Counting Gold Stars

It can be so easy to let a diagnosis become an excuse, and it can be hard to know when you’re just making excuses. Is my medicine really making me drowsy or am I just letting myself think it is? The power of thought is amazing, whether it be positive thinking or negative thinking. That’s how placebos work. That’s how psychosomatic symptoms work. But at the same time I don’t want to ignore the fact that I’m depressed. Much as I’d want it to, much as some people seem to think, depression doesn’t go away through positive thinking alone. And positive thinking can become an impossible feat when I’m in a low. When you switch between brain states it’s hard to remember what the previous one was like. I’m doing okay now, so although I remember that being anxious was a horrible feeling, I don’t quite remember the feeling. And for that I’m mostly glad, but sometimes it can be an inconvenience. Going to the psychiatrist on a good day often means that I forget to tell them about my bad days.

I still have anxiety and severe loneliness. Lately I’m just afraid being alone, I feel cut off from everyone, and yet I’m afraid to leave my apartment in case I have a sudden anxiety attack. I still get the feeling that things aren’t quite right, that things aren’t the way they should be. It’s nothing I could ever hope to explain to anyone, which is possibly the worst part about it. There was a passage in my psych book about Borderline Personality Disorder that I can’t get out of my head.

The foundation of the disorder, according to some writers, is a sort of “emotional hemophilia,” in which a reaction, once stimulated, cannot be staunched–the individual emotionally “bleeds to death”…and individual with this disorder is the psychological equivalent of a third-degree burn pation with no emotional skin. Even the slightest touch or movement can cause immense suffering.”

Somebody asked me if I cut myself so that I can feel. No, I told them, I cut myself because I feel too much. At least right now, this point in my life.

But it’s okay. I’m doing okay. I have 75 gold stars.