A Surprisingly Sane Blog

I’ve been having a really rough time falling asleep lately.  And once I actually do drift off, dreamland is more like a frustrating hellhole where I just can’t run fast enough or breath deep enough.  I wake up feeling like someone slipped me a ruffie.

A large part of these disturbing dreams are stimulated from the fatigue of dealing with certain people in my life.  Their situations, problems, and multitude of psychiatric issues are something that I just don’t have the emotional capacity to empathize with right now.  I have my own problems to face.

Finally, I told one of these people that I couldn’t handle it anymore yesterday.  I handed them my therapist’s card.  If they don’t make an appointment, I am dragging a certain someone’s ass to the mental health crisis center.  You know, the one I ended up at a few insane months ago.

But laying there last night, my brain stuck in a hyperactive web of stress and anxiety, I couldn’t stop the flashbacks of the beginning of the end of my severe depression.

Remembering how bad it was, I started panicking: what if it’s too late to help the people in my life who need the kind of intervention that I had to have?

It’s not, I know.  It’s never too late.  I was on the verge of suicide without any coherent mental capability of understanding that I was in a severe state of postpartum depression bordering psychosis.

The day that James took me to the crisis center, I actually thought I was doing well.  I mean, it’d been two days since I’d had visions of killing myself.  Nevermind the fact that I hadn’t slept since God-knows-when, or that I was 99.9% certain that the nurse was plotting a way to straight-jacket me and pump me full of psychotropic drugs that would turn me into a vegetable.  Or the fact that I couldn’t feel a single emotion other than anger or complete blank-ness.  Everything was rushing past me like I was in slow motion.  A dull rushing sound took the place of any attention that I had once possessed.

But yeah, I actually thought I was okay.  I thought I *might* be just a little depressed.  When my psychiatrist told me I needed Prozac, freaking Prozac, I started to understand for the first time how bad of a mental breakdown I was experiencing.

After months of therapy and the sad realization that I have failed to accomplish a majority of my dreams as a result of my bad habit of living to please everyone else, I have finally reached a restless point that can probably be referred to as a quarter-life crisis.  Or maybe it’s just the moment where I am actually waking up.

I have to stop bearing the weight of everyone else’s problems.  I have to make decisions based on my personal needs in order to grow into the person I aspire to be.  I have to hand someone a phone number and tell them to call it because I am done being their therapist.

Most of all, I have to get out of here.  James needs to work a job he is happy with.  I need to live in a place where I don’t dread going outside.  My kids deserve to have two parents who love where they live, not who stay here out of obligation and guilt to everyone else.

I keep having these thoughts as I lay down at night about what life would be like somewhere else.  What it would be like to make decisions based on things I need and not on what my family wants.

What would it be like to be able to tell someone close to me that I’ve been looking obsessively at Seattle real estate and found a house that I’m madly in love with without having to deal with the guilt trip?

Yes, I know.  Family is important.  The sixty million obligations we have here are important.  Taking care of people who need to call my therapists number is important.

I should just be grateful that we own a house and that James has a stable job.

I can dream, can’t I?

And, hopefully, one of these days I can make the choice to get out of here without adhering to everyone else’s wants for my little family and I.

For me, getting out and starting a life I want to live is a need.  The opportunities I want don’t exist here.  It’s just too small of a city, unfortunately.

My therapist agrees.

Yes, I’m having a hard week.

Current Mood: Confused

Tags: Depression, Therapy

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Insanity, Therapy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.