?

I've read all about the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I initially thought that the way they are listed is the usual order they occur. Based on that assumption, I thought that I must have skipped the "denial" stage. From the horrific moment the office manager pulled me out from lunch so my best friend could deliver the news about Blake's death, I knew he was gone and never coming back. I felt a million different things, but I never refused to admit to myself that the overdose happened. 

But I'm beginning to realize that denial comes in all different forms at unexpected times. This "trick" my brain has started playing on me, I think, is actually a form of denial. The underlying motivation of denial is that maybe if I don't acknowledge this is my pain, I can pretend I'm ok. My brain seemed to be trying to protect me through disassociation. 

Being the obsessive investigator that I've always been, I started researching online again about the stages of grief and loss. Is what I'm going through normal? What I found out was that this 5 stages of grief model is actually seen as outdated and not true for most people. Grief is typically a back-and-fourth between the five listed stages as well as several other phases.

This diagram makes so much more sense to me. I appreciate how it acknowledges that grief isn't chronologically linear. There are more than just five stages and they can occur concurrently or in no particular order. The beginning spiral section recognizes that at any point, these feelings can be revisited (and sometimes again and again). It's not like I went through the anger stage and got to wipe my hands of it afterward: "Ok, I was mad at Blake for a day for lying to me and doing drugs, but now I've accepted it. Anger: check!" Just because I had an angry moment and it passed doesn't mean I won't re-experience that anger later. The same thing goes for depression and now denial too. 

Like I've come to realize in the past couple weeks, everything is coming in waves. There are times when my heart is filled with hope, days that my body gives up, minutes that feel like hours of panic, bouts of anger, quiet thoughts of guilt, moments of peace etc. etc. etc. There is no finish line with a banner that reads "Acceptance! You've made it!" Grieving is a process, and one that it's not neatly confined into five orderly steps. 

It Comes in Waves

There was a moment on Friday night.

I had two of my best friends in the whole world next to me. We were holding hands, we had our arms around each other. A band that we used to go see when we were in college was playing a reunion show. I knew all of the words to the songs. I sang. I danced. I smiled. It was incredible.

In that moment, I felt like myself. I felt so grateful to be exactly where I was. I didn't think about anything besides the lyrics to the song, how happy I was to be with people I loved so much, dancing and smiling like I was a freshman in college without a care in the world.

I fell asleep around 4am after not only a great show, but a lengthy catch up session with two more friends back at my best friend's apartment. After we finally exhausted all people and topics we could possibly gossip about, I passed out on the couch in my clothes from the night. I didn't even notice I forgot to get Blake Bear out of my suitcase. When I woke up in the morning and realized this, I was afraid I was going to panic. I had wondered what the first night sleeping without him would feel like. Almost three months have passed and this was my first night falling asleep without the bear nestled in my chest and gripped tightly in my arms. Surprisingly, I felt ok. I survived.

But now the weekend is finished. My best friends are at their houses and I'm in mine. The concert is over, we're no longer dancing, and the songs are just a faint buzz in the back of my mind. Just as I've experienced before after an exciting day, the pendulum has swung the other way. Now I'm on the opposite side of joy.

The debilitating sadness comes in waves now. Instead of being in a perpetual state of shittiness like I was initially, I'm able to experience truly happy moments like I did on Friday night. In those moments I feel like I'm really me again. My heart is light and my mind is clear. I feel part of the world and connected to other people in real and meaningful ways. But then, the tide sucks me back in. I detach from the beautiful world I was starting to feel a part of. Suddenly my brain gets clouded with a million different memories, questions, thoughts, and fears. My heart starts weighing a ton, my chest throbs from the strain. And then I'm lost again. The idea that I thought "I'm really me again" seems strange and artificial. Who am I anyway?

As I'm writing this, clutching Blake Bear, I'm missing Blake so much it hurts. I'm thinking of the fun I had this weekend and how much he would've enjoyed singing, dancing, and gossiping with my friends right alongside me. It just seems so unfair that I get to have these happy moments and he doesn't. You could try to convince me that he was there with me the whole time and got to feel the happiness through me, but right now I'm not in the mood to listen to that stuff with a hopeful heart. When it comes down to it, he's not here and that's not fair. He was only 25 with so much living left to do. So many moments left to experience.

So as I'm riding this wave of sadness, the only thing that comforts me is knowing that just like my moment of happiness, this too shall pass. I will find myself back on the joy side of the pendulum again and the depressive feelings I'm experiencing now will seem far away. I've realized that you can't remain sad forever, just as it's equally as impossible to live in a consistent state of happiness. Moments like Friday night feel as good as they do because I know what it feels like to be devoid of all pleasure and consumed by pain. It takes plummeting to new lows to truly appreciate times when I feel good again.

Taking the Power Back

For the past two days I've felt completely paralyzed. I can't eat. I can't sleep. I can't smile. I can't move. My bed has become my island and everything that surrounds it is hot lava. I honestly want to venture out of self-induced isolation, but I am afraid to get burned. The world doesn't seem safe right now so I'd rather be alone.

