Hurricane of Anxiety

With Hurricane Sandy almost upon us in Ontario I... am freaking the hell out. Ahh the joys of anxiety. Nothing is quite as much fun as irrational thinking brought on by current events.

Despite the fact that I'm still cracking jokes and sitting calmly on my couch (Not boarding over windows and high tailing it to somewhere I think is "safe"), my stomach is turning and I'm fighting back tears. This is why I don't watch the news, read papers, and selectively read posts on the internet. I am not a person who deals well with things out of my control, I really don't deal well with severe weather.

I'm horribly worried about my friends in the direct line of Hurricane Sandy. I'm horribly worried about my daughter and if I should be taking her to school tomorrow. I'm horribly worried about my mum who lives in a modular home in the country. I'm just horribly worried. Horribly, horribly worried.

My stomach is absolutely in knots. I'm not panicking. I'm not freaking out. I'm just watching TV, not the news, just some true crime show I ran across. I am however watching twitter and facebook and my friends updates.

Every part of me wants to curl up with my baby, where I know exactly where she is and what shes doing at every moment. I want to make my mum come to my house where I can keep her safe, or at least keeps us together. I want to gather supplies and turn my windowless bathroom into a bunker and hide out until the storm is over.

I know I'm thinking irrationally. I know that my home is built soundly and we're almost guaranteed our safety here. I know my friends are all taking proper precautions to ensure their safety. It doesn't matter. My brain won't shut off. I'm worried. Terribly terribly worried. Completely unable to rationalize the situation.

For the first time in months I am seriously contemplating taking one of my "panic pills" aka lorazapam so I can sleep tonight.

Can I just say... I. Fucking. Hate. My. Anxiety. Disorder.

Darkness

I wish I had answers.

I always do.

Truth is, I don't have a clue.

Chemical imbalance, illness, emotions.

They're all just words. You can find them all in a dictionary or on google. You can seek their definitions and be able to recite them word for word.

Unfortunately mental illness changes from person to person. There isn't one clear meaning or reaction. No matter what the internet, doctors and dictionaries say.

We all spiral differently.

There are shades of darkness.

Some of us fight the darkness with substances.

Some of us fight the darkness with self harm.

Some of us don't fight the darkness, but embrace it like an old friend.

If we hurt other people, we're hurting ourselves twice, three times, four times more.

I am still in my break down.

The start, the middle, the end, I don't know.

I still wake up every morning wishing I hadn't.

Take that as you will.

My life is not my own, it belongs to a curly haired little girl who loves me more than I think anyone ever has.

I don't have choices of my own.

Right now my choices belong to my daughter and my illness.

They want very different things.

My illness tells me I don't care. My illness tells me sleep. My illness tells me everything and everyone can fuck off.

My daughter tells me she loves me. Tells me to play. Tells me to read. Tells me to live.

I will never have answers, I can only hope for solutions.

If it takes 18 hours of sleep a day to spend 6 with my Monkey, I accept that for the moment.

I feel safe in the darkness. Like a warm blanket on a cold night.

I don't know what will or is happening. I know I fight in my own way. You may not see it, you may not like it, you may not accept it but this is the control my illness has.

Beyond the 140: Part 1

I've been sitting on this all weekend. How do I explain something so amazing that I'm not sure it really happened. How do I tell you I spend 4 days falling in love with strangers. How do I express the feeling of bottled magic. I'm going to try. I will not do it justice but hopefully I can at least acknowledge those who touched my soul.

This will not be a 1 part post... It will take me days to wrestle through the emotions this post will take.

And with that said, I'll start with my Knight In Shining Armour, Lyndon. We met up at the airport unexpectedly on our way to New York. He was on the earlier flight, but I got there early and we had some time to talk. After finding out I was super nervous to get from the airport to the hotel he offered to wait for an hour on the other end and travel with me. This was only the start of Lyndons chivalry. Waiting places for me,  taking in a room mate he had never met because I asked him to, coming back to the airport, sleep and family deprived to drive me home. This is just what he did, it doesn't even get into how just his presence kept me calm and his voice made me smile.

