This is basically an emo rant. Reader beware. . . Friday, Nov 28 2008

I hate the way I feel right now.  It is as if someone is taking a searing piece of metal to my heart.  Emotional pain and unrest to the point of physical discomfort.  Yeah, fun times. . . NOT.  My shoulders/neck are killing me and have been for days, and now this pain in the chest.  No, it’s not a heart attack or anything crazy serious like that.  It is just me bottling up emotion until it causes me to hurt physically.  See, I HATE the so called “negative” emotions.  Anxiety, anger, anything our society deems “bad.”  So I push them down until my shoulder and chest hurt.  I hate how I by nature feel everything so intensely.  Seemingly to a greater degree than others.  Feelings so intense i get caught up and carried away by them before my head can even counteract my heart.

I wish i could shoot novacaine into my head right now, just to have a reprieve from thinking about difficult and painful aspects of life.  Yet, I know I HAVE to think about them to be able to work through them and move on.

I have accepted that I have bipolar disorder, but it doesnt’ make me hate it any less.  It doesn’t cause me to like the medicine, the therapy, the constantly second guessing when I feel happy.  I don’t like any of that.  No, I hate it.  I hate the pills I take, I hate how I am almost always on guard and monitoring how I feel.  I hate that it seems as thought I am so alone in this, when I know i’m not.  I hate feeling as though I am a plague upon humanity, even though those I love prove to me consantly that that feeling is far from the truth.  I hate how I know that this is my battle to fight, and yet I also know i’m not quite strong enough to fight it alone.  I hate how little and broken I seemingly constantly feel.  I hate how narcissistic I get when I feel good.  I hate being so full of emotion I feel as though I could rip a grown tree out of the ground, roots and all.

Yet, I will press on.  I will persevere.  God is bigger than this shit.  Somehow, i’ll put one foot in front of the other.

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I’m not crazy. . . Tuesday, Sep 23 2008

i’m just a little unwell?

I feel like I’m going crazy.  if I’m not there already.  it’s almost 4 am and I have been fighting all night.  Fighting the desire to take too many pills, fighting the feeling that someone else is controlling my thoughts.  I am at such a weak and broken point right now.  I haven’t had a delusion in 2 years.  I KNOW this isn’t true, but every time i’ve had a skewed thought like this, i’ve known it wasn’t true.  I’m fighting it, but dammit, it’s hard.  I don’t know what has caused these darkest parts of this illness to rear it’s ugly head.  I don’t know why the control and stability I have had for the past year or so is being lost.  I fear this will only get worse.  I just took one of my klonapin, which is something I haven’t had to do in about a year also.  I know i’m probably making a mountain out of a molehill, but it is scary to be laying in bed thinking that someone else is controlling your thoughts and to be trying to fight that.  HOW do you fight that especially when for some reason it seems so real and so true at the moment.  I’m scared of myself right now.  Scared of the path my mind is going down.  Right now I can keep myself safe and can fight these whack thoughts, but for how much longer?  I know i’m not a slave to this illness.  I have freedom in Christ, and I take such joy in that.  He has brought me so far in these six years, but even this little step backward takes me back to such dark places.

I am scared, but I know I serve a God who is so much bigger than this illness.  A God who is in control of the universe and who holds my life in His hands.  My Abba Daddy holds my sanity in his precious, loving hands.

Whoever you are, out there reading this, please pray for me.  I am just a fellow traveller on this road of life and it’s a bumpy road right now.  Prayer would definitely be appreciated.

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heh Friday, Sep 5 2008

So, school is keeping me busy. Sorry to all none of you who read this .

 

Every once in awhile i look back on my life and am just blown away by how far Christ has brought me.  I look at the trials, at the pain and am just set in awe that I am still alive, still (mostly) unscarred, not permanently in the psych ward, I am in freaking COLLEGE taking a full course load, I have friends who blow me away with how amazing they are, I have a boyfriend. . .

1 year ago: I had just started Mizzou and was scared of another hospitalization occuring.  It had happened the last 4 falls, why not this one?

2 years ago: I was working at C&R and about to start at NECAC I would end up being hospitalised in october, lose the NECAC job, get a new job at a coffee shop in Hannibal, quit C&R, then lose the coffee shop job, and then I quit for 4 months.  I did nothing.  There was talk of me living in a group home.

3 years ago: I was at Culver-Stockton and could not manage to go to class.  I would step into class and have panic attacks because I thought everyone could see that who we were talking about in those psych classes wasn’t just a general example, it was ME.  I was hospitalised that fall and had to drop out because i could not pass my classes.

4 years ago:  I was at MACC and took 15 credit hours and worked 10 hours a week, I ended up with a 3.5 gpa that semester.  I was hospitalized around labor day after having been hospitalised the previous march.

5 years ago: I was a freshman at Hannibal La-Grange College and was full of anger.  I was still cutting myself and had no idea how to stop.  I didn’t know if God could love someone as fucked up as me.

6 years ago: I was having the quarter of my life.  playing softball, ended up with a 4.0 first quarter of my senior year of high school.  things went downhill rapidly.  a group of teachers called me out on it, but things still ended up not good.  I cut myself in late november and ended up in the psych ward for the first time.

 

I know I highlight the negative.  The negative stands out.  There has been soooo much good over the years.  The main good i see that has come from all of this, is that I am still here.  I take my medicine.  I have been at one school for over a year!  I haven’t had to be hospitalized for almost 2 years now.  Lives have been touched by me being honest and open with my struggles.

