Just so you all know who you're dealing with here:
I used to think, as a child, when I went into the bathroom and the shower curtain was pulled, you know, for pretty, that there was a dead clown in the bathtub. I didn't really think about how it got there or how it got dead, but it was dead and it was bloody. I can still see it in my head. And yes, mom, I will be expecting your call tomorrow. Now you know why I wouldn't take the clown lamp for Kitten's room.
The scariest scene in any movie is from The Serpent and the Rainbow, where they bury the guy alive and he wakes up and he can't scream or move and a HUGE SPIDER WALKS OVER HIS FACE. It hiked my arachnaphobia up to red alert for years. I actually had panic attacks over spiders for the next 2-3 years.
I once came home and the door was unlocked, the TV was on, but Pants's car was gone and in about 30 seconds I had decided he must be dead in the basement and the burglar had taken his car. I was able to talk myself off that ledge fairly quickly (been in therapy awhile by that time), but still had to check downstairs. Turns out he ran to Burger King.
When I am especially ill or lacking in medication, I get extremely paranoid. Pants can say something innocent, like, "We really need to clean," but I hear, "You are such a lazy slob, why can't you get off your ass and clean this place?" The human brain is truly remarkable.
I've gotten better at weeding through the paranoia and anxiety, but if anyone wants to know if anti-depressants really work, here I am. A functioning human being who gets up everyday and goes to work and is raising two (hopefully normal) children. All thanks to pharmacology and more than a year of intensive therapy. I will live with this my whole life, but I'm living with it. Not existing. Living.
3 comments:
OBVIOUSLY pregnancy-hormone craziness doesn't/can't hold a candle to actual mental illness. That being said, man, am I looking forward to getting off this whacked-out hormone roller-coaster. Granted, the whole post-partum thing isn't a barrel of fun, either, but still... Gotta say I've got a lot more empathy/ sympathy/ understanding/ ADMIRATION for those who deal with this kind of thing all-the-time. (That's including you, Syl! I TOTALLY get your paranoia paragraph and sometimes get the same sort of misinterpret-ty mindset.) Yay for you for living so well with it!
Sheesh. And I thought I was paranoid. Oh wait. I am. So very much the same way you are, Syl. What is the worst possble thing that could have happened given the information I have? Or really, the bits of information I don't have. I have to say that I hate the fact that there isn't a deadbolt on the backdoor of your house Ms. Huis. It creeps me out. The worst thing always seems to be my first thought.
And I am grateful for the pharmacuticals that we have today, and also grateful that I have only needed to be on them for a year or so and then gotten off them with therapy. I hated the side effects of the stuff I was on.
You're the best,Syl. Just so you know who you really are.
You're not alone. I couldn't even begin to explain what happens in my head. But its close to that. The fact that you recognize it is the part that even without medication, makes you one of the sane ones. Or at least thats what they keep telling me.
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