I say I fell madly in love with strangers, and I did, none more so than Matteo. From the moment we were in the same room the first time I knew my life was better because he was in it. We connected. I wanted him in our world, involved in our fun. I wanted to experience 140 with him. We had so many sparkling moments, not big moments, but important ones. It was like we had been friends for our entire lives. I ran like a crazy person to make his talk Wednesday morning and to see him come so alive on stage brought tears to my eyes. I was lucky enough to get to connect with his partner Pheobe online and realized that the awesome ran through this family like a waterfall. Proof that true beauty finds its mirror image.

Just writing about these 2 amazing men has brought on the tears. I went through so many kleenexes the past week that I should probably be out planting trees. I spent 4 days in New York and saw none of the city, but I saw world changers, dream makers, I saw magic with my own two eyes.

Going into day 1 only hours from my talk I spoke to my dear friend Kat. My nerves were frazzled and my anxiety through the roof. I told her I had no idea how I was going to speak between my childhood hero, Carlos Delgado, and a man who inspires me every single day, Mark Horvath. I didn't know how I could possibly come up to their level. She looked at me and told me I could do it, I would do it and I would be great. I stopped and breathed in the air around me, then put it out of my mind. To think about it would spiral me into anxiety. People asked if I was ready, if I had my talk together, I laughed and said I wouldn't know until I hit the stage. How true this was, no one actually knew. I had nothing when I got to New York, absolutely nothing prepared. I woke up at 6am that day, realizing I had another hour or so to sleep I curled up and closed my eyes.

Then I had a dream... A dream featuring another new friend, Tiffany. I was giving my talk just to her. Her stunning smile was the only thing I saw. I woke up and knew. I knew exactly what I was going to say, how I was going to say it... I knew I was about to bare my soul and I knew it was going to be worth it. The nerves and anxiety never went away, but from the moment I opened my eyes after that dream I was in control. I was prepared to take on the world. It was my time to stand up and sparkle.

I was ready...


To be continued...

Vibrating: NYC

I. AM. FREAKING. OUT!!

3 more sleeps until New York City!!

I'm dying! Nerves have made me jittery and anxious but so so excited!

I can't even tell you how happy I am that Jacki, Krystal and Gord will be there with me. For so many reasons. It's not very often that a girl gets to live out a dream with some of her best friends beside her. And by beside me I mean, keeping me from falling over and making sure there are kleenexs available at all times.

Is my talk ready? Well define "ready". It changes, daily, hourly, by the minute. I have so much I want to say. So much to tell the world. So much of myself I want to give. The encouragement I have been getting just makes me want to give more, do more, be better.

On top of all of that, there is talk about #140karaoke in NYC. Did you hear that? Probably not since it was me, unable to catch my breath. I've mentioned before my dream of singing to finance my mental health projects. Singing in NYC would just blow my mind... BLOW. MY. MIND. The experience would be stellar, killer, amazing... pretty much any word you can find in the thesaurus under "incredible".

This whole trip is going to be incredible.

I'm trying to figure out how to download my brain so I can have space to fill with all the new memories I'm going to make. Another reason I am so glad I'm going to have friends with me, to remind me of what the hell happened!

I'm not quite sure how I'm going to be able to thank Jeff Pulver and the 140 family for making this happen.

3 sleeps.

Well 3 nights, I don't know how much sleep I'm going to get.

Just When You Thought You Knew Everything

So there isn't much I shy away from talking about in the relative safety of my internet bubble. Homelessness, depression, anxiety, suicide, heartbreak, love, family... I'm what can be defined as an open book. But we all have our secrets.

My secret is embarrassing, shameful and not even my closest friends know. My therapist however, after hearing my stories of love and support thinks that being open about my issues will help me. She likes you people.

