i put my soul in what i do
Monday, May 30th, 2011 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erikaI started taking classes in January of 2010. You can pretty much date my real recovery from that point. When did I start getting (real) treatment? January of 2006. (I'm not even counting the shitty, erratic treatment I got from 2002-2005.)
So that's 4 years I was doing anything I could think of: inpatient, outpatient, 3 different modalities of group therapy, 2 therapists (one left & went to private practice or I'd probably have stayed with her) once a week every goddamn week, a psychiatrist every 1-3 months and real trials (i.e. 12+ weeks) of more drugs & supplements than you can shake a stick at . . . hell, (as I toldrydra_wong), I would have cut up and waved paper in the air to catch fumes of happiness if I'd thought it would work.
As LunaRufina so wisely said, I'm still not OK. I don't want to dash your hopes or anything--80% of the time I'm no longer suicidal, and most of the time I feel like life's worth living. That's good enough for me. My residual symptoms suck, but I can live with them, and even though I'm still exhausted... well, why bother going through the list when the Wikipedia signs and symptoms of dysthymia can tell them for me. Even though I still have all those problems, I've turned a corner.
But it took time.
It took time and a lot of effort from me, personally, to get there. Like olga says, I make appointments in the morning so I'm forced to get out of bed. I make volunteer commitments in places like our library so I feel compelled to show up on the day I'm supposed to do it. I personally go to classes so I have some fucking structure to my day.
There's no way I could hold down a job. Finally got approved for SSDI in Oct of last year, so my inability to hold a job is even governmental levels of true. I haven't even managed to take a full load of classes yet.
What olga said, what Luna said, both of them have a lot of truth.
I'm sorry if this is the first time someone has said this to you so bluntly, but sometimes, people break and they're just not the same afterwards. We get to be functional, we get to be productive denizens of society, we even hold relationships and have a new normal. But not the old normal, if you know what I mean. Never the old normal, not again.
Maybe that's not you. I hope it's not. But even if it is, that doesn't mean your life doesn't have value, because it does. It has so much more value than you can probably see right now.
So that's 4 years I was doing anything I could think of: inpatient, outpatient, 3 different modalities of group therapy, 2 therapists (one left & went to private practice or I'd probably have stayed with her) once a week every goddamn week, a psychiatrist every 1-3 months and real trials (i.e. 12+ weeks) of more drugs & supplements than you can shake a stick at . . . hell, (as I told
rydra_wong), I would have cut up and waved paper in the air to catch fumes of happiness if I'd thought it would work.As LunaRufina so wisely said, I'm still not OK. I don't want to dash your hopes or anything--80% of the time I'm no longer suicidal, and most of the time I feel like life's worth living. That's good enough for me. My residual symptoms suck, but I can live with them, and even though I'm still exhausted... well, why bother going through the list when the Wikipedia signs and symptoms of dysthymia can tell them for me. Even though I still have all those problems, I've turned a corner.
But it took time.
It took time and a lot of effort from me, personally, to get there. Like olga says, I make appointments in the morning so I'm forced to get out of bed. I make volunteer commitments in places like our library so I feel compelled to show up on the day I'm supposed to do it. I personally go to classes so I have some fucking structure to my day.
There's no way I could hold down a job. Finally got approved for SSDI in Oct of last year, so my inability to hold a job is even governmental levels of true. I haven't even managed to take a full load of classes yet.
What olga said, what Luna said, both of them have a lot of truth.
I'm sorry if this is the first time someone has said this to you so bluntly, but sometimes, people break and they're just not the same afterwards. We get to be functional, we get to be productive denizens of society, we even hold relationships and have a new normal. But not the old normal, if you know what I mean. Never the old normal, not again.
Maybe that's not you. I hope it's not. But even if it is, that doesn't mean your life doesn't have value, because it does. It has so much more value than you can probably see right now.
no subject
on Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 01:05 am (UTC)I actually broke down during a job interview a couple weeks ago when they asked why my work history sucked, and I told them about my grandparents dying, and the woman actually said to me "you just have to get over it."
As if it's a switch left in the off position. Seriously, wtf.
no subject
on Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 01:09 am (UTC)And that woman was a ... ... ... I am trying not to use woman-hating words anymore, so the c-word and the b-word are out, but she was certainly a GIGANTIC FUCKING ASSHOLE.
no subject
on Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 01:25 am (UTC)