Silence

I find myself growing increasingly agitated and distracted by sounds of any kind. It seems as though I can hear everything, everywhere. There's constant noise, both in the physical world and in my head. I'm never able to just sit and work on something. I'm never able to focus in on one topic and carry my thoughts through to the end.

Every waking moment of my life feels loud.

My parents start talking to me; I get text messages; I start obsessively thinking about situations that have already happened or that might happen in the future; I have to pee; I have to brush my teeth; do I feel like taking a shower?; I haven't written a blog in a while; I have an idea for a book; I should probably get some reading in; why is my room so messy?; has anyone posted anything new on Facebook/Instagram/Twitter?; how about now?

What's the most important? Where has my ability to prioritize gone? I spend hours each day thinking about the kind of life I want to lead, the kind of person I want to be. This time could be better spent actually becoming that person, but it just doesn't happen. It feels like it can't happen because I'm always being interrupted by noise.

This prevents me from creating a routine or a structure that I can stick to. I feel like the only solution is to set alarms on my phone telling me exactly when to do things, but that's just more noise. Time just seems to run away before I even realize what's happening. It slips right through my fingers before I even manage to recognize that I'm not even doing anything at all, I'm just barely existing and being carried around by distractions.

Even this short post required multiple breaks and an incredible amount of determination to finish. I have more drafts than actual posts. Things that I really wanted to say at the time that I have since completely forgotten.

What kind of life is this, really? Can I really live like this? Most of the time I feel like the answer to that question is no.

Turning Twenty-Seven

Although 27 really isn't a milestone birthday for most people, it feels like a big one to me because it is the first birthday on which I actually feel some sort of awareness. Over the past year, I have undergone an awakening of sorts. In fact, now that I think about it, this transformation has actually been occurring since the moment I left Buffalo four years ago.

Recently I've been ruminating over my decision to leave Buffalo. It wasn't really a decision as much as a compulsion. I'd always hated living in Buffalo because I felt like I exhausted my options here and I was just ready to move on to bigger and better things. Things that I didn't (and still don't) think were available in Buffalo.

I chose Pittsburgh because I was in love. I was in love with someone I met when I was 15, and after I had driven down to visit him numerous times, I fell in love with the city that he called home. I think I knew deep down that the love connection wasn't really going to work out. First loves rarely do. But I still loved the city.

So I moved. And it was awesome. The first year was absolutely fantastic. I worked full-time as a head server at an Italian restaurant. I played an integral part in developing their wine list. I was able to afford all of my bills with extra spending money, I had a car, I had a single apartment and kept it clean. I had the intentions of applying to graduate school.   

So what happened?

Somewhere things went wrong. The love of my life drifted away from me. I discovered painkillers and cocaine and finally gave in to the illness that had really been tugging at my shirt-sleeves since I was a teenager.

I miss the early days, before my disorder got so out of control that I couldn't keep myself together. I moved to Pittsburgh four months after I turned 23. As I find myself back in Buffalo, turning 27, I feel like I am right where I was in 2010, except now I'm just slightly more stable.

I've finally followed through with my earlier intention to apply to graduate school. This summer I may find myself moving out of state again -- to Seattle, to State College, or to Boston. I'm now aware of the disorder that blindsided me two years ago. I'm more vigilant and self-aware.

But am I capable of living on my own? Will I ever be? Can I ever recover from the damage that has been done in the past 4 years? Can I keep up with the necessary maintenance required for my disorder?

My credit has been pretty terrible since I turned 18, I lost my license two years ago, and I haven't worked in 9 months. I got hand tattoos that I absolutely love but deep down kind of regret. My nose has been broken twice, I had a concussion, my spine is compressed and my whole body is often stiff and sore. I owe a ton of money for medical bills and I can't even begin to think about how many personal items I've lost in the process of moving, escaping bad relationships, and drunkenness.

