Constant Dripping Wears The Stone

(Source: Dan Piraro)

I am not entirely serious about the comic strip; it’s more of a hyperbolic comment on my life, but I need some humour and the chance to vent in order to deal with today. My mum has been cavilling me since the morning, a constant trickle of criticism and petty jabs. And even though I am fully aware that I am not the reason for her jibes, but merely the most convenient target for her projections, it still hurts. Drip.
The individual remarks are trivial, not worth getting upset over, one should think: one was about my doormat having been dirty for “at least three months”, when the handymen who are currently renovating the flat next door had left the crumbs of mortar and concrete only 36 hours ago – which have been cleaned away since Friday night already. Drip. One was about me relating a news article of local interest I had read online which according to her was “old news” – despite the publishing date being yesterday. Drip. One was a degrading remark because I had to take a nap this afternoon, “just because you had to go shopping at 10 AM” – even though I’d had a really bad night with only 5 hours of fitful sleep (when I need 9 hours because of the depression) and still had gotten up without complaining. Drip.
What upsets me the most is that my mother makes these comments because she is upset with another person, and then takes it out on whoever crosses her path. I’ve been through this in therapy so many times and know exactly what I should do and say, but she triggers an automated behaviour in me which just makes me sound sulky and defensive instead. We are not really interacting with each other, but acting parts in a pre-determined script. There is so little self-reflection on her part…

My sister is between jobs right now, with another month to go before her new employment starts. Being divorced and unemployed, she and my mother spent a lot of time together: eight, ten, twelve hours a day, for the last three months. My sister also has started seeing a psychiatrist and taking antidepressants; generally speaking, a very good development. So I understood that my mother would be preoccupied with all of that, since it indirectly concerned a large part of her own day.
My mother has strong tendencies towards OCD-behaviour, with a myriad of unwritten rules one better not crosses. Doing something in a different fashion than the one she uses will give her a very hard time. She is also “orthorexic” in so far that she is obsessed with nutritional properties, minerals, vitamins, and whatever positive qualities an ingredient might have. So when my sister decided to try a vegan challenge, or go at least vegetarian for a while (she took a break for Christmas), my mother was all over that.
Now, I don’t have anything against vegans or vegetarians. I understand and even agree with a lot of the reasons why people would choose to eat this way. In fact, I try to have a vegetarian day or two every week, but I could not go without meat for a longer time, and my husband is quite the carnivore. I respect the choice others made, and want mine to be respected as well. But once my sister embarked on her vegan adventure, my mother’s occasional negative remarks on what I am buying / cooking turned into a steady stream. Drip, drip, drip.
Thanks to the antidepressants, my sister had the urge to walk a lot, and so they would go out together, walk two or three hours every day – and are now bragging about the weight they lost. Some days, they make me feel like a fat, blubbery pudding; the German word I have in mind is Trauerkloß, literally a “mourning dumpling”. The idiot who is too slow and pathetic to get on with her life, the fat fuck who always sleeps. Of course they do not use those words, but this is the effect their little verbal needle pricks have on me. Drip, drip, drip. And it took two years of psychotherapy just to come to the conviction that the problem is actually on her end, not mine.

Not only are they together 90 % of the time these days, but on the rare occasion I see my mother without my sister, she incessantly talks about her. And while I understand that this is on the forefront of her mind due to the many hours they spend in each other’s company, I would very much like to talk about something that is important to me once in a while. I feel like I am going to have a melt-down if the situation goes on for much longer.

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The Jubilee Post

Today, I celebrate the 100th blog post. If the counter didn’t keep track of the statistics, I most certainly would have missed the milestone, but I’m glad I didn’t. When getting started, I had no real direction to follow and was more concerned with not running out of steam early on than with developing a writer’s voice or any long-term goals for “Lugubrious Layara”: I simply talked about what was happening in my life, in therapy and in my head.
There also was (and still is) an educational facet to the blog, even though from a strictly personal, non-professional angle. I get a fairly consistent number of hits through people googling CBASP, and I’m really happy that I can provide links, information and my own opinion – when I was about to start the therapy programme, there was very little to be found online, and nothing in regards to other blogs. Even now, the situation changed only marginally. And despite knowing that there are other people being treated with CBASP all over the world, and even at the same hospital, I have never encountered any other CBASP patient, neither online nor in the real world. If I have accomplished nothing else with this blog, at the very least it added a new voice to the plethora of mental health blogs out there.

