Depressed and Needy

Dear public, online diary,

I am totally miserable. I am depressed, lethargic, behind in 2 of my elective classes, and I have become infatuated with two men out of my reach.

I am experiencing a nasty chemical imbalance that makes me feel sleepy 24/7. I sleep 10 hours or longer. I sleep through my classes. I make it to a few classes, come home, and fall asleep again. I have no drive to leave bed. Bed is warm, bed is comforting, bed is not the hostile outside world.

I am leaving my current out-patient treatment and going back to the County out-patient center; the same one that turned me away so many times despite my florid psychosis. I am very agitated about being moved back there. It makes me sad. It makes me fearful. It makes me utterly pissed off that I have to play nice with a system that sent me to the brink of suicide.

I  hate my depression. At least when I am manic I can get a doctor's note excusing me from class. Depressed, I cannot even get to the doctor because I sleep through all the appointments.

When I am depressed, unlike some people, I tend to seek out other people for sexual comfort. I use contraceptives and I get myself tested before and after each new romance, but I really wish I could not feel this urgent need to possess another person's body.

I go on sprees. Shopping sprees, food binge sprees, sex sprees...I think I am just seeking a little extra serotonin through self-gratification.

Now, here I am again, depressed and needy. I try to stay away from men but it's so hard. I tend to seek egoist males who try to dominate me.

For instance, I have developed feelings for a professor of mine. I've had him as a professor for 4 classes already. During his office hours he has this way of correcting me that is a little different than the way he corrects others. With the other students he smiles and says that their ideas are a possibility but....[here he gently tells them to consider another idea]. With me he just sternly says don't do that, no. I wanted to do a paper on topic 'y' and he told me to do it on topic 'x'. End of discussion, he said topic 'x' and his tone was final.

This is not just my imagination. As part of my therapy for my paranoid symptoms, I learned to look for evidence that a concern of mine is valid. So, I looked for evidence. I have listened to how he interacts with the other 15 students in my grad class and compared it to his manner of discourse with me. I have observed his politeness, his gentleness, his openness to the ideas of the other students. With me, he sternly tells me no, don't do that, don't believe that theory, don't listen to the author of the textbook; listen to me. As an undergraduate he singled me out during class to ask how I was doing on my in-class assignment. I smiled and nodded, shuffled my papers, but he saw through me and told me that the material only got more difficult and to come to office hours for help. I knew he was doing me a favor, but I felt like I was getting preferential treatment. I feel like he doubts my intelligence and that he feels the need to act like a father and tell me what to do. I actually like it. I like his controlling behavior. It makes me feel like he sees me as a distinct person, even if he thinks I am a lesser person than my peers. I crave his attention. I like being chastised for my outlandish and improbable ideas. I like that he has a PhD and that he is smarter than I am. It makes me feel like I should obey him, like I should play the role of an intellectual submissive.

Lately, he has been ignoring my emails and this forces me to seek him out in person after class. He then tells me to see him during office hours instead because he has someplace to be (perfectly understandable, but because of my attachment to him I would much rather he just reply to my emails with an email). Just last week I sent him an email about my paper (now about topic 'x' and not my chosen topic). He didn't respond. I let it go for 5 days. Then, I just decided to go in and see him during office hours. I was nervous and uncomfortable because I am so infatuated with him. I did not sit down in the chair in his office and instead started to ramble on about my paper while standing up. I really wanted to leave. "Sit," he said. "Sit, sit." I felt like a pet dog. I sat. We talked. He loaned me a book. I thanked him and left. I think I just nailed what has been bugging me about this student-teacher dynamic. I am his pet dog and that is what I want to be.

Depression Despite 200 mg of Zoloft

I have been in a depressive state since the end of spring break back in March.

When I get depressed I sleep excessively. I have been known to sleep for 10-12 hours when I am depressed. It's not exactly laziness. I just cannot get out of bed. I feel fatigue, lethargy, and emotionally exhausted when I do roll out of bed. I often wake up at 6 in the morning, make an effort to brew some coffee, but I somehow find my way back under the covers of my bed. I then black out until around 10 or 11 am. It is ridiculous.

I am taking a mood stabilizer twice a day and 200 mg of Zoloft once a day. I have been on that dose of Zoloft for about 4 years now. I think my brain has built up a tolerance to that drug and it now barely makes a dent. Still, if I were to suddenly go off of it, I would go into a depressive withdrawal. People generally don't think that anti-depressants can cause withdrawal, but it does. The withdrawal isn't as bad as barbiturates or hard-core drugs, but there are major mood disruptions caused when you go off of anti-depressants.

Right now, I am restless and feeling low and pretty crummy. I tend to escape into cyber-space and miss class when I go into severe depression. I have been managing to to make it to class lately but I am so behind in my programming class I intentionally skipped the lab class because I fear being scolded by my professor (she would totally tell me I don't understand the data structure chapter because I haven't come to class). When I am in a depressive state I get really sensitive about comments and body language. I always feel like I am not doing good enough, that I am a failure, that people think I'm wasting their time.

