Here I Am

I'm dying to sculpt in marble. Dying. Positively actively deceasing.

So, I asked my parents if I could get a christmas present consisting of these tools and these classes at the Art Students League.


Isn't that exciting? And I'll probably be taking some good art history classes at SVA, since I'll be a FINE ARTS MAJOR! Can't wait for that.


God I'm so moody. I get depressed so easily, trapped in a gradually derailing train of thought which often ends in, "Well, I'll just kill myself" or sometimes, "Well, I'll just cut off contact entirely." Sometimes those are the easy answers. It's extreme black and white thinking, something we talk about often in therapy and DBT.

I hate being like this. I hate being not sane. Radical acceptance. It's okay to have a pity party for a few minutes and then move on. The whole concept of sanity is incredible to think about, as always. Einstein said, to paraphrase, "Insanity is doing the same things over again and expecting a different outcome," so sanity must be learning from your mistakes, by his logic. I do learn, but I still keep making the same mistakes. I'm trying to learn as much as I can through indirect methods like DBT and therapy, but I can't learn from my mistakes directly since I don't understand fully why I make them, or even recognize that they're happening.

Pity party finito.

Jessica's performance yesterday was just so gorgeous. There will be a webcast of it up some time, maybe a couple days from now. I'll post when it's up. But seriously, it was absolutely astonishingly beautiful, the program was perfect, enthralling. I didn't want it to end, and I teared up six times.

I also took a ton of pictures, and while we were at the zoo and such I got a bunch of pictures taken of me. I'll post them here when I get them.

Anger

I've been awash with anger today, and can't sleep. I tried to distract myself with Lost, but as soon as I was done I just started up again thinking about every single person I know and coming up with exactly what it would take for me to say that would really deeply hurt them. I'm posting here because I don't want these things in my head just in case I lose control and they slip out.

I'm just furious, at everything, and I know right where it's coming from. Today I was treated without an iota of trust by someone who I was depending on. He didn't listen to me, and I didn't have a chance to hear him out to see if he has a good reason, and I can't see him again until Monday. I know what's best for me, and when I'm not in a position to make good decisions I do something about it, like check in to a hospital. What's triggering this anger is a lack of basic trust, stemming in part from my constant need to make a case for myself. People presented with the cold facts of my life too often treat me like I'm subhuman. I've watched people dropping their capacity to empathize with me, like blowing out a candle. I've been forced by circumstance and humiliation to try to talk to them until things changed. These memories have a lasting effect on me, they aren't going away.

This guy had better be right about what he advocated, but I need him to sell it to me. I want it so much, it would make things so much easier for me, but I can't operate like this.

I need to sort out my trust issues, badly. I'm hurting myself the most here, by all this rumination on other people's insecurities.

New Life

I've set up an entire new life for myself.

Two classes, Animation and Life Drawing, on Monday and Tuesday 3-9pm.

Five days a week of group therapy.

• 'A' Group every morning, 10-1230, which is 7-10 people my age, male and female, who have similar issues to me. They have addiction problems, trauma, depression, anxiety, and seem like they're really able to understand some of the things I'm going through.
  
• 'Anxiety Management' once a week, 2-430, which teaches bunches of ways to cope with anxiety, including breathing exercises and stretches, nutrition, exercise and various skills
• DBT Group (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) twice a week, 2-430, which I haven't been to yet. I do like DBT though, it's essentially a toolbox that helps you reconfigure the way your mind handles various situations and help you to approach occurances in a healthier way.
• Substance Abuse Group, which I haven't been to yet but likely will have to attend. I have to speak with my sponsor/coordinator to figure that out. It's strange that Jack uses the term 'sponsor', which is so clearly related to AA/NA. If I do have to go to that group they urine test me and apparently administer breathalyzers, and if you get a positive they do a swab test. Not sure what happens if you're back on the wagon, but I know there are two groups, one for people with less than 90 days and one for more. I don't think they'll have as bad consequences as there were at the Realization Center, which yanks you out of all your other groups and tosses you into all Relapse Recovery groups full of court ordered wife abusing 45 year old assholes.

I have a therapist who I see once a week, and I meet with the Disabled Students coordinator weekly as well.

Also, Wednesday nights I attend an NA meeting. Well, I attended one last week, and I intend to attend one tonight. The people there are really great. I'm just .. well, super freaked out by it all.

