Bad Twitter Vibes

We're struggling today.  Something happened yesterday or last night (we think) or at the very least it was quite recently, and it's upset us and we are unable to move on past this incident.  I don't know how to get over it without discussing it with my psychiatrist, but I don't see her until next week, and I can't wait that long for someone to console us.  So I'm going to tell the tale here, at the risk of embarrassing one or all of us K's on Twitter. That's where all this started. Twitter.

I began using Twitter sometime in December of 2011, from what I can tell, although we had the account for much longer; I created my blog close to New Year's Eve. I used the account before December to occasionally tweet to my husband, and to myself.  That's right, I tweet to K.  It helps us remember things, people, places, events.  So I think I tweeted to myself for about 2 years before I ever followed or was followed by anyone.  I was completely anonymous on Twitter.  I told no one that we had an account or a blog. NONE of my real-life friends know I have a blog or Twitter account. I used the blog to empty my mind of all the crap that was pounding in my head at most every moment of every day. I wrote in our blog as a way to release my confusion, frustration, and tension. I could say how I felt, and no one would ever know or judge me.  But I was severely depressed in December, and someone in our head got the idea that perhaps we could find some type of support group online using Twitter.  Or at least, find another person, anyone, who understood what it is we go through everyday.  What I'm talking about is our dissociation.  Hallucinations, voices, lost time, severe memory loss.  All of these things together make my everyday life quite a challenge on many days.  We have good days and bad days.  Sometimes we forget we're ill.  Other days we are so ill that we cannot function at all.

So anyway, I began to search Twitter for someone "like me".  I don't even know now how I found anyone at all....I can't remember.  But somehow we found some people who were at least similar to us, for example a woman with OCD, and we began to follow them, and this led to people following me, and so on and so forth.  Now I can't recall exactly when this happened, but at some point I came across a person on Twitter who had a blog and who wrote about the same kinds of experiences that I have.  This person described symptoms just like mine, and I was thrilled to know that I'm not the only one.  I began to read her blog from the very beginning; it took me weeks, even months, to read all her posts from the beginning of her blog.  But I got to this one part in her blog where she talked about finding someone online who was "just like her".

I was elated-this woman had gone through a situation exactly like my current one.  She had found someone who seemed would understand her and her illness.  Of course I'm not giving any names, but this woman contacted the other woman she'd found, and apparently they ended up becoming friends.  Now let me say this first and foremost-I was NEVER expecting to be friends with the woman with the blog.  I was just hoping she might answer a few questions, or give me some advice about how to handle my symptoms or at least what to say to my shrink.  I was first diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder way back in 2004, but shortly after that I had to move and so I lost both my psychiatrist and my psychologist, who was helping me explore my diagnosis and treatment options.  When I moved, I forgot. That's right, I forgot my diagnosis. I guess it was just too much for us to handle and so we pushed it out of our mind.  I forgot about the therapy sessions in which I'd "switched" and I forgot about all the different "me"s who had shown up for therapy.

What was left in my memory was my prior diagnosis, which was Schizophrenia.  I'd been diagnosed with that around 1998, and that was the label I wore for all these years.  I saw different doctors, but they always assumed that my diagnosis was correct, simply because I heard voices in my head.  I know now that this is not indicative of being Schizophrenic, it's just a classic symptom.  So basically, what happened was I'd been going through my day-to-day life thinking I was Schizophrenic.  I certainly had some of the same symptoms-hallucinations, delusions, loss of train of thought, social withdrawal, and paranoia, in addition to the voices which I heard in my head.  So this diagnosis seemed to fit, and it was assumed by each doctor that I saw that this was the proper diagnosis.  No one had ever explored other options, except for that one psychologist who'd finally identified the real problem but whose diagnosis I had forgotten.

I'm telling you all this so that you understand how it is that I believed myself to be Schizophrenic when in fact I wasn't.  I wore the label for years, as scared as I was of it.  I told only a couple of people whom I trusted, including my sister.  Fast forward a few years, and K began dating a man who was in college, studying psychology.  It was he who first declared my misdiagnosis.  He said he simply did not believe I was schizophrenic, but rather that I had some sort of dissociative disorder (Apparently I had "switched" in front of him before).  I knew nothing of such disorders, but it was only a few months later when my psychologist threw out the term Dissociative Identity Disorder.  I really don't remember too much from that period in my life. It feels like a hundred years ago. But I've lost my place in this story and to be honest we don't even remember what it was that we were writing about.  I hate when that happens, and it happens frequently.  Oh yes, now I remember.

I found the woman with the blog who had the same symptoms that I had.  I thought, after reading her blog, that I had finally found the answer to all my questions about what was wrong with me.  I've been called "mentally ill" since I was first hospitalized at the age of 16, and I've been diagnosed with a dozen or more different disorders, but I've never had a doctor give me a satisfactory explanation as to why or how.  This woman's blog opened my eyes to this new term, which was somehow strangely familiar to me.  Dissociative Identity Disorder.  It seemed to ring a bell somewhere deep inside of us but I just couldn't put my finger on it.  But what I did was this: I began reading everything I could find on DID. Every book at the library was checked out and read.  I Googled and Wikipedia'd and read any information I could locate on this disorder.

Around this time, I found an old diary which talked about my diagnosis of DID, and it was a tremendous help; I took it to my psychiatrist.  But what was most informative to me was this other woman's blog.  She described my experiences perfectly, although of course we lived very different lives.  I decided that I absolutely had to contact this woman, just as she'd done when she'd found someone else "like her".  I figured if she could do it, if she could find a similar soul and communicate with them, then so could I.  Again, I never expected to become good friends with this woman, I just wanted some advice from someone who suffered from DID.  I got her email address off her blog and I guess it took me days to get the courage to write the email, I can't remember.  I just remember that when I sent the email, I was excited.  I was excited by the thought of her emailing me back and telling me she understood.  That she'd been there, that she'd gone through the same things.  When she didn't respond to my email, I realized that I'd told her about the blog but forgotten to give her the address, so I sent another email, this time with all my contact information as well as my blog URL.  I thought maybe she would read my blog and agree that I was DID and that perhaps she could help me figure out what to say to my newest psychiatrist, who had not yet fully diagnosed me but who was in the process of doing so.

Well, I waited for what seemed an eternity, and I never heard from the woman.  She never responded to my emails.  I thought I must've come across as some psycho stalker or something; I couldn't remember what the emails had said.  I was discouraged but determined to make contact with her, for she was the single person I'd come across in my entire life who seemed to understand the symptoms we have.  Months had passed since we sent the email, or at least I think so.  One of the K's is very bold and wanted to send her a Direct Message on Twitter.  Well, that's how we found out we'd been UNfollowed.  Now we know for a fact that she had followed us at one time, for we never delete our messages and so we still had the email from Twitter, telling us she'd begun to follow us.  That could, in fact, be how we found her in the first place; I just don't know (damn this memory loss!).  But I tried to send a DM and that's how I found out she was no longer following us. So without thinking about it much, I sent a Tweet, saying she'd begun following me in January and I wanted to DM her but she must've unfollowed me because I couldn't do that and she responded, very coldly I thought, "I never followed you back. You have our email."  So my feelings were hurt.  I admit it, I'm overly sensitive. But for her to assume that I'd followed her first really pissed me off.  SHE followed ME first, and I had an email to prove it.  Anyways, I took this straight to heart and got my feelings hurt and I never did send her another email.

However, I continued to read her blog.and learned how she'd been able to better understand her illness through her writing. So I wrote. A lot.  I blogged, I had a diary on my laptop, I had a hardbound journal, I had a sketch diary.  I wrote and wrote, and indeed began to learn things about myself and my symptoms.  The first time I read a blog post that had been written by one of the other K's, it really freaked me out.  I mean, there was now solid evidence that I was going through something major.  Still, I didn't mention it to my psychiatrist. I just continued to research, to read, to learn.

