My zen meditation garden needed STAT.

I feel like I was preyed upon by an emotional vampire. I have heard of such people and always thought the term was interesting but never really understood it's connotation. My significant other, only not by choice, is one of them. HIs problems take center stage even when mine are serious and even when I am hurting and need him more than usual. It breaks my heart that I am there for his every day drama and emergencies because of his ongoing dependance on me but when push comes to shove he always has something more important to attend to and even when i need his help he is unaware. Now that I have said this because it is what I am dealing with today, as of right now, that is a challenge when dealing with his mental illness..I must go on to tell you the unbelievable stressers that have come my way in the last week.

The last post dealt with my family and my sisters visit and the realization that my mother has no way to act when she needs help. She is paralyzed with her own fears and insecurities with who she is.

Just a week ago she was having physical episodes that seam to take form of both anxiety related attacks and also seizures and muscle and nerve action. All of which me and my sisters suffer from as well. Things progressively got worse and she was in bad shape. My sister, who lives with her, wanted to take her in to the ER to get treatment but thought she wasn't the one to make that call since my father is there to take care of his wife. However, he is off in his own world and very non-observant these days. He wasn't noticing how serious things had gotten over the course of a week. It is scary what could have happened if he hadn't finally noticed she was paralyzed on the couch having a seizure one night. What really blows my mind is she was having them for days. She has had them before and he was in such denial about the whole thing that he just.....well....didn't notice.
Here I am 12 hours away dealing with my significant other whom is sick from trying to get his mind under control with different medications. He isn't doing well with the transitions at all and no one. Not even his parents understand the severity of his situation. I live in fear still every day that I will come home and find him dead somewhere in this house.  His decisions are just so unpredictable. Not suicidal but you never know about another day.
Today he is withdrawn and pensive and usually this isn't good. Told me he just wanted to have some time alone so I am tyring to honor that.
 Why must every situation right now be so wrapped up in emotions and so unsettling. I want to be sitting in my zen garden listening to my deer chaser fountain with the wind blowing through the cherry blossom trees as I meditate. My breath going in and out and my body letting down its tensions. My mind letting go of its whirling thoughts.

emotional pain= physical pain= anger and more pain

A realization hit me as I visited with my sisters the other day. That some of my pain and health problems comes from problems i didn't even know we had in our family. Things that have been around my whole life that are emotional hurdles dealing with acceptance and letting go.

THere are so many other challenges that I have watched beat down my family because it wasn't possible for my Mom to help herself. I needed to count on her but she was suffering and unable to move to assist herself and therefore unable to help us as children.

Still to this day my mother is not strong enough to help herself by asking for assistance with hard emotional situations or even physical things that she is unable to do alone. She takes on so much and burns herself in to a melted puddle. She is emotionally strung out pretty much all the time. I watch her break down and deal with depression by hiding in a room from it and turning to the same remedies that have failed her over and over. She is paralyzing herself. Unwilling to change and accept change she will go out this way too if she doesn't take action for herself soon. This is actually something I see more clearly after hearing one of my sisters view on the situation. Another view always helps.

Being around my sisters and seeing how much of that helplessness has been passed to us is hurtful and almost impossible to watch. I see the inability to deal with emotional trauma and the transference of emotional pain into physical pain. All of us struggling to learn new coping techniques to deal with our lives because what we watched was self distraction. It wasn't healthy and isn't something we want to follow in.

It certainly wasn't something my mother tried to do or pass on. It was and is how she is and however she must have learned to deal with her problems and stresses. However, even though I feel love and worry for her I also feel anger and resentment. I feel a lot of anger about a lot of things anymore.

I am concerned about my husband and the way I express it to him is in an angry tone. I express most of my concern for my loved ones in an angry way. I am frustrated for not knowing how to help them and so I am angry and I am frustrated in not knowing how to help myself and for that I am angry too.

I want and need to dispel this anger and would like to learn how.

I will not soon forget this Fear. it is my pain for now.