I have a 5 seater car, until last week it sat 2, me and one other person. And not comfortably.

I have a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment. Only one bathroom is used and really neither bedroom should be.

Part of my anxiety disorder has caused a hoarding compulsion.

I am a hoarder.

Now, to be straight, I am not like those people on A&E who live in a house filled to the rafters, have dead animals buried under newspaper and are "collecting" jars or dolls or books or old medical specimens. I have floor and know what it looks like in most rooms (all but mine actually). I am however, chronically disorganized and have a very hard time getting rid of things.

My house is stacked full of stuff. Good stuff, bad stuff, stuff I have forgotten exists, Stuff.

I am paranoid when it comes to getting rid of things. After being homeless and losing everything, letting go of things feels near impossible. I worry what would happen if I needed something I got rid of and couldn't replace it again. Even ridiculous things like clothes my daughter has outgrown, dollar store items that are broken or of no use anymore, things that i'm not sure where they came from or what they were for but I must have gotten for a reason so I can't let go.

What I didn't realize entirely until the last month or so is how much this impacts every aspect of my life. I don't use my kitchen. This is an expensive and inconvenient problem. Monkey isn't home 2 meals a day during the week, so during the day I just don't eat. After I pick her up we go to the grocery store or a restaurant and get what we need for the night. Constantly buying small amounts of food is so expensive, sometimes I just buy for her and I skip dinner too. Weekends and some evenings were not home as much as possible, we eat at my mums or friends or eat out. I spend a lot of my time planning how not to be home.

Until this week, no one but myself and the Monkey had been in my house in over a year. I'd just say our house was too small, or point out that it was out of the way for people to come to our place out of town, or just flat out say no. I would tell people my house looked as if a tornado came through and they would laugh and say "Oh mine too" and I would laugh along because they had no idea.

This week I got notices from my building that it was inspection time of year and that they would be coming to do inspections for damages and to check safety equipment. I panicked. I have spent most of the week having full blown anxiety attacks and throwing up and twitching from stress. (Did I mention my doc changed my meds last week? I'm sure that isn't helping.) Completely incapable of even starting to correct the situation.

My amazing boyfriend cleaned out my car last week and I had admitted to him that my house and my car were pretty much the same. I tried to get through to him the severity of the issue without causing him to run screaming for the hills. Somehow I was convinced (still not sure how, part of me thinks voodoo was involved) to let him help me. Armed with garbage bags, cleaning supplies and more paper towel then you can shake a stick at, I took him to my house. He took a look around and said "Let's get started". No shame, no badgering, no attempt at therapy, just let's get started. It was exactly what I needed. Someone to tell me what to do and when to do it. It's not that i'm incapable of doing the work, its that I have become so overwhelmed by it that I have no idea what to do. I needed someone to take charge and I needed to not be alone doing it.

In two hours of work we filled 7 garbage bags of junk, 4 bags of donations and did a rough sort of the things I planned on keeping. All this was solely in the front hall and kitchen. There were clothes I forgot I owned, things I didn't remember buying and garbage, just hoards and hoards of garbage. Garbage and shame. Every time we would uncover another bag I forgot about, there was more shame. I had become so accustomed to not being able to find things that I just would replace them, which just added more and more stuff to the already unmanageable amount of stuff I owned.

Hoarding is a vicious circle.

Thursday they are supposed to be coming to do the inspection, tonight I'm making an incredibly hard call to see if I can postpone a week so that I have a chance to make changes and hopefully clear out some things, make space and find the home amongst the mess. Tonight I am also formulating a plan. Last night I tried just diving in and ended up a puking, crying mess on the floor who accomplished nothing but upsetting myself into a massive panic attack. I am making check lists for every room, breaking the tasks down to their simplest, smallest element. I am preparing myself to walk in and work.

