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So You Had a Bad Day

So You Had a Bad Day

I’ve been in a serious funk lately.  It isn’t any one particular thing but I have just been present and not present at the same time.  Long story short, I have been walking the “iffy line” for some time now.  This is due in large part to the fact that I don’t have insurance.  I don’t have any extra income and as a result I had to go off my antidepressants cold turkey about a month and a half ago.

I’ve suffered from anxiety and very degrees of depression most of my life. I was diagnosed with ulcers at the age of eleven.  I was tested for various disorders (ADHD, autism…) at a very young age because I always seemed stressed and anxious. I learned to cope, as best I could, with the roller coaster of emotions that guided my life. I didn’t really think about it because it was how I always felt.

In my late teen’s I was prescribed anti-anxiety medication for the first time.  I was having terrible anxiety dreams that would affect many subsequent days of my life.  I would become on edge, emotional and withdrawn for days or weeks at a time.  And each time it would finally subside I would be bombarded with a new round of triggers. The cycle became worse until finally it was discussed with my doctor who thought meds might help.

I hated and loved anti-anxiety medication.  It helped with the panic and seemingly irrational stress I was experiencing.  My mood regulated because I just didn’t really have any strong feelings about anything at all.  Unfortunately I was still feeling very alienated and isolated myself from the world.  After several months of locking myself away from the world, my anxiety seemed under control but it had turned into full blown depression.  I was lonely but had no desire to interact with anyone.  I just didn’t want to do anything.  Having been the primary caregiver for my mother and grandmother, who both needed some level of care for as long as I can remember; locking myself away and sleeping through my pain wasn’t a viable option.  I stopped taking the medication.  I had to help and I just wasn’t doing that.

I had lived my entire life without medication and I had been getting by.  I still worried about everything.  I still had dreams and incidents that would set my heart racing and my mind into chaos for days but I dealt with it.  I took care of my mother, grandmother and not soon after, my son.  Having something to do helped me stay focused. For years I just did what needed to be done.

I have always been very focused when something needs to be done.  I set myself a task and the world just falls away. This also made me feel very lonely.  My depression intensified but I still managed to do what I needed to do.  I get shit done.  I always have although I experience a great deal of personal pressure constantly.

In my early twenties I was prescribed an antidepressant for the first time.  I was trying to quit smoking and the doctor suggested I try a medication to aid me.  I quit smoking for almost three years but I hated the medication.  I stopped taking it after about six months.  It didn’t seem to improve my emotional imbalance at all and it intensified my anxiety about a ten times over.

About three years ago I decided I wanted to change some things about myself.  I was sick of being unhappy.  I was sick of being negative.  I was sick of not caring about myself.  I made a list and changed a lot of the things that I felt needed fixing.  I decided it was time to use all the crazy focus and drive to help me.  I made list and went to work on making myself better.  I changed my diet, lost weight, created a blog to document my progress and I started dating after a thirteen year hiatus.  As I began to see myself differently I realized that those feelings and stresses I couldn’t ever really accredit to one thing or another were things I needed to talk to someone about.

The day I went to talk to my doctor about my depression and anxiety was the scariest day of my life.  Since I had started my transformation, I had been seeing my doctor on a fairly regular basis.  He was incredibly supportive and saw me at least once a month to discuss what I was doing and monitor my progress.  He was so thrilled by the great strides I was making that he really made a point to support me as much as he could.

We had a long talk about what exactly I was feeling and which medication might help with my forward progress.  He prescribed me a medication.  It changed my life.  I often wonder how different my childhood would have been, my adult life would have been if I had only been honest about what I felt a long time ago.  That may be the closest thing to regret I feel about any decision in my life.

Right now, I am having flashbacks of what I experienced in my youth.  I have been trying to get by again. The anxiety dreams, the panic attacks, the roller coaster emotions and the damn numbness…  I can’t imagine how I ever made it 30+ years feeling the way I do now along with the death of two parents before my twenty-first birthday, teen pregnancy and abuse.  I’ve always been strong and I know that.  I appreciate that I have grown from my experiences but I just don’t know how I did it.  I don’t want to have to do it again.

