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.

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.

It's Gonna Be A Long Year...

Spent damn near 3 fucking hours writing one big paragraph about how we're having a terribly difficult day and then that bitch wouldn't let me post it! The need to bleed is upon us...


Christmas got packed away today. Holiday Blues will linger until February.

Ate my first meal of 2012.  Threw up my first meal of 2012.  Didn't eat again.


Fuck this day.  We're going to take a bunch of pills and go to sleep.  Glorious sleep.

One more thing. Death is all around me.  Everybody's dead.

New Years Evil

Ah, New Year's Eve.  A time for reflecting upon the triumphs and tragedies of the past year and looking ahead to the bright, shiny possibilities of the upcoming year.  Ideally, that's what I'd be doing, along with drinking champagne throughout the day.  Instead, I'm just waking up from a sedative-induced sleep which I forced myself into after having a major meltdown this morning.  We were so excited, eager, and anxious about going out to celebrate New Year's Eve tonight that I was completely overwhelmed by the thought of it all.  I was supposed to come up with something special to wear, and get all dressed up, and go out to a party or two with my darling husband, whom I planned to kiss at midnight. But the pressure of doing all those things was just too much for me to bear and I completely flipped out and had the worst anxiety attack I've had in ages.  My heart was pounding so hard I could feel my whole body shaking.  I couldn't catch my breath, and began to pant as though I'd run a marathon. I was enveloped in a desire to self-harm, but was unable to do so because my eyes couldn't focus and everything was fuzzy. I tried really hard to make myself dissociate so I could escape this agony but that never works when I want it to.  My head felt like it was in an ever-tightening vise, and I could feel the blood rushing through my brain; the pain was so intense that I thought I might have a stroke at any moment. I thought I was going to die, literally. All because I had plans to go out tonight...

Well, we didn't even have specific plans at the time of my freakout.  We were pondering two choices: a large, rowdy party with some friends and a ton of strangers and massive quantities of booze and whatnot, or a small, intimate get-together with 2 other couples, some fireworks and, of course, more drinking.  I intentionally skipped all my meds this morning, specifically so that I might drink more tonight without fear of drug interactions.  Apparently, that was a bad idea.  Not a half hour had passed after I'd made that decision before I had a complete and utter breakdown.  My only option was to take 2 mg Alprazolam and lie down on the bed with my eyes closed and my head hidden. My husband was quick to discover I'd skipped my pills and thus forced me to take them and eventually I passed out. (I was doing my yoga breathing to calm down and I guess that plus the drugs worked wonders)  Not sure how long I was asleep, but when I woke up it was no longer this morning, it was well into this afternoon, so I'm guessing I slept for hours. I just don't know for sure. I have no concept of time. I'm not kidding. NONE. But that's a story for another time...


When I woke up, my husband came to my bedside and asked if I was OK.  That's when it all came rushing back to me and I remembered that I had lost my mind for a bit there. Suddenly I was embarrassed and ashamed.and humiliated and felt as though I'd ruined our holiday even before it had begun.  At the same time, the person waking up from her drug-induced coma was someone new and different and she didn't feel anxious about going out to a party at all.  I was stoked about New Year's Eve and eager to find out where we'd be spending our evening. Well, my husband told me then that he'd decided it best for us to just stay home tonight.  I knew immediately that it was because of me/her/"us".  He was giving up his night of partying because he didn't think I was stable enough to be out in public. That made me feel like utter shit. But he wouldn't admit that I was the cause of it-he gave me perfectly logical reasons to stay home (too many drunks on the roads, cops everywhere looking to pull people over, etc) and I could say nothing to change his mind.  So I have already messed up our New Year's weekend (and it hasn't even started yet). What a fitting end to a fucked up year.


