Mandajuice

Ignite this!

2012-02-11T08:10:00-08:00

Thursday night we went to Ignite Portland. If you haven't attended an Ignite event, you really should, and not ONLY because they're free. Thursday I learned that acceptable Ignite topics include slugs, cats, robots, cat-feeding robots, airports, yo-yo's, being radical (which is different than just being rad), taking a walk outside to boost your productivity and why being cute is so damn important. Topics not included: vaginas. (My proposal on Brazilian waxing was rejected...) (Wrong crowd, I suspect.)

I sat there the whole time utterly WRACKED with anxiety. Maybe it was because I think instead of talking about vaginas at the next Ignite, I'll pitch them a talk about how the Internet saved my life. The idea of telling that story is terrifying to me and I can't even get through it without doing the ugly cry, but I think that's my real story. Whatever the cause, I felt like I was suffocating. It was awful. Inexplicable. Just... there. And totally annoying. It's also been par for the course since I've been on Zoloft. I couldn't wait to stop taking it, actually, so I was grateful I'd saved up enough tips to buy my Effexor and that I was able to take it before bed last night and again this morning.

At first it made me super nauseated like I was car sick. Which was exactly how I felt when I first started Zoloft. But this time the yuckiness wore off within an hour and then I just felt... great. Productive instead of exhausted. I wrote myself a to do list and actually got through a bunch of it:

I made a big dent in my tax return.

I baked foccacia from scratch.

I made a double-batch of semolina pasta and hand rolled some fun shapes out of it.

I roasted a bunch of sweet baby peppers and then pureed them with garlic for the pasta sauce.

I wrote a blog post.

I finally took off my cracked red nail polish.

I folded a load of laundry and organized all our mismatched socks.

Oh! And since our washing machine won't agitate anymore, I did a load of wash by hand. I just let the washing machine fill up and then I did all the agitating and wringing myself, which left me feeling like some kind of freaky Amish fraud when I put it all in the dryer.

The strange thing is that my anxiety, while still present, is already WAY better. I can't explain it. It doesn't make any sense that I'd be feeling so much better after only a day on Effexor, but there you have it. The strangest part is that I actually feel like MYSELF again. My enthusiasm is back. I no longer feel overwhelmed. I really REALLY hope these symptoms continue because it feels like I'm finding my way back to YES and god damn it, I really missed it.

Cancellations

2012-02-10T14:26:09-08:00

Tuesday was my Food Stamp Day. If you're poor (like I still LEGITIMATELY am), you know Food Stamp Day is the day you go straight from choking down ramen and canned chili to free-basing fresh asparagus and pre-sliced deli meat. I had a few hours to kill after work, so I went to Costco, where I spent over an hour loading up my double-wide cart with every conceivable food item that wouldn't expire in less than a month. Recently I've decided to stop purchasing any processed food item that I can make myself, so I threw a 50-pound bag of flour into my cart next to a month's worth of chicken breasts and enough Tillamook cheese to put the Oregon coast back to work again. There wasn't a single wasted dollar in that cart.

(Before you out-of-state jerks start telling me I'm too poor for Tillamook chese, I should probably let you know that Tillamook isn't a luxury item here. It's FROM here. I'm not too poor to eat local.) (Not that there is some poverty COMPETITION or anything.)

Yes, I am still on food stamps. I'm working as hard as I possibly can to build my vagina clientele, and I'd like to think I'm doing a damn good job at it (yay for good reviews!), but it's the middle of winter and I have yet to fill an 8-hour shift with even half that many appointments. Which means, yeah, still poor.

I'm not blaming anyone or complaining at all, actually. I LOVE my job and still feel nothing but gratitude that I actually HAVE a job. This is literally the BEST job I've ever had and I look forward to doing it for many, many years. The truth is I don't mind not buying shit. I like to go out, sure, and I tend to save up my tips and then use them for things like dancing and booze (and gas), but that doesn't make me middle class by any standard deviation. It does, however, make me human.

Unlike the 23-year old Costco manager I encountered on Tuesday.

I had loaded up that conveyor belt with at least $300 worth of necessities and when the checker ran my Costco card, it turned out my membership had expired exactly seven days ago.

SEVEN. DAYS.

It was $55 to renew my membership, which for me meant I could either pay my phone bill (which I need FOR WORK) or I could buy my food at Costco. I asked if there was anything he could do and he called over his supervisor. Do you know how much fun it is to stand in a packed Costco line and explain to the manager (and everyone within earshot) the particulars of your financial situation?

I would liken it to a root canal, but at least I had general anesthesia for THAT.

"My Costco membership was a gift and I don't have the money to renew it. All I have is food stamps. Is there anything I can do?"

That coldhearted meanypants just shook her head at me and shrugged. "Don't you have a checkbook?"

No. No I don't.

(Seriously, if you're not old enough to qualify for Medicare, you have no business carrying around a check book.)

