What Trust Doesn't Look Like (TW-domestic violence)

Saturday night he had gotten drunk and violent. He threw things and threatened to hurt me. He was acting literally like a monkey, jumping on top of the couch and tearing the cushions off. He cycled between yelling, rocking back and forth on his hands and knees on the floor crying, throwing things around, and talking to me in that low, threatening voice. He also spoke to people who weren’t there.

I tried to help him. I had never seen anyone like that before, much less someone I loved. I tried to talk to him, soothe him, and give him something to throw up in. But he threw it back at me. When he went to the bathroom, I ran quietly up the stairs and away from him, shutting a door in between us. I didn’t want to leave because I still thought somehow I could help him. But I didn’t go back down until the morning. His grandmother actually asked me to leave, but I said no,  I want to help him through this. Then she gave me some blankets for the couch and went downstairs and talked to him sternly. I thought that I wish I could talk to him that way and have him listen to me.

On Sunday morning, I told him what had happened and he couldn’t remember any of it. He readily promised me that he wouldn’t drink at all if we were alone together and he would just drink with his friends.

Monday night he brought three double-size beers over to my apartment. I don’t know what they are really called, but I know that each one was the size of two normal beers. I was in shock and fearful.

“You can’t drink those here.”

He was immediately angry, “it’s just beer! It’s not that much!”

“You promised me you wouldn’t drink when it’s just you and me.”

“I had a hard day at work, I deserve a beer!”

“But there are three of them, and they’re gigantic. Just have one, ok?”

“I’m a grown man.”

He sulked and acted like a two-year-old for the next few hours, while I was a ball of tension, wondering what I should do if he got drunk and violent again. In my own apartment there was nowhere else to go, no one else to help me. I could put my cat in a carrier and just leave, maybe go to my parent’s house and hopefully he wouldn’t destroy too much of my stuff. 

Finally, we got to the moment when he might have one of the beers and I said, “You know, it’s just that you promised. You gave me your word that you wouldn’t drink and now you’re breaking your word.”

I knew that would get him, since he’s always going on and on about how honesty and ‘his word’ is so important to him, even though he was still able to cheat on me and go out with other women while I was still lying in his bed. 

He didn’t have any of the beers and he took them with him when he left. A good idea, since I would have poured them out. 

Before we broke up, we had a couple other uncomfortable nights with his drinking. Once when he put his arm around my neck in what maybe his drink-brain thought was affectionate but felt to me like a choke hold. Thank god for that self-defense class. 

He told me once during these awful nights, “The biggest reason I know we won’t make it is because you don’t trust me. You’re afraid of me.”

Well, asshole, maybe you should behave like someone who can be trusted.

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Time for a Change

I’m having a hard time this morning. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a billion times;

MY JOB SUCKS!

I hate coming in on a Monday morning and having absolutely nothing to do. Now, some people say, ‘oh, I had nothing to do today,’ but what they mean is they had light work all day. They probably came in, read some emails, did a little work, made some phone calls, maybe paid some bills. In reality they got some shit done.

I came in to work today to nothing. Zilch. Nada. Nary an email or phone call or item of business to attend to. So what do I do? Well, I haven’t had breakfast so I go get a bagel and some water.

Now that’s done. Now what?

Let’s do facebook, see what people are up to. Okay… self-indulgent status updates… pinterest stuff… a few political items… interesting, attention moving from the fact that a friend is blowing me off now even though she posted a status asking if anyone wanted to do a writing project with her and I volunteered, to a poorly written article about ISIL fighters returning to the US; this probably isn’t healthy and is certainly mildy upsetting. Let’s do something else. 

Maybe I should read a book? I’ve got my kindle with me so I’ll download something.  There’s that Jim Butcher book I’ve been meaning to read and I’ve got a few extra dollars, I’ll buy it on Amazon. Crap, my kindle’s not charged and I don’t like reading books on a computer screen. So what now? Time for lunch? I just had that bagel, I should probably wait a little longer and it’s only 11:30 am. WTF am I going to do for the rest of the day?

This would be an ok thing to happen every once in a while. But, this is my life way too often and it’s not good for productivity or my state of mind. I was actually feeling good at home this morning, which is something that hardly ever happens. But once the ‘work’ boredom set in, I was nearly immediately lethargic, depressed and uninterested in doing anything. You know things are bad when you are so bored you find yourself just staring at your desk because there is just nothing at all to do. There is only so much internet content you can consume before your brain starts to feel like mush. And, after 2 ½ years of this job I’m sick to death of it. I want to feel like a real person again.

At least we have laptops and I can leave my desk in the awful dreary basement to come upstairs where I am now and try to write a bit a feel like I’m not a zombie. Plus, at my desk I have to sit next to Bitchy McTraitor, and even though we have professionally ‘made up,’ I do not like how she is always very aware of what I am doing and I still do not trust her. Her presence stresses me out so I’ve come upstairs to see daylight and write and be alive.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about applying to graduate school to become a therapist. I know that might be a bit shocking, and it might be scary and maybe even abhorrent to some people. But, I have been thinking about it since high school and it was actually my first choice before becoming a biologist. I decided not to go get my PhD because I wanted to marry that asshole I was dating and I thought it would get in the way of having kids and whatnot. 