I am seeing a doctor in two weeks but I wanted to explain my absence.  I am feeling very raw about everything at the moment and I just haven’t felt like doing anything.  I’ll be forty in a week (and a day) and I am looking forward to my party.  I have been trying to spend time with friends and just busy myself.    I hate not being here but I love you all and I swear I’ll be back really soon.

…and today is good day. :)

XOXO

The Narcissist

 

25 Comments
by trjensen on May 2, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Life, Me, One Of My Problems, Things I Can Do Without
Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Posted by trjensen on May 2, 2013

http://narcissistsblog.com/2013/05/02/so-you-had-a-bad-day/

A Rant: A World without Compliments

Maybe it is just me but in my little corner of the world compliments seem to have ceased to exist.  I mean it just doesn’t happen very often.  Me, being who I am, miss being told I look nice, that my outfit looks really great or even that a piece I worked on was amazing.  I once had a friend tell a mutual acquaintance that I was the last person on earth who required any sort of ego padding but I guess, although I agreed with her at the time, I do need to be complimented occasionally.

compliment

Praise comes so rarely that I actually woke up this morning trying to remember the last time someone said something to me that made me feel good.  I remember it clearly.  I had woken up late one Saturday that I had planned to walk to work.  The walk is a little over a mile and I had 45 minutes to get ready and get to work.  I wound up putting my make-up on in the bathroom at the library.  My hair was in a bun and I had taken a shower that lasted all of three minutes.  I felt gross.

Let me tell you about my typical patrons on Saturdays at the library before I get much further. I spend my Saturday mornings with a group of five to twelve kids ranging in age from 5 to 17.  I love those kids (most of them).  I often refer to my Saturday shift as “Daycare Day” at the library.  We read and play games.  I joke with them.  I mediate their squabbles. It is my favorite day to work.

Later that Saturday, when all of the regular kids were present, I was sitting on a sofa reading to one of my favorite five year old patrons when an older boy asked me if I he could take a picture of me.  “Why?” I asked with no small inflection of shock in my voice.  I felt gross and was very aware of the fact that I looked as gross as I felt.  “Because you look great Teri,” the teenager said. “You look marvelous.” His absolute sincerity made me blush.  It was the sweetest thing.  “Maybe you can take my picture on a day when I feel marvelous,” I responded.  “Okay’” he answered and turned his attention back to the computer he’d been working on.  I can’t remember the last time someone else said something even remotely that genuine. Out of the mouths of babes…

I am quick to compliment someone.  I always try to say something nice to someone when I see them.  I try to compliment them or praise something they have done.  I am never dishonest or insincere.  This exercise just helps me see the good in someone rather than focusing on the things I may not like.  It helps me see people in a better light.  I don’t do it with any expectations of reciprocation.  I just feel good about myself and who I am and I want other people to feel the same way.

Lately I have been feeling the strain of the absence of ego padding. It may just be an ego thing but damn if I don’t think it sucks.  Maybe I just miss my friends.  Maybe I am just trolling.  It is just feels like maybe we are headed for place where no one sees anything good in anyone else or just feels too superior to acknowledge it.

Has anyone else noticed this?

 

 

 

21 Comments
by trjensen on April 9, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Life, Me, Things I Can Do Without
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by trjensen on April 9, 2013

http://narcissistsblog.com/2013/04/09/a-rant-a-world-without-compliments/

Kicking the Habit: Part Two

This time you are really done.  You can’t keep doing this to yourself.  Why would you want to be with someone who makes you feel so bad about yourself?  Why would you let someone who is clearly having a negative effect on your life back in?