I don't know how I had the courage to do it, but I actually went so far as to contact the other woman with DID, the one that had advised my blog writer when she'd written her an email.  I was scared to death that she was going to be mean to me, like I felt the first woman had been.  But she wrote me back and was very nice.  She told me a few things about dissociative disorders and said while she didn't have time to be a great source of support (she's very busy), she'd do her best to answer the occasional email or Tweet.  I have since made contact with her a handful of times (we think) and she's always been very nice. However, I found out, upon reading her blog, that she considers herself to be cured.  She no longer suffers from DID-she'd gone through something called integration, in which all of the personalities merge.  So I was back at square one. The one person I'd communicated with was no longer suffering from the illness I was trying so hard to understand.  So I continued my search. I was successful in finding a woman who has a dissociative problem, but after I emailed her I found out that she does not have DID.  Still, she became, and remains, a tremendous source of support for me, and I owe her so much for all the advice she's given me since I first contacted her.  She's the person who told me how to create a blog actually.  Her blog is brilliant, and I'd post a link but again, don't want to embarrass anyone.

It was a gradual process, but I began to find others like me, other people who heard voices and lost time, and I even found a few with DID. Now it's extraordinarily difficult for me to talk to strangers, as I suffer from Social Anxiety Disorder, and I fear most people.  So just sending an email to someone I don't know is very difficult for me.  Which is one reason I'm proud of us-we actually reached out to some people on Twitter and met some folks with similar disorders and symptoms and we attempted to be social and supportive in the hopes that what goes around would come back around.  And it did for the most part.  I met some wonderful people, who didn't think less of me because of my mental illness, who didn't judge me, who understood moodiness and depression.  Still, it bothered me that the DID woman with the blog never wrote me back.

Then one day, she wrote a blog post, and I gained some insight into her feelings.  She blogged about how much she appreciated her readers, and that she was so happy to be able to help others struggling with similar disorders.  She wrote that she loved getting emails from people who'd been helped through her blog.  So I decided to once more send her an email-I thought since she said she appreciated the positive response from her readers, well I thought she'd like to hear how much she'd helped me.  But before I could find the courage to send such an email (I mean, this would've been the third email sent to her, and that was like stalker material), she wrote another blog post.  This one stated that she didn't read the blogs of other mental patients, because she found them to be triggering. Well, that certainly made sense to me, as I am often triggered by things I see or read.  So I never sent the email to thank her for her help, the help she doesn't even know she's given me.  I'm afraid of her now.  I really am.  She hurt my feelings twice, and I can't risk getting hurt a third time.  I began to focus more on the people I'd met on Twitter, and on my own blog.

I was starting to communicate with a number of Tweeps and actually, for perhaps the first time in my life, I felt accepted in spite of my psychiatric condition. I gained confidence and started initiating conversations with people on Twitter.  This is unbelievable to me as I write these words-I have NEVER been able to approach a stranger and start a conversation.  So I seemed to be making progress, getting better.  Plus, I was sometimes offering my support and experience to help others on Twitter, sometimes a young girl who was cutting, sometimes a man with an anxiety problem.  I felt like I was doing something that made a difference.  I felt like I was helping as well as being helped, and this made me happy.

At last I had the courage to bring up the subject of dissociation with my doctor, and was happy when she agreed with me, that yes, I had a dissociative disorder.  She didn't say I had DID-it will take a long time for her to positively identify my disorder-but she told me I was on the right path.  So I continued my reading and researching, and talking to people with DID.  They all seem to think that DID fits me like a glove, and I have come to believe that too, but I won't know for sure until my doctor has treated us for a long time, probably years.  I am impatient but understand her point.  She wants to get to the heart of our illness and see what's really going on in my head.  My biggest fear at this point is that we'll have to relive the childhood trauma which she believes is the cause of this illness.  Otherwise, I'm feeling more positive and confident and social. I even got an invitation to join a DID support group, which I did. The people there seem incredibly supportive and understanding. Hopefully I'll be courageous enough to participate in the group.

But now here's where the bad part comes in again.  One night, maybe last night, I'm just not sure, I was on Twitter, just lurking really, not talking to anyone, just reading the timeline, and I noticed a person with whom I'd communicated several times was on there and seemed to be having a very difficult time.  So I thought I'd reach out and let her know that she wasn't alone.  Well, I'm not sure how it happened, but she misunderstood me and got all upset and accused me of yelling at her.  I was shocked. I'd never had a disagreement with anyone on Twitter.  And, as is my nature, I took it personally.  It completely smashed my self-esteem and I was crushed at how mean she'd been to me when I'd only been trying to help.  I guess I'm not very good at offering help or advice.  And so I've come to a decision.  I've decided that I won't be using Twitter as I had been doing up to this point.  I'm not going to try and help people, for it only sets me up for rejection and ridicule and failure and pain.  I'm going to take some time off from Twitter; my husband says I'm obsessed and spend far too much time online anyways.

So I will continue to blog, as it is something that I do for myself, not for anyone else. The blog is my outlet for my madness.  I'm always surprised if someone reads it, and delightfully stunned if I get a comment.  But it seems to help me better understand the different K's, we communicate with each other through the blog you see. So that's pretty much all I wanted to say.  That I was blogging and using Twitter to help myself get better and find support, but that I'd been hurt and felt like I failed. And so I'm not going to do the Twitter thing for awhile.  At least, I'm going to try and stay away from it.  I DO have an obsessive personality, so it will be nearly impossible for me to give up my current obsession cold turkey.  But it must be done.  My feelings are hurt and my confidence is blown.  I'm scared to use Twitter right now.  I shall miss my new Tweeps, and I'll definitely miss the support I received from the other mentals out there.  But this is how I feel right now.  I'm hurt. It's going to take me some time to get over it.  I take everything so personally, it's a character flaw I have no control over.  So there you have it.  That's why I won't be on Twitter for awhile.  It's also why I don't trust anyone on Twitter anymore.  Too much negativity.  Too many bad vibes. Too much disappointment.

NOTE: Not all of the K's necessarily feel this way.  Some of us may continue Tweeting. And we'll definitely continue blogging,as it seems to make us feel more "sane". Hopefully, I'll see you Tweeps again soon. I just have to be sad for awhile, and we need to be alone to sufficiently sulk. That's all I need right now-just a private pity party for the girl who made a fool out of herself, not once, but three times.  I wonder if I'll ever have the courage to speak again to someone in need.  I wonder if I'll ever be able to comfort someone, cheer someone up, make someone smile.  I have my doubts. It seems everything I do now is wrong.

My Psychiatrist is Making Me Crazy!!!

This day has been more than we could handle.  Was so anxious about therapy that I didn't sleep for 2 days, nor did I eat.  Once there, the myriad of questions I'd had for her completely vanished from my mind and I couldn't remember what it was I wanted to talk to her about. I pulled out my notebook, in which we've been noting things like questions for the shrink and ideas for blog topics.  I read her several of our questions, but she was no help at all. Yesterday, I was ready to accept my DID.  Today, I flat-out asked for a diagnosis.  She says she doesn't believe in putting labels on her patients.  So all I could get her to verify is that I have  a lot of dissociative episodes and I also have at least one mood disorder. (Again, she would not be specific) 

So I don't know which disorder I have, only that I have a great deal of trouble with dissociation and amnesia and losing time and dozens of other symptoms which you'd think she could use to give me a motherfucking specific diagnosis.  FUCK ALL THIS SHIT!!!  Just fucking say what you want to say for God's sake.  I am upset with my psychiatrist because she refused to give me a specific diagnosis.  I want a label.  I need to know who and what I am.  This shit can't be normal. I've been pretending my whole life and we're absolutely exhausted by it at this point.  I don't think I can fake it anymore.  I don't think I can paste on a smile and be whomever you need me to be without blowing my cover, so to speak.  I need to be ME, who happens to be an US.  And I'm OK with that.

