there are doctors there are hospitals there are specialists there is medicine there are systems in place so people do not have to suffer and be tortured under their own chronic pain daily and yet. they're all fucking inaccessible to the people who need it most!!! to what I would argue is most disabled people!! I'm so fucking done with the medical system.

Whelp I just had a full-blown emotional flashback that led to a panic attack and some realization. Feeling better now. I was, some time ago, dismissive towards my therapist’s recommendation (which was counter to my psychiatrist… yes I have both… a bowl of crazy soup and I ain’t getting any younger so I decided to jump in with both feet) …recommendation against starting antidepressants. She warned me that they could keep me from feeling the full weight of the pain I’ve carried with me since childhood, therefore blunting my ability to work through it. At the time, I was in a very deep hole and the symptoms of my depression were preventing me from crawling out of it. I just couldn’t make it to work on time and I was put on a 5-day probation at work - as a server in a restaurant, with an M.D. - but I was unable to do anything more cerebral or use any of the knowledge I’d gained from my degrees because I could barely even finish a simple thought. Going from literally performing compex surgical maneuvers and overseeing complicated patients’ ICU care and having what it takes to be a great doctor to barely holding on to a waitressing job, the first job I’d even had for 2 years other than super bs part time sit there with your thumb up your ass get paid under the table work, which itself was infrequent… that made me really lose hope. I thought, whelp if this is my life I really don’t want to be here for it. I guess offing myself would be a bigger burden to my family than having to support me or else I’d gone through with it. This was the second hard wave of suicidality I’d had to endure and I knew I needed medication to get through it this time and my week of forced vacation, I went and picked up a script and started it. 

There are large chunks of time missing from my memory of about 3-4 years: starting from the time that memories from my childhood that came back to me due to circumstances outside of the scope of this post but that i’ve written about before. I know the memories are real, because they took place in a house I’d only seen as a very young child (4) and suddenly I could describe exactly how the house looked and how the furniture was arranged and where the windows were and I asked my mom if I was right and she confirmed that I was… that was a huge breakthrough she finally admitted that some of what I was saying MIGHT be true as opposed to me just going through a hard time personally and wanting to bring her down with me so I had “made it all up.” “it all” being things she wouldn’t even let me finish saying before completely losing it on me with aforementioned accusations… evidence in my “favor” I’d say. 

At any rate, I did the right thing by going on antidepressants. I’m a tutor now and I’ve even worked up the cojones to START my application to be a professor at a nearby university teaching genetics. I have hope now and I’m not trying to milk bricks to find it. Hope and suicidal thoughts do this fun routine where the one disappears while the other, in its absence, steps in. But the thoughts are gone and they’ve mostly stayed that way. I can handle the random wave that passes like a wave in the sea but I cannot withstand the prolonged incessant storm.

But today…. I had skipped a couple days of antidepressants because I lost my health insurance and getting it back is going to be complicated. I don’t know how I’ll pay for them and I was in the mood to just sleep for a few days anyway so I figured I’d just skip taking them. Maybe that was depression talking, in retrospect. Yep it sounds like something she’d say.

My boyfriend has been extremely stressed and trying to find a place to move into and the stress has been keeping him from really having an active role in the process, which I understand completely, so I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to find a place for him. Finally I had a breakthrough and found the more or less perfect place for him, and its with a long-time friend of mine who I know he will get along with very well. I was so damn excited it put me in a glorious mood and I called him to tell him the great news but he had just woken up and instead of being happy about it, he was pretty blasse and I tried and tried to throw more reasons to get excited and he poked holes in them but told me that he just needed to wake up some more and that he just couldn’t feel excited about it. 

I took it very personally. I felt hugely unappreciated. It triggered a very upsetting emotional flashback for me and I had half a mind to call my friend back and tell him to forget about it and find another roommate. I said some things to my boyfriend that weren’t fair and I thought even worse things. I came completely unraveled. I convinced myself that he didn’t care about me. I wanted to sabotage everything. 

But I realized that the strength of my emotions were out of proportion to the situation by quite a bit, and that’s when I realized I was having an emotional flashback. 

You see, I have repeatedly invited people into my life that - due to their own fucked up shit, no doubt - really only wanted to keep me close for the things I could do for them. Not out of flagrant masochism, just out of not knowing any better because how was I supposed to know how I should be treated when I wasn’t being treated that way at home? I had some really shit friends over the years who I’ve done a lot of really big favors for repeatedly. Favors aplenty, but never appreciated. Only accusations against my character if and when I wasn’t available to them. I can say that for the way my mother has treated me not all the time but enough of the time. 

So the people who are truly my friends and who truly do care for me: god damnit I appreciate the ever living fuck out of them! I realized today that scarcity of being appreciated makes it so that if I consider someone to be in that very special circle of dear ones… and especially (!!!) as a romantic partner… a whiff of unappreciation perceived by me feels like a betrayal. I wonder if I’ve been duped again by some user. Thoughts rush into my head and make a seemingly solid case for having been duped once more. It makes me want to sabotage the entire relationship and it makes me feel like I must not matter to them at all. 

*Cue panic attack.* 

Thank GOD I know enough about my emotional… ways…yes, wiley ways at times… that I was able to see the forest from the trees in a pretty reasonable amount of time and explain what was happening and apologize for throwing daggers because really I was responding to another time and place and series of events. Actually, a whole host of them. Deep down at the very center of my heart, past all the layers of bullshit and layers of happiness and layers of suffering a few more happiness throw in the existential dread layers.... is something I've only truly seen and felt through therapy: overwhelmingly painful emptiness. I have to suppose that meeting this quite excruciating emotional pain is what keeps most people from seeking therapy. I welcome it because I know feeling it is therapeutic, and the only thing more horrifying than that, is the thought of having to endure this loveless mediocre and melancholic life forever. That is what really scares me, and I'll run from it in any direction I can, even if that direction is a panic attack while sitting down during a shower.

As for my boyfriend, I really upset my boyfriend pretty badly too. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him so upset before. I hate that that had to be a casualty of the war I’m fighting in my head, but he is understanding. And I, apologetic.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF TUMBLR, THIS IS WHAT A TRIGGER ACTUALLY IS. NOT LIKING WHAT SOMEONE SAYS DOES NOT IN ITSELF CONSTITUTE A DAMN TRIGGER #DIETTALK, UNLESS YOUR PARENTS ABUSED YOU BY STARVING YOU (making you eat healthier btw is not what I’m referring to here), IS NOT A TRIGGER DO NOT BASTARDIZE THIS WORD JUST BECAUSE YOU WANT TO FEEL LIKE YOUR SUFFERING IS AS LEGITIMATE AS ANYONE ELSE’S YOU’RE AN ASS FOR MAKING THIS INTO A SPORT OF THE SUFFERING OLYMPICS FOR EXAMPLE THE WAY I GET PISSED OFF ABOUT THE BASTARDIZATION OF THE WORD TRIGGER HERE ON THIS SITE IS NOT IN ITSELF TRIGGERING IT IS MADDENING THERE’S A WORLD OF A DIFFERENCE

Had to get that off my chest and provide a lil all caps public service announcement @ the end give it some spice