It’s Been Awhile/Tough Love

Hiiiiii. I know, it’s been a minute I posted, but lots of things have happened. I don’t even know where to start. I’ll just start with the more recent events and as things come to me, I’ll write them down. So, until about two weeks ago I was severely depressed. The days were just running together. I was having dark thoughts, I wasn’t eating, I was weepy and apathetic. The usual. Also, I was isolating (as much as I could) in isolation. I would sit on the couch away from my boyfriend, and just stare at the TV, nothing made me happy. Then flashback to two weeks ago, my boyfriend brought me back to reality, he said what I needed to hear. They may not have been things I wanted to hear, and I cried, but it snapped me right out of the depression. He basically said that my perspective was too focused on myself, I know, I know, it sounds like it could be mean or unnecessary. He said it with love though, it was tough love for sure, but it was loving. I’m so lucky to have him, and that’s even an understatement.

I’ve lost count of the days we’ve been in isolation, they’re all running together. Like this morning, I was texting my best friend and I honestly thought today was Wednesday. When I was depressed, I lost all inspiration. I should have been posting on social media for the business, but I just couldn’t, I wasn’t able to choose what I wanted to post or how to word it, so I figured there was no point. Because of the virus things had slowed down for business. Which was irritating because we had just started to gain momentum, followers, people buying the coffee, events, but that all stopped. So, what are you supposed to do when that happens? We tried to do what we could to keep busy, but when there comes a point where you can’t create things to do anymore, there’s nothing you can really do. Positive thinking was not on my mind when quarantine started, I was scared of the uncertainty of the world around me. I spiraled.

The last two weeks have been much better, I changed my thinking. For example, when I say that I feel bad, I just think to myself that “you feel bad right now, and that’s okay because this won’t last forever.” So basically, if you get knocked down, or feel bad or anything negative, you can sit with that and feel that, but you can’t live there. I’m not trying to say, if you feel bad you can just pull yourself out of it. We’re all different, what mindset works for me, may not work for you. I may be able to say those things to myself and accept my feelings, but maybe you can’t. That’s okay, find something though, find something to believe in.

Speaking of things to believe in, I’ve been trying to become my spiritual, and find my path to something more concrete to believe in. I don’t mean concrete in the sense that I want a strict religion to follow, I just want some loose guidelines. The path I have chosen to explore is paganism and wicca. I’m still learning and reading, watching videos, and just finding out what they believe and how they embody their beliefs. I’ve found that you can practice in your own specific way, in private or openly, there is the Wiccan Rede, which is something that attracted me to it, it aligned with my beliefs. It’s like I was looking for something, and I believe I found it for a reason. I won’t go into it too much though. I’m still exploring.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading. I actually decided to read a book about the basics of physics, and I found it very interesting. I’m also in the middle of a book about the actual existence of Atlantis, which is something I’ve always wanted to read up on. Also, I’ve actually chosen to read a philosophy book. I took a lot of philosophy courses in the past semesters, and I was forced to read philosophy, but I’ve somehow found an interest in it, where I actually want to read it. It’s different when you have the ability to choose to read about a subject, then when you are given the material to read, when you’re told, you must read this to pass this class. I actually took the semester off to work on the business, and then COVID-19 hit. Which now that I’m writing, this time off has given me the opportunity to study and explore and just find passions.

Well, I think that’s it for now. If you read this whole rambling thing, I thank you. I promise I will try and write more. Let me leave you with this: Go out and explore everything. By go out, I mean read books or watch videos about things that you’re kind of interested in, you never know what type of passions you’ll find.

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Sunday Rants

Grab a snack, grab a drink, it’s time for a rant!

It’s 3:00 on Sunday afternoon, I’m cranky, hungry, anxious, and irritable, I also have a slight migraine. So, needless to say, I’m not having a great day, I mean, it’s not the worst, but it could 100% be going better. I got up around 7:40, watched some youtube, scrolled on some social media, waited for my boyfriend to wake up. By time he woke up, I was already anxious. We had planned on cleaning today and I already felt overwhelmed by it. To say the least, our apartment is a mess. It is extremely overwhelming, like I want to clean, but I look at all the stuff that has to be done, and I start panicking, so I don’t do it. The main thing I have issues with, is the dishes. I know, I know, it seems like something basic and minimal, like, just do it. We have no where to put our dishes though, so if I wash them, they just sit until we use them, then we use them, they sit in the sink until I do them, so it’s just like a vicious cycle. I hate it. There are other things I could do that I don’t find as daunting, but I just can’t seem to do it.