Obviously there must have been something terrible in my childhood to mess me up in the head this badly.  We can't even discuss this shit with our doctor.  To my horror, we talked about psychiatric hospitals, and she pretty much said that if it comes down to it and we get worse, she won't hesitate to hospitalize me.  NOT what I wanted to hear. I've had some horrific experiences in mental hospitals over the years.  Most important question I asked her was this: "Do I have to remember the childhood abuse in order to get better?"  I was relieved to hear that no, it isn't always necessary or desirable.  I don't think I could handle the truth anyways.

Fuck this shit.  Just fucking take a pain pill and go to bed.  Your head feels like it's been hit with a hammer.  You've been in a manic state and haven't slept but 3 out of 48 hours. I've eaten one meal this whole week. I think I might be dying.  And FUCK ME I haven't told you the rest of it.  How Hubby says I'm spending too much time on the computer and he says I don't do anything else anymore.  Nothing. No eating, no sleeping, no sex.  He says I'm obsessed.  He's right.  I'm obsessed with learning about my mental illness so that I can take better care of myself and live a better quality of life.

FUCK ALL THIS SHIT just fucking give it up.  You're beyond help.  You can't even talk to your own husband about your true feelings because it freaks him out.  None of your Real Life friends know you're sick, except for some depression.  I'm living a LIE.  Our life is a sham.  I'm not K, I'm an imposter.  I don't know who or what we are anymore. Just want to sleep away the pain.

(The Next Day:)

Which I did.  Took a handful of pills and slept for 12 hours straight.  God I needed that.  Still, woke up feeling frustrated and angry, at everything it seemed.  To make things even worse, Mom had a talk with me about how I'm being a terrible wife and am going to lose my man if I don't stop spending every minute on the computer.  Apparently, I'm ignoring him, the housework, cooking, laundry, etc.  I don't mean to. It just seems less important to me than this project I'm on, this project of self-discovery.  I just need some support from people who understand some of what I'm experiencing.  I'm going through a major mental health crisis right now.  I mean, I just found out that the diagnosis I've had since 1998 is incorrect. I'm NOT Schizophrenic.  It's going to take me some time to realize that I'm not that person anymore.  As soon as the diagnosis was stuck to me, I became that.  This is why my current shrink says she won't label a patient; she says they become the label.

So how am I supposed to fill out forms which ask about my mental health?  Just put down "non-specific madness"?  Or "Sometimes psychotic weirdo who's kept heavily sedated"?   Every so often, paperwork comes in the mail to reassess my mental health for The System.  I just hope that Dr. H refusing to give me a clear-cut diagnosis doesn't cause me to lose my benefits, i.e. my health insurance.  FUCKFUCKFUCK   What a miserable day.  Too much worry about being hospitalized, too much worry about losing my husband, too much worry that Twitter has taken over my life.

Well, this morning, I started my hand-written diary, just as my psych told me to do.  I didn't know what I was going to say, but it took 7 pages front and back anyway.  And I'm 99.9% certain that I'll be writing in it some more tonight.  Man.  I wish I could talk to someone in Real Life about this, someone who also dissociates, someone who also doesn't recognize them self when they look in the mirror half the time.  Someone who won't be freaked out if I switch and start speaking differently or acting differently.  Fuck.  This just fucking blows. I'm not important enough to wear a label I guess. And the kicker is, I've always resented the labels.  I've worn so many over the years....it's ironic that I'm now label-free and feel lost without one.  Who the hell are we and what the fuck is wrong with us?!?  Be specific, doc. We need to know.

Incidentally, while I was in therapy, I asked my shrink what her job was and why I come to see her.  (I'm not sure which K was at the session, but she had a ton of information and questions and wanted answers)  She told me that the reasons I came to therapy are whatever I want them to be.  She said it's her job to help me anyway she can, but that what I got out of it depended upon what I put into it.  Once again, non-specific answers. Fuck this!  I think I"m just going to get trashed tonight and be pissed off and drink til I pass the fuck out. Yeah, that sounds like a plan. And I bet I'll be an angry drunk tonight. Oh fun.

Twitter to the Rescue

[I still have the second half of my two-part blog post called "The Evolution of My Self-Mutilation" ready to go. It really should probably be posted here, now, but I still don't have the courage to publish it. I'm just too ashamed, too embarrassed, too humiliated to let people read about the secrets contained in that post. I might just sit on it forever.] So instead... I've been racking my brain trying to think then of what subject would best follow two posts (really just 1 1/2) about self-harm.  I've decided that I don't know, and I'm just going to empty my head and see what this post ends up being about.  My mind is working at a furious pace right now; I can't even put into words how fast the thoughts are coming at me and the voices are all excited and talking at once and I'm overwhelmed when I pause to listen to the inner workings of my brain, to all the conversations. This is exhausting, all this thinking. I never went to bed last night because of it, because of all the noise in my head, all the ideas bouncing around in my skull.  I believe it started yesterday afternoon but it could have been the day before.  I just can't remember.  All I can say for sure is that I've been reading, researching, studying, Googling, Wikipedia'ing obsessively about dissociative disorders, especially Dissociative Identity Disorder.  I've also tried to develop some friendships online, and more importantly, I've been seeking out others who suffer from dissociative disorders such as I do. Keep in mind that my Social Anxiety Disorder makes it unbelievably difficult for me to reach out to people, to talk to people, and especially to initiate communication with strangers. So I must pat myself on the back for making the effort. (only one person I tried to talk to was rude to me)  It seems to be paying off in ways I hadn't even imagined. Not only have I met a few people online with whom I enjoy chatting and who I'm hoping to one day call my friends, but I'm beginning to develop a bit of a support system, which I desperately need.  I've never had a support system before.  I've hidden my mental illness from everyone, my whole life, so I don't have any real-life friends I can talk to about it, I've never confided in a boyfriend, hell my own sister didn't even know I was ill until just a few years ago.  My father never understood how I could have everything a person needs and still be depressed.  Now, it's just my mother, and she's too old and set in her ways to be open-minded enough to even talk to about all of this.  So I hide my symptoms from her.  I avoid her when I'm having an especially hard time. Sometimes I just have to disappear.  Wow, I guess that sentence takes on a whole new meaning when it's used in reference to someone who may be suffering from DID.

You must remember that this is all new territory for us-I'm still in a state of shock about my psychiatrist telling me the other day that my Schizophrenia diagnosis was incorrect.  I wore that label for more than a decade, and I suffered discrimination and ridicule and self-hatred because of it.  It's been a heavy diagnosis to bear, and I am beyond thrilled to find out that it is wrong. I am NOT Schizophrenic!  So then, what am I?  Well, my shrink tells me that I am definitely suffering from a dissociative disorder, she just doesn't have enough information yet to properly name it. I found my diary from 2004 wherein my doctor first attached the possibility of DID to my chart, and I've been reading about all the "episodes" I'd forgotten. My psychiatrist wants to use that diary in our sessions. It seems I've been in denial for the past 8 years.  I've been doing some reading on the different types of dissociative disorders, and more importantly, I actually found a few people on Twitter who suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder or who have problems with dissociation.  These ladies have been wonderful and have helped me tremendously in a very short period of time. I learn a great deal from reading their blogs.  I had some basic questions which they were happy to answer for me.  One of them put me in touch with another one who directed me to a Yahoo group specifically for people suffering from this type of disorder.  As I said earlier, my doctor hasn't officially diagnosed me as having DID, but from what I've read, from what I've been told by people who have it, and based upon my symptoms, I'd say DID is a good fit. In fact, I've never found a disorder which seemed to describe me as well as DID does. So, for the moment, I'm going to study all I can about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If it turns out I have something else, well then we'll just study that instead when the time comes.  But I really and truly feel that I'm closer than I've ever been to being properly diagnosed and treated for my mental illness(es).