My only consolation was that while I walked away hanging my head in shame, SHE had to find someone to re-shelve over a hundred pounds of groceries. She didn't get to make any friends that night. (Which is sad considering that ANY Costco member can bring a friend and let them shop FOR FREE.) (She could have extended that courtesy to me...)

The good news is that they carry the same bag of adorable mini peppers at Winco for one cent LESS than Costco. EAT THAT, Costco! I saved a PENNY, Biotch!

So the next morning, still high on .79 cent avocados, I went to see my doctor to talk about the Zoloft situation. Where I promptly learned that my state health insurance had been cancelled, oh, SEVEN DAYS ago.

Good times!

This one I understood completely because I need to apply for Oregon's health plan and all, but also? I STILL REALLY NEEDED TO SEE THE DOCTOR.

So they agreed to bill me for my appointment, which means I can pay it as soon as I'm able to. The best part was that EVERYONE at Peace Health went out of their way to give me excellent customer service. From the receptionist who made three phone calls on my behalf trying to figure it all out, to the doctor who took extra time to find me a medication that was as inexpensive as possible.

I'm switching to Effexor.

Well, generic Effexor, at least.

It also turns out that when I switched sleeping medications from Trazodone to Mirtazapine, the doctor who wrote the prescriptions while my doctor was out for the day didn't pay very close attention to my chart. Particularly to the height and weight portion of it. Because he wrote me a prescription for a sleep aid normally given to geriatric patients who are withering away on their death beds and need to gain weight (and also sleep). A full 50% of the people who take Mirtazapine gain at least 7% of their body weight.

Which totally explains why I gained SEVEN POUNDS since I started taking it less than a month ago. At least my ravenous hunger has an explanation and I can stop taking that stupid hungry pill. I mean, if I wanted to increase my appetite while decreasing my anxiety, I could just get a medical marijuana card and call it good, right?

(THAT WAS A JOKE.)

So last night I started the Effexor and so far I'm a little freaked out at how GREAT I feel. It's all a big crap shoot, anyway, so I'm just gonna trudge through until I figure it out. I'm just hoping to A) not be crazy before my period B) not feel anxious all the time and C) have orgasms.

As a final note, I may feel bitchy about Costco's customer service, but if you need drugs, DO YOURSELF A FAVOR and have your prescriptions filled at Costco. The pharmacy doesn't require a membership and they are RIDICULOUSLY cheap. Since I don't have insurance, I called around and this was price list I came up with for 120 37.5 MG tablets of GENERIC Effexor:

Walgreens $213.00

Target $183.75

COSTCO - $42.00

What a racket! Especially since all three prices would have been DOUBLE if I'd wanted extended release tablets instead. Insane!

The food, drug and parental administration

2012-02-02T11:52:39-08:00

For whatever reason, my cooking abilities substantially improve at the end of the month when we're broke and my pantry is empty. Tuesday night all we had in the cupboard was flour, yeast and a can of tomato paste and I somehow turned that into one of the best pizza dinners we've ever eaten. I wish I had some kind of recipe to impart, but it was literally: garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, tomato paste and seasoning. The rest was just some kind of poverty-induced magic. (Spread garlic-infused olive oil on the dough and it requires approximately 1/10th the amount of toppings...)

Last night I made a lasagna out of homemade pasta (six eggs, 4-5 cups of flour) with a tube of frozen Costco ground beef and a few cans of tomatoes (purchased for a dollar each at Grocery Outlet) and it was equally magical. Anyone who says poor people can't eat like kings is full of shit. Genoa ate the homemade pasta remnants (flour +eggs+ salted water) with butter and it was apparently the Best! Dinner! she's ever had.

I also figured out how to make brownies from a lingering box of Trader Joe's cake mix, not to mention the kick-ass Fleur-de-sel caramel popcorn we've been eating after the kids are asleep every night. Anyway, necessity, the mother of invention and all that. It always bothers me to hear that poverty creates obesity because nothing is healthier or cheaper than cooking from scratch. (Although, it's certainly not FASTER, that's for sure...)

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My Zoloft is sadly not doing its job. Well, at least not entirely. My anxiety has become exponentially worse. I can't breathe pretty much EVER. Even things that have never EVER stressed me out are causing me to feel like an 80-year-old asthmatic: driving, being late, going to work, maneuvering our schedules, making dinner. Don't even get me started on trying to SLEEP. I have two choices: heavily medicate myself or lie awake wishing for the sweet merciful bliss of death.

Then, because if anyone is going to GO THERE, it's me, there are the sexual side effects. First, my libido has gone AWOL, which is pretty fucking noticeable considering I'm usually the type who gets whiny about anything less than every. single. day bidnesstime. I sleep, I eat, I shit, I have naughty time (not necessarily in that order.) Sex is one more daily bodily function I simply can't live without.

Until now.

Now I actually FORGET to masturbate. Which hasn't happened since I was about ten years old. I wish I was lying, but I've pretty much always had the sex drive of a 14-year old boy.

I miss it.

I also miss being able to get off without it requiring three hands, six batteries and forty-five minutes. Zoloft should come with a coupon for a discount on carpal tunnel surgery, if not a free subscription to your favorite dirty magazine.