Sometimes you hold on to something so hard that it becomes like an addiction.  Regardless of the health of that relationship, it is often difficult to walk away from something you fought so hard for.  You backslide because having something to fight for is better than having nothing.  The euphoria of hope sometimes retards the progression of inevitable sadness you feel upon the realizing that nothing between you has changed; that it will never change.  You have been locked into your roles for far too long.  You both know your parts forwards and backwards.  You are typecast.

You often experience a sense of loss, in a relationship, even bad relationships.  Sometimes that feeling of emptiness is too much.  It clouds your memory of what really happened.  You justify wanting to reach out based your rose hued recollection of actual events.  You focus on the highlight reel.

When you break up with someone, when you have to cut them out of your life, it often leaves you feeling hurt.  But when you feel like you can’t outlast the pain remember it’s going to stop a lot sooner if you use all the strength you used fighting for something bad, to get back to good.  Letting the cycle repeat just means it is going to take that much longer for you to heal.

Often times the pain you experience after the end is more significant.  Those lessons teach us about our strength and perseverance.  That time teaches us what we need to know so that we can really love ourselves.  It is okay to miss the people you love.  How they felt doesn’t matter.  You felt something good and often you did it in bad circumstances.  That is a positive testament your character and you shouldn’t be ashamed of it.

Now you need to give that love to yourself because you need it more than anyone else.  You deserve it more than anyone else.  You can get past the pain, back to a place where you will want something good for you because you know you deserve it.

8 Comments
by trjensen on October 17, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Dating, Life, Relationship
Tagged , , , , , , ,

Posted by trjensen on October 17, 2012

http://narcissistsblog.com/2012/10/17/kicking-the-habit-part-two/

Turning Negatives into Positives

Every negative in our lives can be a positive lesson.  Every individual on the planet encounters negativity.  It might be in an individual, a situation or deeply rooted within ourselves.  The trick is to understand that even the bad things that happen in our lives are opportunities for us to grow and become better version of ourselves.  Even the most terrible events in our lives offer us opportunities to strengthen our understanding of ourselves.

When bad things happen it is to feel victimized but what has transpired.  We wonder why these things happen to us.  We often dwell on the pain overlooking what we were really meant to take away from a given experience.  We forget that even in the dark we have an opportunity to find the light.  We are an ever evolving species, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.  Everything we experience is an opportunity for understanding and growth.

While in the midst of some horrible or painful trauma we often find ourselves just trying to get by but even this demonstrates our perseverance and personal strength.  Often we find it difficult to see through the pain and see what opportunity we have to grow in these times of trouble but they are there.  Some things that happen to us are out of our control while others are entirely our doing but in both scenarios there are positives.

The positives are those opportunities, even in our more difficult times, we have to grow, understand and learn.  Every experience is an opportunity.  The better we understand this the easier it becomes to look for the lessons and opportunity for growth in our experiences.  This minimalizes our desire to cling to our pain, harbor animosity and feel victimized by our negative experiences.

The negatives in our lives become what they truly are, some of our more difficult lessons.  This often implies they are more significant and often more important things we need to understand.  Of course this doesn’t mean that we won’t hurt and suffer.  It doesn’t mean that we won’t or shouldn’t grieve.  What it means is that we have something to take away from the difficult periods in our lives and may find in conclusion, that these experiences were significant and necessary lessons so that we might grow and become better.

Bad things happen.  People are cruel to each other, often we are reckless and sometimes things seem so senseless that it is difficult to understand what learning opportunity could possibly come from an experience.   The truth is there is always something to learn and even the most difficult experiences exist so you may grow.  Every negative has some positive.  You just have to be open to it.

 

11 Comments
by trjensen on August 8, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Life
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Posted by trjensen on August 8, 2012

http://narcissistsblog.com/2012/08/08/turning-negatives-into-positives/

Would You Buy a Car Without Test Driving It?