I've been going from doctor to doctor since 1986, and each one gave me a new diagnosis and a different explanation for my thoughts and behaviors. And then there are the medications-Oh the thousands of pills I must've consumed at this point.  Anti-depressants, tranquilizers, SSRI's, anti-psychotics, sedatives, hypnotics, sleeping pills, uppers, downers.  So many pills.  I wonder sometimes-a lot of the time actually-what I'd be like if I didn't take the medication.  Now to be realistic, I am far too ill to go "all natural" and give up all medications.  I have gone down that road many times, thinking each time that I could do it, I could handle it, I could live without chemical assistance.  Each time, I failed miserably, and always ended up feeling much, much worse than I'd ever felt even before I began taking the pills. The truth is, I have something wrong with my brain.  It does not work as it's supposed to.  I am destined to take some sort of medication for the rest of my life.  But what kind? Which pills?  My sister believes I'm overly-medicated and wishes I'd take only the bare minimum.  Just what I need to function day-to-day.  But how do we figure out which pills those are? I currently take seven prescriptions, a dozen pills a day.  Surely some of those are unnecessary, wouldn't you think?  I mean, if I'm not really Schizophrenic, it seems we should be able to drop some of the pills I'm taking everyday.  But instead of cutting down on our meds, at my last therapy session my shrink actually added a prescription to my regimen. Maybe she's just trying to pull me out of this pit of despair I've been living in since October.  I don't talk much about my depression, because it really is one of the lesser of the mental evils for me at this point in time.  I've been depressed my whole life.  I'm used to it.  I know how to do it.  I'm good at it.  But I must admit, my traditional holiday blues this year have lingered, as they're usually over by mid-February. So yes, I guess I AM more depressed than usual, and struggling to maintain my sanity.  I find it extremely hard to get out of bed, to shower, to get dressed.  Mostly I sit around in my pajama's, reading and talking to myself and wallowing in our misery.  My energy level is at zero.  If my body worked out as hard as my brain does, I'd be built like a supermodel. (except much shorter)  All this excessive thinking, this obsessing, has me physically exhausted.  Yet sleep doesn't come easily, especially when it's supposed to. No, whenever I lie down to catch up on my rest, that's when my brain seems to be at its most active.  Maybe someone inside me is doing this on purpose to get my attention.  We don't know what to think anymore. I'm a hundred emotions all at once-I'm excited, I'm scared, I'm sad, I'm worried, I'm eager, I'm anxious... I just want to get to the meat of the matter.  I want to know what is wrong with me and I want to know how to get better.  If that means pills, OK.  If it means weekly therapy sessions, OK. I am willing to do whatever it takes to get to a point in my life where something makes some sort of sense, because nothing ever has before.

How I Became a Walking Drugstore

Since the diagnosis which I've had for years has practically been scratched off my chart, so to speak, I figured this was a good time to review what disorders we DO have, or at least the ones we've been branded with,  be them true or false.  Now my mind is still reeling over the statement Dr. H made yesterday ("I don't think you have schizophrenia") and I can't help but wonder if maybe some-or all (?!) of the doctors from my past have been wrong.

The first time K ever saw a psychiatrist was when her parents had her committed, at the age of 16,  to a psych hospital, for what they deemed my being inappropriate and out of control.  Bizarre behavior led my parents to believe that I was on hard drugs (which was ridiculous; I'd never even smoked pot) when in fact I was just suffering through major depression with suicidal tendencies.  I think I tried to kill myself for the first time somewhere around this time, but that memory just won't come back to me no matter how hard I try to remember.  So, I tried to kill myself plus my parents thought I was strung out on heroin, hence I ended up being committed to a hospital.  First psychiatrist of my life, Diagnosis: Manic/ Depressive (a couple of  years later called Bipolar II).  This woman put me on Lithium and suicide watch, then proceeded to tell me that I wouldn't be so depressed if I'd just wear more colorful clothing. The audacity!  I was hospitalized for 3 months, during which time I was given a handful of different medications and yet I continued to dress all in black, and I kept writing gloomy and dark poetry.  I think they released me after they decided that I was no longer suicidal, or else they were just sick of me.  I continued to see that same psychiatrist (she had a different sports car for every day of the week, and I can't stand people who are obsessed with money and possessions) until the day came when we had a family session, and my parents were told by this shrink that they, in part, helped contribute to my mental problems.  My father was furious, and my mother was angry and in shock. They were good parents, they really were.  They grabbed my arm and pulled me out of that office and I never saw that doctor again.  (although I realize now that my parents probably did have something to do with my problems, even though they always had good intentions)

The next doctor proclaimed I had Major Depressive Disorder and put me on a handful of antidepressants. I can't remember how long that lasted.  When I graduated from high school, I moved to a new city and was without a doctor for a while.  Bad idea.  Two intentional overdoses followed Freshman year at college.  After the second overdose, I decided it best for me to seek help with my mental "issues", and so I went to the local hospital and inquired about mental health services for low-income persons (I was just a student after all).  I don't remember that, but I somehow know that it happened.

K found a psychologist who worked on a sliding-scale fee and who was near her apartment and she began to see this man every week.  Sometimes he would make us take tests, all sorts of tests, sometimes written tests with questions, other times it was puzzles for K to solve, and one time he simply asked us to fold a piece of paper.  Believe it or not, this was one of the more difficult tasks for us, for it had to be PERFECT and it took me a long time to fold the paper; these tests led to our new (additional) diagnosis of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and some new medication.  K's OCD is easy to spot, although she's not your stereotypical hand-washer or compulsive cleaner. (Actually, one of the K's is a cleaner who's afraid of dirt)  K is an organizer, a list-maker...with a compulsion to turn the toilet paper around so that it rolls over the top rather than being pulled out from underneath.  Silly things like that.  K saw this psychologist for about a year, until the day came when he told her that she needed medication and he was going to have to hook her up with a psychiatrist, but all of that would have cost money, money which K simply did not have.  So we left that place and went unsupervised and unmedicated ("all natural") for what seemed like a long time...but we can't be sure how long.

K had gotten married at the age of 19, and pretended to be "normal" and went "all natural" and thus didn't take any medication or see any therapist during the year that her marriage lasted.  After the messy divorce, K became very manic-her worst episode ever up to that point-and went a bit crazy and started partying and dating lots of guys and going shopping and doing a lot of risky, stupid things such as dabbling in drugs and driving really fast.  This lasted for a couple of years, and K thought she was happy and having fun, like a regular college student...and then she crashed at the age of 23.  She fell into a deep, dark pit of despair, the likes of which she'd never known and from which it seemed she'd never crawl out of.  Somehow, someone helped us find a new doctor.  I can't remember much after that, I know there were more pills and more labels (Borderline Personality Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, Bulimia, Panic Disorder) and this pattern of going from doctor to doctor and getting pill after pill went on until K abruptly disappeared and turned up on the other side of the country.

K didn't go there alone-she was much too insecure and frightened by being out in public.  She had a friend with her, who knew she had a history of depression but who had no idea the extent of K's illness.  They lived in this big, new city for a couple of months before K had a freakout and her friend had to take her to the hospital. (K got lost coming home from work; she totally forgot where she lived and had to call her roommate to come get her) They poked and prodded and questioned K all night.  When it was finally over (a couple of days later? I don't recall), K had a pocketful of prescriptions and the name of both a psychiatrist AND a neurologist.  The neurologist took pictures of our brain, and determined that K was having little mini seizures in her head, and I believe these seizures are what destroyed much of K's memory.