But, now that biology is off the table due to my injury, I’m thinking psychology again. And, there are other psychologists with mental illnesses, the most famous one being Kay Jamison who was a PhD with bipolar I. But other than her, there’s even a school of thought that believes that you can’t effectively help someone through something unless you’ve been through it yourself, and when you’re in school for psychology you’re required to go through therapy yourself.

I probably will think it through to death, I probably already have. The fact is I need more from my life and I’m feeling that one thing my breakdown last spring taught me is that this life I’ve been living is not sustainable. It’s time to stop giving myself to things and people that are absolute shitheads, like this job. 

I have an endgame plan. Next February, if nothing else, I will apply to become an occupational therapy assistant. It’s not an occupational therapist, so there are fewer restrictions on things like GPA and prerequisites, so I’ll have a better chance of getting in. Also, it sounds like a pretty kickass job and it makes decent money. My only concern is that I’ve been out of school for a few years now and I’m not sure if I’ll be entirely interested enough to learn all the physiology I will need. But, I’ve decided that in February I will HAVE to learn it, come what may. Because I need a change. Unless, of course, I get accepted into a school for psychology where I’ll be fascinated by the material and it will therefore be much easier to learn it. But, psychology comes with a few other anxiety points;

• I need a therapist myself. What if that fact compromises my patient care?
• What if I am triggered by the things my patients say?
• What if my social phobias interfere with interacting with patients?
• Will the competitive nature of graduate school be too stressful?

I don’t know how to find the answers to these questions. I mean, I think I would be a kickass therapist. I am compassionate and a good listener, I’m able to identify important details in what people say and use them to help people understand themselves and others, I am able to see things from other people’s point of view and help people understand each other, I am passionate about issues such as domestic violence, proper mental healthcare, and women’s issues. I am also a careful scientist and enthusiastic researcher. I have already worked with participants in a psychology clinical research study and the PhD candidate I was working with said I didn’t seem nervous at all working with them and that I did a good job. 

Yea, I think it’s time.

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Dealing with Dr. Dickhead

A few posts ago I wrote about was what I was thinking before my appointment with my psychiatrist in February, when it had first been brought up that I might have Bipolar Disorder. That appointment was a turning point in my treatment.

For the worse.

This is what I wrote in my journal afterwards;

Cried a lot after meeting with Dr **** because he was dismissive and very disrespectful. I cried on the way to work and tried to text G and when she gave me a very PC answer and said she couldn't talk I cried more because it seemed like no one was treating me like a human being. At least the girls in the psych office were nice and helpful. I was so frustrated. Dr **** just wanted to write me a script for lithium and not listen to anything I had to say. But I sat in my car when I got to work, waited until I could speak clearly, and called my insurance company and got a referral for a new psychiatrist. I called their intake line and hopefully they will call back soon. I will not see Dr **** anymore and I want a second opinion on my diagnosis from someone who won't tell me “I don't want to talk about that anymore” when I’m trying to list my symptoms, or “you're OCD, people with OCD tend to worry a lot about new medications but you'll just have to trust me” and “every medication for bipolar causes weight gain, do you want me to give you a different medication that causes weight gain?” when I brought up legitimate concerns about the lithium.

I'm an intelligent person and OCD or not, I deserve to be listened to when I ask questions, not dismissed! And no, I will not just trust you, you old, white dinosaur!

…..

He constantly interrupted me, told me to stop talking, and raised his voice to me several times. Here I thought psychiatrists were supposed to be good listeners or at least caring individuals. Not Dr Dumbass. I got the feeling I didn’t even need to be there really except to pick up whatever script he had decided on for me. I basically had to shove information down his throat, but trying to force him to hear my symptoms was like trying to search for extraterrestrial life by hiding under a blanket and trying to ‘think’ my message to the stars.

After talking to my friend and some people from my online support group, I decided it was best to go with Dr Fucktard’s treatment plan for the time being, although I dropped my Cymbalta dose more slowly than he said to. Cymbalta has little white beads packaged in a capsule and there are 200 beads in each one. I took 60mg and I needed to taper off to 30mg, so every 5 days I took a few more of the beads out of the capsules. I went down an eighth of the capsule at a time, and then once I got to 30mg, I started taking the Lithium. 

I have a mail-order pharmacy but I wanted to be sure to talk to a pharmacist when I got the Lithium because there are some warnings online about it that worried me; such as the weight gain, making sure to eat salt, drinking more water, and not sweating??

Since I could get a sixty-day supply from Target for $10, I just went to Target and not through my insurance for at least the first supply of pills I got, so that I would be able to talk to the pharmacist. I suppose I could have called my mail-order pharmacist but I’ve never really done that before and I preferred something this important be discussed face-to-face.

So far, officially, I have Bipolar Disorder, OCD and Social Phobia. 

I also believe I have Anxiety, Dermatillomania and Binge Eating Disorder, although I wasn’t able to talk these over with Dr Loser, since he was done talking to me.

I think when I fall hard into depressions it’s usually because I’ve slipped and there was no one to catch me. I talk a lot about how lonely am I and it’s really key to my disorder. When the people who are supposed to care for me and help me fall through, that’s when I fall down hard.

 

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