Math is Hard, Barbie

I'm having a hard time putting things into words, really. Not a usual complaint, in fact most of the time I need to dial down the verbosity, but sometimes I do get stuck.

Thanksgiving passed by in a whir of Thanksgivinglessness. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. It was a harder holiday than usual, not least because the day before the big turkey day we had a discussion that contained the topic of discussion of leaving. Leaving for a longer term than my 24 hour hotel yearning. Leaving for a term that included a question mark.

And really any dining room table talk that includes the idea of leaving for any length of time is a bad conversation to have.

I guess we hit a new low. Somewhere along the way we had stopped communicating and started resenting. We didn't talk to each other with respect while arguing. We both needed some work. We converged on many layers of upset from many layers of life that piled on the table like a many layered dream coat.

The leaving talk was parked behind the scary shed, a place neither of us want to venture in the dark.

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Helen is the contributing editor for Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. She also covers Postpartum Depression. She writes daily at Everyday Stranger where she also chronicles life with her twins, Nick and Nora.

A Couple of White Helens, Sitting Around Talking

A group of people, lounging around on a worn out purple velveteen couch, suddenly stop talking.

"Hey, uh, anyone seen Helen?" asks one particularly brash character.

"Last time I saw her was 9 am, and she was popping herbal tranquilizers again," replies one of them in a matter-of-fact voice.

"Oooh, I love those," interjects one of them, an airy-fairy creature known as Helen Hippy. "They work so well. Takes all of your stresses, anxiety, and anger away."

"Yeah." adds Practical Helen. "As long as you don't mind taking drugs to clear your head, then sure. Whatever works."

"But she spends her days in her pajamas," Helen Hippy says nervously, biting her lower lip. "I'm sure that having babies is sending her downhill."

"You're such a fucking pillock," replies Helen the Volatile. "She wore her pajamas every day before the babies were born."

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Helen is the contributing editor for Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. She also covers Postpartum Depression. She writes daily at Everyday Stranger where she also chronicles life with her twins, Nick and Nora.

Twenty-Three is a Magic Number

Twenty-three.

That's the stopgap I have, that's the number where it stops.

Just twenty-three.

Twenty-three is the number of pills I have left before I start to try to wean myself off of them.

I started the anti-depressants almost eight months ago, on the first of February. The postnatal depression was simply too much for me, I wasn't functioning. My depression manifested as anxiety, and unless I was with my babies in that safe cocoon where no one could touch us, I was a mess. Crying. Sleepless. Not eating. Unable to function in public. Unable to keep from shouting at everyone - except the babies - around me. Unable to stem this mountain of anger that came from somewhere, came from nowhere, anger so fierce it was palatable yet I couldn't reach it, not even to tell Angus to go to hell when I should have done. I couldn't slow down and just hold my babies, just be with them. I mourn that, I mourn those days. My children are more interested in exploring now, and now that I am calm enough to just sit on the couch and be with them they no longer want to be with me. Every day was a mental exercise of running in sticky taffy.

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Helen is the contributing editor for Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. She also covers Postpartum Depression. She writes daily at Everyday Stranger where she also chronicles life with her twins, Nick and Nora.

Healing

Many years ago I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. When I finally got the diagnosis the relief was instant, like a wave that pushed me under to a place where I no longer had to panic and struggle, I could simply drown amongst the answers. Extreme sufferers of BPD also have dissociation, which I had for so many years that it has changed all of my memories, thoughts and feelings on levels I can't even being to unpick.

I started therapy after my third suicide attempt. My last therapist here in London was the best. Calmly but emotively we worked through so much that cataloging it all would take years to get out. He told me that in his many years of being a psychotherapist, my background was by far the most unstable that he'd ever encountered, that I would no doubt have wound up a statistic, a name in the obituaries of a crumpled up morning newspaper, had I not sought help. I would have spiralled and split so completely that I could never have been whole, because in the end I was not only dissociating when bad things happened, I was dissociating when anything happened which triggered an emotional reaction. BPD sufferers are described as people who are the emotional equivalent of a third degree burn. It's the most perfect description ever.