I keep thinking of that Huey Lewis song:

I want a new drug
One that won't make me sick
One that won't make me crash my car
Or make me feel three feet thick

The good news is that I'm two days into my usual CRAY-CRAY-TIME (the days of and before I would normally get a period) (pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder time) and I'm... fine. No crazy thoughts. No anger. No blood-thirsty rage. I'm not out of control AT ALL. Joel is pretty much the best thing that's ever happened to me and I love my children more than ever. I feel remarkably self-possessed and I have nothing but the drugs to thank for that.

(THANK YOU MODERN MEDICINE! Thank. You.)

Chemical imbalance! I haz it. Now to just find the right medication to treat it without the nasty side effects... I almost never ask for advice, but if you're in the population for whom Zoloft didn't work, I'd love to hear what did.

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When I picked the kids up from school on Monday I got a big earful about boats! and fun! and arcades! and I was, like, did your Dad take you someplace awesome? (Which would be unlikely considering he still doesn't have a job) (as far as I know).

"No! Our grandparents took us to Family FunCenter! We should totally go there again! It was awesome!"

"WHO took you there?"

"Regular Grandma and Grandpa!" (That's what Alex has been calling them since birth.)

"You saw MY parents this weekend?!"

"Yeah!"

Color me STUNNED. I was literally speechless for the better part of an hour.

The hurtful thing is that I'd actually asked Dave if I could take Alex myself last weekend. I've been trying to split up the kids to get some much-needed alone-time with them. "That won't work," Dave told me (like, A MONTH AGO). "They have family coming to town that weekend..."

If only I'd known Dave meant MY family!

Basically, Dave won't let ME hang out with my children when it's not my custody week, but he'll let my PARENTS do it. So while I steadfastly refused to see them, they picked up my children from Dave's house and took them to a theme park last Saturday. All without bothering to inform me of said plans.

I'm still not sure what my reaction to this news should be. Anger? Betrayal? Distrust? Sadness? I've experienced all of that, sure, but in the end all I can really do is just shake my head and laugh about it.

Because after more than a decade of being a pawn in the war between Dave and my mother, the irony of their unholy treaty is not lost on me.

Seriously. It's really quite funny.

They deserve each other.

I just can't wait until my mom starts pestering Dave about the holidays!

So basically my life just got approximately 200% less complicated. Their lack of scruples means I no longer have any guilt about cutting them off. Not an ounce of regret about writing about them. I don't even have to feel guilty about not letting them see their grand kids; they can just see the kids during Dave's custody time.

Don't you just love it when everybody wins?

If I ever start a band, it'll be called The Boundaries

2012-01-30T14:56:16-08:00

I had SUCH a great weekend, you guys. I danced too hard and drank too much and talked too loud and got to spend time with (almost) every one of my closest/favoritest girlfriends. I think the following photo pretty much sums it up:

And yes, to answer the question you're obviously thinking: I *DID* leave the house with that hair. It was 80's night! What can I say?

Not only did I dance my ass off (moonwalk anyone?!), but I spent time at the Portland Art Museum on both Saturday AND Sunday (Joel bought us a membership, FTW!). I cooked for our friends. I tried Lebanese pizza and even ate a bite of Joel's lamb (which still tasted like a barnyard to me). Sunday we went to church, which I'll be writing about soon because we ran into someone TOTALLY unexpected there.

It was such a good weekend that it was (mostly) easy to forget that my parents were in town looking at property and that I had chosen not to see them while they were here. Did I mention the fact that they are planning to move here? Because I probably should have.

Remember that week RIGHT before I freaked on Joel the first time? That was the week I talked to my parents for the first time since last summer. It was the week that instead of confronting them about our relationship, I regretably played the Let's Pretend Everything is Okay Game! It was also the week I heard that my parents are planning to sell their house in California to move here to be closer to my children.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Six months ago I stopped talking to my parents. I stopped answering their phone calls. I didn't return their e-mails or facebook messages. And their response was to decide to sell their house to move closer to me.

Basically, I'm going to lose my two-state buffer zone. My no-fly zone!

When we finally did talk, we all pretended that nothing had happened between us. I wish I'd had the nuts to tell my parents what I was thinking, which was: PLEASE DON'T move here. At least not with any expectation of seeing me or my children any more often than you see them now. But I didn't say that. I played along. Because part of me still wanted their approval. Part of me still wanted to be a good girl.

Since then I've stopped talking to them again and here's why:

I choose me.

The past year has taught me that I can either be a sane(ish) mother to my children OR I can have a relationship with my parents. I've dug deep to try to figure out a way to have BOTH and I just don't see it happening in the short term. Right now my mental health can't take both. Joel loves to remind me how doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. So expecting anything less than the drama I've experienced for 35 years would be insane.

Right now, I have to choose sanity.

I have to choose reality. (Even though it totally sucks.)

Who is this girl and what has she done with the real me?

