This is Just a Long New Year's Ramble

I am wondering about this new year. Who I am now. Who I want to become.

I was thinking that I want self care to be a big part of this year. In the past, my self care has consisted of things like resting when I needed to rest, eating when I was hungry, taking a shower when I needed to shower, taking medicine when I needed it.

These are all basics things. The bottom of the hierarchy of needs. I need more.

This year I want to focus on doing things. Not to overwhelm myself, but to get up and get moving and get things done. I want to accomplish things this year. Step by step, day by day, week by week.

I have been cleaning today since Ryan went to work. I still have more left to do tonight that I want to accomplish, but so far I have put away 2 out of 3 loads of laundry, straightened and updated my bookshelf, tidied and organized parts of the kitchen, and unloaded the huge box of food my mom sent me for Christmas. It's a couple of small tasks, but I feel so productive and so proud of myself.

This year, I want to focus a lot more on the self care of taking care of my house and myself. I want a clean house because I feel better in a clean house. Ryan feels better in a clean house. A clean house is a nice house.

I want to take care of my body, too. I ate a lot of food that wasn't good for my body this past year and my body has suffered for it. I want my body to feel better. I want to feel better. I've set kind of a mental goal that I want to lose 50lbs by December. I think I want to set up a plan with check points. By this date I want to have lost this much; by this date I want to be able to run this long. I want to know where I'm going so that I can figure out how to get there.

More than anything, I want to enjoy this process. I don't want to pull my own teeth taking care of myself. I know there will be days when it's just UGH because that's just a part of life. But I want to teach myself to keep going even when I don't feel like it. I want to prove to myself that I can keep going.

This is just a long ramble.

An Unnecessarily Long Entry Mostly Because I Had Nothing Better To Do Than Talk About Myself

I've been feeling better. I have lots of energy that I'm putting to good use. I did schoolwork most of the day yesterday. I'm caught up on school work that I've missed now. I feel a little overwhelmed by all the assignments I have coming up. My planner is a stocked closet of assignments and due dates. But, if this productive energy stays, I'll be able to do it. Even if it doesn't, I have to do it. I'm so close to graduating. 3 more semesters.

This energy. It feels. Strange.

I have been in a really good mood for several days now. Is this what normal feels like? I'm not on cloud nine. I just have a lot of mental and physical energy that I can put towards being productive and feeling good. I have the energy right now to feel good.

Once my meds were adjusted two weeks ago, I slept through the night for about a week, but I'm back to restless nights again. It doesn't seem to affect my day time activities, though. I have enough energy to spare.

For example, I woke up about 5am this morning and didn't sleep again until 6am. Usually, even losing an hour of sleep would totally mess me up. I'd be exhausted and have A LOT of trouble getting up and out of bed. This morning, my alarm went off right at 7:30am and I got up fine. I took all 3 of my 5 minute snoozes from my alarm, but that was more because I knew I had time to spare and wanted to check my email and all that. I got up this morning and stayed awake. Under normal circumstances, when I get up early, usually I crash around 10am or 11. But not today. I stayed perfectly attentive through my entire nearly 4 hour class. We took a 10 minute break while we were there, but I didn't need it. I could have kept going for hours.

Is this Normal Amy? Have I been so far gone from normal for so long that normal feels.....wrong?

Don't get me wrong; I like having all this energy. I'm doing a lot with it.

But I feel like something's wrong. Maybe I'm just making a big deal out of nothing. I can't trust my own instincts and perceptions, after all. I have a warped perception of myself and the world I live in, so maybe that's all this is.

I'm still hallucinating every day. Today, the little lights I see flickering in my vision have been a lot worse than they usually are. I usually see little lights daily (this has been happening for several months now) and they come in and out randomly, but today I've been seeing them almost constantly. It's been really distracting.

I was in class taking notes, so when I looked up I noticed that there was a person in the corner of the classroom that I hadn't seen or heard walk in the room. I started freaking out because, "Is she real? Can I trust her? What if she tries to talk to me and she's not real? What if she is real?" I took a breath and turned to the girl next to me, quietly asking if there was a person in the corner. She said that there was, so I calmed down a little, but was still suspicious. What if she just meant the professor, who was also over there? I calmed down a little more once my professor gave us a 10 minute break and started talking to the girl in the corner, then I fully calmed down once the girl came over to my table after the break and started talking to us about the assignment.

"Okay. She is real. False alarm." 

I'm scared I will see someone like that one day that looks completely real. But isn't. I haven't had any really bad hallucinations as of yet (mostly just the lights thing; sometimes there's a cat in my house; sometimes I see people for a few seconds then they disappear), but I can usually tell that those aren't real. I'm scared this will keep getting worse. It's gotten progressively worse the older I get. Will it ever get to a stopping point?

Please stop.

Something of a Spiritual Update?

I want to talk about God. But there's not much new to say.

I haven't been spending a lot of time thinking about him because I've been struggling, but I'm getting better now, so time to focus on finding him again, right?

It's hard to see him in places where I keep seeing shadows and demons and ghosts and generally negative things. It's hard to feel at peace when I know that my life is not peaceful. There are parts of my life that are very scary. Where has God been for me in all of this? Has he been there at all?