The psychiatrist made us fill out a mountain of paperwork and assessment tests and then there were hours of interviews and therapy sessions, and in the end, he gave K (who was 27 by this time) her new, improved diagnosis: Schizophrenia.  That word scared the living daylights out of K, and she went into a state of bewildered shock.  She turned up hours later at a girlfriend's apartment; apparently K had walked miles from the hospital to the girl's place (this was K's best friend, whom she trusted with info about her mental illness) and K burst into tears when she got there and had a meltdown and proclaimed that she didn't want to be schizophrenic, that it was too serious a condition, that it frightened her.  It took her a very long time (years) to come to terms with that particular mental health label.  How twisted it is that I've now been told I don't have this, after it took so long for me to accept that I did have it.  (sigh)

And so that diagnosis stuck, and after that wherever K went and whenever K would change doctors, she'd fill out all the required forms and papers and she always had to list her mental problems and so she wrote down what the doctors had always told her, and for the most part, each new doctor simply looked at her chart, took it as fact, and prescribed more medication: anti-psychotics and mood stabilizers and anxiety meds.  This is how she lived her life throughout her young adulthood.  See a therapist, take medication, get better, quit taking the meds, have a meltdown, repeat.  In the spring of 2002, K had just found a new therapist.  This therapist she found listed in a local new-age magazine, and K, being quite superstitious,  took that as a "sign".  This therapist, Patty,  was the best one K ever had.  K liked her from the start, and they connected and K trusted her and she truly seemed to care about K's mental health and quality of life.  She worked in tandem with a psychiatrist who prescribed even more medication for K. This situation remained constant for 7 years.  During those years, K would get to a really good, stable place and then she'd quit taking her meds and have a meltdown and have to start over with the pills and she went from one extreme to the other-either drowning in a sea of despair or elated to the point of skipping down the sidewalk.  Patty was there to help K deal with her obsessive thoughts, or depression, or fears...she sometimes gave K homework assignments designed to provide insight into the mind of K and her subconscious.  One of these assignments was to draw a picture of what K believed herself to look like.  I believe this was a self-image/self-esteem test.  At the next session, K showed up with at least half a dozen different pictures.  Now I didn't realize this until just recently, but about 2 years after K first started seeing Patty, the term Dissociative Identity Disorder came out of her mouth.  K wrote about it in her diary, but then forgot about it.  Perhaps it was just more than she could handle, so she removed herself from the reality of this diagnosis and went on with her life and blocked out anything that had to do with that disorder.  Therapy during those years is difficult for us to remember, but I have little snippets of memories, like a few seconds of film; one of these mini-memories is Patty asking us what our name was.  We didn't know the answer to the question...we were K, weren't we?  In another partial memory, Patty is telling us that different people have come to therapy in our body.  All of this was news to K, or at least I think it was...damn this memory loss!  We were just starting to make strides in this therapy, these sessions which focused on who K was and what had happened to her as a child (she clearly had all the classic symptoms of sexual abuse). I believe Patty might have suggested K had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, I remember someone said it.

Just when K seemed to be making progress, just when things were beginning to come out, just when K was starting to open up and be completely honest with Patty....well that's when the unthinkable happened.  K got dumped.  She drove to her therapy session that day, just as she did every week or every other week if she was doing well, just as she'd done for 7 years.  When she got there, she was eager to talk to Patty, she had a lot to say, but Patty sat her down and got all serious and told K that she had missed an appointment the week before. At this particular mental health facility, they had a rule: you can only miss 3 appointments. After that, you are automatically dropped for being a non-compliant patient.  Well, K remembered that one day she had been trying to call them to change her appointment but no one would answer the phone.  We called repeatedly throughout the morning and afternoon.  It was Memorial Day, so K determined that they must've been closed for the holiday.  This is why K missed that last appointment.  She really did try to call and reschedule, honestly she did.  But she was being dumped, and this HURT, terribly, K takes everything so personally, and so it hurt her feelings that Patty didn't want to see her anymore.  From somewhere deep inside us, this angry K suddenly appeared and acted like a total bitch and said horrible, insulting, rude things to Patty.  I watched from outside my body, and couldn't believe what was happening.  It just didn't seem real, it couldn't be true.  K stormed out of Patty's office, got into her car, and hauled ass out of the parking lot.  She started bawling almost immediately, and did so for the entire hour's drive back to her home.

K's world was turned upside down.  Since her psychiatrist worked together with her therapist, K certainly didn't want to see that psychiatrist anymore.  She called and cancelled her next appointment.  For the first time in seven years, K was without a doctor or a therapist.  She had some medication, but would soon run out.  She started frantically trying to find a new doctor.  But it is harder than you'd imagine to find a psychiatrist who accepts Medicare and Medicaid.  We were losing hope, then we called Dr. H's office, and the lady on the phone was so nice and helpful and we explained to her that we really needed to see the doctor, that we'd run out of medications and we were having some withdrawal symptoms as well as feeling unstable.  They got me in quickly, and even though my medical records had not been faxed from the other doctor's office as had been requested, the doctor met with me and we talked for over an hour.  I left feeling hopeful.

Our last psychiatrist, who'd worked alongside Patty, well, we hated her.  She was an evil bitch who didn't seem to give a rat's ass about me and how I was doing, she just wrote out my prescriptions; when I came in crying, she'd increase my dosage.  I never felt anything but distaste for that woman.  This new doctor, Dr. H, well she had shown me more compassion in one session than that other shrink had shown me in years.  I had medication refills now, and I was eager to start therapy sessions with Dr. H.  That was 2 years ago.  It took Patty two years to label me DID, and it took two years for Dr. H to find out about my dissociative disorder.  That brings us to the present day.  We have had 2 sessions in which we discussed dissociative states.  She's ready to get to work it seems; she asked me to bring the diaries which are the evidence of our illness.  I'm terrified, yet excited at the thought of beginning the healing process, of accepting what and who we are, and of learning to love K as she is, in spite of her faults.

Peeling Off An Old Label

Yesterday, (I'm pretty sure that was yesterday...) our husband took us back to see the psychiatrist again.  A different K went this time than had gone last time; I think that's because our doctor specifically requested that K come, instead of Switch Kellie, and somehow our mind just unconsciously pushes a button of some sort and we are another K, with different thoughts and emotions.  (I didn't realize this was abnormal until I was about 30 years old.)  Now, sitting here drinking my coffee,  and wishing that I had a cigarette, even though I no longer smoke, I wonder if I'm the K that went to see the shrink or if that was someone else.  I'm not sure because when I think back to the appointment, I can recall parts of it, large chunks actually, but it's all a bit blurry, like I've smeared Vaseline onto the camera lens. Did that happen to me or what is someone else, someone whose consciousness I sometimes share?  I remember one part very well, and this is important too--the psychiatrist told K that she doesn't believe she's schizophrenic.  This is HUGE. 

K was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 27, and every doctor since then has just agreed with the diagnosis (and usually tacked on a new label to go along with it, labels such as BDD and GAD) rather than trying to dig a little deeper and see if perhaps she didn't have something DIFFERENT.  So. This is life-altering news.  Everything that K believes herself to be is false.  All these years, she's been living with the stigma, and with the shame, and with the despair which stemmed from this diagnosis, and now we find out that the diagnosis is (most likely) WRONG.  K is simultaneously thrilled and terrified.  Thrilled to find out that she probably does NOT have schizophrenia, yet terrified of what she really DOES have, and also afraid that one of the K's IS schizophrenic.  More labels... Take one off and put another one on in its place.  Sigh.  K didn't mention to her mother what the doctor had said about doubting the presence of schizophrenia, and I can't remember if she told her husband or not....that information is no longer with us.  I hope that she told him, he needs to know what the current status of his wife is.  Plus, it'd just be nice to know once and for all what the hell is really wrong with K!  We've been drug through the mud and given the run-around so many times over the decades....  K no longer has any faith in doctors.  This "new" doctor-who, it turns out, has been treating us for 2 years!-seems very willing to help K, and she makes K feel comfortable and perhaps even safe.  That's what the shrink told us yesterday; that her office is a safe haven for K, and that when she's there, she doesn't have to be afraid.