When I close my eyes to go to bed at night all I see is his face as I lifted his head off the floor. The drool dripping from his lips and his eyes rolling back into his head. I hear his speech of only noises from his drooping lips as he trashes around trying to get away from me and yells at me for waking him.

I can't sleep because last night I was awoken by the sound of my significant other falling over himself again and again in and out of the bathroom. Stumbling and barely conscious he was wandering around and then was passing out and falling over and barely able to talk to me when I asking him if he was okay. Not only did he respond angry toward me but through incomprehensible noises. I thought he'd had a stroke or a mental break or both!

When he was in bed I figured I would try to wake him and talk to him to see if had been in my mind the way he spoke. His brain wasn't connected with his lips or something. I woke him and he was mad but he did try to talk back to me and it was shuttering the sound of those noises. Not words but he was trying to form them.

Then he stood up very fast and staggered once again around the room. Asked where he was going. Snapped at me something I didn't know what it was. This happened several times and each time he would come back to bed and pass out again. Finally when he stood up for the third time I went over and grabbed his arm and yelled at him to sit on the chair. Told him he couldn't walk around like this. Told him I would have to go and call 911 that even if he couldn't tell that something was wrong and there was no way I was going to wrestle an over 200lb man to put him in the car. He wasn't being willing.

I went in the next room and grabbed the phone. I dialed and the whole time I am yelling at him because he is getting up and staggering around. I am telling him to stay put. When I come back in he is passed out on the floor. We wait. We wait and I have to go down to open the door for medics. When they look at him they tell me it looks like an overdose.

What! Really? I am praying in my head that this is not another attempt on his life. He has tried several other times to take his own life due to his own personal suffering and the angst of wanting to have rest from his own tortures. I know and understand why it happened before. The day before was our anniversary and he was happy...I can't imagine this would be the one time he had succeeded.

As I was driving to the hospital all that was going through my head was how alone I would be after he had died. I am alone now here in WI and when he dies I will really be alone. I couldn't bare the thought of them telling me he had died and that being the last way I had seen him. It just wasn't him. Being that he is mentally ill I have seen him not being himself many times before but this was different.

When I got into the tiny room in the ER with him he was angry toward me and like a small child turning in circles on his bed, wrapping himself up in the IV line and ripping it out of his arm a few times. You would have to tell him things several times and he wouldn't remember them. In between misbehaving he would pass out cold and snore very loud only to awaken to yell at me in now slurred speech. Then he would need to go to the bathroom and I would have to help and he would be such a baby about the whole thing and make a huge mess. It was awful.

When he went for his tests all I could do was cry in the corner of the tiny room. I was huddled in my chair and could find no peace.

Through his illness and even him being hospitalized and my own illness and my sufferings I have held up and I have been strong and tried not to cry too often in front of him when he is down or when things are rough for him. I know it doesn't help. This time I couldn't keep it in. I was SCARED to death! I was petrified.

I still feel this fear today even though after all that he is fine and has survived this horrible ordeal. It turned out he took several doses of his nighttime medications after forgetting he had already took one. A huge mistake yes...but he lived. This time it was not an attempt on his life but he came closer to dieing than ever before. He remembers none of it and is moving on with his day and life and I am terrorized by the whole thing and feel helpless and not safe in the same house with him. I feel out of join and totally worn to the nub.

He will live. I will too but how will I get those images out of my head. I just hope that after a few nights rest they will fade.

aaaaand today.

I sat last night and watching him visit with someone who has some of the same issues he does when it comes to mental illness and moods and so on. I could see it was very personal for him  to watch this man because for the first time he was REALLY seeing himself. It really got him worked up. We talked about it later and I could see it had really affected him. In turn, yep, it affected me and I was very upset that he was upset. Sounds so silly. I really felt my insides being torn up at the thought that he was seeing what I see in him as he is having a manic episode or change in perceived reality.

It amazes me over and over how connected we are. As different as we are and suffering two very different illnesses we are so in tune with when each other is hurting.  The best thing to do is ask if one another needs something and IF they are able to say so do the best we can to help.  I always WANT to help but mostly have to step back and watch the wheels turn.