I feel uncomfortable praying, because every time I try I start hearing him or Mary or angels speaking to me and I know they're not real. My prayers and intentions may very well be real, but the responses cannot be. They are often not kind responses. I try to search for him within the madness, but I find only ashes.

I started a journal, a sort of lectio divina. I read the readings for today on the Laudate app and write about how it makes me feel or what I think about it.

I've only written once, but it was nice. I felt like I was on the right track. One of these days I will type up what I wrote about and post it, but not tonight. I'm too tired. It's probably not that revolutionary, anyway.

My aunt and I are going to start reading a book about prayer together and discuss it. I need to order it tonight. My goal is to make a little bit of time every day, or every other day, if need be, to read and think. Perhaps I should start a reading journal. I'm so forgetful nowadays.

Perhaps one day I will find God in the ashes of my life and maybe one day we will fall in love with each other again.

Something of an Update?

Things have been getting better. They're not falling apart as much. It gets a little better every day. 

I've had several doctors and therapists tell me over the last few years that I may never be symptom free. I could be on the best meds possible and still hallucinate. As long as it's manageable and doesn't affect my day to day life, I'm fine. 

I'm fine. 

I can deal with the demons that patrol my room at night, The Woman, who waits in my room to scream in my face when I open the door. The shadows. The monsters that peek around doorways and stare. The distant screaming. 

I'm fine. 

I can handle this. 

It's not that bad. It's really not that bad at all. I have dealt with much worse. 

I'm feeling a lot better than I was, trust me. It almost had me again. But, again, I prevailed. 

And I will keep prevailing. 

Mentally Ill Presents: Some Kind of Week

I've had kind of a week. It wasn't decidedly bad or good or even weird. It was just a week with a mix of those things.

My medication situation isn't where it should be right now. I ran out of refills for one of my medicines a few weeks ago (I haven't had it since August 23rd). My doctor's office doesn't accept patients calling about refills; it has to be their pharmacy. They are very adamant about this. I have contacted my pharmacy several times about the matter, but still no refill. I have an appointment to see my doctor in a week and a half, but that's another week and a half without my medicine.

I'm doing okay. I'm having nightly nightmares again and am more anxious and paranoid than usual, plus some hallucinations. However, it's nothing I can't handle. I've dealt with much worse.

My general mood is a little shaky. Sometimes I'm fine, but then the next minute I'm not.

I almost had a panic attack two days ago. I was sitting on the couch and suddenly I couldn't breathe and it felt like my chest was crushing my lungs, it was so tight. I went to the bathroom and sat in the bathtub for a few minutes. Ryan came to check on me and I just started crying. I had been all over the place all day; one minute I was fine, the next I was about ready to kill myself.

I have to refill my other medicines soon, too.

I hate living a life dependent on the cooperation of money, pharmacies, doctors, therapists, and medicine. But I need it right now, so I'll just have to deal with it.

Dreaming Presents: Something A Little Too Close To Home

I was dreaming. Obviously.

I was trying to sleep. Desi was whining from the living room. I slept and dreamed about someone close to me explaining to me why rape was okay and trying to convince me that I had "come so far" and that I shouldn't let this set me back.

I woke up from my dream in my dream. Ryan was at work. I felt terrible. I started hallucinating The Woman. I walked down to the leasing office in my apartment complex that, in my dream, was the K-8 school I'm currently placed at for field experience. I tried to eat an apple because I was hungry, but I couldn't force myself to eat. I threw the apple away. There were kids everywhere saying all kinds of things. Much of it wasn't kind.

I found myself very overwhelmed and walked back to my apartment. I started to feel like I couldn't breathe, so I went and sat in the closet, trying to feel safe.

It didn't help.

The walls closed in on me. I panicked. I couldn't leave the closet; The Woman was there. I started to cry, but the tears choked in my throat. I swallowed, then took a huge breath. Three shallow breaths. Hyperventilating. A huge breath. Small breaths. Hyperventilating. Tears. Over and over and over and over and over.

I heard Ryan come home, but he didn't hear me. He thought I was gone somewhere else. I couldn't move. The Woman threatened me. I couldn't breathe.

I woke up hyperventilating.

Religious Journeying: Attempts at a Connection

I went to Church this past Sunday with a friend. The music was the best part. They had a live band that was decent and because of my history in Church music, I knew all the songs they did.

The sermon was okay. He talked about co-text (the actual words in the Bible) versus context (the environment in which words are said) in the Bible, but he didn't really talk about context. He just talked about co-text while describing it as context. He did lots of loud yelling into his microphone although the sanctuary was very small. It made me very uncomfortable. It didn't help, either, that he did lots of arm motions (which wasn't a problem), and whenever he moved my eyes saw his arms lagging behind in one large streak across my vision (that's the problem). It was really distracting. Not sure what was going on there.

My friend and I were talking the night before about Church things and she suggested that I get some physical things to help me feel connected to God. I thought that was an excellent idea, and have since reached out to my mom for my Bible and the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin, both of which I left at home when I went to college. I also bought a brown scapular with an image of Our Lady of Lourdes on it.  I have felt a special bond with Mary since my teenage years, and want to lean on her now as I attempt to slowly transition back into some form of Christianity. I have a Rosary that another friend of mine gave me.

I don't know what the future holds for me in this regard. I guess we will see.