So, instead of cleaning earlier, I went to ulta with my best friend. I got an eye shadow palette I’ve been wanting, a lip gloss, and a primer. I felt guilty afterwards, feeling like I shouldn’t have spent the money. That just added to how I had already been feeling. I also felt pretty down last night after I posted, like really down, negative self talk and all. So, I dealt with that, went to sleep, woke up, and today is another day..to feel bad.

I’ve been feeling okay for the most part, it’s just the past few days. I’m irritated that I’ve had a migraine for the past three days, that we got nothing done today, and that I spent money that I feel like I shouldn’t have. I’m also waiting on and amazon order, which is taking forever, so I’m just basically annoyed by everything. Also, I hate change, and my boyfriend has been moving a bunch of stuff around in our living room, making me very anxious. So, basically this is just a long rant about how I’ve been feeling the past few days.

I’m waiting on my amazon order which is just some beauty stuff that I thought I needed, but I keep asking myself, do I actually need it? I got multiples of pretty much everything, because I’m notorious for losing most things beauty related. Hair ties, my favorite hair clips, lip balm, makeup brushes, you name it, I lose it. So, I do actually need the things that I got, they’re things I use on a regular basis and lose, on a regular basis.

I need to find something new to do with my time. I watch a lot of youtube, but I can’t keep doing it. There are other things I could do, read, write listen to an audio book or music. The possibilities are endless! I choose to not do them though, because they’re out of my comfort zone and cause anxiety. And what do I do when something makes me anxious? Avoid it. I can’t avoid everything though, that doesn’t mean I won’t try. So, I’m going to go avoid cleaning some more and keep watching youtube.

End Rant.

Today feels like a Friday

You know how some days don’t feel right? Like a it feels like it should be the end of the week, but it’s actually a Tuesday? That’s how I feel today. Since tomorrow is the 4th of July, we have off, and somehow we managed to get off Friday too. So, this Wednesday is kind of like a Friday. We get to wear jeans and maybe leave early, holidays in the middle of the week are pretty awesome.

I’m coming in on Friday though, I have to make up hours because I took off last Thursday because I was switching medications. And I left early the last two days because of migraines and mania. Sooo I lost hours, which is not awesome. I guess coming in Friday won’t be the worst thing ever, no one will be here, it’ll be super chill. Easy breezy. We listen to the radio all day no breaks. It’s not like it’s Spotify or anything either, it’s the actual radio, commercials and all. Sounds fun, right?

I’m working on grant letters of support today. Surprisingly it’s not too bad, but around 1, just like everyday around 1, I’m anxious. Just slightly though. So it’s not terrible, just uncomfortable. It makes it difficult to get work done. I’m focusing on the anxiety too much and not work.

The morning went pretty quickly, lunch came and went, I have to drop my timesheet off for this pay period, which makes me very anxious. They’re always saying that it would “be great” if I could drop it off early, but I can’t. They don’t understand, it takes me all day to work up enough strength and courage to go and do it. I can’t bring it early. I feel like a lot of people don’t understand. Anxiety has become so normalized that not everyone can understand when you say “no, I’m really anxious”. They’re perception of anxiety is personalized. Whether they have it or they listen to the stigma, I feel like people don’t understand, well some people.

I don’t talk openly about my anxiety or bipolar. I don’t want people to make up perceptions about me because of a biological disorder. Like, I can’t just not be bipolar. It’s literally in my genes. Like, thank you for your suggestions, but it is part of me. It makes it hard for me to accept that I’m more than just bipolar, when people perceive me only that one way. That’s why I don’t talk openly about it. I want people to know me, as me. With no preconceived notions.

Anywayyyyy. Work, I’m back at it. Trying not to be anxious, because, it’s Friday, right?

or shall I say Fri-yay…

An ode to Tuesday Mornings

Oh, Tuesdays…how I hate thee.