Twenty-seven is a big birthday for me because I'm now aware enough to be able to ask these questions. It's a big birthday because it's the year that I turn my life around and start moving in a positive direction again. It's the year I take responsibility for myself and my actions and continue with the changes that I've already begun to make. I will find meaning again. 

Meanderie Reads

Although I have created a separate blog to host all of my readerly insights of 2014, I have yet to really begin over there and I have had a thought that I'd like to express.

You see, I've been filling out these graduate school applications and that's all fine and well, but I still feel like I'm only grazing the surface of what I want to study. It's difficult for me to corral all of my thoughts into a three-page statement of purpose, and it's frustrating for me to try to pretend that I don't know exactly what I want to study for my PhD.

So when my advising professor proposed that I include a section explaining why I am applying to master's programs instead of doctoral programs, I was stumped for a moment. How to best explain that I want to even out my grades and prove that I am worthy? I made a show of the fact that I learn better in more focused studies, using that to explain away less-than-stellar grades that were really due to my flights of manic fancy. It's true that I got my best grades in the courses that most closely mimicked graduate level courses, and I do think that's a reasonable explanation.

I do think I will benefit greatly from a couple of extra years studying the classics and getting a better sense of my area of specialization. But on some level, I will be reading for that specialization no matter what course I'm taking. If I am in medieval literature, I will be reading with an eye to how eighteenth-century satirists stole from Rabelais and Chaucer. If I'm studying post-modernism, I will be reading how Foster Wallace and Pynchon stole from Sterne and Swift. If I'm studying Milton, I will somehow be considering Enlightenment philosophy.

I think I will also end up reading toward narrative theory and cognitive science, regardless. While this kind of compulsive linking is definitely beneficial and is far better than coasting through a master's program without taking advantage of its offerings, I still feel like I will be somewhat condescending toward the whole experience. I am afraid that I can't change my feelings that it is a waste of time that could be spent working on a doctoral project.

On one hand, I feel like I do need to pay my dues and earn my way through. I can't just expect to be admitted to a good doctoral program because I have ideas. I feel like my professor had the right idea suggesting that I build myself up with this master's program so that I can get into a top-notch doctoral program with someone that I truly want to study under. On the other hand, I'm impatient to get to work on the ideas I already have and I am also afraid that I will get bored if I'm not able to start focusing on them right now. It's a double-edged sword. And I don't want to forget about this project and latch onto something new. I know that a lot of students go in with ideas and come out with completely different projects, but I don't want to be that student. I want to follow this one through before I go off on some tangent.

Anyway, those are my thoughts right now. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

The reading blog will be at www.meanderiereads.blogspot.com whenever I get around to updating it with the one book I've read so far this year.

Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, Schizophrenia, Bipolar, and Me.

Dr. E Fuller Torrey's opinion is that schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are one and the same. Although this isn't the first time I've read reports that make this claim, the degenerative quality of my disorder leads to a stronger understanding of the truth within it. The more delusions and psychotic breaks I have as a result of mania induced anxiety, the more I fear that I will lose complete control on a more regular basis. 

"The brains of individuals with these diseases are measurably different from individuals who do not have these diseases, both structurally and functionally." Source

Although I can't say I remember everything that's happened in the year and a half since I've been diagnosed, I do know that I've had several instances of what I understand to be psychosis. Far more than many sources have indicated as the norm. And the thing is that I've only really kept track of the episodes that have included hallucination, dissociation, and extreme delusions because I've been under the impression that the intensity of the symptom was a distinguishing factor. From what I've read recently, though, even less severe delusions and feelings of unreality are considered psychotic. This site even suggests that merely the most serious and intense symptoms of mania can be considered psychotic.

Here is a list of the major psychotic breaks that I recall since I entered my first inpatient rehab, which is where I was diagnosed:

- On three separate occasions (twice at White Deer Run and once at Greenbriar) I was described as restlessly walking in circles, wringing my hands and mumbling about something ridiculously insignificant. At Greenbriar I spoke of towels. I'm not quite sure about White Deer Run because I left when they couldn't get me in for another psych visit soon enough.