I have to enact my WRAP plan. That is short for "wellness recovery action plan," which was invented by mental health counselors to get patients from relapsing into severe mental illness. Basically, it's a booklet you create outlining warning signs that indicate you are going into a period of mental illness. Accompanying this list is a set of actions and thoughts that help you re-ground yourself so you don't go into a downward spiral. I have a WRAP plan for mania and paranoia but I totally neglected to make one for depression.

I will give you an example of my WRAP plan for mania

> I get insomnia when I feel manic // --> Go to bed even earlier and just lie there instead of surfing the web until I feel sleepy.
> I start thinking that people know I'm nuts // --> Remember that the constitution protects me from discrimination based on mental disability. Write a list of arguments for and against proof that people know I'm nuts.
> I can't concentrate to do my homework // ---> go to the library, get a private study room where there is no noise and distractions, and work for as long as I can. Leave. Walk around for an hour. Come back, study.

This works pretty well for me. I cannot believe I forgot to make one for depression! I think I will do that today. Then off to the library to lock myself in a room to study programming.

I feel sad. Today is 4/20. That is national marijuana day (not a federally sanctioned holiday, but still). I cannot smoke marijuana because I am broke and also because I live with family who do not allow marijuana in their house. I have been clean 90% of the time for at least 3 years. I tend to go back to smoking pot every summer for a month or so, but I really feel that pot would be beneficial to my major depression right now. Yes, you can disagree with me. You have the right to think that pot should be illegal (it's not in California due to majority vote, but federally it's a shady area), but I have the right to disagree and yearn for the plant.

Sigh**

Holiday Blues

It is a little hard to write when my personal life (being a former mental patient) bleeds over into the national political hot zones. Bear with me, I'll try to keep it on point.

Christmas is very difficult for me. I think I have emotional issues from my childhood that never quite went away. I struggle with depression during this time of year. I feel so dumb, being 29 years old and still feeling like bursting into tears whenever a Christmas carol plays on the radio, but what can I do? My therapist is away on her holiday vacation.



The thing that sort of fills the void is online shopping. I shop like a new book is the thing that will keep me whole, keep me centered, keep me sane. I must be the only one who thinks that a book on multi-variable calculus is a life-raft.

Two of my five classes have posted grades officially. I have an A and a B. I already know I got 2 more A's that still have to officially post, and the fifth class is a toss up between an A and a B. I didn't fail miserably. I did not have a nervous breakdown. I did not wind up in the hospital corridors, cowering in the corner, mumbling about telepathy and thought projection. Instead, I am a little blue, but sane, nonetheless, sitting in my grandmother's room watching a guy talk about blueberries on PBS.

Blueberries.

Electra's Complex 101

If you don't like confessional-style, soap opera lives please click "next blog." 

This blog is my way of coping with the loss of my cousin to suicide. We lived together for several years before he moved back with his mother and I hadn't seen him for 2 years when I got the news from his father that he had committed suicide. I don't mean to start off on a sad note, but it's important that anybody who reads this understands that I'm coming from a place of mourning and confusion.

In the aftermath last week, I binge ate and regained 6 pounds I had lost through a vegetarian diet and exercise.I couldn't help my cousin and it seemed like I couldn't help myself either. I stuffed BBQ chicken into my mouth at the park where our two families met to mourn. I gulped down bites of rice. The next day, we got pizza and I ate 3 slices for lunch and 3 slices for dinner. My new, healthy lifestyle went out the window for about 3 days.

I've always had issues with food; I'm an emotional eater, or dieter, it depends. When I lost one of my uncles to a tragic accident at the age of 18, I stopped eating. I sought counseling at the University psych services, and though the intern there flaked on me, he did give me some good advice: find something you can swallow and eat it someplace safe. That turned out to be chicken nuggets with me eating them in the very back of the fast food joint, out of sight. I went down to a size 2.

I came back to my home town after losing my housing accommodations and began to party like crazy. Sex was my new issue. I had lots of it. I ran around to various house parties, met up with random guys, and slept with them. My friend was disgusted. My mother was horrified (we're a traditional Mexican-American family).  I was on the verge of  a nervous breakdown from all the sex, drugs, and rock n roll.

Then I lost it and took a bunch of pills. That was my first experience with a psychiatric hospital. I was labeled bipolar, drugged up, and released. Later, a more specific diagnosis would be given to me: schizo-affective disorder, meaning when I get manic, I stop sleeping and I wind up psychotic. I'm not a bad person, I've never been in a fight and I'm not delinquent. I'm just nuts. Hence, the Electra Complex (Also, my father left before I was born so I figured this would be a good title.)



Please stay tuned for part 2. My mother is home and I have to go buy some Coriander powder and zucchini.
Thanks for reading, and I hope I haven't depressed you too too much!