Surviving My Invisible Illness
24 May 2012 11 Comments
in Day-to-Day Life Tags: anxiety, depression, fear, friendship, life direction, PTSD, social anxiety, stigma, stress, the life of erin, tips
A lot of people use their blog as a place to vent about their life. I try not to use this blog like that because I want to spread knowledge, share tools, and give people hope. I don’t feel able to do that right now, though, so here’s a bit about what’s going on for me in a less-than-uplifting sense:
I’m aware that I’m in a bad spot. In light of everything I’ve experienced, this is minor, but I should stay in tune with my feelings so that I can take care of myself. And my biggest feeling tonight is fatigue. Depression is so hard. It’s always present, sucking at my energy, draining my positivity. Murmuring in my head about how the bus just blew past my stop today only because I am insignificant.
Lately I’ve been spending only a few hours a day with others. More social interaction would probably help me feel better and so I try more and more to be social. But then when someone says no to my invitation, it kind of wipes me out. It’s like, “Okay, there goes my shot for today” because it takes so much out of me. Same for shopping, going to therapy, hell, even going out and ordering a coffee. Functioning is so much work!
And then it pretty much goes without saying that it makes applying for a job extra hard, yet having a job would lead to consistent daily social interaction, and more friends, so I really want one. I just can’t predict how I’ll be feeling from one moment to the next.
Then I judge myself for not trying harder to be “normal” and “productive” and “sane.” I fear that the world sees me as self-indulgent, irresponsible, and most of all, lazy. I see myself that way, though I need to take full scope of what’s going on: depression, therapy, and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms that are keeping me from being at a place where I can work.
I catch myself being envious of those with a visible disease or injury. I obviously don’t want to be sick or injured at all, but if I had a broken leg, I wouldn’t be berating myself for not taking dance classes, and neither would the rest of the world. People wouldn’t be able to look at me and forget that I have a broken leg the way that the world can look at me and forget I have depression. I’m the most skilled person in the world when it comes to putting on a mask of happiness and it can make people think that I’m doing well when I am not.
Yet sometimes I’m even too tired for that anymore. It actually has taken a long time to learn that I don’t need to smile all the time, that I can be real about how I’m feeling.
Oh, but about three weeks ago I got off the bus downtown and some stranger said to me, “SMILE!” and I gave him this ICY look right back. If he’d said something like, “It’s a nice day, isn’t it?” it would have made me smile, but instead he chose to stick his nose where it didn’t belong. He berated me for not pleasing him by wearing a mask. It made me so angry!
So that’s it for now. Being real about my emotions here is validating. I feel a bit better now.
P.S. Maybe there are some positive things in this post for you to take away:
1. Staying in tune with your feelings can help you take care of yourself
2. When you’re being hard on yourself, make sure you take everything into account, especially your mental illness(es) if you have them
3. Practice taking off your mask and let your face show your true emotions once in a while. It feels really good, even if others don’t get it!
Put a STOP to it!
18 May 2012 2 Comments
in Survival Tags: anxiety, change, coping, fear, friendship, post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, stress, suicide, the life of erin, tips
(written a few nights ago)
Listen to your feelings. They are telling you something. With practice you can learn to deal with anything, even the impulse to commit suicide.
Today I’m visualize inflicting violence upon myself in some drastic way, but not as a way to kill myself. I just want everything to STOP. The greater the force behind that giant STOP sign the better.
Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to [jump from] tall buildings in a single bound!
Suicide and Superman have a lot in common. Maybe. I actually don’t know very much about Superman but that tag line captures my impulse towards self-harm.What if we imagined ourselves surviving superhero-style? Our impulse to inflict pain can be equally stopped with a fantasy of being faster than our impulse to die, and counteracting it with something stronger.
I feel better recognizing that I don’t actually want to die but that I want things to STOP. During my treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, I remember learning that if you say, “STOP!” loudly and put your hand straight out to accompany it, it’s much easier to stop your feelings, if only for a moment.
I can handle this. So where do I need to put a few STOP signs in my life?
- I am stressing about my future, because it feels like I don’t have one.
- I am stressing about money, because it dictates my future in many ways, and I don’t have enough money to keep living like this.
- I’m stressing about relationships, because they too will make my future worth living or not worth living.
Those things are big — they are worth stressing about — but not to the point of pushing myself over the edge. And this is where things get tricky, because if I don’t think about my future then my life will continue going in a direction that I don’t want it to go. But must I have my whole life figured out right now? No, no I do not.
Here’s the spot where I can STOP my all-or-nothing thinking, but dammit, I can’t. It’s too much of a habit. Maybe I can at least try to be more aware of thinking in black and white. I can try to think about how much money I need to get through this month or this week or just this day.