2012-01-26T16:28:07-08:00

Since leaving the Matrix, I feel like I've not only lost the history that made me who I was, but I've experienced a complete loss of self. I'm not that girl I used to be.* And it seems funny that the moment I started learning how to feel my feelings was also the moment I lost who I was.

But I miss me.

Joel misses me.

I used to be so fearless and full of YES. Now I'm scared and tired and full of maybe. Joel keeps asking me what happened to the Mandafesto poster because we need to hang it back up at the new house. I need to be reminded to live like that again.

It's obviously the first point - BE WHO YOU ARE - that I'm having the most trouble with. How can I be who I am if I have no idea who that is? I'm trying to feel my way through it and promise to write about it as I go, (I already started that journey in today's post at yearofsundays...) but I'm starting with the easy parts. Tonight I'm going to a comedy show (LAUGH!) and tomorrow night I'm going 80's dancing (DANCE!). I'm also doing both of these activities with or without Joel. I feel like I've been leaning on him too much and I need to find that spark that used to help me lean on my own damn self.

It's not his job to make me happy, it's mine. I need to remember that.

* I should also mention that I started feeling this loss of self long before I went on any medications. I actually think it started over the summer...

A little ditty about Jack and Diane

2012-01-23T16:20:58-08:00

Over the summer, Joel and I pretty much gave up on going to church. We had other priorities (law suits, feeding our children, etc.) and we ended up letting the blog go. At the time (and in fact, even now), I was okay with this. I blamed it on a lack of mojo. Lack of time. New job. Excuses, excuses...

But what my lackluster interest in the blog really boiled down to was trouble in paradise. I didn't want to write a blog with Joel because he and I weren't okay. We still aren't. Go on over there and read about it because we're going to church again and I'm going to do what I should have been doing all along: I'm going to write my way through the sludge.

"I don’t feel like an equal partner in the most important relationship I’ve ever had. My biggest fear is that I have found the love of my life (because I might not believe in Jesus, but God help me, I believe that Joel T. Gunz is The One), but that he doesn’t feel that way about me."

Read more here.

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In other anxiety-inducing news, I took Genoa for her first haircut on Saturday. For months she's been begging me to cut it off and for months I've been resisting the idea for one reason: her father. We all know how well he handled it when I cut MY hair off, so I can only imagine what his reaction will be to seeing his beloved baby girl with short hair.

But that's my PTSD and his problem, not Genoa's. I mean, the child just wanted to get her hair cut.

And the truth is I only intended to let her get a trim, but once the baby curls were gone, I lost my willpower and gave in to her demands to cut it as short as she wanted. I mean, wasn't this about making HER happy?

Because OMG, y'all, she is SO HAPPY. She LOVES her new hair.

She kept begging me to take her picture so she could see it on my phone.

I'm honestly still mourning her beautiful long hair myself, but I know EXACTLY how good it feels to love your haircut, even when the most important man in your life doesn't. Although, my guess is he'll take one look at the huge expectant smile on her face and swoon. She's never been more adorable.

Zzzzzzzzzzz is for Zoloft (and hope)

2012-01-18T16:02:07-08:00

My first day on Zoloft went fine, you know, aside from the nausea, anal leakage and the fact that looking at words of any shape or size made me want to barf. After a couple days, I began to notice that I wasn't really able to stay awake for much longer than a few hours at a time, so I switched to taking it before bed and that's definitely helped.

Not that I've been able to sleep! Insomnia has been a huge piece of my anxiety, so along with the Zoloft, the doctor prescribed me a sleep aid called Trazodone. (Ambien literally makes me suicidal, so even though it knocks me dead to the world, it's out...)

You know how when you close your eyes in the dark, you can sometimes still see fuzzy little floaties in your vision? Well Trazadone made those floaties look like neon red and blue cookie cutter shapes that zoomed all around. It also made me more tired than I've ever been in my life, but did not shut off my brain. So that was a rough night. I literally didn't fall asleep until it finally wore off after 6AM. I called the doctor back the next day and got another sleep aid along with some Klonopin to help with the anxiety until the Zoloft kicks in. I've only had to take it twice, but I like knowing it's there when I need it.

I seriously feel like a walking pharmacy. Or rather a sleep-walking pharmacy.

I'm sooooooo tired. And so not myself.

Which has made it difficult to deal with the fact that everything in my life is broken. The TV was the first thing to go. About a week before Christmas it stopped turning on and instead makes this freaky heartbeat noise as if it's attempting to defibrillate itself back to health. This means no Wii for the kids. No movies. No Netflix.

My car was next. I was driving merrily along and it started to sputter and then just... died. The check engine light flashed and I lost power. Ten minutes later the fickle wench started back up as if nothing had happened and not even the grease monkeys at Jiffy Lube could figure out the problem. This cycle repeated itself until a week later when I finally had to call a tow truck to get home. Of course, it started working the moment the tow truck driver pulled up, so I still have no idea what's wrong with it. My very uneducated guess is that it's something to do with the fuel line, but that's just because of the sputtering.