I know that premarital and/or casual sex is fairly common these days.  I also know in some cultures it is really frowned upon.  I respect anyone’s right to wait to have sex until they are married or in a committed relationship.  The choice is personal and I don’t judge anyone for waiting but for me that just wouldn’t work.  I want to know what I am getting myself into.

Even before a committed relationship is established I need to check under the hood, take a car for a test drive and see how it runs.  Sex isn’t the most important aspect of a relationship but for me it is important to consider.  I am hyper sexual and I really need that aspect of my relationships to be good.  I can’t imagine ever committing to someone if that part of my relationship didn’t work.  To me, that is crazy.

I have been in one situation, in all of my “pseudo” relationships where I just let the fact that the sex was mediocre slide and it was because the feelings were there before I realized that things weren’t going to substantially improve in the bedroom.  I really don’t think I would do that again.  I am not really much of a teacher.  While I was in college I actually tutored writing for about three years and I sucked at it.  I just told them what they had to change and what they should write.

I don’t mind giving a little direction in the bedroom but if they just can’t seem to get it then I get real impatient.  I have been pretty lucky in that respect.  I just wouldn’t want to be in a long term relationship if we weren’t sexually compatible.  It is like writing.  You can teach them the rules but when it comes to talent you either have it or you don’t.

I have a friend who is not Christian who just got married to a man she has known for a very short period of time because her parents arranged it.  She seemed happy and excited about the wedding and I truly believe that that situation works for her.  She is also a virgin.  If someone were to come to me and tell me that I was going to marry a man and that I would not be able to have sex until we were married I think I would opt to abstain and be single forever.

I just can’t even fathom that.  That would be a nightmare to me.  I sound like a slut right now huh?  (I really don’t care.)  Having a physical connection is so important to a relationship.  I place more emphasis on it because I was really deprived of physical affection for the bulk of my life.  I need to want you.  I need to crave you and if we aren’t sexually in sync then the chances are I am not going to feel that way.

I read an article that said, “Women need intimacy to feel sexual, while men need sex to feel intimate.”  I guess I date like a guy.  I am okay with that.  I need the sex to be good.  Sex helps me feel connected.  That is the moment when I start thinking about whether or not we could have a future, I almost never think about it until we’ve taken a drive.

22 Comments
by trjensen on January 30, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Dating, Me, Relationship, Sex
Tagged , , , , , , ,

Posted by trjensen on January 30, 2012

http://narcissistsblog.com/2012/01/30/would-you-buy-a-car-without-test-driving-it/

Why You Don’t Go on a Date on Christmas Eve

I don’t know what I was thinking.  Okay that isn’t entirely true.  I thought maybe having a nice dinner with another adult would put me in the right frame of mind come Christmas day.  Aside from potentially cheering me up I didn’t really think my Christmas Eve date out very well.

This morning the hot European text me and asked if we could meet earlier or next week because his family’s celebration was starting earlier than he thought.  I said nextweek would be fine but then he said he still really wanted to go out , we would just have to cut it short because he had to drive to his family’s house. And we’d have to meet earlier than we planned.  We agreed to go at 4:00 p.m.

He showed up at my place looking cute as hell and we headed to a local restaurant.  Guess what!?!?!  It closed at four because it was Christmas Eve.  We decided to check another place across the street and it was closed to.  We decided to go to a little 24 hour diner to sit and chat for a while.   Trying to find a place had taken up nearly an hour of the two we had planned on spending together.

We sat at the diner, drank a couple of beers and talked.  We talked about college (he’s pre-med,) our work and being shot.  (He was shot during a robbery.)  It was a very brief but nice date.  We made plans to see each other again on Friday.  But I still feel a little silly for scheduling a date on Christmas Eve.  I didn’t really think that one through.

And yes, I kept myself to myself.

7 Comments
by trjensen on December 24, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Dating, Life, Me
Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by trjensen on December 24, 2011

http://narcissistsblog.com/2011/12/24/why-you-dont-go-on-a-date-on-christmas-eve/

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