The Pains In My Head.

Owwww. I have a horrible, ongoing sinus infection that is making me want to puke up elephants.

Suffice it to say, I am somewhat depressed today. La di da! The weather here, all gray and clouds and lightless, doesn't help a bit, and combined with the sinus infection and piles of work to do, keeps that frown just where it is.

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the last time I was happy. Really happy. It was January 2004 and I had recently quit my job as grants manager at a museum in Los Angeles. I couldn't stand many of the people I worked with, and after having enough of IT, I gave my resignation with 3 days notice. About a month prior, I had ended a friendship that had grown to something more because the commitment to having something more was not reciprocated. In the span of 4 weeks, I made the decision to take the GRE and go back to school for my Masters degree in Social Work, a discipline that I have always liked and now love. I remember in January, jobless and nearing broke, I was sitting in my room in my shared house in Los Feliz, watching the movies that I love. In particular, I was watching "Finding Nemo" -- I must have watched it 3-4 times in one day. The part where Dory says the following really hit me:

No. No, you can't. Stop! Please don't go away! Please? No one's ever stuck with me for so long before! And if you leave, if you leave... I just, I remember things better with you! I do! Look! P. Sherman, forty-two... forty-two... I remember it, I do! It's there, I know it is, because when I look at you, I can feel it. And-and I look at you, and I... I'm home! Please. I don't want that to go away. I don't want to forget.

Its that last part that got me. About home. About being lost. I remember that I cried like a baby for about an hour and then I felt...relieved. Maybe it was chemical. But I remember that for several days after that I felt very light, very free, as if something had been lifted. I remember saying to myself "Wow, is this what feeling happy actually feels like? Is this what I have been missing out on for so long?" And the realization that I had been missing out on a feeling that felt so good, so wonderful and so pure made me cry even more.

The Power of Now.

After much hemming and hawing, I've picked up Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now. Of course, I've done so in my perpetual quest to figure out how one reaches happiness, not as a moment but as a plateau. I've only read a couple of pages. We'll see what I think when I'm done.

It is interesting how difficult it is to broach the subject of mental illness on a personal level with our friends and family when it is everywhere in popular literature and culture. Just from the first pages of Tolle's book, I could tell that he was someone suffering from depression and suicidal ideation. How he goes about "treating" his mental illness is basically the subject of the book, as he tries, in my opinion, to teach others how to treat their despair, clinical or not, using the power of now.

Using the power of now is an intrinsic lesson for anyone who has gone through cognitive-behavioral therapy. Many people who are depressed experience the neverending cycle (or recycling) of "bad thoughts", usually related to a traumatic past. While such memories are not in an of themselves "bad", they grow to be detrimental because they cycle over and over again into our thoughts of the present and how we cope with situations we might presently find ourselves. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is useful in helping a person discern between the past and the present and learning to use new coping mechanisms and behaviors when dealing with the now.

For many people, including myself, it is difficult to stay in the now. The past often creeps up on you like a ghost -- silent, unnanounced and sudden. Just today I was standing in the kitchen talking to J., about to make a cappucino when we started talking about my parents relationship with my many extended family members. As a member of a large immigrant family, I have a lot of relatives, cousins in particular, who are close to my age and struggling in poorer, less developed countries. My parents were the first of my extended family to immigrate to the United States, and subsequently are doing well financially as the result of their investment timing and risk-taking.

My parents are the unofficial bank of our extended family members and it has come to irritate me how often they are hit up for money, particularly from cousins just a little older than me. While I sympathize with their financial position, especially since they live in an unstable, poor country, for years I felt resentful that much of my extended family turned a blind eye to the domestic violence, physical and emotional, that plagued my parents relationship for over 20 years. In fact, many of my family members advocated to my mother that she stay with my father despite the violence.

Standing in the kitchen talking about this made me so upset I started crying. Not about the "now" of my life, but because of the past and its curious, unwanted presence in the now. I felt such a strong resentment to my cousins, such a sense of hypocrisy, that they would dare reap the benefits of a union that took away my childhood. That they should benefit from my parents' staying together while I and my brothers have born all of the cost.

