Mental Illness Melancholy

I CANNOT THINK STRAIGHT!!!!!

And this makes me want to cry.

In this very moment I feel so out of sorts that I want to bawl and laugh hysterically while pounding my head against a wall until the only thing I see is blood.

I am not okay!

Life abroad did not “fix me” and now is threatening to become a big problem for my currently untreated mental health issues.

Everything seems to be going wrong.

I know perception has a lot to do with how one handles stressful situations; however, this is not a case of mind over matter.

I’m scared.

I don’t feel like “myself”. Whatever that may mean.

I guess what I mean to say is that more and more I don’t feel in control of myself.

It stresses me.

Which only scares me further because the more stress I’m under the more unpredictable my responses to occurrences in my life may become.

In comes my high-stress job of teaching ESL to young Korean children in one of the most disorganized and dysfunctional work environments I’ve endured.

I was so proud of myself when I originally felt a change in mental climate back in November and managed to make it this far without losing it.

Of course I acknowledged that I was fighting off a bad mood but for the most part I did not let others know too much about how I really was feeling. This led many people to commend me on how well I was dealing with the stress at work. This led my peers to compliment how I seemed to be navigating the stages of culture shock.

And all that has gotten me is lack of support now that my composure seems to be crumbling.

I have even shared with a few people that I have a history of mental health. They don’t believe me or perhaps they just don’t recognize the severity of what could come if things don’t improve and soon.

I’m not even sure which illness is the culprit for the symptoms that I’ve presented with recently.

Bipolar disorder seems to be the constant theme in my posts about mental illness; however, in case I have failed to make it clear that my anxiety isn’t simply a symptom of my mood disorder, I also have been formally diagnosed with GAD.

So many things have gone awry at work during the past several weeks that I would prefer not to distract from the topic of this post by listing them all. The fact of the matter is, it has occurred to me that I am employed by a school with very questionable business practices.

Things have gotten so out of hand that I even fear that my employment and livelihood here in this foreign country are at stake if I refuse to be treated like an indentured servant. The institute is unlawfully trying to bully me into working ridiculous hours, between 10 to nearly 12 hours per day with loads of administrative work and screaming disobedient kids. AND they are trying to scheme out of compensating me for the trouble. Not to mention imposing this confusion upon me only one week after paying me late with no explanation other than a half-hearted apology and play on my sympathy to please understand.

My nerves are shot.

One of the first telltales was when I noticed a drastic change in my sleep. Either I was restless because I was having bad dreams or so anxious about work that I would awake in a panic every 30 minutes or so afraid that I was supposed to be at work and had overslept. I began to grind my teeth.

The teeth grinding got so problematic that now the majority of the right-side of my inner mouth is chewed up. I have bitten my bottom lip, inner-cheek and tongue so terribly that I have difficulty eating comfortably. There is an ever-present coppery taste in my mouth.

Which brings about the next signal of trouble. My appetite is a mess. Either I am uninterested in bearing with the pain of chewing my food or my nervousness has ruined my appetite whether my stomach is growling or not. My gastrointestinal functions are all askew as well.

Lately I have felt in a bit of dissociative haze. Paranoid even.

I constantly feel dizzy and short of breath. I’ve lost sense of sureness of where I am and have been observed “spaced out” by my coworkers. I feel jittery and my hands quiver. I have had a persistent headache for more than a week now. I have had inappropriate responses to things: such as uncontrollable hysterical laughter when given another delivery of bad news or set of impossible tasks to complete.

I don’t know who I am right now.

I did not disclose mental health history (of course I couldn’t in the first place) so I have been trying desperately to hold it together. In doing so I have begun to lose a sense of self.

I have a grim history of not fairing well once I get too enthralled in the charade of pretending to be ok. Especially if doing so comes with the expense of being taken advantage of or passivity for the sake of avoiding confrontation.

I nearly broke down yesterday.