The upside of all this treatment is that it's all free to me. My therapist is paid by the school, and she's also a great help as a social worker, setting things up for me. The Columbia University Day Treatment Program is paid in full with no deductible by Aetna Student Health, which happens to be the only insurance they take. And NA is free, clearly. With the classes, that's all done in loans.

I'm way too busy now, though. I can't really deal with the fact that I have to be on a train every weekday at 9. It's like having a 9 to 5 job, and as worthwhile as it is, it's mentally exhausting to me. And they're trying to make me change my diet up, which is costing a lot more because apparently peanut butter as my only protein isn't healthy, and they think that my diet of mostly carbohydrates is contributing to my poor mental stability.

It's very overwhelming. I can't even recognize my life anymore. NA? Day program? Where is this coming from? Seriously, I've had my life uprooted again, and it's hardly recognizable, again. This is too much change in too little time, just like the hospital was. I have a hard enough time accepting the fact that I have any form of addiction much less mental illness - it's surreal to apply those words to myself. It somehow doesn't seem honest, like people are all rushing to judge me or help me and in doing so I've lost my sense of who I am once again, so I'm just going with it. I'm not able to own any of those words yet; I've been close, there have been moments where I have reached a sense of acceptance, radical or not. But right now I just feel too exhausted by all these new responsibilities, and I want to go to a bar and get drunk instead of going to the NA meeting tonight. No one will check up on me if I don't go. Lucia might be disappointed, but not really. The little crowd I played poker with last week might wonder where I am since I said I'd be at the meeting, and they seemed to want to play again.

I think right now I need to just get up and go, while I can convince myself it's worth the trip.

New blog, new everything

Today I start at the Columbia University Day Treatment Program, I'm not sure what group I'm going to first, but in the afternoon I'll be going to an anxiety management group I think. Or that might be starting next week. I got a phone call yesterday that outlined the rough treatment schedule but it was too confusing to follow, since I think they wanted to get me in early and then stabilize the schedule as groups become available over the next two weeks.

I'll be going five days a week, which is a lot. Like, a lot a lot. But that might be good; structure can be.

Yesterday I went to my first drawing studio class of the semester, Advanced Life Drawing. It looks like it will be great, but I couldn't handle it, I dissociated and derealized hardcore when the male nude came out at around 7:30. The class runs from 3-9, so it's going to be tough staying .. well, together, for that entire time. Seeing the male nude model triggered my derealization after having spent the entire class prior to that one foot out the door just trying to convince myself it was worth staying instead of just freaking out. Gaffney, the professor, saw me staring vacantly at the model - I had sort of hyperfocused in on the guy's leg, which had these bizarre muscle movements going on since he was holding a tough 5 minute pose - and he said I could take a break if I wanted, so I did and I sat in the bathroom for a few minutes before coming back and trying to draw again. It was very strange to draw in that state, none of it mattered, I just made lines and didn't care about them at all, didn't care if it was nowhere near accurate. I stopped lifting the pencil when I finished making marks. After a few minutes I stopped even looking at the paper or the model, I don't know what I was even looking at. I just doodled with my eyes unfocused until the model broke pose and I packed up and snuck out of class an hour early.

Today, depending on my Columbia schedule, I may be late for animation class. I don't really care, but Marty, the prof, seems to be a little unsure of himself and I don't want him to think I'm blowing it off. If I'm late it's because of an anxiety management group, which to me seems far more important. I plan to talk to him about maybe working it out so every other week I'm an hour and a half late. It's another six hour class, it shouldn't matter that much.

Those are the only two classes I'm taking this semester, and I'm glad, because I don't think I could handle much more. I'm really, really unstable. It's so awkward to accept that I am at all mentally ill, but a century ago I know I would have been placed in a hysterical women's ward under lock and key. I got close to that when they brought me to bellvue, which was the first time I got to try out handcuffs. What I remember of them wasn't so great, which is too bad. I've always been curious what they'd be like with sex, but the thought of it totally freaks me out now.

That reminds me. Last night I had this song stuck in my head after I left class. It's funny to me now, but last night 'stop freaking out' was like a voice on repeat in my head and I kept trying to change it to something more soothing like, "it's okay" or "calm down" or "bejuyfhakjhdsskjkasfkj" sorry, just started mashing keys there. I hate having to deal with this. If I could just drink it would be so much easier to deal with.