It is hard to forget these things sometimes. The pain is palpable, real and very much in the now. While there might be joy in the present, I can see how it can be obscured in the now. For while there might be the power of now, the power of the past still is a force to be contended with.

This is what you get.

This is what you get.
This is what you get.

Had another interview today.  This time for a TA position, helping students
WRITE, of all things.  If there was anything that I could do while asleep, it's
that.  We'll see.  I need a job.

I can't believe the summer is over.  And at the same time I'm glad it's over.
I've always hated idle time, even as a kid.  I hated hours of nothing structured
to do.  I wonder if my parents ingrained that in me -- never being able to
really relax.  I could be sitting and look physically unproductive and yet my
mind was whizzing.  I recently worked on a grant.  High pressure work. I
actually enjoyed if for once.

How sick is that.

I'm one of those people that could get addicted to work.  Not because I like it.
Or is it?  An addiction is something, a hobby, a predeliction, an affinity,
taken too far.  But is there something wrong with taking a love for something
(not a person though) too far? Like if I really love donuts, do I really need
intervention? Seriously?

The Karma Police

The sun is shining and the weather is close to perfect here in Seattle. We start school (finally) on Wednesday, or at least I do with practicum downtown. I have a million and one projects going and a million and one ideas zooming in my head. And all I want to do, of course, is to just shut myself in my room and close my eyes and just wish everything were different. I walk around the house muttering to myself "I hate everyone!" Why?

I just don't know.

Depression is that insidious, I suppose. Can strike at the oddest, most irrational times. Even when your own rationale is saying that there is no choice in this situation other than to be happy happy. But the chemicals in our brain, or at least my brain, work to their own rationale I suppose. The mind, in otherwords, has a mind of its own.

I have a lot of bills. Struggling to find a TA or RA position for the year. I'm so broke. But these shouldn't be enough to strike me down completely. At least under normal circumstances. I'm just feeling weakened and petrified about the future. And I have a massive headache since yesterday that just won't go away. In a situation that you can't describe, what/where/who is there to turn to???

At least there is Radiohead.

The Noonday Demon.

I've spent the last month and a half switching to a new medication. I was on Effexor for 4 years and am now on Prozac, which I had been on before Effexor and during the early Effexor days. Is there a change? I hope. Prozac can take up to 7 weeks to take effect and the weaning off of Effexor can be quite painful. Luckily, Sharon (my psychiatrist) weaned me off slowly and I didn't experience a lot of the flu-like symptoms one can feel when you miss a dose of Effexor. I haven't had another session of EMDR and haven't seen my therapist since July. Our last meeting kind of pissed me off -- she told me about getting out more, travelling, etc. Good advice and heard it all before. But not so practical and not so easy, at least when you are living with the noonday demon.

Depression is insidious and eats away at your head. What is even worse is to have people know this, and make disparaging comments that reflect only their ignorance, immaturity and lack of understanding. It is a struggle that many people are fortunate not to endure and they must take solace in that...and keep their mouths shut in the process.

I'm depressed today, not in that bluesy kind of way that makes you want to shut yourself up in a dark room and wish the world to hell. Moreso the kind of depression that makes you want to smash windows and your own face if you could.

Now I see the need for padded rooms in the psyche ward.

Ending to Begin again.

Rainer Maria Rilke, in his Requiem for a Friend wrote the following:

We need, in love, to practice only this:
letting each other go. For holding on
comes easily; we do not need to learn it.

I've read these words many many times and each time it comes to mean something very different. These words have comforted me through losses that have become too countless to remember. These words have taught me the hardest lesson that I have ever had to learn. And these words have fallen on my eyes and ears like spears, reminding me that the pain that accompanies loss is as inevitable as the loss itself.