The next thing to go was my washing machine, which no longer agitates, so I'm officially down to my last pair of thong underwear. Last Sunday, Alex spilled my coffee in the middle of a Greek Orthodox sermon and I had to use Genoa's ONLY jacket to sop up the mess, so she doesn't have a coat right now. I'd take it all down to the laundromat, but fitting all that laundry in Joel's tiny car along with two small humans is difficult at best, and that's assuming I actually HAVE the car. Being a one-car family with two kids who live in Vancouver and one who lives in Gresham is more than a challenge, especially since not all five of us actually FIT in the car at the same time. My logistics gene has certainly been getting a workout.

Monday night we got our first snow just in time to run out of heating oil.

Yesterday we had to meet with Alex's teacher and the school principal to discuss his behavior at school.

Last night Joel got snowed in at the office and couldn't drive home. We both had to sleep alone.

But I'm writing this all out as a way of saying: I'm okay. We're fine. My paycheck finally cleared this morning, so I got an oil delivery and any minute now the house should be warm enough that I can feel my toes again. Joel started a new client project this morning that will allow us to get everything fixed. I'm finally getting used to our feast and famine cycle. It probably isn't the best thing for my anxiety, but I can live with it because there just isn't any other way for us TO live.

The beauty in being down on your luck is that it either brings hope bobbing to the surface like a life raft or it doesn't.

Late last night I was still having a hard time sleeping, so I bundled up (even more than the three sweaters I was already wearing because we didn't have heat) and went out to the garage. I opened the big sliding door and sat there just watching the snow fall.

I had forgotten - like I do every year - how quiet it gets when it snows.

It was unbelievably quiet. Unbelievably beautiful. It was the perfect opportunity for me to try and feel my feelings. So I sat there and I listened to my heart and the only feeling I could come up with was gratitude.

Everything is broken - even the chemistry inside my brain is broken - but I'm not. I'm just lucky. Because given the choice between hope or despair, I choose hope every time.

Every time I type "Zoloft" my iPhone changes it to "Spliff"

2012-01-12T14:08:25-08:00

As I was driving to my Monday therapy appointment, I did a little math in my head and ended up with a rather startling conclusion, a conclusion that every mental health provider I've seen has asked me about and for which I'd never had an answer until Monday.

From the night that I freaked out on Joel to the day that I freaked out on him during therapy, guess how much time elapsed?

Precisely 28 days.

Since I haven't had a real period since before I got pregnant with Genoa (over six years), I'm not all that aware of my cycle. I have this magic Mirena IUD that brings me lovely ovulation hormones and zero period. I love it because I get to be all horny when I ovulate, but then I never have to deal with PMS or tampons.

But apparently I DO have to deal with PMS because it looks like I'm not so much bipolar as I am COMPLETELY INSANE the week before I would get my period were I a woman who actually menstruated.

The technical term for this condition is Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder or PMDD and the symptoms hit disturbingly close to home. Here's the list from the wikipedia article. I've put in BOLD the symptoms I've experienced:

feelings of deep sadness or despair, and suicide ideation
feelings of intense tension or anxiety
increased intense sensitivity to rejection or criticism
panic attacks
rapid and severe mood swings, bouts of uncontrollable crying
lasting irritability or anger, increased interpersonal conflicts; typically sufferers are unaware of the impact they have on those close to them
apathy or disinterest in daily activities and relationships
difficulty concentrating
chronic fatigue
food cravings or binge eating
insomnia or hypersomnia; sleeping more than usual, or (in a smaller group of sufferers) being unable to sleep
feeling overwhelmed or feelings of being out of control
increase or decrease in sex drive
increased need for emotional closeness

Apparently, "five or more of these symptoms may indicate PMDD."

So, yeah.

There's that.

I finally got a doctor's appointment yesterday to talk about PMDD and the near-crippling anxiety I've been having lately. The doctor asked me to describe what happens when I get anxious.

I told her, "I can't take a full breath. The more I think about not being able to breathe, the worse it gets. Sometimes I feel like I'm suffocating."

"That's a panic attack."

"I know! Which is why I'd like you to prescribe me some Xanax, pretty please. Did I mention how much I love your shoes?! And Xanax. I'd really love some Xanax."

"How often do you have these panic attacks?"

"Um, like, I dunno, three times a day?"

"If I give you that much Xanax, you'll be comatose."

So after much discussion, she gave me this instead.

I had some huge concerns about taking an anti-depressant.

1) I'm doing all this therapy work and it's really important that I continue to be able to feel my feelings. I'm anxious FOR A REASON and I don't want to slap a band-aid over that just to make myself feel better. I don't want to be numb.

2) Since there IS a reason for my anxiety, I don't think I'll need to be medicated FOREVER. That's why I'm doing all this work: to get better. Any drug I take will hopefully just help me get through it with minimal damage to those around me. I wanted a drug that would be easier to wean myself from in the future.

3) I'm not depressed!