Something sparked that evening. It sparked because he is going through a manic faze again. With change of medication to try and help with side effects from his regular meds the new one brought on all kinds of demons. We have gone with this one before and new this might be the case. The doc was convinced we might be able to find a co-med to go along and help the jitteriness (akathisia) that comes with this one but.....alas no success yet.



I am very proud at how he deals with his anxieties and fears as he goes through this hard time. I, myself, am not doing so well. My anxieties are at a all time high and my pain was already headed there due to a gap in my treatments when we moved. Still I am waiting for a pain center visit.



Waiting lists for mental health are unforgivable and for pain treatment are just hard to bear. I remind myself I am lucky it isn't for mental health.

Loss of control - gaining acceptance

Some days you are just tired. When I say tired I mean you can't move. Not one inch. No decision making power, no brain power. Nothing. I think I should be able to make myself food and that might be it for the day but, no, not even that. I am worn to the bone. I hurt everywhere and I can't move out of my bed. My mind is half between asleep and awake and then ….woops...i am totally asleep again.



It goes in this fashion for two days. This has been the longest in a while that this has happened to me. Especially without a migraine spell to come along with it. I just have been running myself at full speed ahead for a week and a half now doing everything I wanted to do and not limiting myself at all. It was nice while it lasted but that was something the “old me” was able to do and now I am seeing the new (limited me) kicking in and taking what It needs. Not asking ...taking it's rest from me.



I feel guilt because two of those days I still had company staying at my house. I am unable to turn the dial on my energy level so that I might enjoy those last few days with my loved ones as they visit. I can't rip myself off the couch and out of that comma to continue showing them around town. I feel like a bad hostess as my illness takes hold of me and I am week to it's power. Once again I am OUT OF CONTROL and in pain.



I should feel good that I lasted as long as I did. Going all kinds of wonderful places and even going on a hike (which I haven't done in forever) but instead I just feel guilt and shame that I can't live up to who I want to be in my heart. I feel sad that I am so week and wonder once again , why me?



Today my thoughts are on the loss of control. I am in shock how my body just shut down when it needed rest and how I was powerless to do anything about it. It is another realization that I am not fully in acceptance of my limited abilities yet and must work to get there. My body knows far better what is best for me than I do and I have got to stop fighting against my wiser self.



Loss of control is a hard one.

emotional - pain connection. How YOU deal.

Today my mother travels a long way to come and stay for a week. I think of all the struggle she has been through the last few years taking care of her own mom and now finally her mother is in a home being well cared for. Even though this was necessary and what is best my mom is very upset about the whole ordeal. She wears her emotions outwardly and has become better at sharing her burden of taking care of a parent who is mentally not there any longer. I am glad she will come and rest and I can't imagine the stress she leaves behind. I don't know what to expect while she is here because, I myself know, that when you leave behind a very high situation ….high stress, anxiety and the load you carry, and you come off that high, it tends to be a crash.



I am hoping she is able to breath easy for a bit and know that she has support here for anything she wants to talk about.
It is hard being so different form my mother. We have always been so very different. It makes it hard for me to understand why she feels she must go on suffering with her own chronic pain and not rely on modern medicine to help her even though natural medicine only takes care of maybe 5% of what she deals with daily. It does help but she needs so much more to help carry her through her depressions and moods.....and yes pain.



This issue of pain runs deep in my family. Just like the force in Star wars. LOL. It Is something we all know on some level. How we all deal with it well that is all very different from one to one.



I do think that how a person deals with pain and what they do it is what defines them. If they are not able to know what to do with the pain in their lives it says something about them to ask for help or get help to learn coping techniques. It says they are wise and wish a better life for themselves and those close around them.
This issue of pain whether emotional or physical and so often both and related....is such a mystery to us. Keep opening your mind and eyes wider and you will see a connection in yourself. I feel that every day that goes by I notice something else that is a connection or a key to my pain where I am able to cope so much better or just to live on through it and not give up.

one VERY lonely day - the cards I've been delt

I am having a very lonely day. The longer I am here in the new town I have moved to the worse I feel about my ability to help those i love. Nothing feels more helpless than to feel your words and advice are valueless. There was a moment today when I was remembering when I had friends to confide in and talk that lived just down the street. I am feeling old and burnt out on making friends and seeing it much more difficult than I thought it would be. Plus, wants new ones when you have great old ones who are just very busy with their own lives.
The question of “why” has been here it seams forever. Why me? Why do I feel so sad sometimes. It isn't an irrational way to feel about my life and how it's turned out. It really has taken the less-traveled path.



