Surfing the (Mental) Fog

28 | Genderfluid | he/she/they | Bisexual | ADD | BPD | Cats | Asexual

[adhd-bpd-anxiety-dysfunction]

Waves of Wind Against My Skin

Waves of Wind Against My Skin

Photo by Scott Rodgerson on Unsplash Do I write about how I feel or do I push through the feelings to try and get something done? I thought I was being calm today but realized my ADHD is acting up big time. I’ve been jumping from task to task – starting from a freelance portal where I needed to do their tutorials. But then I wanted to make notes on the tutorial. And then I wanted to schedule…

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[adhd-bpd-anxiety-dysfunction]

Asleep Atop the Storm

Asleep Atop the Storm

Photo by Todd Turner on Unsplash Sometimes the chaos inside my head rises into a defeaning panic, and I have no choice but to… spread it around. It feels weird to say this, but I dislike lying. And yet there are those times when lying becomes the only way out, because doing whatever someone expects of me is beyond me. And in those times, I feel moved to justify the lying by transmitting to the…

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[adhd-bpd-anxiety-dysfunction]

Hyperstimulated

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash I want to grab my doctor and scream “Why are you trying to treat my depression?!” at her while shaking her. When I say ‘Everything hurts right now’, what I mean is that my every sense is overloaded. There’s barely any noise/ sound, but even the slightest – like my cat shouting – is slicing through my brain and making me want to scream. Visual inputs are similarly…

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[adhd-bpd-anxiety-dysfunction]

Wow, I'm Sad

Wow, I’m Sad

Photo by Joël de Vriend on Unsplash It’s not so much sadness as it is… everything. I’m… Feeling raw after therapy session. Feeling slight despair because I can’t keep track of what’s happening in therapy anymore. Feeling angry that all my work seems to have gone unnoticed and unacknowledged.Feeling guilty that I’m not there for my parents more. Feeling upset that life is so unfair, that I am…

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[adhd-bpd-anxiety-dysfunction]

Hiding From My Dreams

Hiding From My Dreams

Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash Written March 3, 2021 From Yvette: To fix my insomnia, my instinct has always been to sleep deprive myself further, to hold off until I get to a decent hour and then pass out from exhaustion.  But in the last few weeks, I used a different approach. I slept more, and impulsively. Whenever sleep called, I answered.  Perhaps it was born of the repetitive…

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[adhd-bpd-anxiety-dysfunction]

Going Deeper

📷Photo by Craig Whitehead on Unsplash

She wants me to dig deep, to disturb memories that have lain undisturbed for years, and feel old hurts all over again. She says the only way to process pain is to feel it, instead of suppressing it.

For one thing, the little voice in my head takes issue with this. Because feeling that pain is what led to its (alleged) suppression in the first place. Because I felt it every day, and I thought I was processing it. And if I wasn't, then I don't know what processing it looks like.

When I look at my hands, sometimes it feels as though I can see the mud and the red on them. All the mistakes of the past - mine and other peoples' - cling to me like I am their lifegiver and life sustainer. I try to shed my skin to get away from them, but they grow on the inside, always leaving behind a new layer of pain and guilt and shame.

The urge grows stronger, to try and rip everything off - my hair, my skin, my face. Like feeling a cockroach on your skin, and feeling your heart jump out of your chest. Only it's every moment. It's every day. It's unending torture, and I am not strong enough to resist it.

Perhaps if I take enough baths, they will slough off and leave me clean, leave me pure, leave me a blank slate once again. But for every hopeful thought, ten evil ones chime in, reminding me that I speak in echoes of hateful loved ones. Warning me that I am spewing death and destruction around me, just as those who went before me used to do.

There are many lies that the evil thoughts tell me. But it's hard work, to separate the truth from the lies, to search within them for any semblance of logic or sense without being tainted by the pain and the festering sores of guilt.

Gaslighting has been my life - a life I sought out, and a life I sought to escape. And I forget, I forget how to breathe. And once again, the thought sinks in unbidden - this is my fault, and it is right that I suffer for it.

[adhd-bpd-anxiety-dysfunction]

Clarity and Colds

📷Photo by Alex on Unsplash

The morning has brought with it relief, and some space to think about how to approach mental health blogging. I don't want to only talk about the bad stuff or the difficult times, so I've decided to do a mental health check-in at least once every day.

And to be as honest as I possibly can.