I had high hopes for this experience.

I may even be taking things a bit too personal but I feel wronged. In a matter of weeks the one thing that helped me battle the bipolar blues and homesickness, which was feeling pleased with my job, has turned into a complete shit show.

Which led me to cry out that I must be cursed.

Why does it seem inevitable that no matter how hard to I try to fight for my life, I keep having this happen to me?

Is it really possible to live a functional adult life with mental illness?

Or am I just buying my time before I become another anonymous statistic of the epic failure that is adequate acknowledgment of mental health disorders and the need for better treatment?

Why am I here?

Why is this my plight in life?

What do I do?

I am scared and am losing hope.

Normally I would say welcome to my world but instead I caution you…

Please take care of yourselves.

-dannie..peace-

Anxiety and Me

Palms are sweaty

My heart rate increases

The room begins to spin

As everything ceases… to matter…

Well at least for the time being.

I am more concerned with something

That has yet to materialize

Actually it may never be realized

But in this very moment,

It threatens to be

The destruction of me.

This is an excerpt from a poem I wrote about anxiety.

I recently contemplated how my blog efforts had been coming along. And I noticed that I focus a lot of my attention on the entirety of living with Bipolar Disorder as if my anxiety were only a symptom of an episode. I struggled with anxiety long before I understood what a psychiatrist specialized in. I can recall during my adolescence that something always seemed to be upsetting me, there was always something that I just could not “get over”. If the issue that bothered me went unresolved my mood and disposition would be greatly affected, sometimes for days at a time.

I could not understand why I needed to have all my pencils sharpened to the same length, or why I cried so terribly when I got my first B in middle school. Perfectionist is what my mom used to call me. But why was I adamant about avoiding cracks on the sidewalk?What was so scary about crossing railroad tracks? Was it really necessary for my mother’s children to be arranged by age and in chronological order when we posed for photos? Did I have to touch the door knob exactly 3 or 7 times to check that it was locked behind me before going out to play? And if I miscounted or couldn’t precisely recall if it was in fact locked why couldn’t I just let it go and have fun with my friends? I would think about it incessantly unless I forced myself to do otherwise.

How come I could not eat my chicken nuggets if the server got my sauce preference incorrect?

It has been nearly 20 years and I still cringe when I think of how I lost the spelling bee in the 3^rd grade. I obsessed because of the way I misspelled daisy! It is definitely not d-a-z-z-y! [gasp] Where did that even come from!? I knew that word! I had seen it many times before. I studied and practiced for WEEKS! So how could I get it wrong?

“Maybe your brain got it mixed with dizzy and you confused the two” is what my mother says to me as I descend the stairs from the public school auditorium stage. This futile attempt to cheer me up further embarrassing me.

I have not spelled it incorrectly since!

I was a failure at life.

At eight years old I was in a constant state of panic because I was not sure what I wanted to do after college; that is if I could even get in since I couldn’t spell.

I did not understand why my armpits sweated and tingled or why my palms would grow moist. Sometimes I could literally hear the thud of my heartbeat in my temples.

Once I grew older, I began to think that I was suffering from heat-related events as a result of inadequate hydration. As a kid I could not stand to drink water! I grew up outside of Miami, FL and spent a great deal of my time outdoors. So it made sense to me that my sweatiness and dizziness had to be the result of dehydration. But the symptoms would persist even while indoors, in places that had air cooling systems, so that hypothesis was quickly dismissed.

Anxiety can happen to any and everyone.

For those of us with chronic anxiety, it does not just go away. We do not get to simply turn it off at our will. It can happen anywhere and at any time. It’s not just about a spoiled brat wanting to get her way. It is more than the notion that the person affected is not mentally tough. Becoming overwhelmed with life and circumstantial situations can lead even the most cool, calm, and collected-temperament to experience an attack of anxiety.

Anxiety is a real problem.

But at least now I know that living with it is certainly possible.

PEACE