Sabotage

I drop one addiction to pick up another
I give up a bad habit for something that’ll kill me faster
I only know how to play one game
And it’s called self-sabotage
Didn’t even need the tutorial
Cause I already had the cheat codes
Unlock new levels where I think I’m getting better
Only to fall off another cliff
What’s “better” anyway?
At this point I haven’t a clue
Logically I know
I know it’s unrealistic to expect so much of myself
A person can only improve so much at a time
Healing isn’t linear
I get that
Its a hurricane, a whirlwind, a true and honest shitstorm
But why does it always become stagnant again
Playing with my eyes and making me think it’s over
Makes me think the storm will end with me sitting in the dirt
I never wanted the storm
But now I crave it
It lets me know that something is happening
Anything
Anything is better than nothing
At least when it storms I can remember to bring my umbrella
What do I bring when there’s nothing?
What do I bring with me when I AM nothing?

Self-Doubt and Second Guessing

In light of recently being told by my doc that he’ll be referring me to a psychiatrist (which I’ve been wanting and hoping for for awhile now), I’m having a lot of old self-doubt about my symptoms and how I feel resurface.

I’ve always been the type to second guess myself, even when I’m 99% sure of what I’m talking about. It was like that answering questions in class, it’s like that at work and it’s like that when I think about my mental health. Even though I’ve been experiencing my symptoms for years and they have over time gotten worse and then better and then worse again, I still find myself wondering if I’m just faking it or exaggerating or just blowing things out of proportion.

I’ve had at least 2 major anxiety attacks due to social interactions, both bringing on symptoms of heart palpitations, nausea, shaking, and rapid breathing. I’ve had what I believed (and my doc agreed with) to be a brief but full blown psychotic episode including auditory and visual hallucinations both during the day and at night, extreme paranoia and a loss of touch with reality. I have been passively suicidal since high school and as such eventually had one breakdown over the phone with a friend saying how I didn’t want to die but existing is just too hard and I don’t want to do it anymore, as well as contemplating getting rid of rope that I own because the thought of having it in arm reach made the urge stronger.

Despite all these things in combination with my other symptoms, I still find myself doubting if it’s “serious enough” or “real” or if I just talked myself into it.

(For the record if I had talked myself into it, pretty sure I would have talked myself back out of it years ago. Would have saved a lot of tears, anxiety and stomach bile…)

As I touched on in the beginning of this post, these thoughts of self-doubt and second guessing aren’t new to me, however that doesn’t make them any easier to deal with. Add in the painful memory of the one time I asked a previous boyfriend in a fit of anxiety and panic if I was just faking it and talked myself into it and hearing the response of “you probably are”, it’s easy to assume that now being faced with the situation in which I have to discuss these symptoms with a professional, I’m understandably stressed.

I know well enough that I’m what would be considered high risk. My dad has depression, both his aunt and his mom committed suicide and there was one severe case of schizophrenia on my mom’s side of the family. The chances of me developing a mental illness are high and I know for a fact that I did indeed develop at the very least anxiety and depression. Whether or not that’s with psychotic features or due to a personality disorder or if another mood disorder altogether, I don’t know and I find myself having difficulty figuring it out when I’m so all over the place.

I spent a lot of time as a kid and a teen researching both physical and mental illnesses because I found a genuine interest in it, even considered going into the medical field at one point as a kid, so I know enough to know when I’m displaying symptoms of a thing and when I’m not. I’m well aware that I do not have full blown schizophrenia for example, but where that leaves me now after having experience symptoms of psychosis, I don’t know. And in all honesty, I’m a bit nervous to hear what the psychiatrist tells me in general.

Not because I’m ashamed or because of the stigma attached to mental health, I’ve always been relatively open and accepting of this part of me. But I’m more nervous about how well I actually know my own mind…and even more importantly, what happens next.

Once I get my diagnosis, where do I go from here? Medication and therapy most likely, but what do I do once I finally have things managed better?

What’s it going to be like to live more freely? How do I fill the time?

How is one supposed to feel about recovery from an illness that essentially became a toxic best friend?

You get so used to having it around, that it’s almost scary to think about life without it.

But it’s also incredibly exciting. I hope after going through with the psychiatrist appointment that I’ll finally get the answers I was searching for and learn how to push aside the self-doubt.

I hope I can learn what it means to trust myself again.