Blogging means walkig a tight rope. How much of yourself do you put out there? And how much of the people you write about? I try protecting the privacy of everyone I mention as much as possible, even if it means that my writing sometimes suffers from the vagueness. Occasionally, I don’t post because it would mean discussing the personal history of another person more than I’m comfortable with – I can decide to put my own history out there, but not my husband’s, for example.

Sometimes, I want to post, but don’t have the energy for writing. There’s a good deal of regurgitating going on when developing a new blog post – I type, erase, type again, erase again, scratch certain formulations, phrases or entire paragraphs. And there were a few incidents where I had an entire post ready for publication but never chose to put it out there – because the situation described didn’t exist anymore, or because it had taken so long to jot the story down that I had already moved on from it by the time I was done.
And then, there are the blog posts I would like to write, but that are too emotionally exhausting to go there: for example, my sister’s “borderline meltdown” the day before my wedding. Or the post about my husband’s immigration process I started writing back in September, but the 800 words on that which I got so far only covered everything prior to our marriage day and revisiting the events make me feel depressed, so the progress on that is very slow…

Despite and because of all of that, blogging is very beneficial for me. My therapist always urges me to become “more visible”, to put more of myself out there, and the blog is one way of doing so. My friends and my husband not only know of its existence, but some of them even are somewhat regular readers. This allows me to talk about my feelings and problems at length without pushing them on anybody – they can decide when to visit, and how often.
There is a similar effect to writing about depression as visiting the student classes had; it gives me a sense of not only dealing with it, but of making it a little less like I wasted all those years with the illness. At the age of 32 years, I have spent a minimum of 20 years with the condition, about ten of them severely depressed. By sharing, it does not feel like I wasted those.

Decluttering: Part I

Even though there are symptoms which the vast majority of people with chronic depression share, everybody’s got their own personal “bouquet”. In mine, lack of energy features very prominently. To the non-depressed reader, it might sound either very lazy, or pleasant even if I write that I don’t have the energy for anything but sitting on the sofa and watching TV, or browsing the internet, or playing computer games. The truth, however, is that these occupations are not thoroughly enjoyable, but merely a way to pass time. Plans one might have harboured when going to bed suddenly appear impossible to fulfil, turning into insurmountable obstacles when waking up.
There’s hardly a person who does not feel tired and worn out once in a while, consequently putting off all chores. But, for the non-depressed person, these feelings usually vanish quickly, and they go back to vacuuming, cleaning, grocery shopping, mowing the lawn or doing the dishes. For me (and many others out there), nothing changes after a day or two of rest… In fact, it can be like that for weeks or months even.