I received a wedding invitation in the mail today to a good friend's wedding. Ashamedly, I felt enourmous disdain when I tore open the envelope and felt the guilt of not wanting to attend this joyous event. I am in no mood for joy and in no mood to celebrate. What pained me even more were past thoughts and discussions that my friend had "settled," settled for a life of comfortability and predictability with a woman who was ok, not so bad, and very nice...but not the stuff of dreams. Perhaps I just don't know the whole story, as the story of anyone's happiness is as nuanced as the story of my own lack thereof. But I can't help thinking, when I look at my friend's somewhat forced grin and the smiling, beaming round face of his bride-to-be on their wedding announcement, that sometimes we just get tired of seeking, tired of trying and tired of losing.

These past few weeks have been ones of pain. In many ways, I feel that I've been living the lives of past mistakes. In a fit of rage, J. lost control one night and grabbed me. Of course, it caught me by surprise, even though this was the second time. I still can't believe that it happened, especially to me. To ME. Of all people. It just seems to improbable. I should know better. I should have seen it coming. I should have prevented it. I should leave.

I still can't believe it happened, for J., like all of us, isn't all darkness and strife. He is good and kind and caring as well. But the grabbing. And the other acts of violence perpetrated against himself and walls and tables. That is a part of him as well.

How do we separate the mistakes that people make from the people themselves? Is there room for forgiveness, even when boundaries are crossed?

My therapist has helped me put together a safety plan. A safety plan. Of course I know what that is, I told her. I've worked in domestic violence for over 10 years. Of course I know. Of course I know. Of couse I know.

The pain of knowing is all too real.

Although this isn't exactly what happened to my mother, it feels very close to me. It feels strange that the scenarios that I had remembered so clearly through my EMDR sessions are almost coming to fruition, with me as the actor. What would my mother have done in this situation, in my situation? Well, I know the answer. She would stay. She would stay, knowing that it should have been the ending. But my mother, weak in spirit and lacking in courage and fight, could never see herself beginning again.

But can I?

Second Session

About preparation: While my therapist was fairly throrough in prepping me with the ins and outs of EMDR, I'm not so sure if she adequately armed me tools to deal with the "aftermath" of a deluge of fairly bad, often painful memories. In essence, EMDR makes the past come present, not just momentarily, but rather opens a sort of "door" where thoughts, images and emotions from the past will continue to make their way through. Unbeknownst to me, this is what has been happening and the last week has been a veritable rollercoaster of seething emotions and flashbacks.

But how could my therapist have adequately equipped me to handle a past that she herself has no familiarity with? No way to judge the depth of the trauma?

I noticed that this past session went over 15 minutes and I remember that when the clock hit 3pm and we still were not done with the closing relaxation exercise, a dread came over me. Usually the therapist will look at you and say their trite "Well, our time is up for today." But at least this therapist continued past the 3pm dreadline and into the relaxation exercise. Very professionally responsible.

But, in all honesty, the night that came after this session was a bad night for me. I don't know exactly where my head was at, but I felt that I was back into the little-child-mode of not being able to do enough, to be good enough, for the people around me. This is definitely a side-effect of EMDR that I was not prepared for. To be young again, but in that way that wasn't all that good -- with the same insecurities, easy to upset, vulnerabilities worn on the sleeve and everywhere else. There was a horrible moment where I turned to self-harm, slamming my arms and hands against the wooden headboard, giving myself bruises on the outside and bruises on the inside. Why? I don't know. Because I'm not good enough, or so I believed.

We shall see.

I was waiting at my doctor's office today (my medical doctor) and the receptionist had the following poem by Rainer Maria Rilke attached to her wall:

And once I took between my two hands
your face. The moon's light fell upon it.
Most unfathomable of all objects
beneath the overflowing of tears.

Like one who is willing, whose hushed term,
almost was like a thing to be held.
And yet there was no being in the cold
night that more endlessly escaped me.

O there we flow smoothly to these places,
penetrating into the small surfaces
all the waves of our hearts,
pleasure and weakness,
and to whom finally do we proffer these?

But to the strangers, who misunderstood us,
to the others, who we never found,
to those servants, who bound us,
winds of spring, that with this vanished,
and to the silence, the one who has lost.