What can I do today to make money tomorrow? What’s one teensy tiny thing I can do? I can work on filling my Etsy orders. That’s a start.
And relationships. Well, I feel like being a hermit but at least I have plans to meet up with an old friend on Wednesday. It’s scary but it’s one teeny tiny step.
Now I feel a little better, but not a lot. I’m still really stressed out. But now that I’m done writing this post, it’s bed time. Time to put my worries on the shelf and have some rest. Enter the land of STOP, but not permanently. My bedtime medication ensures sleep, which is nice and predictable. Yes, I’m probably going to have nightmares again tonight but hey, I might not.
And what can I do until I fall asleep? Breathe. Breathe one breath at a time.
My thoughts tonight make me feel insane, but this is how to survive that insanity. Minute by minute. Maybe tomorrow my road will have more STOP signs, more than today’s road. That’s worth looking forward to. Those maybes.
Where do you need some STOP signs in your life?
100 Feelings
14 May 2012 7 Comments
in Blog Maintenance Tags: goals, growth, happiness
On the 100th day of school in Grade One we had to bring in 100 items of our choosing. I brought 100 pieces of popcorn. I don’t know if I ate the popcorn after, but probably not because everyone touched it while counting.
This is my 100th post. Yay! I would never have guessed that I’d written that many but WordPress counts these things.
I’m trying to make a habit of relishing the good things because there aren’t nearly enough of them in life. So 100 posts is pretty cool. And in just under a month’s time, Daisies and Bruises is going to reach its first year anniversary.
I have about 100 feelings right now. Pride, excitement, joy, anticipation, and satisfaction. Then I have my normal feelings of anxiety and depression, caution and fear.
I feel a bit wiser than when I started this blog, too. I’ve noticed some patterns in my writing habits, like how I tend to stop writing for a bit after I write a post I’m proud of writing. At first I tell myself that I want to make sure everyone reads that post before I continue, but then I start telling myself that I can’t write another post as good as the one before. Then I tell myself that post wasn’t that good to begin with. Then I start beating myself up for writing a new post. Then I just avoid writing, period. It can be fucking exhausting, being me.
Anyway, the countdown is on to the first-year-anniversary of Daisies and Bruises on June 16th. I’m super excited because this blog is going to grow in some exciting ways. Stay tuned!
Self-harm & Tattoos
30 Apr 2012 12 Comments
in Life Events Tags: art, cutting, rite of passage, self harm, self-injury, tattoos, the life of erin, tips, writing
(This post talks about self-injury. Though I never write about what I find to be triggering, I do advise self-harmers to read this post with caution. If it is triggering you, stop reading or sit with someone who helps you feel safe. )
I have a consultation for a new tattoo on Thursday and I’m super excited. This will be my third tattoo. On my left forearm, I have a typewriter with cherry blossoms bursting out of it, designed for me personally by Cassandra Warren. Another of her designs is on my right shoulder: a birdcage with a burst of light coming from within, indicating that the bird has disappeared. My upcoming tattoo is my own design, and it will be the smallest. It has a very special and secret meaning for me. It’s going to be on my left wrist. Maybe I’ll share its meaning with you someday.
As a kid and younger teen, I never ever thought I’d get a tattoo. After I started self-injuring, however, the idea of permanence no longer scared me. One of the reasons I cut myself was to mark myself permanently, to tell my story, the pain of that day or week or moment. I have hundreds of scars and I can still remember the stories behind some of them. If you could wave a magic wand and make all of my scars disappear, I wouldn’t want you to do it. They are part of me and my history. Tattoos cover the scars so they aren’t the first thing people notice, but they don’t erase them. I like that. Getting tattoos marked a new chapter in my life. I chose to love my body instead of hate it.
There are some people who argue that getting tattoos or piercings are a form of self-harm. When it comes down to it, these things do harm the body physically, so the argument is a valid one, but I believe it’s the reasoning behind the acts of “harm” that make body modification different. That said, I know I can handle the pain of a tattoo because of my experience with self-harm. Maybe that’s why tattoos mean so much to me.You can’t separate or define some things. That argument doesn’t matter much to me.
So, my typewriter tattoo spans over 50-100 scars on my one arm. At first when people asked me whether it hurt more to be tattooed over my scars, I couldn’t give them an answer because I only had one tattoo. Now that my shoulder is tattooed, I can say that getting tattooed over my scars didn’t hurt more than getting normal skin tattooed. Most of my scars were at least five years old, however. The minimum healing time before getting a tattoo over a scar is six months so that your skin is properly healed first. I think my scarred skin is tougher than unscarred skin. Overall, your body feels pain differently all over, so it really depends on the location, the detail of the tattoo, and the tattoo artist when it comes to pain.