For about 90% of my adult life, I have lived with the dishes piling up in the kitchen, my entire desk hidden under stacks of paper from the previous year(s), and the bookshelves covered with thick layers of dust. Both my flat and my behaviour lived up to the stereotype of the messy, absentminded professor.
I don’t really like living like this, but whatever little energy I had usually went into whatever was the most necessary at that moment. The last time my entire flat was neat and tidy lies a good ten years back in the past. After my husband moved in and there was someone to share the chores with, things improved visibly, but there still are piles which I have not touched in years.
About two months ago and after a particularly lethargic summer (completely drained from the exam), I found Cynthia Ewer’s “Cut The Clutter” at my local library (the book appears to a more fleshed-out, printed version of the author’s website, organizedhome.com). It did provide the inspiration and motivation so bitterly needed, and a few eye-openers. For example, it never occurred to me that chaos can be described as resulting from put-off decisions – definitely one of my weak points.
Of all the personality types Cynthia Ewers mentions in her book, I have elements of every single one in me: because I’m sentimentally attached to many of my possessions, I have a hard time throwing them away, even long after they’ve stopped being useful or important. Because I tend to think that I might need something later, I’m afraid of getting rid of it. Perfectionism gets in the way of organizing, because I am under the impression that I need a faultless system before I can get started. I feel bad about throwing out items which once were expensive. And a tiny part of me still is in rebellion against my mum telling me to pick up my room, even though I moved out of there a long time ago.
Four out of those five reasons I can overcome with rational thinking: even if an item used to be expensive, its worth usually decreases over the course of time. It’s more important to get chores done than to slavishly follow a predetermined plan. Most of what I was saving for later use could easily be obtained at the time I actually would need it, so holding on to it is just a waste of space. I am a grown-up now and do not need to rebel against my mother – having a nice place should be more important.
That leaves sentimental attachment as the only reason where pure logic alone does not help me changing my behaviour.

The decluttering process began as a rather assessable project, with re-organising my pantry. Certainly not the most pressing matter, but it promised quick results and little risk of running out of steam before completion and thus adding to the long list of problems. I finished within two days and due to instant improvements when cooking (ingredients were so much easier to find), it gave me the motivation to tackle a bigger challenge the following week: sorting out my wardrobe / closet, which I hadn’t done since the day I moved out of my parents’ flat (throwing away individual pieces does not count). By the time this was done, there were two big and four small bags of clothes as well as a bag of shoes waiting for the trip to the donation containers. For the first time in years I was able to move the hangers on the rack – another instant improvement.
Over the following weeks, I would finally put an old glass-showcase outside that had been sitting empty in my flat for at least three years, because I never got around to taking it apart, and then I’d move on to weeding out all the books I’d never read again, with the intention of selling them online. To this date, I have made just over 90 euros out of 87 books sold, with about 100 more titles I hope to sell eventually too. There were about 30 shelfmetres worth of books in my flat, and while I kept the majority, now there is actually enough space to put every single volume on a shelf.
The last week was dedicated to decluttering my desk, because I intended to put both the desk and my swivel chair out for the bulky waste collection. While the collection is free here in Germany, you have to call in and register in advance if you want it picked up, because in the past scavengers used to tear the piles apart, making a lot of noise and strewing the discarded items all over the neighbourhood. In my community, there is a collection every other month and you can order the service twice a year , meaning that you’d better have the bulky trash ready once the date rolls around.
The swivel chair posed no problem, because both armrests had been broken and resisted any attempts at repairing them in the past. It was utterly unusable and actually a minor threat of injury. The desk had two drawers, one of them unfixably broken, but otherwise it still was in a good condition. Had it been smaller, I’d have kept it – however, with dimensions almost as large as a single bed, it was too big for our bedroom and we could not keep it. Decluttering the desk was not as difficult as I thought since it was mostly paper, and after about two hours I was done.

This is the status quo; since I want to move some furniture in the bedroom and change a couple of things, I reckon that I am about half done now. I will keep reporting on the progress.

Forcing Myself To Post

This is not the first time that I’m trying to write a blog post, even though a couple of weeks have passed since the last attempt. The biggest hindrance being my continued inability to express myself – if talking about it poses great difficulty, writig appears an almost Herculean task. So I’ll just try to give a very fragmentary overview in the hope that eventually I’ll be able to express myself more eloquently.

I don’t know how I made it through the semester, in hindsight maybe even less than at the time of living it. In the end, I was so burned out that I pushed all but one of the exams to October, because I wasn’t mentally fit for studying any more, but at least that one exam I passed with an “A minus”.

My husband’s appeal for a residency permit got granted for three years (after that, it’ll be a permanent one). We jumped through all the bureaucratic hoops and in December he can finally start the mandatory German classes, the way there being paved with many frustrations that will require a post of their own.