4) I'm terrified of losing my sex drive and/or my ability to orgasm. 25% of people who take SSRI's experience negative sexual side effects, which would be a deal-breaker for me. Sex might be the only thing keeping me sane right now.

The doctor and I talked a lot about all the different pharmaceutical options. Wellbutrin is great for your sex drive, but can actually INCREASE anxiety. Effexor and Paxil are better for anxiety and tend to have fewer sexual side effects, but it can be extremely painful to wean yourself off of them. Zoloft ended up being the one that made the most sense. It's also what they usually prescribe for Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder, so anxiety or not, I'd be taking it anyway. If I have sexual side effects or begin to feel like I'm getting numb to my feelings, we'll simply adjust the medication or switch me to something else. It's a work in progress.

I never thought I'd be here, but here I am. Ironically enough, one of the first tag-lines I had for this blog was: Cheaper Than Prozac. Apparently I needed both all along.

"Welcome to the real world"

2012-01-09T06:47:00-08:00

The first thing I did the morning after I saw myself for the first time was to call a mental health crisis line. Since my regular therapist is a student at Portland State and they were on winter break until January 9th, I found an emergency therapist and grabbed the first appointment I could get, which was two days later. I tried to keep myself safe by going to work and calling my friends and apologizing to Joel. A surprisingly large number of my closest friends are bipolar and my every other thought was the dawning realization that I probably am too, so I called and asked them all a million questions.

(It's been nearly a month and I still don't know whether or not I am, but let's be honest: no one is going to be shocked if Amanda P. Westmont comes home from the doctor with a bipolar diagnosis.)

Anyway, during the 48 hours after I freaked out on Joel and before my first therapy appointment, I didn't eat a single bite of solid food. Not one. This may seem like a random thing for me to point out, but I think it was important on a number of levels, most of which I'm still trying to figure out. What I do know is that I wouldn't LET myself eat. Food felt like a reward I didn't deserve. So I survived on liquid protein shakes and Tylenol to stave off the constant headache I had from not eating enough calories.

I also didn't drink a drop of alcohol. I was afraid it would re-awaken the beast.

Joel was surprisingly kind to me during those first few days. He had every right to push me away and I would have understood if he'd stopped talking to me altogether, but he just... didn't. Instead, he looked me in the eyes and held my hand and made love to me so tenderly I fell asleep with tears on my cheeks. What he DIDN'T do, however, was come to my rescue. That beautiful, bald motherfucker knows better.

Therapy has been... wow. I don't even know where to start. I've been in therapy for a year already, but none of it has been this deep and intentional. I went to my new therapist in a state of crisis, more willing to do the work than I've ever been before, and duh, it's working a lot better as a result. Good therapy feels a lot like childbirth: the better it's going, the more it hurts.

I think the easiest way for me to talk about it is to use a movie analogy, so here goes. That moment when I saw myself for the first time was also the moment I left the Matrix.

"After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes." (Morpheus to Neo, in one of my favorite movies of all time.)

All my life I've been believing the story I WANTED to believe, which, as it turns out, wasn't REAL. It was just the way I chose to see the world because seeing it that way made it easier to swallow. All year long, I've been steadily pursuing reality and trying to squeeze my way into it. Part of that process has included distancing myself from my parents so that I can figure out what I want those boundaries to look like. But the moment I saw myself as that crazy out-of-control woman screaming obscenities at her boyfriend, it clicked. I saw my whole life story for what it was: make-believe.

So basically, I took the red pill and now I can see my whole life as it ACTUALLY happened and my rabbit-hole is so deep and dark that I'm beginning to think I might never see the sun again. It's only been, what, three weeks? Four sessions? And I've already learned a metric fuckton about my anger. Joel has been super helpful with it, too (because he figured this stuff out for himself nearly a decade ago) and our weekly couples therapy has been the hardest/best thing we've ever done together. (I'm at two therapy sessions a week right now and starting this week, it'll be three. There is no such thing as too much therapy.)

So far I've learned that anger is at the top of the emotional pyramid. It's the easiest emotion for most of us to access and boy howdy, do I have access to that emotion. The other emotions? Not so much. I went into my first therapy session with an agenda: to find out whether or not I'm bipolar and whether or not I should be medicated like I've always wished my own mother had been.

I left my first therapy session with an unexpected, but meaningful diagnosis: I have a phobia of my own emotions. You know that thing I've talked about where if I start to think about my breathing, I freak out and have a panic attack? That happened during my first appointment with the new therapist. I warned him about it and he tried to walk me through a breathing exercise to help me calm down and I lasted all of three seconds before he made me stop. The more we talked, the more it made sense: I learned from an early age that emotions are scary and bad and that it's a lot easier to just show the world how happy and congenial you are instead.

You know, right up until you get angry.

It turns out that anger is always - ALWAYS - about fear. They are two sides of the same coin. Behind my anger is a giant, gaping wound of fear. I'm TERRIFIED that Joel won't love me enough. That he'll be just like Dave. That my needs will never be met. That I'll lose the best thing that ever happened to me. That I'll be alone.

