Five Minute Friday: Try

Note: This post is my weekly contribution to the Five Minute Friday community that is hosted by Kate Motaung on her blog Heading Home. Click here for more information about Five Minute Friday and how you can get involved! To link up with all the other entries for today's prompt word, click here.

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July 2009

"No."

"Why not? Why not try it?"

I look around the office at the book case, the desk, the carpet and window and swallow. There is a fear stuck in my throat and I don't know if I can give voice to it. I look at Pendragon again.

"H-h-hospital. You said hospitalisation program..." I manage to stammer.

"Yes, it's the partial hospitalisation program, " he says. I look down at my lap.

"I don't want to go in the hospital.." I reply.

"It's not like a real hospital. It's an outpatient program. You go during the day and then you go home at night. Actually, it doesn't even look like a hospital." Pendragon tries to explain it more fully for me.

I am wary, skittish, and very afraid. It is early days in our therapeutic relationship and I'm still learning whether or not this man sitting across from me is trustworthy. And now he wants me to stick my neck out and try something new and scary? Something that probably won't work?

"No, I don't think so."  My answers are short and to the point, something that is very unlike me, but it is anxiety creeping in and an unspoken fear that this is something that he will somehow force me to try eventually.

But he doesn't. He nods. "Just think about it, okay? I really think if you give it a try, you'll benefit greatly from what that program has to offer. There's a great program therapist, Samantha. She's really great."

He's hit one of my hot buttons. I stare at him with daggers.

"She???" I query, wondering if I've heard him correctly. He knows how I feel about women and my past experiences.

"Yes, she. Actually, she's a lot like you," he says. Unlikely, I think, inwardly rolling my eyes. Despite my attempt to keep my disgust to myself, he senses it and continues, "No really, she is. Your personalities are very similar. I really think you'd like her a lot. And all that aside, the information is good stuff and I think would be very helpful to you."

I shift in my seat, glancing down at my hands, biting my lower lip as I think. "No, no, I really don't think so."

"Okay, okay, it was a thought. If you change your mind, and decide to give it a try, there's some fliers in the reception area about it and all you have to do is let me know," he answers and turns toward the computer on his desk. I can see by the clock on the wall that our time is almost up.

"Okay," I answer. We make another appointment for two weeks later and he ushers me out of the office.

In the reception area, I pass by the fliers in their little bins on the wall and wander over. My eyes flit over the various group therapy fliers and just as I'm about to walk toward the door, I happen to spy the one marked "Partial Hospitalisation Program."

I freeze for a moment, my breath catching in my throat. Then without another thought, I reach out, grasp one of the fliers and fold it in half with my appointment paper as I walk to the car. I don't know why I took one, but now it's burning a hole in my purse and I feel like I've made some kind of decision, although perhaps only subconsciously. I open the paper and read the information on it. My stomach is in knots and I am tempted to crumple it up and toss it out the window, but I don't. I keep that paper in my purse and look at it several times, reading the information over and over again.

A month later as I am sitting in Pendragon's office for another regular appointment, I take a deep breath, trying to steady my nerves. I am sitting cross legged on the little sofa and am trying to think of how to respond to his usual opening question regarding how I am. With a tremor in my voice and feeling as though I am about to step off a ledge, the first thing that falls out of my mouth is, "Okay, so I've decided I want to try it..."

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Five Minute Friday: Free

 Note: This post is my weekly contribution to the Five Minute Friday community that is hosted by Kate Motaung on her blog Heading Home. Click here for more information about Five Minute Friday and how you can get involved! To link up with all the other entries for today's prompt word, click here.

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Maybe you're tired of me talking about it, but that's okay. I'm good with that. It's my experience and my passion and something I think more people need to talk about. Of course, I'm talking about mental illness and mental health. For this Five Minute Friday, I want to talk about something that is related and something that REALLY needs talking about. I'm going to try to do it in 5 minutes.

Self-injury.

Yeah, it's a kind of scary thing to say aloud. I'll be honest. It's not the easiest thing to talk about with regard to my own experience. So why talk about it today, with this prompt?

