I’ve tried hard over the past couple days to find some perspective and sort the puzzle pieces. It seems there are many but the edges are hard to find. I catch a glimmer and they are gone. I see parts of the picture come together with no reference. What am I looking at? Are the pieces I’m seeing too distorted to truly cast light on whole thing. I still find myself struggling and fighting to just bring everything back together again. For some semblance of normal or okay. There is nothing okay right now in my head. Far too many moving pieces and nothing concrete to hang on to. Session with Beatrice this morning just emphasized that point. It is a terrible feeling to be so adrift. Is this all just backlash from the psychopharm? Is this a natural progression as my energy and emotion return after a brutal frozen winter? Is it some combination of all? The farm and the family issues remain as they have for a long time. They are nothing new. My struggles with my partner are not new either. What is it that shifted everything so hard into chaos?

Beatrice asked if I really thought Virgil had manipulated me. Well, that is tough to answer. Are my thoughts based in rage and not in reality? Am I seeing something that truly isn’t there? I struggle to answer those questions. If we take her out of the picture and look solely at the choices and the options as they exist for me I can say without a doubt it is. To take his words and see them as reality. I have a disease. X drugs are the gold standard of treatment. Without said drugs I am losing. I am giving up and passing on the best shot I have at stability. Note I am paraphrasing here. I won’t pull his words into this blog as I don’t think he ever intended for them to be read by anyone but Virgil. Taking that at face value I no longer have a choice. In my life I have tried hard to be responsible. I go to sessions on time. I show up. I interact in as much as I can on any given day. It is never easy for me. I learned at 20 there is no option. You comply with treatment or you will succumb to your issues, disease , demons . And so began this journey. I do like control. I have a personality that doesn’t lend itself to passivity. I learned to be that to comply with the role of patient. I was so hopeful once. I dreamed that her little rectangles of paper might lead me to a place of wellness. That I might be free of this darkness. But years passed and soon I dreaded seeing it. With each change and each failure I felt that hope slip away. My work and effort felt meaningless each time I felt a hostage to my emotions and my behaviors. I understood the harm these drugs could do and I understood that most would not work. I took them anyway. I fought to extinguish my anxiety and fear when a new med was started. and so it continued. After the ECT I learned it wasn’t just the meds I had to fear. None of these lessons helped me. Each instilled more fear and distrust. How can I reconcile the fact that someone I love and believe will protect me is the one on the other end of this onslaught. How can I possibly believe I have any choice when I know there is none as the psychopharm pointed out. Along this route I became a slave. I want to believe that in my compliance and responsiblity I am owning my care, and determining my path. I’m not. I am just going along and abiding by a course that is deemed the right one. I lost ownership of my life the first time I strangled myself. the first time the depression became deep and dark enough to obliterate all reason. I lost it when I earned a ICD9 code and a diagnosis. As years went by and episodes came and went I drifted farther and farther from me and closer to hopeless. To earn a lifetime of toxic medications is to mainline that hopelessness. It laps constantly in the back on my mind. with each day and each shift it calls into question is that alright? too much? too little? too sad? too agitated? too reckless? It bends and obscures the ability to find the middle ground and to truly figure out where okay is. Without compass points it is an ever losing battle . So the meds enter the picture because they might still the endless tide shifts so okay can be ascertained and marked for future reference. I don’t know where that reference is and I sure don’t have a fucking compass. I have wandered amongst deep anguish and pain for so much of my existence I cannot contemplate nor dream of a reality without it. It has shaped me and it has destroyed my ability to navigate rough seas. My personality tells me to row the fucking boat into the waves POINT AT THE WAVES AND YOU’LL BE OKAY. THE BOAT WON’T SINK while my conscience tells me to jump overboard-THE BOAT IS SINKING. YOU’RE GOING TO DIE. JUMP. There is no middle ground and there is no compromise. As the seas of emotion level out I see glimmers of who I might have been. I catch sight of the strong obstinate woman. But she is worn down and weary now. While once she might have argued and fought, today she looks down and sees only the chains. There is no losing sight of them. Virgil may try to she always has to convince me I am something I am not. When we met I may well have been but she’s long gone. She doesn’t come round for long and always loses the battle to a foe we know so well. I should be raging and fighting to get her back. I should want nothing more than to medicate myself into that person. I don’t. I have no faith in them anymore. I guess I have no faith in you anymore. I know you each will argue and point out all the well times. All the progress I have made. The growth I have sought and gained. Don’t you see it makes no difference. My thinking is as distorted and dark as it ever was. Only difference now is I can see it, hold it, identify it and ultimately stagger from the impact. Before it was always there and I could not tease it apart. I couldn’t name it and all its accompanying emotions. Now I know each. I see each problem and each obstacle. I feel each. There is no ignorance and there is no hiding anymore. I don’t feel any stronger. I feel like a hostage.

There is so much I cannot even begin to explain. so much I feel at this point. I want to trust that life will once again improve. I want more than anything to believe you will once again find some magic and banish this anguish. All I know is I must once again concede. To relinquish control to even have a chance. Can’t you see that the cumulative effect of that is wearing me down? To give in just so I might not give up. Isn’t it all just giving up in the end? I’ll take your drugs. What difference is there now? He was right. I just need go along and comply because to refuse is only to harm myself anyhow. My fear has no place here, only my ability to yield and agree. If there is anything this journey has taught me it is to let go. I’m all yours. I will swallow them whole and not complain. I will accept it and swallow my pride and my strength with each and every one. I’ll be a good patient just as I have always tried to be. yep I know, that’s just a sentence away from I’ll be good, please don’t leave me. and not ever to the likes of that guy. I see it now. I see it.