I'm not new to this journey - I've been seeking treatment for chronic depression for fifteen years. And it's frustrating that even despite being so far along with my treatment, and with therapy, I still end up having bad days like yesterday. Days where there's no plausible reason for why the depression has hit. When I've been regular with meds and regular with therapy and processing everything correctly and staying away from alcohol or whatever.

'Well,' said my therapist, when I once mentioned this to her, with the air of someone bringing grave news. 'You have a diagnosis. This is part of that.'

The bit she left unsaid hung in the air between us, as I nodded along like this wasn't absolutely crushing. You will never be not okay. You will never be not depressed.

And I just have to say - that's too hard. That's too unfair. That's too difficult.

But hey. Worse things happening in the world, amirite?

(No, I know it doesn't work like that. But it helps to think about that perspective right now, so I will.)

The To Do List hangs ominously over my head as I battle a random, stupid cold and wait until I can justify ordering lunch. The weather is beautiful today, so perhaps it will be a better day. A day where I am kinder to and more patient with myself.

[adhd-bpd-anxiety-dysfunction]

Haven't Spoken to my Cats

📷Photo by Iz & Phil on Unsplash

I haven't spoken to my cats in five days.

The first two days, I wasn't even here. I went off to a friend's place to take care of my mental health. I missed them, and I felt guilty, but not guilty enough to come back. I had to force myself back, despite all the nightmare scenarios that were playing in my mind.

I would come back to find them dead, I kept telling myself. Or that one of them would have been injured and helpless for days. That the water would have run out, or the food. That they might have toppled a cupboard on themselves.

And none of it was enough to make me come back. I took my time, and felt bad about it.

When I got back, the state of the house was immediately depressing. Everything I'd cleaned before I left was in uproar, and a quite a few new things too. I've wanted to die ever since.

So here I lie, exhausted, for the past 4 days. Barely interacting with the cats. Ignoring them when they complain about being hungry, coz I know there's still a teensy bit of food left that the can snack on. Just until I get up the energy, I tell myself. Just a bit longer. Five more minutes, even.

It's been five days.

They miss me, even though I'm right here. They sleep more, or scuffle silently. It's not the same, for them, when I'm not jumping around, playing with them, talking to them or dancing with them. That's when they get excited and start running face first into the walls. That's when they get curious about the things I'm doing and come to watch.

Instead, they stay quiet, and steal up to stare at me in the middle of the night, when they think I won't notice.

I notice, and I stay where I am. Because I cannot move. I have been taken out of my mind, out of my body, and until I'm allowed to return, I will stay right here. Unmoving, unspeaking, and just the worst cat mom of all time.

[adhd-bpd-anxiety-dysfunction]

The Philosophy of Losing Your Mind

The Philosophy of Losing Your Mind

Written April 7, 2021 Photo by Victor Freitas on Unsplash Picking up where I left off with the previous post – being philosophical – I am glad to say that this has kept the panic attacks at bay rather successfully. That doesn’t mean I’ve been leading a happy-go-lucky life – all of this still weighs on my shoulders unbearably. I still feel the need to scream in order to be heard.I still overdo…

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[adhd-bpd-anxiety-dysfunction]

A Broken Tree

📷Photo by Hennie Stander on Unsplash

TW: Self Harm/ Depression

In my mind, I trace the lines I want to bring to life upon my skin. Like vines sprouting off dead branches, they spread over the expanse of my body, prophesying nothing but doom.

I think of the options before me, and the knife held in my mind's eye digs a little deeper. Just a little sharper. Just enough to counteract the nausea and panic. I drag it down my cheeks, stoic expression unchanging.

Just for a second - a fleeting second - I imagine moving upward, dipping into my eye socket, gouging out an eye. Perhaps I do not need an eye. Perhaps I have read one book too many about little girls without an eye.

The dehydration is criminal. I wet my lips, and immediately am struck by the urge to find a delicate blade to draw across them. I imagine the salt on my tongue as blood pools slowly out of the cuts.

Upon my arms and legs, the knife is less forgiving - for my arms and legs are strong. They can take the punishment the world has doled out to me. Or so they claim, even though, they, like me, are tough only on the outside.

Gently, I leave the encasing of my skin and float upward. I imagine the wings folding out of my back, finally free as they bear me aloft - high above the troubles, the difficulties, the sticky inconveniences.

I breathe in power as I finally fly free.

[adhd-bpd-anxiety-dysfunction]

Numbers

📷Photo by John Moeses Bauan on Unsplash

I got numbers coming out of my ears:

490 days since the pandemic began.

34 days since the ongoing lockdown began.

5 years as a college dropout, with no end in sight

8 years and 8 months since the worst decision of my life began to plague me.