That's how it has been going for years. Life takes me to unlucky places. It hands me hardship and pain and not much forgiveness or understanding. Why? what I've done to deserve such bad luck and path. I want to know.



I, like anyone else, need support but because I am proud I don't ask. I see myself the way I always was....strong...physically and mentally. It brings me down to see myself the way I am now. Searching for someone who can support you may seam so simple. Look to your right side...your sig other.



My voice feels silenced and misunderstood from the only person who could possibly hear it. My sig other lives in a world self-created and built of things real and imagined. When do I know if he is there for me or not? Does he hear me through that blank stair when I tell him I'm in pain. When I tell him I am in physical pain he might say "are you alright" but mostly he just keeps staring. Maybe he is tired of hearing it. Doesn't he think I am tired of being in it? I am!I am tired of saying it.



I am exhausted of the energy it takes to not let it get me down. It is easier to just give in and feel really bad about how tortured I am and feel sad for myself sometimes. I make myself sick thinking about how I wish things were (in the past) and not accepting how they are now. Mostly I do pretty well with acceptance but today …...is a bad day.

Mental illness and it's part in my pain.

When for a moment you get a little peak at what you loved about being you long ago before the illness you can only remember fondly how nice it was to be you. I start wondering why did I ever hate myself? Why did I always wanna be different and someone else?


I don't understand how that works. We aren't grateful for what we have when we have it.

I get a small door of time when I also see who my sig other was when I married him. He was a different man then. He was confident but not cocky and smart (as all knew and could tell around him). He was so observant of himself and what other's needed. Maybe he even gave away too much of himself in order to make us all happy.  He was a handsome and well put-together man. Clean cut and well dressed he cared how he presented himself to the world. He had pride. As he should have.

After the mental illness took affect 5 plus years ago he became totally different. As you can imagine the illness was powerful and he became week to it's chemical control over his brain. He became angry and resentful of all around him and distrusting. He became sad and unsure of himself and ashamed. This was the hardest and has been the hardest to see. He was so ashamed and felt guilty of so many wrongs. Even though this illness isn't something he created he felt responsible. Once on meds he realized what was going on. It wasn't like with a mentally challenged individual who is happy and oblivious to their disability. It was a man who knew he was different and a man who was fighting against it with all his might. He was defenseless for a while and it beat him down.  He was tired of fighting every day to be "normal" and he was ready to give up.

I don't blame him. I can't possibly understand in fullness but I do know that as he learned coping techniques and in continuing his journey it became easier to control his thoughts and mind and explain to himself what was real and what was his brain chemistry manifesting itself as strange perceptions. 

This is what was happening to him. However, THIS was tearing me apart emotionally and physically. There was not much I could do during the time he was in such struggle and I, myself, was suffering from illness as well. My illness and pain only reflected the unhappiness and challenges in our lives. It was a radar to how our lives were going. The pain would get worse whether I realized it was a reflection of how upset I was about his illness and then I was powerless to even hug him or offer verbal assurance.

When finally he was admitted in to mental care I felt numb. I had been feeling so overwhelmed and so week and beat down. I was so depressed about both our situations. Now, I was numb and in shock. I would go daily to visit a very sad and scared man. He looked so out of place in that facility. My man...my strong man, didn't belong there. But...alas..he didn't look strong. He didn't look the same. He wasn't himself at all and was battling a war that would go on and off for the rest of his life.

I didn't sleep at night. I tossed and turned thinking about what he must be going through sleeping in that place. I was in so much pain the nausea didn't allow me to eat and I was crying and rocking myself by the bedside wishing God would take me now. It was years ago all over again when things had started with my pain that was unceasing. I wonder what started it then. Was it something emotional, like now, that I was clueless to understand. Maybe.