Mostly, though, it's a fear of never being loved.

I'm learning to embrace that fear and just let myself FEEL it instead of turning it around and aiming it at the people I love. This is the hardest thing I have ever learned EVER. I've been doing okay (BARELY okay, but hanging in there), until I had a set-back earlier this week and kinda blew up at Joel during therapy and was pissy with Liza and...

IT'S SO HARD.

Of course, the anger and the fear suck, but unfortunately, they're not even the worst of it. The worst of it is that if the emotional pyramid has anger at the top and fear in the middle, the bottom of the pyramid is SADNESS (quoting Joel again...). So it goes like this:

I'm ANGRY that my needs aren't being met.

Because I'm AFRAID that they never will be.

But what's really happening is that I'm SAD that I have never had my emotional needs met in a meaningful way.

The only way for me to stop being angry is to grieve the crap out of my emotional past. It's to embrace the sadness of never feeling loved by my ex-husband or by anyone else. Ever. It's grief that even at 35, I'm never going to be good enough for my parents.

It's grieving that I never actually HAD parents. Not the ones I needed, anyway.

Let me repeat that: I'm 35 and I have never ever felt truly loved or accepted by anyone, ever. (Until Joel.) HOW FUCKING SAD IS THAT?!?!

Before I swallowed the red pill, I was convinced that I'd had a happy childhood. I used say things like,

“I have NO bad memories from my childhood. As in, zero, zilch, NONE whatsoever. Sure, my mom threw the occasional piece of dinnerware on the hardwood floor in anger and my brother cut the head off my Madame Alexander doll, but those incidents really only served to enrich the experience. Seriously, my first two decades were disgustingly happy and I wouldn't change A THING.”

But that was my PARENT'S reality. That was the public foot we had to put forward to protect the family reputation. Up until this year, I bought into that reality wholeheartedly. And now I've had no less than three therapists call me on my "happy childhood" bullshit because up until I saw myself, I still defended it as a good one. "Yeah, my mom threw dishes, but she was fun! I had a GREAT childhood!" Which is exactly what my mother convinced me to believe. Her reality was ever-so-compelling because believing it made me a good daughter. (This is why you've never seen me write an unkind word about her here: I WASN'T ALLOWED TO.) Protecting her self-image made me a good girl. It also made me weigh 309 pounds.

But that was the Matrix.

Which is a reality I no longer subscribe to.

Neo: Why do my eyes hurt?
Morpheus: You've never used them before.

My worldview now takes place in reality. It is not the Matrix. It's the cold, hard truth. It's nowhere near as pretty and no small part of me wishes I'd swallowed the blue pill instead and gone back to believing WHATEVER I WANTED because that was so much easier.

In the meantime, there is therapy and my therapist is fantastic, but he's also a cruel, evil bastard because every week he makes me cry. On purpose. He wants me to mourn the shitty parts of my story. When I gloss over them like I've done my whole life, he makes me stop and rewind until I'm a huge sobbing mess.

The hardest part isn't the grief that everything you thought was fine actually SUCKS, but it's the enormous grief that comes when you realize it'll never go back to being the way you thought it was. In my case, it's the realization that I'm never going to have a mother. I don't have a mother. I have Barbara. She was a lot of things to me, but she was never, EVER the mother I needed. She never will be. (I know she can't understand any of this and that she'll probably never talk to me again after reading this, but all I can say is that she never had a mother either. She had Virginia...)

I have to murder all of that. Every notion I ever had about my family, what love feels like, my own happiness. I have to live in a world where never seeing my mother again is okay with me. Because it might just be what's BEST for me.

Reality sucks so hard, you guys.

It's the worst thing ever.

My brain is just about the worst place I can possibly imagine being these days. I want to shut it off. The voice that questions everything and everyone. The voice that tells me it's all Joel's fault even though I know it's not. The voice that snaps at my children. The voice that knows I don't know how to nurture my children because I was never, ever nurtured by my own parents. (My therapist actually had to walk me through, sentence by sentence, what it would have sounded like if my mother nurtured me through things like having sex with my 30-year old boss when I was fifteen instead of just blowing her lid and getting angry with me. The words "Are you okay, Amanda?" sounded like Arabic to me. I'd never heard them before. Totally foreign.)

The voices.

I'll do anything to make them go away.

But the only way to make that happen is to dig so deep into my vat of grief that literally everything makes me cry. I sob ALL THE TIME. On the way to pick up my kids. Every time I'm alone. Between waxing clients. Between text messages. Between Pandora tracks.

It's almost unbearable. I HATE being sad. I've fought so hard against it my whole life that I don't know how to do it. It makes me feel like a bad little girl. In fact, every bit of this red pill business makes me feel naughty. Like if I'd just done what my mommy and daddy wanted and chosen the blue pill instead, none of this would be so hard. Seeing the truth makes me such a bad daughter. According to a recent e-mail from one of my brothers, it even makes me a bad SISTER.