11 years since the second worst decision of my life.

9 months since I last self harmed.

Almost 10 days since my last serious breakdown.

29 years of being alive.

30 cigarettes a day - on a good day. 40 on a bad day.

Day 5479 of being chronically depressed.

Day 5479 of being miserable, of failing at everything, and of wanting to not live.

Day 5479 of there being no light at the end of the tunnel.

Day 5479 of 'still-here-major-semi-colon-tattoo-energy.'

Haven't got the slightest idea what to do with any of these numbers though.

[love-notes-to-survivors]

Please be gentle and kind to people with BPD who are Splitting. We're usually being triggered by something that seems small to you, something you maybe did or said, and that trigger is making us act in these big ways because it feels like we're overflowing with pain, and also we haven't had a lot of experience with people being kind to us so please

[adhd-bpd-anxiety-dysfunction]

He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted and rather selfish is to be ill-disposed.

~ Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

[adhd-bpd-anxiety-dysfunction]

I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

- W.B. Yeats

[adhd-bpd-anxiety-dysfunction]

(Don't) Signal Boost My Pain

I scream to be seen.

I'm going wildly back and forth between "my feelings are reasonable" and "I've lost my mind, BPD is never going to let me go."

And through it all the back of my mind tries to pull the wool over my eyes while it seeks to solve an unsolvable problem, while it pulls to pieces every step of progress I seek to make.

I yearn to let it all out of me in a flood, whether by scream of rage or bloodletting in ink, and yet I have only the strength to lie here day after day, and exist.

[love-notes-to-survivors]

“The medical system says trauma is exceptional and rare, not systemic. The medical system blames the victims of trauma by assigning us disorders, which disempower us by making us believe that we are inherently broken. […] I understand the need for labels to feel like we have explanations for our painful experiences, and I don’t want to take that comfort away from anyone. Use the labels that help you. But please do be careful not to pathologize every single thing about your humanity. The medical industrial complex would love for you to think that you are broken, because then they can sell you more “fixes”, but I want you to know in your heart that it’s not true. Your intense pain is valid and justified. It’s real, and there is a reason for it. It’s not wrong, and it’s not your fault. You don’t exist in a vacuum — society is not blameless, and psychology is not objective. Bias permeates everything humans create, and science is infamously lacking in social critique. Trying your entire life to fit into a world not designed for you is traumatic.”

— Jesse Meadows, Is it rejection sensitive dysphoria or complex trauma?

[frogwithadhd]

not everything is an adhd symptom

and i dont mean this in a bad way or to call anyone out, i actually hope it can just be comforting?

you dont have to feel alienated because of normal human emotions. there are some things that every person truly experiences simply because we are human—it’s normal to be sad or angry or irritated at certain things. and im also not saying that there arent emotions that are adhd-induced, or that we sometimes feel them more intensely—those can definitely happen!!

i just hope that you dont have to feel all alone because it seems like everything you do is because of adhd. having a mindset like that just leads to feeling even more lonely and isolated, because you feel that you’ll never relate to anyone at all. it’s always just good to keep in mind that even though adhd is an inesparable part of your personality and it can be a pain in your thicc sexy ass, it doesnt have to tie you down constantly. even though people might not understand you, that doesnt have to keep you from going out and exploring and making friends and being the best you.

but then also on the other end, seriously—not everything is an adhd symptom. and i do mean this in a call u out way SHHSJAHS

sometimes i see stuff like “i get head rush when i stand up and i had no idea that was an adhd thing omg ??????? does anyone else experience this???” like my guy....im sorry to break it to you but either youre dehydrated or you have low iron or both ?? i.. thats not ... thats not adhd ..i dont think .. i..

anyways i dont see that a whole lot lol but its always good to keep in mind that there are some things that arent exclusive to adhd—some things we experience are just because we are human and it’s our nature!! you dont have to feel alienated for feeling sad or silly or confused or what-have-you!! its ok, ily, youre valid, and you have a place :)

but also remember to drink water so you dont get adhd head rush😫😫😫those are the worst

[seesarahaccomplishstuff]

There’s a lot about people sabotaging their good relationships because of adhd and at fort I was like !!! maybe that’s why this happens. And like, nah, I’ve got trauma and codependency to actively work on.

Not everything is an adhd symptom. And it’s been great to learn that I’m not crazy, that many of the issues I have that have led to people calling me lazy or obnoxious are because of adhd. But it’s not an excuse to not reflect on your behaviors or ways you’re caring for yourself.