I was listening to NPR after the latest school shooting in which there is the obligatory reference to mental illness... and when the announcer said, “unlike governor... did not call for measures to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.”
Set aside for the moment the horror of the event. The ghastly mundanity with which we can speak of school shootings. Of course this is hard to hear. Of course it shreds my nerves and leaves sadness bleeding through my veins. But... The Mentally Ill!!!!! I was furious. Shaking. And I spent the next two hours frantically scribbling notes for the editorial I am going to write. Illegible pencil scratches in between typed lines. Curling up one side and down the others Racing thoughts and slithering nerves. The Mentally Ill? Do they also refer to The Cancerous or The Domestically Abused or The Physically Ill... But this is not the post about that. That was days ago. Thursday. And I don’t have the time to sort out the twisting graphite lines and straighten them into a coherent narrative. No doubt this failing is because I am one of the mentally ill. Interesting that I have not been so affected by lack of “person first” language. Usually it just seems like careful, politically correct speech. But it this is not about that. This is post is just this: a post. Not doing well and I know this. Have eliminated FB from my phone and I won’t touch my computer. Partly because I simultaneously want and do not want contact with people. And I don’t want to see if I post and no one replies. And I don’t want to read in to much and psychoanalyze any responces or non responses. So I pulled back. And I don’t check my email. And I am nervous about interacting with people in person. More and more. You say hello... do you mean that? Or are you just saying it out of social obligation? I cannot handle conflict. I shut myself in my room and locked the door when the children were bickering about picking up the living room. I texted Spouse to say that I was never coming out. By then all the kids were laughing and playing and singing. There is no winning with me when I am like this. I want to be alone but not really and I know the isolation is not great for me. But I don’t want to have to put on a show of normalcy... I don’t want people to not notice that I am gone but I don’t want anyone to call attention to my... me, I guess. And I’m afraid that I have been so absent from my own life that this withdrawal is not noticeable to anyone but me. Friday I felt terrible for going to a book club at school because I hadn’t read the book entirely. So today I read the proposed book for next month plus 2 others just in case... reading is a gateway drug and now I cannot stop. I want to watch all 4 seasons of SKAM and write down word for word what the characters are saying in Norwegian. I can listen to it now and have memorized the English translation. I think it would help my Norwegian language learning. I dont know know if I am more afraid that people will read this or that they will not. I am living in a state of anxious fear. Some of that racing hypomnic thought, but none of the elation. I asked for this. (See recent post re:longing for hypomania) I dont want want to talk to psych NP when I see her on Tuesday. I’m afraid she will tell me I need to go talk to The OFP and I don’t have a thesis prepared. Tomorrow somehow I will bring myself to go to the largest indoor shopping mall in the United States so I can watch my children play piano. It feels like a terrible plan. It feels like I should put on fully-beaded chain-mail armor to be well prepared for such an outing. Can’t be a mess. Gotta be a supportive parent. Equatorial actions: asked for help from family 220mg lamotrigine I gotta say I have not noticed a dramatic improvement in depressive symptoms since increasing from 200mg. Comments are closed.
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K. BuchananQuaker, teacher, parent, |