#silver ribbons

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[poem-today]

Silver Ribbons – Brief Poems by Joseph Campbell

Silver Ribbons – Brief Poems by Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell (1879–1944) who also also wrote under his Gaelic name, Seosamh Mac Cathmhaoil, was born in Belfast to a Catholic Nationalist family from County Down. From his father, a Catholic Parnellite, he imbibed fervent nationalist politics, and from his mother, of mixed Catholic–Presbyterian stock, a strong interest in Gaelic culture. He was educated in Belfast and, after working for his…

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Furiously Happy

I’ve been reading this book by Jenny Lawson who talks about mental illnesses and her experience with them. One point she brings up is how medication for mental illnesses are not fun. I like to somewhat compare them to birth control pills where you have one goal you want to meet, not getting pregnant. But along with that need, there are many side effects like gaining weight, becoming more hormonal, losing sex drive, etc. My goal for my medication is to relieve myself of the constant churn in my stomach, the voices in my head that turn against me when they should be with me. Then there’s the hard part of finding the right medication. Some either work, but have terrible side effects. Some may not work in the way you want them to, like relieving your anxiety but making you too lethargic and tired to do anything. Others can be amazing, but then their use wears off. Then the search for another drug begins. I started out with Cymbalta, which apparently has a lot of drug legal issues right now that I was not aware of. No doctors ever showed any concern about that medication. My main doctor gave it to me without much questioning and handed it off like it was some candy. I felt constantly tired where simple things like going to classes were a struggle. It was even difficult to stay awake in most of them no matter how much or how little sleep I had. I just wanted to lay on the couch in my apartment and watch Netflix forever. It even got hard to want to go out with friends at some points. I wish my doctor actually cared for my mental health enough to stop me from taking Cymbalta and suggest something better. Something with fewer side effects that made me feel alive and like myself. Sometimes I think this medication robbed me of so much in school. I also think how it helped me just in the sense of numbing my anxiety. That’s all I see this medication as now that I no longer take it. It was just a way to numb my anxiety and most emotions I had. I don’t even consider it medication, more like a drug your body gets addicted to like heroin. Cymbalta is also a pain killer (which I didn’t know either) which was highly addictive. That’s why when I had a few days without taking it, I would get serious withdrawals like vertigo. I could be happy, and I was, but everyone in my life knows how easy it is for me to laugh. Being easily happy comes with its consequences too of being easily sad. I guess I didn’t necessarily feel sad on the medication, but I wanted to feel more than slight happiness.  There are days where I’ll feel worthless, fat from gaining weight, ugly, lonely, and unlovable. I push past those days and see so much proof that my mind is lying to me. That I’m very much loved and days are worth living. I’m not trying to say I’m suicidal because I could never do that to my family. They’re the ones that always remind me why life is amazing and worth living. 

Pretty much, I was supposed to write about how much I love Jenny Lawson and her book, but then I started to talk about my mental illness. She and I relate in our weirdness and our anxiety. If anyone wants something hilarious and very real about mental illnesses, check her out. 

[travellyr]

I'm still so proud of a perfect stranger

The Traveling Red Dress

Jenny wins an award

[travellyr]

I wrote the piece below back in January, a bit over a month ago.  I found it today when I was having a rough morning at work (during which I wrote this part).  I'd stayed up too late and being overtired makes me a little bit... edgier, with my emotions.  Easier to laugh, easier to weep, closer to the edge of everything but anger.

I have anxiety and depression.  Saying that, "coming out," was once such a huge step... it's just a thing, now.  It doesn't change who I am, or what I live with, or that I'm not broken.  I'm not damaged.  I'm different and sometimes that makes life very hard for me, and sometimes it makes life easier (all that experience at anxiety-ridden what-if has made me pretty darn good at planning).

I wonder, sometimes... I know and know of so many very wonderful, very creative people with challenges similar to mine.

I did learn one trick, though.. bashing my head against "why can't I do this" and "I should be able to" never gets me anywhere, but, sometimes, most of the time, saying "I am having a hard time right now" and letting go... it lets me move past that.  I can't climb over the roadblock, but I can go another way.  I can't get everything done, but I can get some of it done.

I am having a hard time right now.  I am disappointed that I'm not living the life I want to, that I'm not writing and flossing every day (no, really, we all have goals).  But... it's okay.  I'll get it.   I own floss.  I remember how to smile and mean it.

And I'll get my work done, and remember what it feels like to be pround of small, genuine accomplishments.

[January's bit follows:]

Silver ribbons and red dresses.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html

http://skepchick.org/2012/01/red-dresses-and-silver-ribbons/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferleggio/2012/01/09/traveling-red-dress-movement-proves-social-media-foundation-is-still-people-empowerment/

I'm so lucky that my life is a red dress.  The most recent time I was feeling worthless and unworthy, my mother came by with a ring shaped like a jeweled snail.  Just because she thought I needed it.  Because I used to stick snails on things when I was a very small girl.  What do you do when you don't know what to do with something?  You stick it on something else.  At least that is what you do if you are five and the thing you have is a snail.  (I put them on the stucco, on the fence, on the car, on my body, city-towers of bricks and on the handlebars of my trike and took them for a ride around the block.)

I have anxiety and depression.  You don't know me, most of you, and it doesn't matter.  I know so many brave people and I am sometimes guilty of saying "why can't you do this?  Just get up and do the thing," when I, of all people, really ought to know better.  I say it because I hear it and because I think it and because that is the voice that beats me down when I'm already low, and it is my voice.

These women, Allie and Jenny, I admire them so much.  They are out there doing a thing that they love (being themselves, being silly), and it is a thing  also happen to love.  I too am ridiculous.  I want to do what they do.  I don't want to be them or to write like them or to put up pictures like them, I want to be myself like them and have other people adore it, because hey, I'm worthy of adoration.  I'm pretty special and entertaining.  And I am in awe of the courage it took to go out and do those things that they have done, to drown out the voice inside that whines "I don't know how" or "it won't work" or "this is stupid."

They both have books coming out, and I am ridiculously proud.  Good job, ladies.  Thank you for being yourselves.

[travellyr]

Sometimes I feel that I want to be who I am now, but at 23.  It's not a rational thing.  If there were any way for me-of-then to have been the me-of-now, only then, then I would've been it.  I haven't missed any opportunities that I was capable (emotionally, physically, and talent-ally) of taking advantage of.  I don't have any regrets over anything that I was really able to do any other way.  There are other choices I could have made, but I wouldn't have been me had I made them.  We grow up slowly in my family, that's just how it is.

I just... feel jealous and stuck sometimes.  Like I've missed out on something just because I didn't do it when I was nineteen, or twenty-two.

._. This could have something to do with job-hunting and turning up a disproportionate number of internships.

[waylonjenningsstuff]

Silver Ribbons