Thursday, June 28, 2018

How to stop digging

I haven't had much to write lately. Things are mostly the same. In my head there is this constant debated about if I am crazy or sane. If I am sane, am I just thinking I am crazy as an excuse for being a worthless, useless, lazy human being? I am constantly questioning the reality of my problems. Logically, I had depression and bulimia before the alcoholism. I was hospitalized several times before I started drinking and was hospitalized once when I was a year sober. Yes somehow I feel like being sober means I should be back to full functioning. I should be sane now that the alcohol is gone. The problem is that I can see the signs I am still crazy, but I am getting totally mixed signals from others about it.

The main problems I am dealing with are the fact that I am fucking around with my meds.. mostly just taking half my dose of Wellbutrin, but I have also hoarded seroquel to take extra. I also am not throwing the Wellbutrin away. I am sort of stockpiling it. I really want to stop taking more of my meds, but I haven't been able to decide what to do. Plus, I don't want to have to admit to it.. and right now I could probably safely go back to the full dose. If I stop more of the meds, I might have to slowly increase again which would involve the doctor knowing. I am leaning towards manipulating the doctor to take me off more meds. Then the other problem is the eating disorder. I am still purging pretty frequently. I have cut back on laxatives because I don't want to run out, but I am still purging almost everyday.

The mixed signals has a lot to do with my case worker. She seems to push for me applying for jobs, but when I express my concern about working she will say that there's no pressure. I really wish I could get someone to give me a concrete opinion on if I should be working or applying for disability because I don't know. I just know my head is not healthy. I mean I nearly started crying the other day when my mom said we wouldn't go to the grocery store that day but would go on the weekend. I was upset at the change to the plan in my head for the day (and also because that would mean my dad would be there and they would probably argue). I get upset and overwhelmed any time I can't plan my day just right. What is going to happen if I have a bad day at work? Am I going to go back to crying in the bathroom and self harming at work to appear sane? Then doesn't it make sense to try to get better before I do that? Except.. I am not getting better.

The thing is that I have a lot on my mind. I have less than a month to decide if I should appeal the disability decision.. my case worker has said multiple times that she was emailing someone to contact me about help with it. I have waited weeks and heard nothing. I am going to have to figure out some other way to find a lawyer. I am also dealing with a lawsuit about the 16K I owe on a credit card. I contacted legal aid about that and probably filing bankruptcy. I have to wait to see if they will help me, and I don't think I can go through them for that and the disability stuff all at once because it would take so much of their time. This is going to ruin my credit, but it's pretty much ruined anyway because of all the bills that have gone to collections. I am thinking about this everyday trying to decide what I need to be doing and if I am just being lazy or really can't do anything at the moment. I am afraid of having to meet with strangers and talk about all of this shit that I am ashamed of.

And what I really want is to just have enough money to get out of my parents house, and then I can drink myself to death. I still have vodka in my closet, but I am afraid to drink it and not be able to get more if I decide to die. I am reminded often of my drinking days.. and I miss them? I miss not knowing if it was day or night when I woke up and drank to fall back asleep. I miss never getting out of bed. I miss being weak and sick and barely able to walk up the stairs. I miss it, and I feel like i am just waiting until I can go back. That's why it is hard to want to do anything. I know that if I get to be self sufficient again, I am going to go back to digging this hole I was in. Every time I thought I hit bottom, I would go to treatment or stop for a bit and then just dig myself deeper. Every bottom was lower. I know the final one is death, so I sometimes want to speed the process up. I just want to skip to the end result.

But I feel like I have no one to talk to. I have no one to tell me that I am sick and need help and to help me get it. I mean I have my case worker, but I guess I don't want to tell her and have her not help. I don't think there are resources for me to get help. In IOP, I only have a few minutes a week to check in, so there's no time to talk about what's really going on. I am too busy finding lawyers and sorting out my other shit that I have no energy to see if there's more mental health services out there that would help me. I have no money, so I am lucky to have what I have. I really want my parents to leave for a few days so I can recharge by spending my time in bed and not having to act like I am social and normal and healthy. It's exhausting. That or I want to drink to turn my brain off for a while.