Because I'm free of it.


It's something that plagued me on and off from about late middle school through my early 30s. Then I went through an intensive outpatient mental health program and using the education I gleaned from that, the coping skills I learned, and the help of my therapist Pendragon (who helped me uncover the reasons why I did it), I broke free of the stranglehold this habit had on my life.

This August will make six years of freedom from self-injury. And I'm pretty stinking proud of that.

One thing freedom from self-injury isn't: easy. It takes incredible effort and it takes vigilance. Freedom also isn't being free from thoughts and temptations to self-injure. The freedom is in resisting those thoughts and temptations. Every time you resist, you get a little bit stronger. I've had some fierce temptations. I've come very close to losing the fight with those thoughts a few times, especially in the early days.

Eventually though, I got to a place where one year became two and then three and at some point, I realised that when I'm tempted, the part of me that has become stronger with resistance says, "It's not worth it to throw all this hard work away and have to start again at square one." And the part of me that's fighting yet another temptation says, "You know? You're right." And the temptation loses and I win another victory.

I am free from self-injury. If you are struggling with it, know that there is hope for you to find freedom too. If you need a friend to encourage you along the way, email me at the link in the sidebar. I promise I'll listen and be there. You can do it! You can be free too!

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Day Twenty-nine: Night of Silence

"Cold are the people/Winter of life/We tremble in shadows/This cold endless night/Frozen in the snow lie roses, sleeping/Flowers that will echo the sunrise/Fire of hope is our only warmth/Weary, its flame will be dying soon." -- from Night of Silence by Daniel Kantor

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Thanksgiving has passed and for the first time in my life, I have not been with any extended family. Because of this, the preparation for Thanksgiving dinner has fallen completely to me. I have never done this before, but have manage to pull it off with a precooked ham, boxed stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, broccoli casserole, store bought rolls, and a homemade pumpkin pie. It takes a lot of planning and a fair amount of effort on the day of, but everything comes out really tasty and is well-received by everyone, even my sometimes unpredictably picky big girls. It is the first time in a long time that I've felt a bit more like myself. Even so, I find that the effort of cooking and baking drains me and I am much more irritable than I have any right to be. 

Day Twenty-four (extra content) - Five Minute Friday: Dare

Note: The following is my weekly five minute long contribution to the Five Minute Friday community. For more information on Five Minute Friday and how to join in this incredible community, click here to learn more at Kate Motaung's blog Heading Home. If you want to join in the fun and link up with all of this week's FMF based on the prompt below, click here.

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~Dare~ 

 

I dared to believe that the partial hospitalisation program at Green Tree could help me one more time.
I dared to hope that it would render the same results that it had the first time almost four years ago.
I dared to hope that God would help me through it.
I dared to trust in the people who run the program and in their abilities to help me.
I dared to trust in the therapist who I spoke with when I had that awful horrible no good day.
I dared to think that the worst of it was over after speaking with her.
I dared to feel "cautiously optimistic" when I returned to the program the following morning.
I dared to believe that it would all be okay.

I was wrong. I was horribly, horribly, irrevocably wrong.

But still, I dared.
I dared to believe after the trauma of being inpatient at Pine View that I could get past my anger.
I dared to believe that I could force myself to come face to face with those who betrayed me and ignore that betrayal.
I dared to believe that I could still get everything that the partial hospitalisation program had to offer and use to for my benefit.
I dared to tell the doctor exactly how angry I was at the prospect of coming back to that place.
I dared to fight for the opportunity to return to a place where I had been betrayed just so I could prove that I was stronger than that betrayal.
I dared to come back to that program and endure the entire three weeks of it.
I dared to do all of these things in an effort to get better, to recover, to move out of the darkness.

I dared to hope that through all the writing of this painful dark journey that things might be getting better.

I was wrong and foolish to have dared.

Five Minute Friday

Day Twenty-three (a bit late): Rating My Depression

This entry is a bit on the late side as it ought properly to have been posted on the 23rd of October, but things being what they are, it wasn't. So, here it is. I've been struggling through a bad patch of deeper depression than normal and I'm not really feeling like continuing the story at the moment, but I'm trying to write something, so here's a bit of an aside, if you will. Oh, and it's two parts, just so you know.