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Helen is the contributing editor for Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. She also covers Postpartum Depression. She writes daily at Everyday Stranger where she also chronicles life with her twins, Nick and Nora.

Finding My Way Back

A few weeks ago my therapist sat across from me and asked about my homework (it's homework. And I get to pay �50 an hour for the privilege of doign homework. I'm finally in a form of private school, albeit sans ties and tacky knee socks). I'd had homework to do and done it I had, only I wasn't sure that it was correct. It was like math homework-I needed a key in the back with the answers to every other question. Luckily, mental illness is not something that comes with a little red pen so it was clear he wouldn't be able to mark points off for punctuation errors.

I was to come up with how I felt about addressing some of my issues. The past 8 months have been fact-finding only, to get a view of the mountains before determining where to start the mining operation. Now that the view's been had, the earth-moving equipment is being brought in.

I had decided how I wanted to address my issues-I was going to see if we could find a way to handle it scientifically-identify problem. Examine. Theorize as to nature of problem. Hypothesize about treatment. Apply treatment. Mark issue off on checklist. Move on. These formulas I am familiar with, and like a true punnet square addict I was prepared to get my number 2 pencil out and give it a go. Once upon a time I was a crunchy-granola anthropology student, but all these years as an engineer have taken their toll on me and the Scientific Method is as critical to making choices as my Benefit Brow Zings are to my eyebrows-I don't leave home without either one of them.

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Helen is the contributing editor for Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. She also covers Postpartum Depression. She writes daily at Everyday Stranger where she also chronicles life with her twins, Nick and Nora.

When the Fog Has Finally Lifted

Some mornings I walk Gorby in the local woods. He loves it there, and he deserves it. A number of people (including Cheryl, Kenju, and CTG) have asked how he's doing with the babies, and the truth is, he's very insecure. He sits by them when they're downstairs, he follows them when we carry them, but he needs an awful lot of attention. We try to give it to him but it's not always easy when you have two infants to deal with. Maggie, on the other hand, is the true loser in this scenario. She hates the babies as much as she hates all other people, and she spends most of her time outside, inconsolably angry and unwilling to sit on my lap. I am not forgiven for bringing them into the house, no matter how much I try to make peace with her.

I will keep trying.

That's what I do.

These walks we take in the morning are something I have started looking forward to. Sometimes I take a Lemonhead along with me in a sling and the three of us walk through the woods, quiet in our activities. Sometimes I take Gorby alone.

We walk until I get tired and light-headed, then we go back.

Autumn has hit the woods hard and on any given morning you can stand beneath a tree and let the shower of falling leaves hit your head and shoulders. I wear gloves and a scarf because the nip in the air takes me by surprise. Gorby runs on the path, his breath sometimes visible in the early morning air.

I take these moments of peace as they come, not because of the hecticness that comes with babies because, believe it or not, I love every goddamn minute of it. I love the baths and the feedings and the diapers and the burpings. The babies are even sleeping through the night most nights, it's not as though I'm as endlessly tired as I was. I take the moments of peace because I need them and cling desperately to them.

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Helen is the contributing editor for Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. She also covers Postpartum Depression. She writes daily at Everyday Stranger where she also chronicles life with her twins, Nick and Nora.

Helen's Story Continues

Helen is the contributing editor for Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. She also covers Postpartum Depression. She writes daily at Everyday Stranger where she also chronicles life with her twins, Nick and Nora.

I went through five rounds of IVF, over a duration of five years. We were reaching the end of the IVF ladder when lo and behold, on what was possibly our last cycle the RE transferred two “meh” quality embryos and 8 months later I gave birth to tiny preemie jaundiced babies. And they were fabulous. Even the one with jaundice who screamed 18 hours a day. But despite having my Christmas come early, I started to falter.