My old computer broke after five and a half years of faithful service. The power supply unit literally blew up (knocked out the living room’s fuse, smoke curling out of the computer’s back) and damaged not only the PSU, but also the mainboard and processors. It was only because of a financial donation from my mother-in-law that I could buy a laptop as replacement… All my personal data – photos, all my uni files, the templates for the blog charts etc. – still are on the old harddrive, but I hope I can get them back soon.

The last regular therapy session was in April. I had one “on the side” in late June, which my therapist had crammed in between hospital duties one morning, but following up on this, all scheduled appointments got cancelled due to the persisting staff shortage at the hospital, and then August rolled around, which my therapist takes off every year.  I was told to get in touch via email at the beginning of September, so I guess by Wednesday (when the first dust of back-to-work-stress has settled) I will contact him.

For about three months, I have argued back and forth with German Telecom over the cancellation of my landline phone back in February: because I couldn’t pay my phone bill all at once, I had cancelled my phone and arranged for payment of the remaining bill in four rates, due in March, April, June and July.  In May, I received a letter reminding me of outstanding payments on my landline and when I called customer service to clarify the mistake, the ladies I spoke to insisted that my phone had been turned off because I didn’t pay – never mind the fact that if one calls my old number, an automated message announces that the phone number is not available at the moment. It wasn’t turned off, it was properly cancelled. On top of that, they spoke of the fee due in May, when the payment plan I’d received in the mail clearly stated that no rate was due that month, and claimed that a sum equivalent of three rates was still due when I had already paid two rates out of four.
In the end, I got so worried that I even discussed it with my therapist the one time I saw him, even though his suggestion to take a lawyer to sort this out was rather unsatisfying to me – how would I pay the lawyer? I don’t have any insurance which would cover such a case either, and so I could only hope that one of my emails or phone calls would finally sort out the matter.

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These are, in a nutshell, the most important events of the past months. This is the third day I’m “working” on this post, just to give some kind of perspective regarding the difficulty of writing. By the end of June, I was at a score of a whopping 33 points in the BDI-II, which signifies heavy depression, and right now I’m still lingering at around 15 points on good days, or higher on bad days.
The most persistent symptoms are a lack of energy and “emptiness” inside. Not only am I  devoid of any kind of esprit or verve, but sometimes it’s even hard to tell what I’m feeling. There’s… just nothing I could put into words. Which is upsetting when my husband asks me what’s wrong, because I don’t want him thinking it’s something he did. It’s just our circumstances, I guess. We’re on a very tight budget and can’t really afford to go out, much less to go on a trip for a while. So I guess part of that emptiness inside is just boredom, being stifled by the ever-same routine. And part of it is pure dread in the face of having to go back to uni in a couple of weeks. Even though I know that I should take it as a challege and one day at a time, the memory of the last semester is too fresh to actually see it this way.
Around this time last year, I thought if I went back to uni, it would take a couple of weeks and then I would get used to it. I thought that if I did not manage 100% productivity, I would reach at least 70%. Right now, it feels that anything beyond 30% is beyond my capacity, and I wonder if I will ever become “normal”, ever be able to finish uni, get a job – and hold it down. How do “normal” people manage?

Just A Quick Update

I’m still alive, but very busy. Lectures at university started again – not that I had a lot of free time during the “break”. I attended an extracurricular class in zoology and passed the exam for that, and I didn’t pass the second attempt of physics because I was just too burned out and my brain didn’t cooperate at all. As a result, I opted out of taking maths again.
Currently, I’m writing a report on the field trip I took in February; the text is as good as done, but I still have to put in pictures and so on.

Then, of course, I got married and had a lot of family drama going down the day before the wedding, all of which deserves a dedicated post.

Finally, my therapist invited me to join a class for psychology students next week – as a “living exhibit”. They’ll present my data, including the clinical tests I took (the results of which I’ve never been told), and I’ll be there to answer questions. Bring the person to life, I guess, because according to my therapist, most of these students have no real idea of what it is like to be depressed and what it is like to undergo CBASP therapy. Besides the scientific data, I can provide insight into all of that. Strangely enough, I’m looking forward to this.

