One of my problems with my mental health is sometimes I feel completely all over the board. I know that this is a struggle even some people have that don't suffer from mental illness, but I do believe mine affects me in different ways. I am always eager to do anything and everything to help someone out, at times even when I know the things I need to do for me are equally important. I guess you could say I need to work on putting my needs first sometimes.
Last week was a really hard week for me, my son was in the hospital for five days and was diagnosed and treated for Guillain Barre Syndrome. The three weeks leading up to his hospitalization were pretty scary. I stayed with him because he was 2 hours from home and I didn't want him going through the treatment and more testing alone, just in case it was bad news.
This week I started the last half of my hep c treatment, and it has seemed to be taking a toll on me. I have been having bad headaches, upset stomach and pretty tired. I am glad though that I only have three more weeks and then it will all be behind me. I will find out in three months after I am done with the medicine if I am hep c free. It has a very high success rate so I am very hopeful.
Something else that has happened this week is I got a new mental health case manager, so I had two meetings with them this week. The first one was my case manager telling me I was getting someone else that is from this area, my old case manager had to drive one hour one way just to see me. I think I am going to be very pleased with my new one as he really wants to help me get out of my rv asap. Even though I have a roof over my head, the condition it is in I am considered homeless, so he is going to try and help me get something figured out. I am very grateful that he is going to try, although to be honest I am not getting hopeful because I have been trying for some sort of housing for almost five years, it's always led me to a brick wall.
I was hoping to hear an answer on my disability this past week and now I have to go see one of their doctors and that is not until the 25th of this month. I think it has kind of thrown me towards a down and depressed mood. Once again I have been very hopeful and just knew I would have my approval by now. I really need it! I don't think anyone really knows the truth behind my mental illnesses. It's my fault though because I am not a poor me kind of person, and I guess I feel that really talking to anyone besides my therapist would put me in that feel sorry for me category. Even then to be honest I don't always let my therapist know how deep some things go because I don't know what would happen.
I don't think anyone realizes my mental health keeps me trapped more than my physical health. It's hard for people to see that because it's not physical, it's an invisible illness as I call it. I have really been thinking about all that goes on with me, yes, I am in chronic pain, yes I have a few physical disabilities, but I most days can seem to push through it. Mentally, I am hardly ever ok, but I think I can fake it enough that no one can really tell. Even though I was in a mental hospital a handful of times before I was even seventeen, once I went home from the hospital it never was talked about. So it was like I programmed myself to seem ok all of the time and really my mind became a really dark place for me when I was alone. I really didn't have anyone to talk to about mental health, so I kept it to myself and that became what I did until I was in my thirties.
I feel as if I have been trying to convince myself even that I am ok, truth is I am not. I am in between therapists right now, my last one was not engaging enough for me so I requested for a new one and haven't been assigned one yet. So, as it stands right now I have no one really to talk to it about. I feel like I am failing in every aspect of my life right now. I am having a hard time focusing because I feel like there are so many things I need to be doing because I am getting behind, that I am thinking of it all at once, and I get lost. I have to reground myself but some days I am lost for an hour or two at a time. What I need to figure out is how do you explain the chaos in your head to people that you have always been able to convince you are really something you're not. Partly because I know I have the knowledge to do many things that is not the problem, the problem is my bipolar 1, depression, schizoaffective disorder among other diagnosis, but my ups and downs, concentration everything that is going on with me, doesn't tie into physical illness but mental illness.
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