I know this is a problem, I don't enjoy living this way and I know the Monkey deserves better. This sets me apart from most hoarders. I want to change. I just need help. So tomorrow I'm going to try. I can't make promises I can't keep, especially to myself, but I can try.

BULLIED

I've been thinking about this a lot. Watching the news there seems to be a young person committing suicide every other week because of some kind of bullying. These are just the ones that we hear about, I'm sure the numbers are much higher.

We hear people saying "It gets better" or "hang in there" and I have to put in my two cents on why telling people it will get better simply is not enough.

I have attempted suicide.

I have harmed myself.

I have been deeply impacted by bullying.

From the time I was young I was bullied. I was never the popular kid. I was loud and dramatic and sang all the time. I was also "the fat girl". Funny enough I wasn't that big in school but thats another story. Kids have an uncanny ability to feel out insecurities and play on them. Being the biggest girl in the class as a kid made me different and insecure. I knew it, my classmates knew it, my bullies knew it.

I had numerous people that were unkind or mean. Baby bullies, they wern't as direct or harsh but they had words that cut me none the less. My bullys name was David, I can still hear his voice and picture his face 20 years later. A time I should have been playing and having fun, I was begging to spend recesses indoors or walking around with the teacher on recess duty.

"You're fat"

"You're ugly"

"No one likes you"

I was terrified to sit on the school benches, I had been convinced I would break them.

I hated gym class, I swore I could feel eyes watching me jiggle.

I refused to eat at school, afraid I was being watched and judged.

As the years passed I lost friends, I avoided the usual life lessons of young love and friendship. Group projects were done solo and I spent all my spare time hiding in my basement.

The Basement. My personal prison.

During junior high I gave up. I lived in my basement, coming up for food and very little else. My mother tried to push me to go to school and I would leave the house and then return as soon as everyone was gone. The thought of going to school made me physically ill. I slowly retreated more and more until full fledged agoraphobia kicked in. I would hide in the dark basement away from people and sunlight and the world and scrape at my skin. I would get an itch and scratch it until it bled. My arms and legs held scars hidden by long sleeves and pants. My family tried everything to get me out of the house. Threats, demands, the police were at our house numerous times as we fought tooth and nail.

All because I didn't want to go to school.

Because I hated myself.

Because I was being bullied.

I tried everything I could to stop the bullying. I told my teachers, I stood up for myself, I stole from family and stores so I would have the coolest new thing or so I would have money to buy things for other people and look popular. It didn't work. Nothing worked. The insults would continue to fly and I would lash out verbally at my bullies and end up in trouble myself. This just aggravated the problems. No one was on my side. In trouble at home, in trouble at school and hated on the playground. I had no where to turn.

The more depressed I got the more I ate my emotions. The insecurity I was fighting so hard against was my one comfort. Food. I was ashamed. I would hide food, empty packages, dishes so no one would know I was eating. I wasn't fooling anyone. I was hiding in baggy clothes and behind long bushy hair. The weight I continued to put on did not go un-noticed. I was disgusted with myself, so I would stop eating for days and then binge. Cartons of ice cream, full packages of lunch meat, cookies, cheese, crackers, chips, hot dogs, kraft dinner... anything I could get my hands on. And then the shame, the self hatred, the hiding evidence and myself.

The emotions and mental distress of bullying was clearly visible in every aspect of my life.

The self hatred, the shame, the feeling that I had no one to turn to... I gave up.

Pills were my method of choice.

No one was home.

I didn't care what it was as long as there was a lot of them.

I swallowed handfuls of pills until there were none left.

Then I laid down and waited to die.

I'm fairly sure I left a note apologizing for being a horrible person but everything is a blur for awhile. I know someone found me. I know I ended up at the hospital. I know I was forced to drink charcoal until I threw up. I know I had my stomach pumped.

I know I didn't die.

I know nothing changed.

I know I tried again.

and again.

and again.