Well I hate Tuesday mornings. Tuesday as a whole isn’t too bad, but the mornings are rough. I don’t have a routine. I work half days on Tuesdays because I have therapy in the mornings. So, my weekday morning routine that I follow the rest of the week, just don’t apply, because an extra hour and a half is added to my morning. It is even worse when I wake up earlier than usual. Like today, I woke up at 6:15, which is fantastic. Especially since I’ve been having debilitating migraines, and when I have these migraines, I can’t stay asleep, and when I don’t sleep, I get manic. The migraines are the worst in the Summer, and I don’t drink enough electrolytes, so they just get worse and it’s just a vicious cycle.

Anyway, back to my loathe of Tuesday mornings. I just hate them so much. This post is just going to be a giant rant about Tuesday mornings. I mean I could just add some things to my mornings on Tuesdays, but I just feel like nothing makes the morning seem any less daunting. It’s 7:47 now, I don’t leave for therapy until 9:45, but I’m leaving early today to go to target. So I guess I can leave 15 minutes early, yay…it doesn’t make the morning any better. The rest of the day will go pretty well though, I just feel like the mornings last forever. Before I take my meds, I’ll have some bad thoughts, I’ll feel like garbage, and I’ll just hate everything, but that doesn’t happen any other day of the week, just Tuesdays.

Bottom line, Tuesday mornings are the worst. End rant.

The Fad of the Year

It seems as if everyone has bipolar disorder these days. Especially celebrities. I mean, yeah, it’s great that people are more willing to open up about their disorder, but sometimes it’s hard to swallow when they don’t give any background and just say they have it. Or maybe they only talk about one side of it without explaining what the flip side is. There is no black and white with bipolar disorder. Yes, everyone experiences symptoms differently, but sometimes it seems like a they just want the attention or sympathy. I almost got into a fight on Twitter about it, but I came here instead. This is just how I feel.

Let me tell you what happened. The magazine Cosmo posted an article about Kanye’s bipolar disorder. He only went into a small part of it, how he gets paranoid, which I don’t doubt he has severe symptoms of something, but to me it doesn’t sound like bipolar disorder. I don’t know, I’m just irritated. I feel like there’s still so much stigma. I haven’t even told most of my family about my disorder. Let alone tweet it out. I can’t believe I did that. Someone said it last week about how everyone seems to have bipolar disorder these days, and I agree. It is not fair to the people who do have it who are afraid to tell people because of stigma.

So much anxiety. So little time.

As I write this there’s a whole list of things I should be doing. I have two papers to write, 2 hours of research to do, and I’m supposed to have a meeting with my group for a group project. Buttttt, my anxiety has different plans. It always has different plans, my anxiety and I, we can never agree on anything. I took a Xanax, it made me sleepy, which made me want to curl up in bed, but I’m sitting on the living room floor instead.

I’m supposed to be making progress, my therapist said that I was, making progress, this morning. Then this happens, the anxiety grips me and squeezes, like a boa constrictor. I can’t breathe, I can’t think, focus, I can’t do anything. I have the tv on, but I’m just staring at it.

Take deep breaths? Tried it. Journal? Tried it. Any of my coping skills? Tried it. There’s always trying, but rarely results when it comes to my anxiety. It has a mind of its own. It has different plans. It doesn’t care that I have piles of work to do by tomorrow afternoon. It doesn’t care about anything. It just is. I know I shouldn’t let it be, I shouldn’t give into it, but sometimes I think to myself, I’m exhausted today, and I let the anxiety consume me.

I can’t create a coherent thought. That’s how I know it’s really bad. I honestly don’t know how I’m writing this or if it will even make sense once I post it. I’m going to do it anyway though, it’s something my anxiety will let me do. I should be the master of my anxiety, I should know how to beat it, but the thing is, I don’t think there’s an actual way to “beat” it. Yes, it can become under control or I can learn the best way to deal with it, but what happens on days where nothing works. It just piles up and up and up. Then it’s a mountain of anxiety I’m too tired to climb. So, I give in for the day Tomorrow will be better. Won’t it? I’ll have to wait and see.

The anxiety is always a part of me and I know it always will be. Yes, I can take Xanax to keep it at bay, but that’s not something that I want. I want to be able to take a few deep breaths and it be gone. Right now though, I want to sleep, I’m not hungry, I want sleep, but I know if I try to sleep, I won’t be able to. So what’s the point in that? Try, try, try, that’s what people think you should do, as if you try, it’ll automatically help. That’s not how it works though, sometimes, I need rest. Today though, there is no time for rest, today is supposed to be a time for work and progress and catch up, but right now, my day is filled with time slots, and each slot has one word next to it. Anxiety.