Semester Exams

The next two weeks are entirely dominated by exams, plus a palaeontology / micropalaeontology test which got announced on short notice, because too many people want to get into the zoology class. Tomorrow I’m taking the test, Tuesday the chemistry exam, Friday crystallography, the following week physics and mathematics.
Even though I’m rather good at palaeontology, I had to learn for this test because here the absolute grade isn’t as important as the relative placement – in other words, one wants to leave as many people behind as possible, to ensure getting into the class. However, studying for palaeontology is taking away time I meant to invest into chemistry, which is the exam I have the least chances for passing to begin with. At the beginning of the semester, I would have thought that role fell firmly to mathematics, but chemistry is twice the workload and just more than my brain appears capable of handling. I somewhat regret registering for the chemistry exam now as it will use up one of three attempts for taking I have – guess I will just give it a fool’s try on Tuesday and if I fail, I’ll spare the other two attempts for next year…

I’ve written before about the effects depression has on the brain: it alters and destroys synaptic connections in the brain which then have to get re-connected again (through therapy). I really feel the difference between now and ten years ago – I tire much more quickly of learning and have a harder time remembering facts. When working on long-term projects, like writing a paper, it doesn’t create too many problems because I can take breaks as I want and the result depends on continuous effort rather than a moment’s “genius”, but I struggle with preparing and sitting exams. After about 90 minutes, I need a break for several hours, and even though I still have two weeks to go, “learning fatigue” has already set in.
The sad part is knowing that ten years ago, I easily would have excelled in classes where now it takes an effort to be “merely” good. And I know that it could be worse, that after all I still manage to keep pace – but there is a lot of frustration still, and I am constantly afraid that from the outside it looks like I am procrastinating, and I am afraid that I will be judged by the professors and other students, because they are not aware of my background story.

Change Of Plans

Due to health reasons, I had to cancel my mother’s attendance for the therapy session on Friday and it will just be a normal appointment for me. My mum had been sick last week already and even though she’s not bedridden anymore, she’s not 100% either. Nor am I, and if being honest, I’m secretly relieved about the turn of events: there are so many other things on my plate that I’d like to discuss with my therapist before my mother joins us – last Friday, for example. Also, I’m going to have a friend visiting all weekend long, and regardless of whether our joint session leads to a long amicable discussion or a long argument between my mother and me, I would need a lot of time for that…

I’ve been put on the sick list for the rest of the week because of a stomach bug myself. There are three general physicians who share the practice I go to; some of the patients only see one of them, others – like me – go to whoever has the first slot available that day. So I ended up with the same doctor as back when I fainted on my way to work and broke down crying in the practice (check the “Pre-Treatment Diary” for the entry of October 19, 2010). He’d urged me very much to find a therapist then, which was just the extra encouragement I needed to actually call the hospital three weeks later.
The memory of losing my composure last time, even though more than a year in the past, embarrassed me a little, but fortunately the doctor didn’t ask any questions about it. He had my file already open when I walked in and thus doubtlessly was reminded of the incident, as well as my stint with citalopram and the fact that I get a referral for psychotherapy from them every three months. He was especially nice, though – a kind of cordiality that goes beyond good manners and agreeable behaviour. It reminded me a little of my therapist. There was nothing he could do about the stomach bug (“That just takes a couple of days to get through.”), but he did inquire about university and I told him about changing to geosciences.

The doctor actually asked me how long I wanted to stay home and despite really being sick, I feel a little guilty for making it the whole week. Not that attending classes would do me any good, and thus (as my therapist would say) there’s no reason to even debate the matter.
It’s more than the stomach bug, though. I’m constantly tired – Christmas break didn’t do much to change that. In fact, only the last two nights I managed going to bed and falling asleep at a decent hour, following several weeks with insomnia.