The shrink, Dr. H, talked with us for a while about different ways we can go about treating K.  I asked her if she'd had any experience with mapping therapy (wherein the different personalities are charted) and she admitted that she had never done such therapy.  She did NOT say that she was opposed to it. She also didn't say that she believed integration was the best route to take, and I feel that's important.  (Integration is organization of different aspects of the personality into a hierarchical system of functions, or one, unified personality)  We, the K's, are afraid of integration.  The Smart One is all for it-she just wants to be "normal" and be able to live a productive life and perhaps have a successful career in the arts.  The Good Daughter would like very much to feel more connected with her environment, with her mother, with her husband.  She's in favor of integrating all the different aspects of K into one being, assuming that being would be a positive addition to the world around her.  Some of the K's (like The Little Girl) are dead-set against integration, for this state of feeling split apart, of feeling shattered, this is all we've ever known and while it may not always be pleasant or convenient or logical, we're used to it-it is who and what we are.  (I think...)

The best part of the therapy session was when Dr H told us that she'd like to use the old diaries that we found, that she believed we could learn a lot about K and her different personalities from these books. (See Blog Post "The Discovered Diaries" from January 9)  K was elated that the doctor recognized the importance of the diaries.  They could change my life as we know it.  I just knew it, I knew when I found those diaries and read them, I KNEW they were important to K's recovery.  This could change everything.  We're all on the edge of our seats.  What's going to happen to us?  What will become of the K's?  Who will come out to meet the doctor, and who will stay hidden?  Who will we ultimately become?!?  (panic attack coming on-I have to go take a pill now)

When Do People Sleep Around Here?

It's far too early for me to be awake.  Then again, I've not yet been to sleep, not that I can recall, for the past night, maybe two, (maybe more) and as I'm looking at the clock and out the window, I'm seeing that the sun is up and the clock reads 7:42. WAIT- Now the clock says 10:10! How did we lose so much time already?? It's going too fast dammit, this "time" business! Therefore it's tomorrow already, now how did that happen?  It seems to keep happening to us lately, a great deal.  I feel as though I've been suffering from insomnia for some time now, at least a week or more I'd venture to guess, but it's impossible to say as I don't keep a sleep diary.  Maybe that's a good idea-a sleep diary-a diary to tell me when I've allowed my body to sleep and for how long and little details like that.  It might actually help us to take better care of ourselves, and therefore lead to a life filled with less sickness and more healthy days.  K gets sick easily and always has I guess, it's hard to remember now... K's always had a weakened immune system because of her poor eating habits, e.g. she does NOT eat fruits or vegetables and she very often forgets to eat at all.  So it should come as no surprise then, that she got sick, dangerously sick, in May of 2010.  This was her most dangerous illness ever, the one that nearly killed her.  It was her own fault really, if she'd only taken better care of herself and paid attention to what was happening to her body and to how she felt then perhaps she'd have gone to a doctor sooner.  Perhaps she would've ended up with only some bronchitis or mild pneumonia or something much, much less serious than what she ended up with in the hospital.

Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), also known as respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) or adult respiratory distress syndrome is a serious reaction to various forms of injuries to the lung.

ARDS is a severe lung disease characterized by inflammation of the lung parenchyma leading to impaired gas exchange with concomitant systemic release of inflammatory mediators causing inflammation,  hypoxemia,   and frequently resulting in multiple organ failure.  This condition is often fatal, usually requiring mechanical ventilation and admission to an intensive care unit.

Kellie, herself, was in Intensive care for what seemed a very long time but which we know now was only a week, plus then an additional week in a regular private room, NOT on the Critical Care Unit but just "normal" like a regular, sick person would be.  Sigh.  I wonder how many times we've typed words to this effect?  Have I  been spouting off bits of information like this all damn night and morning?!?  God this is so fucking exhausting, I really and truly cannot express that enough.  IT'S EXHAUSTING TO BE "NORMAL"; wish I could let go and just "BE" but I'm not sure that this K, this current K, Switch Kellie, can relax enough to be any other way.  I mean, we are somewhat uptight, (not really, we just seem that way because of the serious nature in which we often speak) we are nervous about coming out to play, I guess you could say.  WE ARE AFRAID!!!! At least, some of us are, I think perhaps THIS K is not nearly so afraid as the others.  I'm not afraid.  Not usually, although I certainly do have that paranoia thing happening for me.  Not sure if that stems from Schizophrenia or what.  (At least one of the K's is schizophrenic; that's one of the things that's making all of this so damn difficult!)  We keep getting misdiagnosed because different K's show up for different doctor's appointments, and none of them have ever "compared notes" shall we say.   Should we publish these findings as a blog post, or simply keep all this information to "ourselves"?  This is utterly over-the-top exhausting, for all of us involved and certainly for K, whom I fear hasn't slept in days, we really can't be sure.  Hopefully Husband is seeing to it that we get at least SOME rest and food and the like.  This always seems to happen to us around Christmas time, is that important?  Yes, I think that IS important-Good job at finding that out for us. K has suffered from the holiday blues for many, many years now, every year, every holiday season, without fail, for reasons unknown to her but which seem vaguely to feel like...homesickness.  Even when she's at home.  That makes no sense, no sense at all.  This is madness I tell you, absolute madness.  If only I were able to efficiently organize all my notes, all my papers, all my lists; perhaps then we'd be able to step back and look at the situation from a different point of view (as if we need any more points of view!) and form some sort of opinion about K's current state of mental health. Sigh.  This is really and truly becoming a nightmare for me, for us, for K.  There's just an overwhelming amount of work to be done, work which feels so utterly important, and I believe that it IS important, at least as far as K's recovery is concerned.  K's recovery is the reason we're all here now.  We want K to get better.  We want K to have a chance at a somewhat "normal" life, although not entirely normal, for to be normal is to be boring, no offense of course to anyone reading this who may be considered by society to be "normal".  Oh what I wouldn't give for another 6 hours of extra time today, whenever today is! Time to work, to write, to get this shit out of my head, and perhaps even to sleep.

Major Breakthrough or Break From Reality?

(When we started writing this blog post, it was yesterday? Last night? Some time in the past, not terribly long ago, yet it seems I've been typing for so very long...at least 12-16 hours now, but since time is foreign to us there's really no way to be certain)

I'm not sure how to start...Something has happened. To me, to us, to K.  She really, very much needs to see her doctor!  That's not a viable option for us right now, however, as it's currently either horribly late or ridiculously early, take your pick.  Now it could be that she's just experiencing what is known as a psychotic break...

(Wikipedia says: A psychotic break is a term used to describe an occasion of a person experiencing an episode of acute primary psychosis, either for the first time or after a significant period of relative asymptomaticity.)

This has happened to us before, I can't say for sure how often it happens or even when it last happened, but it's certainly not something we are unfamiliar with.  If that is not the case, (and I have my suspicions) then we are having a MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH. I really can't stress enough that we're not sure at the moment what is happening to us, and I'm not sure if THIS has ever happened before. (I have a terrible memory, for a number of reasons which I'm not going into but which include my mental disorder(s) and my medication side effects)

psy·cho·sis [sahy-koh-sis] noun

1. a mental disorder characterized by symptoms, such as delusions or hallucinations, that indicate impaired contact with reality.

2. any severe form of mental disorder, as schizophrenia or paranoia.

I feel, at this moment, that something profound has occurred to us. I'm not sure exactly when it happened and I can't be certain how long this has been going on.  I've tried to trace this "event"(?) back to the beginning, using Tweets and Facebook posts and my phone data.  I would normally just check out my personal journal, but we were shocked to discover that K hasn't made an entry in that particular journal since October 21, 2010, so that really didn't help us much at all.  K has spent her entire life trying so hard to hide her symptoms from the outside world, that it feels somewhat liberating for her to open up and let things show now.  Several of the K's are shy, but I am not.  I guess that's a good place to start...