- At Greenbriar, I woke up and both shoulders were stiff and completely immobile. I was advised to sit in the shower to let the hot water loosen my muscles. While I did so I had a very vivid visual hallucination. My eyes were closed and it was very dark. Ephemerally emerging from the darkness, the glow of bone appeared and solidified into a ribcage, surrounding me entirely. All of a sudden a knife plunged in between the ribs and came toward me, repeatedly stopping just inches from my face.

-  While fighting with Mike, he threatened to kill me and the cats, so I gathered all of my belongings and barricaded myself into the living room. After a few days I was completely detached from any meaningful sense of reality. I paced all over the apartment and eventually left the house in inadequate pajamas, neglecting to put on shoes or take my keys. I wandered around the South Side of Pittsburgh aimlessly, unsure of where I was going, what I was doing,or even who I was at all. It was strangely dizzying and basically amounted to a long, intense panic attack with delusions that I was a ghost wandering the streets. 

- When I was moving from Pittsburgh to Florida, my aunt picked me up and took me back to Buffalo so I could be on the same flight as she and her boyfriend. When we got to Buffalo, I went out with a few of my cousins and good friends. Toward the end of the night, someone asked me how I spent my last night in Pittsburgh and I mentioned something that didn't sit well with one of my cousins. He confronted me about it and apparently I got so upset that I dissociated and ran away incoherently, hiding in backyards until my friends had no choice but to call 911 -- at which point an ambulance came, strapped me onto a gurney, tranquilized me, and took me to Erie County Medical Center. Once the tranquilizer wore off, I remember flipping and throwing trash cans because I couldn't sleep. Needless to say, they tranquilized me again. Somehow my father managed to get me out the next day and I flew to Florida by myself.

There are a few others that aren't really worth writing about, especially in comparison to these ones. 

There were also episodes when I was a child that were attributed to lucid dreams or that weren't taken seriously at all. I'm pretty certain my math teacher wouldn't be at all surprised with my diagnosis, considering how many times I yelled and cussed at her about how I would be a famous musician if only high school wasn't holding me back.

Anyhow, this post was inspired by the paper that I'm editing for use as a writing sample. It addresses Freud's concept of the uncanny, which has a relationship with psychosis that is better saved for another post.  

I don't believe in holistic treatment, but just maybe...

“Bipolar disorder, we now believe, isn’t a disease of too much or too little serotonin or dopamine. It is not about the ‘chemical soup’ of neurotransmitters in the brain, but rather it is about synaptic and neural plasticity.”

“What we’ve learned in the last 10 years is that whether we’re talking about memory or mood or movement, all advanced brain functions involve changes in the ability to convey information between synapses in different circuits.”

These quotes from Dr. Husseini Manji appear in an article written about new treatments of bipolar disorder. The primary supposition is that mood disorders are concerned with the synaptic plasticity of the brain rather than the excess or lack of certain neurochemicals. He believes that the shrinkage or atrophy of neurons makes communication across the synapses between them much more difficult, if not impossible. Considering the difficulties I've been having with verbal recall lately, this seems like a reasonable explanation.

Although I'm definitely not an expert in neuroscience, it also makes sense to me that the effects of this atrophy or shrinkage depend on the specific neurons being affected. The hope of finding ways to reverse, or at least halt the intellectual problems I've been having has led me to spend a substantial amount of time researching neuroscience and one of the many things I've learned so far is that neurons can be classified as to whether they perform sensory or motor functions. Mood disorders, then, would be a result of the degeneration of sensory neurons. The delusions, leaps of logic, irritability and psychosis all seem to me as if they'd fall under the jurisdiction of sensory neurons. 

I just wish that there was some way to harness the good parts of my mania and prevent the crash that happens when it's over. I think I will eventually see if I can decrease my dosage and try to control the negative aspects of my disorder with cognitive behavioral therapy. Before I became a Depakote zombie, the neurons of mine that are not atrophied worked exceptionally well. I would like to have that back, please! 