By the way, seeking to get tattooed over my self-harm scars was an awesome experience. No one has ever looked at my scars with less judgement than the tattoo artists at True Love Tattoo. It was as if we talked about me getting tattooed over a single scar from an accident. I felt no shame when I saw how little my scars affected those tattoo artists. So my advice is, if you are worried about the reaction you’ll get from tattoo artists when it comes to your scars, DON’T WORRY! These people alter skin for a living. They don’t care why your skin is a certain way, they just want you to love your tattoo(s). They go to tattoo conventions where there are people with the most extreme forms of body modification. Google it! I swear it’ll make you feel like your scars aren’t shameful.
So being a self-injurer made me consider getting tattoos, whereas if I’d never self-harmed I might not have considered tattoos as easily. But now that I have tattoos, I know they are 100% for me. As a writer and artist, symbols mean a lot to me. My typewriter tattoo mainly represents writing, but also the work behind writing. I researched flowers and chose cherry blossoms to grow out of that typewriter because of the meaning that flower holds and its tie-in with a favourite book of mine. My birdcage tattoo has many meanings that I expect to change as I grow. The tattoo primarily symbolizes escape, but the birdcage can represent so many things.
Tattoos are an investment. Take the time to come up with an idea you love. Then find a tattoo artist who is skilled and be prepared to pay them as much as they ask for, plus a tip. It’s worth every penny! They are giving you art that you’ll have the rest of your life.
If you want tattoos but are scared of their permanence and whether you’ll get sick of them, do what I did. I printed out a picture of each of my tattoos and hung it on my wall as I saved up my money. After six months, if you aren’t sick of seeing the design every day, then it’s a safe bet as a tattoo. Also consider getting your tattoo(s) in a spot you can’t see all the time. My shoulder tattoo is more visible to others than to me and so it’s always a delight when I glimpse it in a mirror or in a photograph.
Tattoos celebrate life. They help define who you are without you ever saying a word. They remind you of your beauty. Take the time and then take the risk. Life is worth living, however you do it. Go ahead and do it!
Housekeeping & Snail Self-Talk
29 Apr 2012 15 Comments
in Blog Maintenance Tags: anxiety, blog, feedback, self-talk
Isn’t that a rad typewriter? It’s my sister’s, even though I’ve tried to get her to sell it to me a zillion times. I thought it was fitting for this post because those little yellow snails on the top are my various negative-self-talk voices.
“You suck!” – snail on the far right
“This is way too depressing to post.” – snail 2nd to the right
“No one wants to read about this.” – next snail
“Why are you writing a blog post on a typewriter?! WTF!?” – snail on the far left
Okay, that last snail does have a point.
Needless to say, I’ve had a bit of anxiety about posting here lately. I’ve written probably seven posts in the past five days and every one of them isn’t “good enough.” I need some new editors, preferably ones that don’t leave slime trails across my pages and monitor.
Moving on! There are some maintenance questions about this blog that I’ve been meaning to ask you. Your feedback would be greatly appreciated!
1. For those of you who comment, do you get my replies? Either through email or checking back on the post later? Do replies matter to you?
2. What are your ideas around an “ask” box? I want to put something on the sidebar to let readers anonymously ask questions for me to answer, however I haven’t found the right widget to do so. Any recommendations?
3. Can anyone recommend a good web designer, artist, or website that could work with me to create a 100% unique WordPress layout? This one is too common and generic.
4. What are your favourite post topics?
5. What would you like to see more of here?
This is my 98th post! If WordPress didn’t count these things for me I’d probably guess I’d written fifty or so. This blog is almost a year old. The feedback I’ve received so far from all of you has boosted my confidence so so much. Thank you! As you can see from those questions, I’m thinking about expanding and making this blog even better. I feel my passion for writing and art coming together into a movement. I’m pretty excited to continue on this journey. :)
A Sign for My Window
24 Apr 2012 6 Comments
in Day-to-Day Life Tags: anxiety, coping, depression, life direction, quotes, self-talk, social anxiety
Life feels dark and directionless today. The weather can’t be helping, cold and blowing, rain hissing down from the sky. I feel like a sitting duck, waiting for disaster, which I know is ridiculous. I create my life. Mental illness affects it but I can choose positive thinking to get myself through today. But it’s hard with the sky so dark.
Every once in a while, life brings someone into my life that helps me see the sun. Someone breathes life into my veins and shows me that there’s a lot out there in the world, a lot of goodness that can be trusted. Then life takes that person away and I question whether they existed in the first place. It’s hard to believe in the good when it leaves so little evidence.