Abba, Daddy,

I am still so young, I know there are many more trials, and many more amazing things you wish for me to see.  Lord, give me the strength to fight those battles as they come, and Abba, when I feel weak, and those doubts creep in, Lord help me to call back on where I have been, and how far you have brought me.  Lord help me to look back on the past in a healthy manner, mourning what I have been through, but not getting caught up in it, always praising you for what you have done in my life.  Jesus change my heart to be more like yours.  Your work is far from finished in my life.  You are the potter and I am the clay Lord.  Change me, Mold me.  I want to be like you.

Angela

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A letter to Me 2038 Friday, May 16 2008

My friend Traci posted in her blog the idea to write a letter to your future self.  The idea is for chronic pain sufferers help deal with the frightening prospect of the future.  It sounded like a pretty applicable idea!  I know I get pretty intimidated by what my future might be like, so here goes!

Dear Future Angela,

Here you are, almost 53.  I wonder what your life has been like.  What highs and lows you have seen.  How many times have you seen the psych ward doors yet again.  Maybe none.  That prospect excites me I must admit.  Unfortunatly it’s possible that you have seen them many more times than the five you have now.  Do you have your Bachelors Degree?  Did you ever attain that ultimate goal of your Masters?

How many of those lofty and random goals did you achieve?  Future Angela, I hope that you stay on this positive track I am set on right now.  I hope you don’t run from the amazing friendships you have in Columbia and I hope you don’t run from success.

Future Angela, I haven’t lived as long as I am writing into the future, which makes this kind of difficult to do, but I know that I look back on the past five years and see so much growth and change in our life, and I hope we stay on that track of foward motion and momentum.  Life is kind of hard and scary right now.  School is so difficult and I don’t really know why, but Future Angela, I’m doing this for you.  I’m doing this so maybe you can live in community in an urban area and love on people and teach them how to garden.  Maybe you can help connect people to the healing power of the ground and working with it.  I know how much that has healed us.

When you read this, Future Angela, Daniel, Catherine and Issac will be grown men and women with families and likely children of their own.  What other neices and nephews might you gain in the years to come.  How exciting will it be to see them grow and mature.  Remember when Daniel was born and it almost hurt to see him, and now he’s one of your best friends?  Then Catherine Bear came along and you were hoping she would be born on your birthday?  Then baby Issac this winter and Daniel and Catherine were BOTH convinced they would have a baby sister!  What kind of men and women will they turn into?  Will it hurt when they have children and you don’t?

Where will Jennifer’s life take her?  Right now she is in Chicago in Culinary school.  You are so excited for her, and have big dreams.  She hates the big city life and just wants to be in a smaller town close to home and you dream of being in a big city far from home!  Will she ever open her small town bakery?  How hard will it be when she graduates next spring and you’re still working on your degree?  That will be difficult.  I know you’re proud of her, but the jealousy twinges every now and then.

Where will life take you dreamer?  A smile is bubbling up on your face right now and you are EXCITED and ready to go.  Dear friend, no matter where life takes you, no matter what struggles and emotional hardships you endure, know that there have been moments like this in life where you have been excited and ready for battle.  Times when you have wanted to surge ahead full force and have known that you are in a wonderful place in life.  The pain of the past is being left there, where it belongs.

I can’t wait to get to know you Future Angela.

Love,

Current Angela

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Jesus and Mental Illness Thursday, Feb 7 2008

I come yet again to something that always seems to confound me.

When I get depressed, or manic, I do stupid sinful stuff I wouldn’t do if my mood was level.

When I do this stuff, it’s like I’m doing it, but it’s not really me.  I know it’s not all like “the bipolar made me do it” or some stupid crap like that, but an illness that causes you to be more susceptible to sin is just like, I can’t get my head around it even a little bit.

I know God forgives me for the stupid stuff I do when I’m up or down, but when I’m there, it doesn’t seem like a bad decision.  It doesn’t seem sinful, I don’t think about or even really realize the negative consequences, or what God would think of it, or any of the things I do when I am in a more steady mood.

How could God allow such an illness to exist?  One which makes you so much more susceptible to sin and do horrible life altering things?

I really struggle with taking my medicine.  I hate it, and my former therapist Carrie always equated it to someone with diabetes, you don’t think of them as being weak because they take meds, etc.  This illness though, is so far different from any non-mental illness (I’m using “non-mental” completely on purpose.  Because in my case it definitely is a chemical, physical illness.) in how it affects your life.

Diabetics don’t come to truly believe they can fly.

Taking daily medication for non-mental illnesses is so far different from taking medication for mental illness because they way the illnesses work is so different.

I know however that the reasons I hate taking my meds a diabetic probably would wholeheartedly agree with, and vice versa, yet I think it would be so much easier to come to terms with daily medication for a non-mental illness.  Nobody doubts that diabetes is a real illness.  People don’t think diabetes is a lack of faith and if only you would draw nearer to Christ, you wouldn’t deal with it.  I hate when people see the amount of pills I take and the look of shock they get on their face.  I hate that friends say they would rather go crazy than take as many pills as I do.  Where I would be without this damn medicine I hate so incredibly much is scary enough for me to be pretty good about taking my medicine.

I wish my brain wasn’t broken.  I wish I wasn’t on 3 different medications for this illness.  I wish I didn’t know the inside of a psychiatric ward.  I wish I could take 11 hours, lead the prayer team, and do what Rob is helping me to without feeling incredibly overwhelmed.  I wish I knew where the illness ended and I begin.

What does wishing accomplish though?  I can wish all I want and it changes nothing.  The only thing that changes anything is gritting your teeth, humbling yourself to God and your friends for the billionth time and trying to move forward.

That is my heart.

Angela

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