Hello. I'm the K that takes care of business, the K that gets things done, the K that is responsible and does necessary things such as pay the bills and take care of our mother (who is frequently in poor health) at times when things are just too stressful for K to handle them on her own.  K is currently unavailable but will (hopefully?) return at some point and things will settle back down to what we know as "normal". Not that it is normal in any way, mind you.  That's one thing I'm starting to realize.  There's something strange going on around here, and I intend to get to the bottom of it.  This feels SO important, I really can't stress that enough.  This feels like something of vital importance to our very existence, we being the K.  Now K has been in therapy for most of her life.  For over 20 years, we've gone from doctor to doctor, looking for answers, and hoping someone would say "Oh, you have this condition and you should take these pills and then everything will be fine. You'll get better."  We are painfully aware by now that this is just NOT going to happen for us.  I don't know if it ever happens for anyone (but I sincerely hope that it does). But television commercials and the media in general would have you believe that everything can be cured with a magic pill or X number of therapy sessions.  If either of those things were true, I'd be long cured.  I've been placed on a veritable cornucopia of psychotropic drugs since I was given my first prescription (for Lithium) at the age of 16. I know for a fact that I'd never be able to name them all, as I've been on so many, and of course because of my memory problems.  Depakote, Trazodone, Zyprexa,  Ritalin, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Ativan, Valium, Lexapro...I could go on but I won't. You get the idea. I've been on different combinations of different drugs for years now; for so long, in fact, that I can no longer remember what it feels like to be completely drug-free. I'm currently prescribed 60 mg Prozac, 300 mg Wellbutrin, 50 mg Seroquel XR, 3 mg Risperidone and 4 mg Alprazalam per day, plus a Folic Acid tablet for what my relatively-new medical doctor (non-psych) tells me is a deficiency which supposedly affects your moods. The last time we were without our pills, we turned to self-medicating to help us feel more "sane".  It's very common behavior in people with mental illness and since I have an obsessive-compulsive personality, it can lead to a lot of problems, physically, mentally, legally, financially,,,(sigh) You get my point. I tend to overdo things, become obsessed, act impulsively and compulsively. K, according to some people, "just doesn't know when to quit", but the obsessions themselves generally come and go over the course of "time".  Time is something we have a special relationship with, and no realistic sense of, but I'm afraid I don't have enough of it at the moment to go into that story, so please let me continue before I switch again.

I have both a relatively-new medical doctor as well as a new psychiatrist (I can't remember how long I've been seeing her, but she was unable to get my medical records and/or therapy notes from my last doctor, whom I disliked).  OOH just checked my neglected hardbound journal and found out that I started seeing this new shrink sometime after Feb. 9, 2010 and before April 17, 2010.  (WOW I had no idea it'd been that long; maybe she knows me better than I give her credit for) I saw my last therapist (not to be confused with my psychiatrist, whom I usually refer to as my shrink, even though I know they hate that) sometime in early April of 2010.  She dumped me after 7 years together!  Because I missed 3 appointments at various times throughout our relationship.  She said that was the limit; that after 3 misses you're automatically kicked out of the system on your 4th miss for being a "non-compliant" patient.  So even though I have this alleged illness-which she herself was attempting to properly diagnose and treat, and which she herself brought up first in our sessions-and even though she knows that we have issues with understanding time and "reality", still she cut me loose just as soon as I had walked into her office and plopped down on her up-until-that-moment-"comfortable & familiar" couch.  Well, actually I think she let me rant first for a minute-I recall I was dying to talk to her about my (often-recurring) then-current obsession (suicide) so she let me spill for a few minutes, then asked the obligatory questions: "Are you thinking about hurting yourself?  Do you have urges to harm yourself?  Are the voices telling you to hurt yourself or someone else?"  I told her that at that time, I did NOT have any plans to hurt myself, and I'd certainly never hurt anyone else!, and so as soon as she was satisfied that I wasn't going to leave her office and kill myself, she dumped me like a bag of garbage.  Up until that point, I'd been seeing her at least every other week, or weekly if I was struggling., for 7 years. A few times I had more than one appointment in a single week.  And I tried to always see my psychiatrist in tandem with my therapist, as they shared a clinic location, and because I was driving an hour to get there from my home. While I may not recall the exact date of our last appointment, I do recall parts of the session.  It was quite brief, or at least it seemed so to me.  I described to her my obsessing over suicide, and how I'd been Googling it and researching and reading news articles and how everyone around me seemed to be doing it at that time, like the voices were trying to get me to "do what everybody else was doing" and how fascinated I was by the whole process. At that time, I explained excitedly, there had been a number of prominent suicides in the news, including a famous fashion designer as well as a former television actor. I had intended to tell her how the TV was speaking to me personally about these things. She didn't like that I was talking about people killing themselves, and as I've stated earlier, she quickly asked me the "suicide watch" questions...and I gave her the answers I knew she needed to hear.  Don't get me wrong.  I had NO intention of killing myself that day, or any day soon, as K was and still is a big believer in Karma and I think that killing yourself is bad karma, regardless of your religious beliefs. Plus I'd never put my family through the humiliation and pain and suffering of the whole suicide event. (some of us do indeed have suicidal tendencies though) I love them too much to do that to them.  Also, I don't think that anyone would be able to style my hair nor do my makeup as I would like, or even pick out the right outfit for me to wear to my funeral.  This may seem trivial to you, but to K,  it is really important.  Damn.  Now I've gone off on a tangent and can't recall where I was in telling the story...

Interesting.  I just left the safety of my bedroom, wherein I've been holed up for roughly 9 hours now, and went into the kitchen for a cup of coffee, which K is almost always able to make (she's a coffee fiend) and which, sure enough, she had prepared much earlier, as in last night.  Now we must interact with our mother, for she is in said kitchen and expects some sort of recognition and acknowledgement.  I'd been wondering what would happen as I walked up the hallway, before I ever saw her.  And then-BOOM-I'm in the room with her and the Good Daughter is hugging her mom and asking how she slept and how she was feeling that day, which is today. I know because I've begun taking notes in a notebook, and I see the date and time written on the notebook and I can compare it to the date and time on my new cell phone, and I can get an idea of "when" I am existing, I being the current K, the smart one, the one who used to attend college and hold down a job (hard to believe now).  We are the K that has ambition.  We are the K that dreams of going back to school and finishing her degree, and of having an actual career that she could nurture and benefit from and perhaps even earning a living and being completely self-sufficient, which up until this point, we don't think she's ever been.  She has always ended up needing some help.  She just can't do it on her own.  She can't make enough money.  She can't have the proper benefits of medical insurance and retirement funds.  As much as K HATES to admit it, she is completely held hostage by, and controlled by, The System.  The System currently considers K "mentally disabled" (due to schizophrenia I believe) and we get a Disability check every month for a set amount of money.  Not a lot, let me tell you.  In fact, I've NEVER been able to afford to pay all my bills in addition to buying food and gas for the car.  K is really ashamed of that fact.  She came close to being self-sufficient once; she had a full-time job and was in management, and she had a checking account and a house and a car and a seemingly "normal" (only NOT) life. Sigh. (That was before our first, and most severe, "nervous breakdown") We're really rambling here.  I need to wrap this up before some other K comes along and messes it up, or erases these words without posting or saving them because of our over-the-top paranoia. I still very strongly feel that these events, happening to us "now"-whenever that may be-are going to have an enormous impact on K's future, hopefully for the better.  Hopefully, this is a brain-altering, life-changing moment of clarity within our foggy, crowded existence.  Hopefully this is K taking the first steps at realizing how she can go about getting the sort of help that she really needs, and not just drugging us to keep us at bay.