I felt overwhelmed with stress. I couldn’t handle any situation outside of the babies. I was angry and difficult. I felt like I was drowning. I shouted at people. I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t eat. The weight I gained while pregnant fell off and took many other pounds with it, as I just couldn’t get the energy to eat. I almost literally couldn’t hold still – when the babies were napping and I should have been napping I would be going crazy cleaning or scrubbing or crying. Most of the time it was all three. I couldn’t concentrate and couldn’t talk and my relationship was falling apart and showering was exhausting and I swore I didn’t have post-partum depression.

But I did.

10 months after the birth of the twins I am still on medication to help get me through this. Postpartum depression (called post-natal depression on my side of the pond) has, like other aspects of mental illness such negative connotations. When people hear about PPD/PND they think that you’re dangerous. If you have it you may be the kind of person to drown your kids. Maybe you’re being selfish and not getting out of bed. Really, we must just be ungrateful, crap mothers.

PPD/PNT comes in many forms. It can be depression so dark you can’t breathe. It may be anxiety so severe you prematurely age yourself by the second. It can be both. Regardless of how it manifests itself you feel very isolated and alone, particularly so if you’ve had fertility treatment – you finally got pregnant! You should be celebrating, not depressed!

Suffering from PPD/PNT is awful. If you have it, you are not alone.

What the Hell is the Matter With You

Mr. Y and I signed up for a new doctor in town. With the NHS, this means visiting the GP and doing a brief physical, getting an NHS number, etc. The form is straightforward-name, age, address, last time you saw a doctor, and a list of boxes that you check yes or no to, the standard things that your pen flies over and makes a tiny mark in a box.

Do you have or have you had heart trouble? No.
Do you have or have you had kidney trouble? No.
Do you or have you had cancer? Yes.
Do you smoke? No.

And then the one that stopped my pen. The one that made me think and made me wonder how to proceed.

Do you have a mental illness?

Do I have a mental illness? Mr. Y flew through his questions ticking no, and there I was, stuck. Do I have a mental illness...

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Helen is the contributing editor for Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. She writes daily at Everyday Stranger where she also chronicles life with her twins, Nick and Nora.

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Helen's Story

Helen is the contributing editor for Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. She writes daily at Everyday Stranger where she also chronicles life with her twins, Nick and Nora.

My name is Helen.

And I'm crazy.

Not crazy like going to work wearing a tutu, Wellingtons, and a Napoleon jacket with silver epaulets and pulling it off, even though really - that's crazy. I mean crazy as in spending a little time inside of a place where people get to spend the night in rooms that have restraints on the beds. I mean certifiably crazy, although I never got a certificate to hang on my wall.

In 2003 I was finally diagnosed with something called borderline personality disorder, accented with severe dissociation. This came one month after I went right over the edge and tried to commit suicide. I was briefly hospitalized. This was, unfortunately, not the first time I tried to kill myself, but it was most definitely my last.

The DSM IV criteria for BPD are:

1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. [Not including suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5]
2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation
3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., promiscuous sex, eating disorders, binge eating, substance abuse, reckless driving).[Again, not including suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5]
5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats, or self-mutilating behavior such as cutting, interfering with the healing of scars, or picking at oneself.
6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days).
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness, worthlessness.
8. Inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights).
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation, delusions or severe dissociative symptoms.

I went through many years of psychotherapy to help overcome my mental illness. I don't know if you can ever be cured, I think it's something we grow to live with. I have to make conscious efforts at some things, including avoiding falling into previous eating disorders I had, but while I don't think that you can ever be truly cured of a mental illness, it is something I have worked hard to overcome to be a better person, not only for myself but for my partner and my gorgeous babies, born to me after years of fertility treatment (and who are hanging in there with me while I battle postpartum depression).

There is a lot of stigma attached to being mentally ill. I'm here if you want to talk, because I know about the stigma. I know how bad it feels inside. And I know how amazing it can be to just have someone to talk to.