When he finally did come home after a week in the facility I was relieved he was back under our roof but i was scared to death that at any moment I might be driving him to the ER because at any moment he might decide it was all to much and take his own life. That fear has been with me every day after that time. It isn't something you forget and it isn't something you wish you could control.

I wish that I could know that something I might do would prevent him from ever taking action against himself again. However,....there isn't. So, I must let go. In letting go I give in to the powers that be and I say that whatever happens was meant to happen that way.

The Ups -n-downs struggle in life.

So, when you are going through your week do you too have ups and downs that are totally unexplainable. Moods. I sure do. It is a constant struggle to understand my body. My cranky moods mostly come with my pain but some days I find myself really hating first myself and then others. It is a battle to get back to feeling like I can do anything that day. leave the house, clean the house, make food, clean up after making food. ....even just go out and pick up meds at the pharmacy that are needed.
Why is it so very hard sometimes to pull oneself together?
When my sig other is feeling bad I am feeling so so much worse than usual and can barely be well enough to help him out. He doesn't want my help...or doesn't think he does but still that is what us sig others are there to do. We are there to raise each other up.

I feel as though I just want to understand the why of my chemistry. Why am I this way and other people not? I certainly have some kind of chemistry roller coaster going. I've known this since I was very young. My concern gets expressed through anger and lashing out toward my sig other. I feel guilty after the mean and shocking things I say . Then I am beating myself up just moments later about the whole display wondering why I am taking out my frustrations on something whom I care so much about. Next day I may feel totally at peace and at ease but don't have the courage to apologize for the nasty things I said the day before.

What is this horrible cycle? The depression meds only help somewhat with these ups and downs. I can see that his ups and downs due to his mental condition are much worse. Mine might vary from day to day but his might vary from half hour to half hour. It makes for a volatile pair sometimes. If neighter one of us can explain our actions but only know how we feel and are having a hard time being mindful about it and control ourselves...well it makes for a mess.

What to do?

Life brought us together for some reason. Probably because in the long story of the two of us we are both missing something. we are both sick and struggling and can understand pain in several ways. However, is it right that we stay together even though things for us are always running in such a up and down flow all the time. Day to night we don't get breaks from our selves and that leads to resentment. Is it healthy? Sometimes these are questions that I see not being answered by our therapist. I see that these questions are something we must desifer on our own. Are we okay for each other...healthy for one another? We do the best we can to support one another but many times one of us is down and nonfunctional to be the support the other needs. Does this bring on the strength in the other one because they are forced to deal with the struggle alone? Maybe it does. We can't always lean and lean....we must pick ourselves up.

Some days I just want a strong and put-together person to be there for me and tell me it will be okay. That "they" will stand up for me and I can just take a deep breath cuz they have it under control.

The diagnosis.

"You don't look sick is the thing I don't understand." 

No, I don't "look" like I am bleeding out of my head and shoulders or that my body hurts all over or my head might just pop off at any moment. This is the truth.  I can understand that people around me wonder what is wrong with me when I say I'm disabled and they stare at me checking for wounds. Relating to pain beyond belief with no blood took me a long time to accept as well.

The questions for my doctors and from them were always ones that said "why is she in pain...what is causing the pain...and how do we stop it?" After seven years or so the answer seams to be just as allusive as the problem.

The consensus is "nerve damage...neuropathy". My nerves send pain signals to my brain from my neck, head and shoulders and muscle spasms develope in what they call the pain-spasm cycle.

Cycle meaning that one causes the other and the other feeds the one. I don't expect anyone, even my doctors, to understand the pain. Even after all this time of pain I am stunned with it's persistence some days and it (I admit) gets me down.

I want so badly to regain some of the physical strength that I was so proud of all those years ago. I yearn to be even just a snap shot of the strength that I was honored to have.