But I contradict myself again. There is evidence of good in the world, as I talked about in my last post. I just have to get there and hang on until I do. My problem is that there are so many people around me that are tired of life as well. There are so many of us straining for something better.
I read a quote this week, adding it to my one hundred and fifty page collection that grounds me when no one else can:
[My best tip for overcoming depression is] to regard it as being like the weather. It’s not your responsibility that it’s raining, but it is real when it rains, and the fact that it’s raining does not mean that the rain is never going to stop. The only thing to do is to believe that, one day, it won’t be raining and accept it so you can find a mental umbrella to shield yourself from the worst. The sun will eventually come up.
- Stephen Fry
Maybe I should make a sign for my window that the sky can read and be reminded that some of us down here have had too much rain. DEAR SUN, PLEASE RETURN TO MY LIFE. AND WHEN YOU COME BACK, DON’T YOU DARE LEAVE AGAIN. At least stick around long enough for me to dry off and warm up and sit in peace.
I feel myself in my own way. My self-talk is bad and my self-esteem is worse. Hence my lack of blog posts lately. And then, of course, I beat myself up over that.
Isolation is always a trap for me. I fall into it so easily since I adore doing solitary things like reading and writing and doing art. It felt like my connection with the world was falling away piece by piece and then I got the flu, so all the events I was looking forward to got crossed off my calendar. Now I feel like I have nothing to pick back up.
The solution is there: Go, don’t think, just go and do it and live. Or at least, write.
Proof of Life
16 Apr 2012 7 Comments
in Survival Tags: coping, faith, happiness, wellness
Raise your hand if you’ve been to England.
Raise your hand if you’ve been to Africa.
China?
Australia?
The North Pole?
What if I told you that those places didn’t exist? You wouldn’t believe me, would you? I could argue that if you haven’t seen one of those places or all of those places, how do you know they are real?
You’d tell me that you’ve heard of them, that you’ve known people who have been there, that you know about the customs and the cities and the histories. Even if you haven’t been to those places, it would be impossible for me to convince you that they didn’t exist. There is too much proof.
How about wellness? Happiness? Have you ever been truly happy, depression free, hopeful?
Sometimes I forget that those things really exist. I can think about happiness and feel like I’d probably meet the Loch Ness Monster before ever feeling truly happy.
But other people have been there, they have been happy. Hundreds of thousands of people over the centuries. Millions! They have written music about it, books, movies and plays. They have put their flag in the ground to stamp proof of their conquest, just like Neil Armstrong planted his flag on the moon in 1969.
Emotion is harder to prove than physical measurable things, but it’s as real as anything else. And until I get there myself, I’m going to surround myself in as much proof of happiness as I can. Then, when it decides to make its way into my life, I will not only believe in it, I will recognize it. And I will hold onto it until you get there too.
Links of Love
11 Apr 2012 4 Comments
in Fun Tags: art, creativity, frank warren, gaslighting, life direction, links, postsecret, psychology today, self-sabotage, TED, video
So, I’m still feeling sick as hell. Great! Anyway, I haven’t been up to any genius writing these past few days but I have found some great mental health stuff online that’s informative and inspiring. Worth every…click!
First of all, my new awesome friend Claire wrote about Happy Lists after reading my Happy List post from February. Her blog is brand new and I am in love already!
Next, Psychology Today has a great blog post about Self-Sabotage, complete with a list that branches out into several related articles as sub-categories:
1: Dodging Emotions: The Help That Harms
2: Procrastination: Oops, Where Did the Day Go?
3: Extreme Modesty: The Case of the Disappearing Self
Number three reminds me of what I believe to be the original Gaslighting article, A Message to Women from a Man: You Are Not Crazy. If you’re only going to click on one link from this post, the latter is the best. I feel like my entire life is explained by it.
Moving on, TED (my new favourite site) has a brand new video of Frank Warren of PostSecret. It’s phenomenal. Check it out:
Speaking of TED, this is my most favourite talk on there, one that I make sure to rewatch every few weeks. It’s Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love on Nuturing Creativity. It’s a great example of how to weaken your negative self-talk and keep your channels of creativity flowing and open.
*okay, that video isn’t working for some people, so click this link to watch it instead. :)
(If you know me in “real life” I’ve probably talked to you about this. Now you have the link so you have no excuse for not watching it! I’ll be checking. Yeah, you!)
I just learned about assistance dogs for people with seizures. Apparently we emit an odour right before having a seizure and certain dogs can smell it. Once trained, a seizure dog can save lives. Read about this awesome kid who wrote a book to raise money to get a seizure dog. HONESTLY, GREATEST THING EVER.
Lastly, read about this Memorial for Mental Health. The header photo alone just makes me feel peaceful and wonderful:
Be well!! ♥♥♥