Not to mention that I have been missing my boyfriend insanely. Now that we can actually count down to the day he’s arriving and almost reached a single digit number of days left until our reunion, it’s worse than all those last months. Like the last mile of a marathon: you know you are almost there, but because you’re so close to the finish line, you just want to be done with it and let go of all the self-discipline which got you so far. Every single step makes you ache more, every muscle is sore, every breath laboured. I just want to be at the airport gate and wrap my arms around him, and then the world may end.

Almost There…

One more day, and it’s Christmas break. I am really running on reserve fuel now… and apparently it shows. One of the students I spend some of my classes with asked me today, “Are you doing ok?” I replied that I was being tired and needed a break, but this was quite the understatement. I was touched by the sentiment of him asking, though – how easy it appears to be for some people.

We got back two physics homework sheets today, one I had done when I was only halfway on the decline, the other I had submitted last week. The old one came back with a result of 31.5/32 points, the other with 8.5/34 points. Both were of comparable difficulty and length and I put equal effort and time into them. The difference is that the first one I did while not suffering from cognitive deficits, the second clearly shows that I could hardly think logically.
Once I go past a certain point, it’s not only fatigue and stiff muscles, but an increasing inability to articulate myself or recall memories. With each point my BDI-II score rises, learning becomes harder. My therapist, who has a background in neurology, actually understands this kind of symptom and takes it seriously. When we were talking last week, I couldn’t remember a word I was looking for and gave him a few others until I finally found the one I had meant to say. He replied, “Good that you remembered!” and nothing more, but from the way he looked at me (and from former conversations), I knew that he was aware of the struggle behind it.
This kind of problem usually starts out very unspectacular, you merely have to concentrate a little harder. But as time goes by, the concentration you have to bring up for understanding the text grows increasingly out of reach. Eventually, the level of your reading skills just isn’t up to it anymore – as if you gave a young child of 6 or 7 years a text written for adults. At the worst stage, sentences just stop making sense. You look at them and it is as if every word is written in a different language, and if you try to read one of them, they start moving over the page and never hold still long enough to actually see them properly.

I know that getting rest and sleep and doing recreational activities will “fix” this again, just as those symptoms disappeared during spring and summer before. I will not touch any of my uni stuff before January 2 – classes start again on the 9th.

Last Session Of The Year

Last therapy session of the year; the next one is on Friday the 13th (January 2012), to which my mum will accompany me. Apparently, my regular therapy is also coming to a close – I’ve had 31 sessions so far and if I recall correctly, that means only 4 more in the normal rhythm before drawing them out. Not sure about the time periods between them, but I do know that session 40 is definitely my last one. I’ll part with a laughing and a crying eye: laughing because my life improved so vastly, crying because I will be sorry to say goodbye to my therapist for good. The whole purpose of our relationship was that it would end again eventually, but I’ve grown fond of him… but, I guess that’s a bridge I’ll cross when I get to it.

We took a look at my uni schedule today, trying to find out what I can eliminate – all contact hours, homework and commuting time added up, I had a 50-hour-week and a BDI-II score of 20, with a tendency for the worse. Friday was crossed off the list completely and I’m supposed to figure out what I can do without until I reach a point where the work load does not push me into a depression anymore.
“We are pulling the emergency brake now,” my therapist said. “And if it gets too much,” he smiled, “just scratch another class off the list and go to the cinema instead.”
Eliminating classes wasn’t the problem, I didn’t need help for that. The huge difference is that if my therapist “allows” me to take it easier, I feel like I’m actually doing something pro-active and taking care of myself, whereas without discussing it in therapy, I’d have suffered from a bad conscience and felt like I was only procrastinating. That’s clearly something I still need to learn during our remaining time together: that I have a right to take care of myself and that I’m allowed to set limits.
A job is only possible in summer, because I’m going to have exams and an “en bloc” course and an excursion (probably followed by another protocol) during the upcoming semester break, and during the second semester my situation will hardly be any different…