I want to be clear here and say that I'm not BLAMING my parents for my craziness. I own it 100%. This is MY problem. Seeing myself just brought my past and present into a collision course with one another. To ignore the past or to continue sweeping it under the rug and playing nice (and not talking about it on my blog) would mean to continue BEING THIS WAY. And I'm not okay with that crazy screaming lunatic. My children aren't going to have that mother. They're just... NOT. The only way to deal with MY shit is to deal with my parent's shit.

There is no spoon...

The hardest post I've ever written

2012-01-04T15:24:22-08:00

Stop me if you've heard this before, but when I'm avoiding my blog, it's usually for one reason and one reason only: I AM NOT OKAY. These past few weeks are no exception. I don't think I've ever been this not okay before and I'm long over due to talk about it.

Shortly after I clicked publish on that Super! Happy! Post! about the house and the kids and the Christmas tree and my lovely lover's ridiculous grin, I started to go rather swiftly downhill. I noticed, but tried to ignore the fact that I was suddenly feeling less happy and lots more annoyed.

I think ANGRY is the word I'm looking for here.

It took me a few days to really work up to it, but by that weekend I was basically a walking case of road rage. I have a vivid memory of scrubbing the bathroom floor that Saturday in a fit of murderous, blood-thirsty violence. Of course, since I wasn't exactly in my right mind, I directed all this anger at the easiest target in my life: Joel. How dare he be outside decorating for Christmas with Liza while I'm on my hands and knees cleaning the previous tenant's piss off the floor! (Not that I actually WANTED to be out there helping, mind you, but still.) How dare he insist that Alex clean the mess he made in the yard! How dare he sleep when I can't! How dare he BREATHE!

This was unpleasant, indeed, but it got a lot worse. I had somehow lost the ability to see anything good in my life. Forget the fact that Joel is the best person I have ever known or that I love the crap out of him, the only feeling I had inside me was anger. I finally understand the meaning of the term: BLIND RAGE. (Although only through the benefit of hindsight because at the time I thought it was all perfectly justified.)

By Monday night we were childless and I tried to convince myself that I was feeling better, but mostly I felt restless, like there are spiders crawling in my belly. We planned a nice dinner and drove out together to get the needed ingredients. Joel held my hand and we kissed while picking wine at Trader Joe's. I still didn't feel like myself.

Dinner was magnificent. The wine was perfect, but I drank it too fast and was instantly tipsy. Actually, if I'm being honest, I got drunk. And since I was feeling miserable and my inhibitions disappeared along with the last of the wine, the anger surged back with a vengeance and I unleashed it on Joel, who'd done nothing wrong except make me a damn fine dinner.

I sat there over my empty pasta bowl and berated the love of my life for I don't know how long. Until I ran out of steam. His only response was silence. Deafening, dreadful silence. Later, when he got up and went to bed without saying goodnight to me (which was perfectly reasonable given how badly I'd just hurt him), I totally lost my mind. I went crazy and slammed doors and told him "fuck you" and...

God.

I slept in Genoa's bed that night. Although "sleep" isn't really the right word. It was more like eight hours of silent screaming in my own head. It took more than 24 hours for the fog of that rage to lift. Even then, it took Joel sitting me down the following night and telling me in great detail what I'd done and how it made him feel.

I didn't even remember most of it, which I'd love to attribute to the wine, but I'm a rather professional drinker and rarely ever lose my memory.

It was the rage. I had lost my rational mind to it.

Then, while Joel and I were talking about it, this thing happened to me, which at the time felt like the worst thing that had ever happened to me, but which will probably end up being one of the five greatest moments of my entire life:

I saw myself.

And what I saw was a woman who had completely lost control.

Which was a disturbingly vivid image given all the work I've been doing lately to reconcile my childhood crap. I grew up with a mother who was perfectly happy and congenial right up until the moment she wasn't. And when she WASN'T happy and congenial, she was emptying the dishwasher by throwing dishes at my older brother while I hid downstairs protecting my younger siblings from the shrapnel. She was throwing my Nintendo off the back balcony because I didn't come to the dinner table fast enough. She was screaming through the phone that if I went through with my gastric bypass surgery (against her wishes), "all of [my] children were going to be deformed!"

Or she was calling to tell me in explicit detail - on the same day when my blog readers had saved my life and kept my electricity on and paid my rent for a month - everything that was wrong with me and my little family.

So when I finally stepped back and saw myself, I saw my mother too and my mind blurred through a hundred memories of how I had acted exactly like her.

Because if I really think about it, I've done this all my life - gotten so angry that I was not even remotely in my right mind. I did it to Dave on a monthly basis throughout most of our marriage. (Although in his case the rage was justified. He'd earned every red drop of it.)

But Joel?

He does NOT deserve my rage. Not at all.

Neither do my CHILDREN.

Joel would never let anyone talk to me the way I talked to him that night. Because he loves me. And it was his love that allowed me to see myself for the first time. It was his love that made me believe him when he told me that I'm not okay. That I have a lot of work to do.

So I'm doing that work.

But oh my god, you guys, it is so much work.