It was one day that I was driving to work, to a photography shoot, and was excited to meet my clients and take amazing images for them. It was the next day that I was not able to look at the road on my way to work because my eyes felt like hot needles were prying them out of my head. I was clueless to what this meant for my future. It meant that I would never....ever...be the same again.

I was so focused on my career then and taking handfuls of advil, asprin and alleve just to make it through the day. I wasn't aware of how much I was taking or how bad the pain was until someone pointed out the stash of empty bottles that had accumulated in my personals box at work.

When I think back on what led up to that moment in time when my body shut down and over a period of several weeks I went into neurological overload....I remember clearer now than ever the signs that I was in trouble and my body needed help.

My savior was a neurologist. He was caring and atentive and understood the importance of "quality of life". He tried so many different combinations of medications trying to still the muscles in my neck and scare the migraines away. The best he could do is exactly what he did. Still there became need for so many other doctors to step in and do tests and treat me for diagnosis as it came about.

First discovery: blood disease. Second: headache and migraines. third: neuropathy

All these treatments and not one of my doctors asked me how I was feeling mentally. Not at first. They all sent me for testing and ordered pills but no one knew that my sense of identity, pride and happiness were all crumbling away. After three years I was in full on depression about my situation. At that time my husband also seamed to be going through his own crisis. He was so supportive for as long as he could be and then when his personal battle with mental illness became to much to bear he became less and less able to be a part of my trips to the doctors and treatments and even just companionship.

I would look back into the very beginning when my pain started and within a few weeks of me barely able to make it to work I had suffered a near death experience. It had been an  anaphylaxis incident.  I would think "why didn't the universe take me then?" It was clear that things were only going to get worse with me being barely able to take care of myself and now my husband in some other world of his own. Yes, there were thoughts of death and many days of wondering "why me". There was also a new diagnosis to add into the three above....depression and anxiety.


Now, I look back and am glad I stuck it out but this really was just the beginning of learning about  pain and how it would integrate into my daily life . what would I do with it?

Adaptation

I have to look at this as an opportunity to learn what is beneficial to suffering. Yes, there is strength that is to be gained and incite into how others might live so differently from the average populous. Mostly it is the realization that the struggle to do every day tasks wasn't going to get easier and so I needed to adapt.
Adaptation:
We don't want to change. We want things to come easily and to not change is the most easy of them all choices. However, in my case if I still wanted to get in my car and go to a store there were adaptations that were needed to make this happen just as with many other activities in my life. At first it was a fight. I was angry. I felt like I would never again leave my house because it was so hard to TRY and find a way NOT to be in pain or have a migraine while out and about.

Eventually I realized some little tricks to the avoidance of migraine and pain.I was able to drive again and be in some stores for short periods. If you are a migrainer you know that travel in any moving vehicle isn't a good thing. Nausea and sometimes migraine/ pain accompany this ride.Part of my personal situation involves avoiding direct contact to florescent lights. A hat each and every time I go under them is needed.  So, I wear it. It is part of my fashion now.

I attempted to do the same things I had as my previous self but I realized with sadness at first, and acceptance later, that I must adapt. These activities did not have to completely leave my life. A thing to be glad for. 

Someone so young with so much pain.

It started many years ago with pain and suffering that doctors had no idea what the cause was. It included migraines, muscle spasms, and everything neurologically that comes with migraines. ( nausea, vomiting, bed care) . I was 27.
For me it was the start of a relationship I never could have anticipated with come to me ...ever. My relationship with pain. For me the pain started as a physical pain yes but the more years that passed by and the longer it stuck around it became depression and despair at all I had lost due to pain.
Many will understand I am sure, what it is like to be fine one moment and have the onset of something so serious and so life changing that you become someone else. The person you were without suffering or pain is no longer there. You barely remember what that person was like. In wishing things could change you search and search for a remedy or even just an analgesic to ease the agony but such things are just fairy dreams.
When you realize that you must accept this status change you go about altering how you do things in your life and how much you are able to do in a day. You simplify and it seams to help.
Now having given up so much--carrier, sex, physical activity, and a carefree style I am forced to search within myself to find my inner peace with the cards I have in my hand now.