Our roleplaying exercises were a little different today: not the usual dialogues acted out, but instead my therapist challenged me to defend my position. After I told him that I preferred learning at home over learning at the library, for example, he said: “Convince me! Why should I believe you are learning more effectively at home?” So I listed my reasons – that I felt more relaxed at home and could concentrate better because I wasn’t constantly aware of the people around me, that I didn’t have to watch my stuff if I walked out of sight of the desk, that I had more freedom on when I wanted to learn…
Later he made me stand up while he remained seated (a position I hate, because it causes me to feel vastly overweight – even though he doesn’t get that impression and it exists in my head only) and voice the effects the depression has on me as if talking to my mother: “I have troubles falling asleep and wake up in the night; the muscles in my arms and legs hurt, my joints too. I have headaches and backaches and stomachaches. My eyes are inflamed and hurt and I can’t always see properly because of that. I can’t concentrate very well either and doing my homework gets really difficult because of that. There are cognitive problems which make me forget words and sometimes I don’t even understand my homework anymore because of this.”
Only when looking back I realize I listed exclusively physical symptoms, but didn’t mention the sadness, crying and despair descending upon me. Had I spoken to my therapist directly instead of him acting as a proxy for my mother, I would probably have mentioned this, but since we hardly ever discuss intimate feelings in my family, I didn’t speak about this in therapy either.

One aspect I forgot about and which my therapist highlighted today was exercise. There is no room in my current schedule for any kind of physical activity. He described a scientific experiment to me, in which hamsters had been exposed to stress over a long time, leading to the hamsters becoming depressed. The source of stress was removed then and the hamsters got divided in three groups: group A had a nice cage, plenty of food and social contacts; group B a nice cage and plenty of food; group C a nice cage, plenty of food and an ergometer. Everyone suspected group A to show the fastest recovery rates, but in fact it was group C which was the most successful within the given time frame…
Exercise is supposed to be light and fun – no pressure to achieve any results, but regular periods of physical movement. I certainly remember how beneficial my Tae Bo classes were, even though I have nowhere near the energy for that now. But I’ll try to reserve a fixed time for swimming or cycling or something like that.

I’m So Tired

So far, I haven’t done anything about my schedule, but I want to figure something out and just see if eliminating some classes works – the problem is not only missing content and having to learn it from books instead, but also the possible increase in exam-related anxiety this might spark. I don’t really gain anything if I’m so afraid of failing that I keep worrying those hours away.

I spent all of last weekend writing my excursion protocol and the beginning of this week was pure hell, but I’ve also been under the hormonal influence of PMS, which gets me a little down at the easiest of times. When I’m stressed out to begin with, there’s no limit to the doom and gloom it creates. I did, however, bounce back a little afterwards – now it’s just plain stress, not depression that gives me a hard time. The weekend cannot be here soon enough.

My therapist had to cancel our last session because of hospital-related reasons, so it’s been five weeks since my last appointment and I pray he doesn’t call before tomorrow’s meeting, because even though we are in email contact in between, that’s not the same as actually discussing in person.
I had a dream earlier this week:  I’d fallen asleep in my therapist’s office, just before the session. When I woke up (in my dream), it was 9 o’ clock in the evening and he’d gone home, leaving me a message on my phone about it. A nurse told me that I had to stay the night as they couldn’t let me out anymore this day, and when I asked why my therapist had not woken me up, she said I’d be sleeping so deeply that they’d given up on it. I then had to spend the night in his office with two other girls, because – as I learned – they put patients in there at night.
What’s sad about this dream is that I feel like this is something which could actually happen to me now… Even in my dreams I’m tired…

The good news are that the people whom I mentioned as saying hello to me almost a month ago have become something like a steady “work group”, so I do not have to worry about finding a partner to spend those classes with. We aren’t friends, but they are nice people and I am not quite so isolated anymore.

Stress which isn’t related to university comes in the form of bureaucracy surrounding my boyfriends immigration process. Documents, deadlines, translations, apostilles and affidavits… I’m sick of them and wish we were finally done with it so we can live together…