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For me, depression is an odd sort of creature that mutates and bends and changes from day to day. Some days, it is easier, some days more difficult, and some days are so hard that I don't want to wake up to another day. It runs the gamut. You might wonder with such a wide variety of mood how I make sense of it or see patterns in it or how Pendragon knows what to do to help me treat it or how Gray lives with me and has any sort of understanding of what is going on with me. The answer is actually quite simple.

Day Twenty-one: Owning My Anger

It is almost a month now since I have been home from Pine View and I just "graduated" from Green Tree's partial hospitalisation program about a week ago. Since I only got through two full days of the program when I began it before my stint at Pine View, they just restarted me from the beginning. To be honest, I wasn't sure I was going to be allowed to go back.

Day Nineteen: Dearest Gray

18 October 2014

Saturday

Dearest Gray,

As you know, today hasn't been the easiest of days for me and that what I'm feeling as I type this and try not to cry (not that I don't feel that I can, I just don't want to have to stop now that I've finally started to get a tissue from the bathroom and wipe my nose) is the weight of all of this that I've been writing about of late. These memories that I've been sharing with the world have been even more sharply in my dreams the last several days which, as you also know, has caused you to waken me from nightmares. I told you today that I don't want to continue this writing of this. It hurts so much and I've cried so many tears over it. I told you too that I was starting to feel something akin to hope, only to have it smashed to bits this afternoon and evening. That is the way of this disease though and why I have learned that it is an exercise in frustration and pain to tell myself that I might be getting better or that things might be changing in some way because there is something about saying it aloud (or writing it) that seems to signal an ill wind to come and knock me back down into the darkness again. Two steps forward, two steps back again. Maybe not a whole two steps back, but enough that whatever infinitesimal amount of progress I am making is so miniscule as to be completely unrecognizable to my senses. All that said, my darling, you have encouraged me and lent me your strength and I am trying. As I said, today, I am writing this for you.

Day Fourteen: Down the Rabbit Hole

Note: This entry is particularly long. I started to separate it into multiple entries, but I could not find a good place to split it that made sense to me. I am going to insert some pauses, if you will, in the form of asterisks, so that if you need to grab another cup of coffee, change a diaper, make a phone call or just take a break, you'll have some way of finding your place again. I apologize in advance for the length of it and offer my sincere gratitude to all of you who are reading. Thank you.

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It is Wednesday morning and I am on my way to Mass for the third day in a row. This morning though, there is a healthy lunch packed in my insulated bag and although I'm not what I'd call really happy, my overall mood is definitely lighter as I drive along. Yesterday on my daily assessment, I rated the intensity of my depression at a 9 out of a possible 10, although in all honesty, it was probably closer to a 10. I know I was trying to hide it a little bit though. Today though, I feel like it is sitting somewhere around a 6 or 7. It's not a complete 180 degree difference, but definitely a step in the right direction. With any luck, by the end of the partial hospitalisation program, I will be able to get that number down to nearly 0.

Day Twelve: Barbecue, Holy Oils, and Big Books....Oh My!

It is the day after my tears have returned and we are sitting around my parents' kitchen table, eating barbecue, potato salad, baked beans, and other assorted slightly special summertime foods. It is July 4th and there are fireworks on TV as we eat. I did not want to do this today, but felt like it was too late to back out of it. I am still wasted from yesterday's session with Pendragon and still trying to find right side up in my emotions. I take a bite of my barbecue sandwich, but don't really enjoy it. Truthfully, I barely even taste it. Although it may not look like it from the outside, I am miles away inside and want to just eat and go, but we won't be able to get away that quickly. After our late lunch, we will have to wait a bit before dessert and then a bit after that before we can make our excuses and go. Gray and I have already discussed that he will say that we need to leave so we can get home before too late and he can get to bed at his regular time because he has work the next day. It is true, but it is also an excuse.