We've tried to explain this, or some of this, to K's husband, but he is having quite a difficult time in wrapping his brain around these concepts. We have, in fact, completely blown his mind by telling him openly and honestly what K was thinking and feeling. Now K feels completely vulnerable and fragile and I have to alter my train of thought before the stifling paranoia takes over again... My husband is my best friend, but even he has never seen me like this before,  he's never witnessed me switching from one K to another. I imagine it is quite upsetting and disturbing to him, as it would freak anybody out who wasn't prepared for it. Sigh.  I really, REALLY hope I don't scare off my husband...!!! I tried, very hard, to warn him, to prepare him, for the day he'd see the real me.  "US".  And now it turns out he can't handle it, or at least not at the moment.

The Lost Blog Post

I was editing our blog-we are still trying to figure out how to do this-and I came across this draft.  I have some memory of someone writing it...Not sure who or when...Anyhoo, I thought perhaps I'd share it with you, as I myself found it rather insightful.  Or something. It goes like this:


Hello and good day there! It's about time that someone, anyone, step up to the plate and tell the (non-)Real World who, and perhaps more importantaly, WHAT we are!  I apparently need to get off my ever-increasing ass and do something about this situation! So while it may be true that according to phone records and internet timestamps, we've only been asleep for say, 3 hours, and during that 3 hours let's say that I took some Seroquel and every one of us knows how much that frightens K, and that technically she should still be sleeping due to it's sedating qualities...i.e. This shit usually knocks us on our face and we sleep for at least 12 hours, so therefore WTF am I doing awake this damn early?!? Sigh. Things just can't seem to go as planned these days...


We're only a few entries (unless it's changed since I woke up; not saying it hasn't--) into this New Blog, and I've said this to someone before, perhaps you, that I'm dissatisfied with the look and feel of it.  I am looking at this and reading this and this just WILL NOT DO at all!  This blog seems rushed and NOT put-together-right and our OCD simply will NOT stand by and let this go on any further! It should be perfect.  It should be entertaining, and interesting, and maybe even a bit controversial as well, since K so enjoys that feeling of risk-taking, and after having read this so-called Blog, we have decided that K is NOT up to the task and someone else positively MUST take over the reins for awhile.  And that someone appears to be me today.


Who the hell am I? you may be asking yourselves, and I will be happy to answer that question.  We are K, not to be confused with The Kellie, (who is fabulous but rarely comes around anymore from what we can tell), we are the conglomeration of all the things and people and ideas and whatnot which belong to K but which she currently cannot express because K suffers from "mild"(?!) Schizophrenia and Major Depressive Disorder and perhaps even Dissociative Identity Disorder (we were just making strides in that area when our therapist dropped us; damn the luck!) even though she thinks (HAHA) that she's currently OK, she truly is very seriously depressed and/or mentally ill and just unable to talk about it.  For a number of reasons which shall become (at least somewhat) clear by the end of this post.  Hmm.  I wonder how long this post will be??  (cue dramatic music, then cut sharply, and zoom in to the center) We shall see, Oh yes, we shall see indeed.


The story starts as many stories do, only ours doesn't necessarily start at the beginning...rather, it starts somewhere in the middle and then jumps back and forth from past to future, never really lingering long enough in the NOW to have a "normal" life, whatever that may be. In our mind, "normal life" means literally "the life that most normal people lead" and it entails a job and a spouse and some kids and probably a dog and a mortgage and plans for some sort of future in which the star of the show has grandchildren and memories of a long and fulfilling life, with the usual ups and downs along the way but which ultimately has a happy ending.  The "...and they lived happily ever after" part of the movie. But NO, not us, not now, not EVER, that's just not the hand that was dealt us in life, and we must face the facts. K is still (after all these years) in denial, and probably always will be.  It's just in her nature to be negative, only she considers this "realistic" and gets pissy if someone calls her a pessimist for she very clearly is a realist.  But I'm jumping ahead again. Damn.  I forget sometimes that this is NEW, that you don't know us, that you are NOT my doctor or my therapist or my partner or even my friend yet, and that some explaining needs to be done.  How could anyone possibly jump into the middle of this madness and be able to successfully navigate their way through  these troubled waters? Not even I can do that, and at the moment, I am the captain of the damn boat! ("Ship" I hear Daddy whisper in my ear "A boat fits on a ship, a ship cannot fit on a boat!") K's father was in the Navy and loved all things ship-related. So let's dive right in, shall we say, and start swimming.  I'll be nearby with a life preserver for you in case of sharks or piranha or whatnot.  You will be safe, I (cannot) promise. Just keep swimming.

We are known collectively as K, and we were first diagnosed with a "mental disorder" and given a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder (although at the time it was called "Manic-Depressive Disorder"; I suppose this dates me EEK!) when we were 16. Now granted, just because this is when the illness was brought to the attention of us and (some of) our family, it does NOT mean this is when we first got sick. No, we've been hearing voices and/or having hallucinations since roughly the age of 4.  For as long as we can remember, in other words. It just didn't really become a problem for us until I was a teenager. Actually, K had no idea that anything was wrong with her at all, because this way was the ONLY way she'd ever known. She assumed everyone else also had a sports broadcaster in their reality, commentating on their "game" of life.  Throughout her childhood, she heard people refer to "that little voice inside your head", so she thought it was perfectly normal to have someone in your ear telling you to do things.  The fact that she had more than one voice didn't make her ill, it just made her special, and so we lived with these voices and were not afraid at that time.  They were nice to her back then, perhaps because she was innocent. The visual hallucinations were her "imaginary friends" that a lot of children have.  K's secret is that she never outgrew them as other children do. (They are no longer my imaginary "friends" however; more like enemies)


Now we come to the childhood trauma which every therapist seems to think mental illness comes from, although I'm not sure mine was all that traumatic for me until I began seeing a certain therapist in my mid-20's,  which seems a long time ago now, (but how would I know? I have no concept of time. And K has issues with her age-she doesn't believe she's as old as she is-but that is definitely another tale for another time) and she told us that I was displaying all the signs and symptoms of sexual abuse. (Yes, I do exhibit the classic signs. I'm not going to list them here; you can easily find out for yourself online what exactly those signs/symptoms are) Now we've tried to revert back to our childhood and remember who exactly did what and when...Yes, it happened. Yes, it was a family member.  Two actually (but NOT our beloved parents!) But in the end we  only succeeded in making ourselves feel more uncomfortable than ever in our own skin and brought about feelings of guilt, as though she had done something to deserve it and it was her own fault that she got molested. No, K was unable to handle that reality and therefore she dissociated and created her own reality and we can't really remember those super-traumatic things anymore. K isn't allowed to think about that stuff.  It's best we not go down that path again, I assure you. It's a slippery slope and we always fall and it takes literally years for us to get back up again.  So we will NOT be talking about the molestation OR the rape(s). Another time, another place. Maybe.


Jump ahead now, and K is a teenager, and puberty kicks in and the hormones start to take over and this starts to compete with the Mental Illness (which of course is going untreated at this time) and what happens is  she becomes a suicidal mess and gets sent away to the loony bin for what seemed years but which we now know was only 3 months.  And in those 3 months, K's parents did all they could to hide K's illness from the rest of the family; they were ashamed that something like this could happen to them and they thought they'd be judged, and let's face it folks, there IS a stigma, and back then it was much worse even than it is today.  We certainly never had famous actors going on national television and announcing they were Bipolar or Bulimic or anything like that; it was something we didn't talk about, something to be ashamed of and embarrassed by, something that happens to other families, not ours. So K's sister, her very own sister, was never even told that K had been hospitalized for attempting to commit suicide (the wrist slashing we can't remember-it was too traumatic; we just have the scars and nightmares now) not once but several times, using different methods, which we obsessed about and which we were constantly in our head planning out for K's future. She intended to be dead by age 25 anyway.       


That's the end of the draft.  As I've stated earlier, we're not sure which one of us wrote that.  But it seems important to share it with someone, anyone, and that someone turned out to be you.