I guess this is where I should go into details about all the important things that happened in 2011.  That's what the average person would do, right? But I'm not the average person and besides that, my memory is so bad that I've forgotten most of the past year anyway! I remember LAST New Year's Eve however. My husband and I rented a cabin with 2 other couples (the same ones who've invited us to hang out tonight) and we spent the weekend in the mountains.  We had a fabulous time, drinking and feasting on grilled steaks and dancing and singing and being silly and dressing up and playing board games and lounging in the 2-person hammock and chilling out in the hot tub with the always-present glass of champagne in my hand... When the time warrants, I can become this person who is sociable and funny and seems to be normal. It's a mask I wear. (another story for another time) Now I have to admit, the main reason I'm able to remember all this so well is because that Christmas, I'd received a mini video camera and I was filming our whole trip.  So I can watch the video and relive the experience. That camera has become an invaluable tool to me, for it gives me the ability to document my daily life and remember the important events/people/etc that I'd otherwise forget due to my ever-shrinking memory. The only problem I have now is, I always FORGET that I have the damn camera!


After starting off 2011 with a bang (fireworks!), it was only a short time before my husband and I were celebrating our very first wedding anniversary.  Yes, I am just recently married, and my husband is the most supportive, understanding, kind-hearted man I've ever known.  He's my best friend and I absolutely adore him and can't imagine life without him. I don't know how he puts up with me (us?).  I really don't.  Hopefully, my mental illness won't drive him away like it drove away so many boyfriends/friends/family members/co-workers...(big sigh here) Now back to our story. February brought Valentine's, my birthday, and my mother's hospitalization. I very nearly lost her this past year.  She's 81 and precious to me, and her near death brought on alot of mental problems for me. But you must understand one thing: I NEVER tell my mother what is going on in my head.  We don't talk about the voices, or the hallucinations, or the dissociation, or any other symptom which she might perceive as serious.  I hide avoid her when I'm having an episode.  She really has no idea exactly how ill I truly am.  But I digress-


My husband (whom I need to come up with some name for, so that I don't have to continually type "husband") threw me a birthday party at the bar we normally hang out in.  I like it because it's dark and smoky and usually empty. The owner knows us, and my husband bartends there sometimes, and so the bartenders and waitresses and everyone there went out of their way to make my night special.  Balloons, party hats, cake, the whole shebang.  My sister was there, which is simultaneously awesome and bizarre, since she lives so far away from me, but she'd flown in to be with Mom on her supposed death bed and was therefore able to attend my little soiree.  I drank until I got sick (it's not a party until you puke!) and ended up talking and laughing with my hubby and sister all night,  long after the bar had closed and we'd stumbled home.


The next 6 months I don't remember at all. Seriously.  Not a clue. Sitting here right now, I can't tell you if we were sick or stable or up or down. I can't recall a thing. I have some photos of the birthday party I threw my husband in August, so I'm able to vaguely remember that.  We rented 2 hotel rooms (so no one had to drive home drunk) and invited everyone to party and hang out with us at the pool.  Actually, it wasn't nearly that smooth and easy, but I'm going to gloss over it for you. After that, I can't remember anything until near Halloween.  October is my favorite month, I LOVE Halloween and all things spooky and I usually get manic and ridiculously happy during that time of year.  I'm having trouble remembering what we actually did for Halloween.  Hmm.  Oh well.


With November comes the onset of my traditional holiday blues, and this will last until just after my birthday in February.  Thanksgiving was stressful to the max, but we can't remember any specific details about it. Next was Christmas, which sucked, and that brings us to where we are now.  I'm quite certain that you're sick to death of my rambling by this point anyway. And besides that--SHIT!--the whole day has already gone--I have to go get dressed for tonight.  Tonight.  New Year's Eve.  This will be the first time I've stayed at home for this night in decades, I kid you not. As it turned out, I've spent my entire day either sleeping or working on this blog entry.  Yes, it has literally taken us all day to write this post.  I can't remember how long this entry is or even what I've been talking about.  My OCD tells me to reread it for the 1000th time but at this point I'm so mentally exhausted that I just want to stop thinking.  So I'm going to post this without a final edit. Holy shit, I can't believe she's doing that! But I'm tired, so very tired.  And the night has yet to begin, along with the new year. Let's pop some fucking champagne, shall we?