Until at 14 I was admitted to a juvenile psychiatric facility for suicidal tendencies. Such a nice way to say I wanted to be dead and wouldn't give up. Most people chase their dreams, I think I was chasing my mothers nightmare. I spent 6 months locked away. Group therapy, one on one therapy, art therapy, music therapy, medical tests, medications. I came home numb. Heavily medicated and numb. I no longer knew how to feel. I couldn't sing, I couldn't write and I couldn't think.

I knew one thing. School was where I was hated and ridiculed and terrorized. I knew I wouldn't go back. I wouldn't give my bullies more ammunition by having them find out that they broke me. That they had won.

I muddled through in independent learning until I was 16 and I dropped out. I was done. I felt exactly the same in independent learning that I did at school, I was an outcast. I was different and people were watching me and waiting for me to fail. I took a minimum wage job and moved out. My mother and I were at each others throats and I hated everyone and everything.

The years since then have been hard. I'm not going to lie, suicide has been an option many times. Luckily I have learned better coping, kind of. I've had problems with drugs, problems with alcohol, I am a hoarder, I have horrible anxiety, and some days, I still hate myself.

I have done a lot of work over the years to slowly improve and better my life. I still have to work very hard every day not to swirl into a black pit and just say "To Hell With It" to everyone and everything. I am a work in progress. I am bent but not broken.

Bullying did this to me.

Bullying destroyed my mental health.

If I close my eyes I can still see and hear my bully as clear as if they were standing beside me. The words they spewed still cut me inside. Their hatred so thick in front of me still that I can taste it.

If your child is being bullied or suddenly has a major personality change, please, I'm begging you, get them help. Be on their side. It will be the hardest thing you may ever do in your life, but it can save their life. Give them hugs. Give them understanding. Give them time. Give them love.

No one should ever grow up to be me. It is preventable. We can't change other peoples kids. We can't fix bullies. They will always exist in some form, what we can do is save our own children through educating them, empowering them and being open to giving them any help they may need. Therapy is not bad. Medications are not bad. Reaching out is not bad. We seem to think that we need to be super human and capable of dealing with everything on our own as parents. That to ask for help is a sign of weakness and a failure of parenting.

Asking for help will save your childs life.

Caught In The Silence

I have chronic laryngitis. At least once yearly I lose my voice. Sometimes for a few days, sometimes a week, sometimes a month. There's no reason for it, sometimes it happens when I get sick, sometimes it happens after a long night, sometimes it just happens.

Now despite the door that opens to jokes from friends and family who know I talk... A LOT... Its not as funny or amusing as it sounds. Especially now, with a toddler who likes to run and occasionally needs to be hollered for (or at) to prevent injury and insanity.

There's also the associated difficulties of having no voice like making phone calls, ordering my tea at drive thru, asking for help at the drug store etc...

But there's an added dimension of pain involved in being voiceless for me. I lose my therapy. I am a firm believer in music therapy and for me it's done vocally. When I'm sad, I sing. When I'm happy, I sing. When Im mad, I sing. See the pattern emerging?

I've been singing since I was hardly old enough to talk. As a kid I took lessons and trained as a broadway and opera performer. (Yes, I sang opera... SURPRISE) It wasn't my cup of tea so I started just singing for myself, family and in school productions. Later on I became a karaoke regular then karaoke host. Anything to get to sing.

History lesson over, basically singing is a huge part of who I am. I use it to free myself from the daily grind. Not having my voice is so mentally debilitating. More mentally debilitating then not having my medications, not having my doctors, not having my reading, my writing, my books. Not having my voice is like breathing underwater. Like flying without wings. Like like like putting a tiger in a portapotty. Its basically taken every emotion, every thought, every everything and confined it within my body. Like an untreated infection it just eats at my from the inside out.

I feel like my thoughts have opportunities to take over when previously I could release and heal. Being that it has been a rather rough week for me, its all the more in my face. I can't sing, I can't scream, I can't even whisper how I feel.

So for the moment, this is my release.

This is my therapy.

This is my song.