Am I capable of graduate study?

My mom has been pushing the issue of applying for disability for a while and since the Obamacare insurance deadline is coming up, she decided that it's the perfect time to put in the application, even though it takes five months to start paying out anyhow.

While we were at the lawyer's office, my mom asks about what would happen if we were to move once it was instated and tells him that I am applying to graduate school. Of course, this results in a question on his side: is she really capable of keeping up with school? If so, then why not work?

He asked further questions about where I went to school and what I studied, and commented on the fact that English was a useless degree, and I explained very hastily and passionately that literature was the one thing that I can actually do and if I were to be able to work at the same job for a reasonable amount of time, it would be in this field.

But of course his questions have made me doubt myself. Am I capable? I've been struggling with reading comprehension, memory, and attention issues. I had a bit of a crisis, but I guess we'll see.

Black-and-White Thinking

This post has been inspired by a book that I'm currently reading: Change Your Thinking: Overcome Stress, Anxiety & Depression, and Improve Your Life with CBT by Dr. Sarah Edelman.

The second chapter of her book, Recognizing Faulty Thinking lists a multitude of common logical mistakes that people make when thinking about their present situations and circumstances. I may write more posts as I go if more of them strike me as closely as this one did, but I don't want to lose my focus right now.

Rather recently, both my mom and stepfather pointed out that I always had problems socially. While I agree that I wasn't an overly social child or teenager, at the time I never really noticed how reclusive I really was. I have a notoriously unreliable memory, but when I think back on my life, I know I preferred being alone most of the time. I did have friends here and there, but never anything long-term and I never really got close to people. I never really wondered why, it just never really happened. I was never interested in people.  

At some point my mom brought up that as far as people were concerned, I always either really loved someone or really hated them. She said if a friend or a boyfriend did something wrong, I immediately cut them off and proceeded to completely forget they ever existed. This is something I notice a little bit in my life as an adult, but hearing her describe my childhood like this shocked and saddened me to a degree, even knowing I preferred to be alone. It just seems so brash and cold, and I never thought I came off that way. I never understood social relationships.

I never really did see any middle ground, not just in my social life but at all whatsoever. It either is or it isn't, what's the problem?

Sarah Edelman writes an example of this type of thinking in her book: "Sasha's black-and-white thinking causes her to feel unnecessary resentment, and limits her ability to make friends and enjoy social relationships."

Recognizing this as faulty thinking is going to be a bit tough but hopefully with the help of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy I can turn it around. As I've been able to recognize my behavior more in adulthood and have considered what I want for my life, I've realized that I shut people out, alienate them, and generally make them feel terrible and that's not what I mean to do. Then I wonder why my relationships don't work out or why I only really have one friend. Why people don't include me in their social circles and look at me like I'm crazy when I try to socialize. Some have said to me "that's just the way she is" and that they know me and it's okay when I'm out of line, but those kinds of flippant dismissals just make me feel worse about myself.

I know that my mood disorder has caused a lot of the issues -- cancelling plans, causing an argument over nothing, refusing to compromise, not responding to someone's messages, thinking and acting selfishly, etc -- but now that I'm on my medication and my moods are relatively stable, I can take steps to change these behaviors and I no longer have any excuse for making everyone around me miserable. I no longer have to see things in black and white, I can choose to see the gray. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm lowering my standards or that anyone is any "worse" than I am, but that not everyone agrees on everything and not everyone has to comply with my moods.

The older I get, the more I wish I had more social skills and was able to be a better friend, the more I wish I had someone to turn to when I wanted to talk. I hope cognitive behavioral therapy helps me to fix my faulty thinking and develop friendships so I can provide support for others and give something in return.

This first and foremost includes my parents who have forever loved me and provided for me even though I've always had these problems and never done anything for them. I guess we'll see.