j4 | Still ill

You're viewing

j4's journal
Create a Dreamwidth Account Learn More

Reload page in style: site light

I came off the Pill on Thursday. I'm now shaky, nauseous, and uncontrollably weepy (and my period won't stop). Every time I think it can't possibly get any worse while I'm putting so much effort into trying to make it better, it does. And after 10+ years of fighting depression I'm really tired of being shouted at for not being optimistic enough about getting better or finding a cure.

And yes, I cried, I'm sorry, I cried because I'm in pain and I'm frightened and I am worn down to scratchy backing-material and bent tacks from gritting my teeth and trying not to feel the wrong thing.

I feel like my life is just one big flat I'm-sorry-I'm-sorry-I'm-sorry with nowhere left to hide.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

j4.livejournal.com

No leg-biting required, he does everything a person could reasonably be expected to do and quite a lot of things that they couldn't. It's just that it hurts me so much more than it should when he quite reasonably gives up and gets cross.

I suspect this period is just the hormones resettling after the change in Pill, but if it hasn't gone away in a week or so I'll make another doctor's appointment (and while I'm about it ask him if the silence on his part means that all the last lot of blood tests came back normal). It's just on top of everything else it's, I dunno, a lead-covered straw on the back of a camel with rickets.

Crying may be a normal reaction to some things, but crying all the time? The fire alarm this morning made me jump and then burst into tears. It took me till midday to get to a point where I couldn't feel my eyes welling up every time I thought about anything at all. My stomach just keeps fluttering as if I'm terrified of something that's going to happen but I don't know what it is; and my brain tries to process it as specific fears, and it comes out as all sorts of stupid paranoia, and I can feel it happening, and I try to stop it, but.

Candied ginger and chocolate: now that's the kind of prescription I like.

Cookie recipe would be great.

From:

vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com

Cream together:
1/2 cup butter (you can use marg but butter really is better)
1/2 cup each of white sugar and medium brown sugar, the latter well-packed;

Beat in:

1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla

Sift, and then stir in:

1 cup + 2 tablespoons all-purpose white flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Stir in:

1/2 cup (or more) of semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped nutmeats (if liked; walnut or pecan rather than peanuts, which are too strong a taste in this recipe).

Bake at 375 degrees (I'll have to look up the gas mark on this one; about 5, IIRC) for about ten minutes.

Yeah, crying all the time is normal for this much upset. You sound classically stressed and hormonal, which is not surprising under the circumstances. Moving house is hard, you have a new FT partner in your life, you're stopping the Pill with all that implies, you're trying like mad to make your life more sorted and straightforward, and it all happens at once, all the time. What's not to cry about? It's not stupid paranoia, though, the fluttery stomach and the incipient terror; it's mostly biology, and transient biology at that. It's a wave; ride it when you can, fall off if you have to, get back on, and ride it some more. It's nothing to do with you, yourself, at all; it's electrochemistry acting up in your body until your body re-learns what to do with those signals.

Sometimes I go for days feeling timorous, wide-eyed, angry, and vulnerable as hell; can't bear it when the people I love are cross with me. It's Not Fair.

From:

j4.livejournal.com

It's not stupid paranoia, though, the fluttery stomach and the incipient terror; it's mostly biology, and transient biology at that.

I keep trying to tell myself that, but mostly it just so doesn't help. :-( I wish my body would have physical symptoms for physical things. I'd rather be throwing up every 5 minutes than feeling like that.

It's Not Fair.

First bit of life-guidance (can't think of a word for it, not exactly "moral" guidance) I ever remember getting from my parents was my dad telling me "nobody ever said life had to be fair" -- the context was computer games that I was upset at losing. (Owen says it's stupid advice, and it causes Learned Helplessness.)

I can't bear it when he's cross with me, though, even if he's just snappish because I'm interrupting his breakfast with boring admin about supermarket shopping; and it makes it even worse to know that most normal people would have probably killed me by now -- it's unfair that I get upset with him even when he's being nicer than I have a right to expect. And of course once I've got upset, even if it's just the upsetness equivalent of an involuntary "ow!" when stubbing a toe, it's an instant endless downward spiral of "Don't be so touchy" and "but in an argument four months ago you said" and guilt and anger and accusations. :-(

From: (Anonymous)

(Too hurried to log in.) {{{{{ aw }}}}}}. Ow.

Bodies can be feckwitted, always mixing stuff up when we've categorised everything so neatly....

All I can say is that your arguments and elements of t'other's crossness and your devastation are terribly familiar, and that isn't meant to minimise what you're going through, just saying that it's familiar. YOu have invested a great deal in your relationship with Owen and it's new and it's bloody important. (I think one of my Dad's most wounding maxims was "You're TOO SENSITIVE." and 'II also upbraids me for being touchy and having the memory of an elephant about words not spoken or if spoken then never meant. Therefore one is an idiot for not recognising what's meant and what isn't. PEOPLE!!!!)

The cookies will help. Try them, try them, you will see.