Explanations for Absence, Pt. 1

As I wrote in the previous post before last:

It has been little over two months since my latest 'crash,' as I call it. Due to a variety of reasons, mostly involving the culmination of events that have occurred all throughout this past year, I have experienced an extreme panic attack. This attack has proven itself to be greater in impact than previous ones I have faced, due to the fact that for once I do not maintain a degree of grandiosity and fantasy with which to serve as a leg to "fall back" on. As such, it has been only gradually, that I have made strides to resume normal functioning.

It is very hard to extrapolate upon this previous statement in order to qualify just what has been going on in my life for the past several months since I last returned to Ithaca, NY, from my latest backpacking tour. The reason for this difficulty in writing is that I have been plagued with an ever-present nervousness that makes the simple task of sitting at my laptop and typing up a storm, to be more difficult than it usually would be.

Under the circumstances, I look to excerpts from various letters I have written in order to provide the information relevant enough to clarify my state of affairs.

I've been having this terrible problem with depression and anxiety attacks, which has left me sleep disordered. Things have been worsening, and I am very frightened about it, because I have had a difficult time finding treatment. It has wreaked me and has made me unable to work and I can barely leave the house or socialize with people.

It’s a very long and complicated series of events that led to my breakdown, mostly to do with shifts and changes in interpersonal relationships. It's usually much easier to avoid letting breakdowns crystallize when there is a very busy schedule to fall back to. My problem right now is that for the first time, I broke down at a time when I had little to fall back on. Basically, due to some social strains and other issues, I came down with a very sudden crash that has sent me out of whack, both mentally and emotionally. And I isolated myself for two months. I'm anxious to find a new job, but my doctor feels it may not be a good idea to rush it so fast, since we are only making baby steps to improve my health problems.

To tell the truth, I am not sure if it is some sort of post-traumatic stress or just depression or what, but it is a major crisis. I'm doing my best to work on the letter, but it is difficult to write because every time I try to, my mind shuts down from not wanting to deal with the pain of having lost French Woods.

I began my involvement with my new doctor. He has put things into terms I had never considered. And the new medication is really helping out a lot. I realize that I have been wallowing in dementia for a very long time. So long, that I'd come to adopt it as truth.

I have been taking Ativan and Abilify. They keep my mood stable and my obsessions down, while still allowing me to retain some semblance of emotion. It remains in the early stages, though, there is much work to be done, as there are moments where the obsessions wax and wane. The meds are not perfect, however. They seem to cause insomnia, and I have to take sleeping pills to counteract the side effects.

My relationship with this new psychiatrist I started seeing is very positive right now. He is different from the ones I have been used to. He shows genuine empathy and sympathy because he has, himself, suffered from many of the same mental illnesses. He feels that my biggest issue is not only depression, but also severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. This news comes as something of a breakthrough to me, as no other doctor has ever made that observation about me before. But he recognizes the symptoms, as he has experienced them as well. The Abilify and the Atavan have both been doing very well at curbing my obsessions, albeit gradually, although, they make it hard to sleep and cause nausea and fatigue. Still, I have been feeling less crippled by fears and delusions when I wake up in the mornings. I realize now, as my doctor has made it understandable, that most of everything that I have been rambling about lately is in fact, dementia stemming from my obsessions, and that the more fear can circulate in the mind, the stronger the delusion.

This sums up why I have been somewhat delinquent in my blogging for the past couple of months. I am writing, at this very moment, having taken several mood stabilizers and anti anxiety medications, so as to muster up the concentration in order to write this entry alone. It isn't easy.

As I have stated before, major depressive crashes are nothing new to me. I have been used to their recurring catastrophic events for years. This time is different, though. As I wrote before:

This attack has proven itself to be greater in impact than previous ones I have faced, due to the fact that for once I do not maintain a degree of grandiosity and fantasy with which to serve as a leg to "fall back" on. As such, it has been only gradually, that I have made strides to resume normal functioning.

Three years ago, when I found myself stuck in a small rented apartment in Cortland, NY, with nothing to tide me over but some audited courses at the local SUNY, I was a basket case, the epitome of clinical depression. I had been spendin. my days and nights at first, oversleeping and letting my body waste away. I had one attribute that kept me chugging along through the pain. That attribute was my strong sense of selfish emotional need, and the insatiable sense of constant infatuation that went with it. One only take a look at the expression captured on my face back then, the misery etched across my face, my eyes sunken from inadequate sleep:

With this neediness came an insatiable desire. I swore I would travel to Australia next year, fulfill what had been my dream for so long.

So I indulged in fantasy and obsessive delusion in order to reinvent myself, create a new identity.

Before I knew it, where the previous year I was wallowing in misery in Cortland, I was now in Adelaide, caught up on a constant High, in all the excitement and action and freedom I could ever dream of. But most of all I'd found a new community to latch on to. One where no one knew me, except for as the identity I created for myself.

To Be continued…