Any road will take you there

I’ve had a song lyric by my favorite band (Dawes) stuck in my head the past few days. “If you don’t know where you are going, then any road will take you there.”

It’s crazy how much this rings true in my life right now. Between being in a depressive episode, trying to fight my way through school, and now my new fashion journey. I have stable things in my life of course, my boyfriend, my parents, friends, doctors. Yet, I’m still on my own journey. I’ve realized recently, that I haven’t found a point in life, I don’t mean in the depressive way, as in, life is pointless, but more in a philosophical way. I’m not going to get into that here though.

What made me think about this is a run in I had we my neighbor the other day, he has a daughter my age and we were close friends growing up. And he assumed I was working, that I had finished my BA, and that I was in graduate school. The thing is, none of those things are true. And as I told him, he had this look, as if, my journey didn’t fit into his idea of how things should be, how his daughters journey was. And that’s not fair. It made me feel like lesser of a person.

Recently I’ve been trying to retrain my thoughts, so I had to sit with that experience for a little while and think. I had to remind myself that my journey is my own. I am not the same as other people. And most importantly, that that’s okay. I have to learn to be at peace with the things in my life, with my personal journey.

I’ve come to learn that it’s not my journey verses someone else’s journey or your journey verses anyone else’s journey. It’s a hard thing to come to terms with, especially if you’re on social media all the time. It’s hard not to compare yourself to other people and how far they have come in the same amount of time. It’s not fair to you or your mental state. And I know for me, my mental state is of the highest priority. Even though I still compare myself to others, it’s only natural, I’ve come to learn to respect my journey. And that I’ll find a road to take me where I’m meant to be.

This is ridiculous

I’ve been on two specific medications for about 6 and a half years, because of these medications I have gained a significant amount of weight. With that came a slew more mental issues, body image, and such. So I’ve just found out that I probably need to start wearing plus size clothing, I’ve come to peace with that. The thing that I can’t come the peace with is how the clothing we have available to us is not even close to the same as what “normal size” people have. I’m 4’11” and 220. I used to be so tiny before this medication. So coming to terms with the fact that this was a side effect that I have to deal with because I NEED this medication (latuda). I tried coming off of it last year and I spiraled. So we decided to reduce my dosage by half. This did not help. Anyway, back to my clothing rant. I can’t go shopping because when that happens I’ll see such cute things and try all of them one and not one thing will fit me. Do you know how discouraging that is? I know some of you do. It’s disheartening. Not only can I not wear the clothes I like anymore, but my options have become severely limited. So not only am I wearing plus size, but I need petite, this is not really a thing. The bigger the size the taller/longer the clothes get. I feel like this is so unfair. I love fashion and have a closet full of clothes that don’t fit me and may not ever again. It makes me sad, for anyone in a situation like mine.

The fashion industry is broken, what they think is “plus size” isn’t. I never got angry about this until now, because I was living in a fantasy world, a world where I would someday fit into the clothes I want to or even today I could go out and buy something I really, really want. Well, that’s fantasy and I feel like I was just slapped by reality.

The Other Day

I saw this:

And this really got to me. I’m not close with the person who posted this nor do I know their history of mental illness. I still saw it though, luckily it didn’t trigger me. 18 months ago, it would have. I’ve been hospitalized twice, once because I went off my meds and was deemed a danger to other people, the other I was so depressed I was a danger to myself. Both times it was done by one of my doctors. I’m so grateful and lucky to have the doctors I have, not only do they work with me, but they work together as well.

Anyway, seeing this made me think that you don’t really know anything about anyone on social media. I didn’t know this person had mental illness and this person didn’t know I had a history. I don’t want to say that it was inconsiderate, but I do feel like it was in bad taste. That’s just me though. Hospitals are supposed to be a place where you feel safe, you go because you need to. I don’t want people to feel like they shouldn’t have to talk about something because they’re afraid of the hospital. That’s how people feel though, I think. I have an emergency plan, I was by myself last week and I felt a manic episode and in my head I thought, if this gets out of hand, I have to know it’s okay to go to the hospital. I need to be safe. Thankfully it didn’t come to that, but it is part of my emergency plan. I’ve been triggered by things I’ve seen on social media before, so I was afraid that it would happen after I saw this, I got upset, it texted my best friend, and I dealt with it. No triggers.

Sorry for this rant.

-A