Looking back, I think this started with the confrontation online the other night. After talking it out with Blake's family and a couple of his friends, they reassured me that they were supportive of whatever I felt was right. They never saw my actions as tarnishing Blake's memory and urged me to brush off comments made by people who don't know me and my real intentions. I was comforted by this, but still there was a small seed of insecurity planted in my head.

This seed was watered the other night after another jarring conversation, this time with someone who knew Blake very well. I'm not going to go into details out of respect for that person, but this interaction set me back to the time right after Blake's death when I was questioning everything. Did I know him at all? Was everything a lie? Did he ever love me? It felt like this person enjoyed saying things to have these questions resurface, even after I explicitly explained how the way they were saying things made me feel. I should've let it go. I should've backed away. But I continued to push back, thinking that maybe somehow I could change their mind.

People have told me a thousand times at this point that I need to find inner confidence in knowing who Blake really was, what he wanted, and how truly in love we were. If I am at a place where I let that guide me, no one can rattle me. I have nothing to prove to anyone. Negative comments or critiques won't touch me because I know the real truth.

I am giving people way too much power over me. I refer to myself as a people pleaser, but pleasing other people should never be at my own expense. I can still strive to make people feel comfortable, happy, and loved without taking away from my own comfort, happiness, and love for myself. Every time I give someone the power to instill doubt or insecurity in me, I am chipping away at my self worth. If I cross that line and don't respect my own right to these things, no one will.

That's not to say I need to be selfish and only worry about my own wants and needs, because that would make me no better than the people who have gone out of their way to put me down. Instead, I need to protect myself above all else. There is absolutely no reason for me to waste two days of my life paralyzed on an island of my own making. I say "my own making" because I can't blame the conversations or the two people I had them with for getting me to this point. No one put me here but myself. It was my own decision to let these things affect me in a way that caused me to shut down. I need to take the power back.

Lost at Sea (A Poem)

If home is where the heart is
and my heart is up in heaven,
Then where do I belong?

If my anchor is to ground me
and it's with me no longer,
I'll drift aimlessly along

If my compass is to lead me
and I've lost my direction,
I'm out here afraid

If light is what you bring me
and now there's only darkness,
Then you should've stayed.

Homeless and ungrounded
Drifting and clouded
Everyday I wake
Hoping it's a mistake

Because now I'm all at sea
Trying so desperately
To be true to who I am
While mapping a new plan

Without light it's hard to do
What the compass tells me to
But I don't need to hold steady
I have no anchor so I'm ready

Now that my heart is in the sky
I can always use it as my guide
I won't ever feel alone
You've made the whole world my home.

Am I Depressed?

This is a post I'm scared to write, but I need to.

I drove back up to San Jose on Monday. It is now Thursday. I was supposed to spend the four days up here (by myself) packing up all of my things so that when my parents arrive later today we can get everything in order for my move to San Diego.

Since Monday...
Bags Packed: 0
Times I've Left the House: 0
Meals Eaten: 2
Hours Slept: 10? Maybe?

It's like I can feel the depression creeping up behind me. I have sneakers on, I know exactly how to escape, but I just don't care. I don't even fake a light jog to pretend I'm trying to run away from it. As it get's closer and closer I am fully aware of what's happening. I just. Don't. Care.

This is why it is dangerous to be alone right now. I didn't realize that even being in my parents house and just having them downstairs is enough motivation not to completely give up. When I was staying with my best friend in LA I wasn't like this either. Just knowing she was there was enough to stop me from slipping too far away. It's not even like it's so different there because my parents and best friend and I discuss or ignore Blake's death, I think it might be the simple fact that they are with me.

Now I'm here. Alone. With nobody to stop me from wearing pajamas all day and not leaving my bed.

Am I depressed?
Who could blame me?

I know that the next phase in managing my grief is to focus on myself. I spent the first month and a half completely consumed by figuring out exactly what was going on with Blake and his addiction. At this point I know everything I "needed" to know, processed all of that, and am at peace with it. Now all that's left is me, broken, alone, and in desperate need of figuring out who I am and what my life is going to be like without Blake.

It's crazy because I have so many amazing things about to start in my life. I am moving to San Diego on Saturday, I get to start the grad program of my dreams, I have a whole month to get settled and meet people before I start classes, and to top it all off I am living three blocks from the beach. How can I logically know all of this, but still be so sad? Am I ungrateful?

As I teeter on the cusp of depression, I almost feel like I'm playing a game. It's weird how fully aware I am of this line I'm about to cross. I feel like at any moment I have the complete volition to say to myself, "What the fuck are you doing? Get out of bed! Live your life!" I know I can make myself if I wanted to. I just don't want to. Why not?

I've always thought that depression consumes you before you have a chance to realize what's happening. Maybe one day you wake up and realize the hole you've already been in for a while. Maybe you don't even realize until you finally listen when someone calls it to your attention. I didn't think it would be like this. I am so aware of what's happening and the path I'm about to go down. I know I have the chance to go either way. It's really up to me. Why do I insist on playing chicken with depression?

If I don't take control soon, it might not be my choice anymore. I am so grateful that I still have a choice. I need to remember that and act accordingly.