Thursday, June 14, 2018

Inside my head

I am really struggling. I haven't posted because I really don't know what to say. I think I am bothered by the disparity between my outside life and my inside life. To the outside world, I think I appear to be functioning. Inside my head, I can clearly tell that I am self destructing. There's a lot going on that makes this apparent to me.

I am incredibly frustrated with the therapist from IOP. He is terrible at communicating things or assuming that they're understood. Like he let me go several extra weeks at IOP (3x a week) when I should have dropped to SOP (2x a week). He said he assumed I knew and just wanted the extra accountability. Then he normally says SOP lasts about 10 weeks. Well after far less than that, he tells me I am out of sessions... and he says this like I should have known that was my last day. He ended up giving me one more individual session.. and when I came for that he seemed surprised I hadn't come Monday and Tuesday.. I'm like.. you told me once a week? So yeah.. it's very frustrating. He seemed to think it was odd that I wasn't excited about this, and I tried to hint at the fact that I am NOT doing well with regards to my mental health and other than this group, I only see my case worked every 2 weeks for 30min. I love my case worker, but it is very hard to accomplish anything in that time. So dropping down to once a week means getting very little help when my mental health is clearly getting worse. Except I don't think he sees that. He also has asked me a couple times about if I was looking for a job or if my parents expected me to find a job. I will get to that in a minute, but he didn't seem to understand why I am anxious about that and why I applied for disability. I don't want to get a job and fall apart and end up losing it anyway. In group, I just say in general that I am struggling with depression and stuff because it's a substance abuse group.. I don't feel it's appropriate to talk about the depression, the eating disorder, the self harm.. but other patients have been commenting that I look unhappy. They seem to understand it better.

I don't know if i wrote yet that my disability application was turned down. I had been told to expect that, but it was still really hard. The decision said stuff about how I am being treated for the depression and should be able to manage it with medication. Well.. I am not taking all my medications. I keep playing around with not taking all my wellbutrin. I also have a stash of a couple other medications that I am taking at random for sleep. It wasn't because of the disability decision. I started it because I had reached a point where I wasn't really depressed but I certainly wasn't happy. It feels safe for me to be depressed than to be numb. But since I started this, I have started self harming again. I also have a stockpile of meds and a bottle of vodka hidden. That's not normal behavior.

Since all this.. the suicidal thoughts are worse. No plan at the moment, but I know that the vodka is there as a backup. I haven't told anyone that the pills and vodka are a suicide backup plan.. I think they think I just plan to drink if it gets to be too much. The consequences are potentially serious enough, that I know I can't drink if I want to stay alive.

The eating disorder is still there. I am purging daily. I have been getting very upset if anything interferes with the time I set aside to pace the house or jog in place to get my steps. I spend a lot of time thinking about all of this. I am also eating compulsively.. especially at night. The self loathing is pretty deep at this point. I feel completely worthless.

So then.. because all of this isn't bad enough. I mean I am at least still doing what I am supposed to. I am not drinking. I am going to meetings. I am stumbling over how to tell or text my sponsor about how i am doing. I went to see an employment counselor and at least applied for one job since then. I still am not sure that I can do it.. like it causes instant panic to think about working. I have been reading back through my old posts and my old instagram posts and I can see how crazy I was for a long time before they fired me. I also kind of miss it. I miss the insanity of drinking and spending my days in bed. I miss not having to pretend to function. Anyway, tonight my parents hand me something that was left on the door about someone trying to serve me with papers. I am sure it is regarding some debt collector... I have all sorts of debt collectors calling me. I have been ignoring them because I have $0.. actually less than no money. Now my parents want me to call legal aid... I've kind of known I would eventually end up filing bankruptcy because I owe tens of thousands of dollars and have no income. Still.. my first thought tonight involved a bottle of pills and vodka. I can't handle this on top of everything else. I mean.. I don't even know how many bills I have out there. I might be able to list the hospitals, but there are so many bills.

I just don't see myself coming back from all this. I feel like I am delaying the inevitable by pretending I am going to live. I don't see myself able to regain independence, and I cannot spend my life living with my parents. I just want to give up. And having no insurance means I am seeing someone every 2 weeks for 30 minutes.. and that's probably all the help I can get unless it becomes a crisis. Sorry.. that sounds ungrateful. I know it could be so much worse. I just don't want to be doing any of this.