Today I decided to take a trip down memory lane in a self torturing kind of way. Why, you ask? I have absolutely no idea, but I did it. I scrolled back through a year’s worth of Face Book posts and pictures and sat on my couch fighting back tears, missing the woman I saw in those pictures. I mourned the loss my daughter suffered as I viewed the pictures of the day we moved her into college and how happy and proud she was, only to have that ripped away from her by utterly evil people at her school. My heart was already heavy today, and I just made it worse. I am so damn good at that. I just love to torture myself.
Currently I am involved in an Outpatient Program that focuses on DBT and one of the key steps is Radical Acceptance of your current situation, diagnosis, etc. I am stuck on this step. I am fighting the Radical Acceptance. I just can’t manage to say that everything that has happened since October is okay and this is where I am today and it is what it is and it is okay. After 43 days of hospitalization, multiple medication regimens, ECT and hours of therapy, I still want to scream out in anger and pain. I still want to hide away from the world and sit in my own bubble of sadness and despair.
My family is thrilled that I am home, but it is really just the shell of me. Today, I am actually home from the hospital 42 days, almost as long as I was in there, and to be perfectly honest, I am only slightly better. I am so numbed out by the meds that I am no longer agitated and irritable and yelling out loud, but instead, holding it all inside, unable to release any real emotion. These medications seem to rob me of my authentic feelings, as they do many people. I hate them with a passion. I really want to stop taking them, but am scared to death that I will end up back in the hospital.
I was just talking to my husband tonight and told him that although I am not suicidal any longer, part of me thinks I am even worse. The friends I used to reach out to prior to my hospitalization three to four times per day, I no longer call. Why? Because I am tired, sick and tired of feeling like shit and I hate to burst their bubble that the hospitalization and the medications have not cured me. I no longer want to take them on this roller coaster ride from hell with me.
Some may say I am in the infancy stage of medications, considering I have really only been trying meds since December, but to me, it feels like forever. I don’t know anymore. The ball and chains have been reattached to my ankles and again, I feel the depression slowly pulling me down as I try like crazy to tread water. Is it too much to ask to find my smile and laughter? Would an exorcism rid this awful demon from my body and return the old me to my family and friends? I know I sound like a broken record, but I just want to find me again. I miss me and looking at old pictures does nothing but remind me that person no longer exists right now. Lydia is MIA. And who knows when she will return if she ever does?