What is normal??

You know what the difference between you and me is?? You wake up every morning, and know exactly who you are, feel exactly like yourself. I, on the other hand, have to work for it. Sometimes I wake up with a migraine that makes it so I can't think straight and I am not my sharp, whitty self. Sometimes it is simply that I am easily irritable, short-tempered, easily confused, sluggish and simply unhappy... not me, until I take my morning medicine. It's sad. It's sad to not feel like yourself, the fun, energetic person that people used to love to be around, without medication. And it's sad to feel those characteristics slip away as my medication wears off. I don't take medication to medicate myself. I take medication so that I can feel like myself again.
When you are dealing with what I am dealing with (Just for the record, I have been diagnosed with mild depression, post traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder, anxiety disorder and severe PMS) feeling normal and finding a balance, is a difficult task. One that I wake up every day, and work really hard to do.

Alone with my pain...

My life has come down to 2 options. Everyday I wake up and hope I will be able to pull off the first. Faking It. Faking it like everything is okay. Like I am happy with where I am and what is going on around me. The second option is to simply be a mess. Anxiety ridden, facing panic attacks, having migraine headaches, short-tempered, a super emotional fucking mess. For months I had the faking it thing down pat. I was the queen of the plastic smiles and the "sounds great". Then, I was knocked completely off my game. And now I am a mess. No matter how many pep talks I give myself, no matter how much medication I take, everyday I am just struggling to get by. And I feel like when I tell people what's going on, they are beyond over it. They are sick of my migraines, sick of me not feeling good, sick of me being an emotional wreck. Even my boyfriend, who is so supportive and loving and understanding, seems to be losing his patience. It feels like I'm burdening him by talking about it and like he just wants me to be over it already. And so here I am... alone with my pain. Alone with the anxiety and panic attacks that you can not possibly understand unless you have experienced. Alone with my migraines that blur my vision, make it impossible for me to think straight and make me feel like a complete idiot. Alone with my mood swings that could strike at any minute... sparing no one and then leaving me feeling like the biggest bitch ever.
And alone with the fact that despite my numerous trips to several different doctors over the past year and a half, my emotional issues are still NO WHERE NEAR UNDER CONTROL. Despite all my medications, I am still not in control of myself, my body or my mind. It is an incredibly helpless feeling. One I hope you will never feel. But if you do... I hope you will learn how to fake it with the best of them. Meanwhile... I just I hope I can somehow find my way out of the pain and back to the faking it. I just don't know how much longer I can take it before I break.

Mood Swing Sally

So for real... I am crazy. I am having the worst mood swings ever. Mood swings that I can see happening but can not control. I know why I am irritated, and I do have a right to be irritated, but I do not have a right to act like I have been acting. I am acting like a child. It's ridiculous. The problem... even though I can see it happening, I can't stop it. Do you have any idea how frustrating that is?? Imagine watching yourself act crazy, almost like you are a ghost floating outside of your body, knowing that you should stop yourself or change your behavior.. or at the very least... apologize, but still NOT being able to do it. All that does is make you more frustrated. It is a viscious cycle. I hate it... I wish more than anything I had control over my life, my feelings, my reactions. Here's the thing... I am on medications.. I have been working on my "mental state" for at least 9 months. I'm sick of still feeling out of control, I'm sick of stil feeling like something is wrong with me, I'm sick of being crazy. Perhaps it is my lot in life, and the sooner I accept it, the better off I will be. I just want to be better, to be able to have a conversation with my boyfriend without intentionally making him feel badly and then getting off the phone and 10 minutes later being like WTF???? I am the biggest bitch ever!!! I am a mood swing mess... I just hope that I can manage to get myself together before I lose the best thing I've ever had.

Survivor

One year ago today... my life flashed before my eyes. In the blink of an eye, I ended up in the hospital with an Emergency Room doctor telling me I had a blood clot in my leg the size of Texas... and two clots that had broken off and traveled to my right lung. I spent the next 6 days in the hospital.. learning all about how lucky I was that I didn't die. I had probably been walking around with that ticking time bomb for at least three weeks... and if one of those chunks of clot that traveled through my heart had been just a little bit bigger... that would have been it.
May 9th, 2008 my world forever changed, I forever changed.
In the aftermath, I learned I had a clotting disorder which would make me susceptible to blood clots like this for the rest of my life. It also came with a laundry list of other side effects, like it can make it difficult to get pregnant, and if you do get pregnant, it will be a high risk pregnancy.
I was also immediately taken off birth control and told never to go back on it again. As a result my hormones went wacko, literally. I began having migraines, severe cramps and crazy PMS.
And then there was the worst part... the anxiety. I started having anxiety attacks... sometimes up to five times a day. They are undescribable, except to say that I wouldn't wish that feeling on anyone.
As a result, I am on medications to control my world and blood thinners.
There were some very dark times, and some times where I didn't feel like myself. I feel much better now, but I have forever been changed. I have always been a control freak, but I think now it is even worse. I want to control everything I possibly can in my life, because I know what it is like to lose control. I lost control of my health and that is a feeling I don't ever want to have again. One year later I am no where near recovered... or past this... but I am coping and learning and trying to be the best person I can be.
There have been some positives in all of this, I learned that I have a very rare clotting disorder that could have presented itself later, and the older you get the more likely you are to die from a blood clot.
I quit smoking... and so today also marks the one year anniversary of my last cigarette.
And I realized how strong a person I really am. No matter what anyone says to me, or thinks about where I am or where I should be, I know what I have been through. And I dare anyone to go through all that I have, and not come out a little bit scarred. If you went through this I guarentee you would understand what it is like to really be a fighter.
I'm not trying to pretend like I'm the only one who has faced tough times... I know they are all around us. I'm just saying I'm proud to say on my one year anniversary... I KNOW that I truly am a survivor.

To Medicate or Not Medicate...

...that is the question??? So the other day I went to see my therapist, originally with the plan to try to convince him that I should try to ween off my medications. But that plan was blow to bits the minute they decided to do layoffs at my work and for a week straight I was a crazy mess again... insomnia, migranes and anxiety attacks galore. So, I had to re-think my plan. Perhaps now is not the best time for me to be cutting back on the meds. But I did ask if this was how my life was always going to be, anytime I got super stressed my "craziness" was going to take over. Basically, my therapist said he couldn't really answer that. But that he has absolutely no problem with the amount of medications that I am on and doesn't think I should worry about that. Instead, I should be focused on just feeling good today... tomorrow and the day after. That got me thinking. Why was I so anxious to get off my medications? It's obvious I need them. And then it hit me. I have heard from numerous people that believe that since I started taking medication, I have become a different person. That's what was driving me... but I need to do what is best for me. My therapist told me medicating is like religion and politics, people have very strong views about whether it is right or wrong. I was talking to my mom about it all later, one of the people who had said she noticed a change in me, and she said she didn't mean that it was neccessarily the medication. She felt like I had changed, but she totally understood why. I had been through a lot, a near-death experience, a life-changing disorder, mental problems that went untreated for months. The truth is, I am a different person. Whether you blame the medication, or the life experiences, it doesn't change the fact that this past year has forever changed me. I'm pretty sure I can't ever go back to the person I was before. I just have to learn how to be the best person I can be now. And for me... at least for now... that includes medications... like it or not.