Easy Peasy Japanesey

Back in July, I’d signed up for a Japanese class. Mainly because I was bored and suffering from cabin fever; it provided a great opportunity to get out of the house and gain a new skill.
A month-long intensive course for a small group, we were taught the hiragana syllabary and basic grammar/ vocabulary. Even though it makes my usual problems (performance anxiety, social phobias) rear their heads again, I’m enjoying the learning process so much that I went back for round 2 earlier this month.

I’ve had a fascination with Japan since primary school, and as an added benefit you gain fresh perspectives from learning a new language, especially when it doesn’t belong to the same language family as your mother tongue. Different languages come with radically different views of the world around them, which I find very exciting to discover.
The first time I strayed out of the Indo-European branch was 20 years ago, when I started learning Biblical Hebrew at school. Shame that I haven’t had a chance to use it after I got my high school certificate, because even though I can still read it, I forgot 90% of the grammar and vocabulary.

Also, I like the challenge. I spent so many years at uni with the sword of doom dangling over my head that I forgot what it is like to pursue a skill just for the sake of it. As mentioned before, I am not completely anxiety-free in class, but there’s no big test in the end or target I have to meet: just attending and learning is the goal. And nothing or nobody forces me to go there, so I have the freedom to quit whenever I want to. Which is not anytime soon.

Learning Japanese is difficult. Not sure how much of that is the inherent nature of the language (from an Indo-European perspective, at least) and how much of it is my rusty brain creaking into gear… I usually grasp the concepts explained to us immediately, but the reading/writing and numerical systems are very complex, and it is intimidating to start off from a place of complete illiteracy. We stammered our way through the textbook like first graders, even though now, after eight weeks’ worth of lessons, the prospect of reading the lines out loud is not as daunting anymore. I did practice between sessions, though, because it’s a lot to take in at once. Come to think of it, I wonder how long it will be until it doesn’t hit me like a wall of cryptic text anymore – even if I know all the words, nothing jumps out at first glance.

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To Hell And Back Again

After the last post, I fell into a really dark hole. For every problem solved there appeared to arise two new ones, and between a lack of energy (which was bordering on apathy) and near-despair, I had some really horrible weeks. None of the bills due June had yet been paid, and I’d really had more than enough of those troubles over the last months: we got threatened with having the gas / electricity switched off twice and had to borrow money from a friend to pay those bills. I had my bank account terminated because I accidentally went over the credit limit and (thanks to being preoccupied with the side-effects of venlafaxine) didn’t notice immediately, so I ended up being blacklisted as a “financial offender” for the next three years – it will be as good as impossible to get any kind of loan, and I had to go begging at the bank to be granted another bank account, and on top of everything else I will have to pay off almost 1250.- Euros for the old account and in penalty fees. I tried explaining my situation on the phone, but first I had to wait three weeks for a call-back since the people holding the decision power were always busy, and when they finally did get back at me, the lady berated me for it “being all my fault”.
We just about managed to pay for my husband’s German classes and get some food on the table, even though the latter was perilously close to uncertainty at two times at least. There was one day when we had all but € 9.- between the two of us, and all that was left to eat was a bit of frozen vegetables, half a jar of jam, pasta and potatoes. No bread, fruit, rice, cheese, meat, fish, butter, milk or soy drink or whatever we usually eat. Our options were plain potatoes or plain pasta, with a bit of spinach or peas. Nothing you’d traditionally serve for breakfast – and having just asked a friend to help us out with money so we wouldn’t have the gas / electricity cut off, I didn’t want to go begging again. My mother-in-law unwittingly saved us from this by sending some money, and my friend scolded me for not telling her earlier when I related the story to her… All I can say is that there’s a difference between having to ask for help once, because you got into a tight spot, and having to do it again and again, week after week or month after month. It wears you out mentally.
I believe my husband became more worried about me and my state of mind than about the money, because even though I was not entertaining thoughts of suicide, he made me promise I wouldn’t do anything to myself. Nevertheless, even getting dressed became an almost insurmountable obstacle, and I oscillated between apathy and fits of crying. I felt like I had nothing left in me: no energy, no fight, no will. And even though I had successfully fought off the denial of the application in April, nothing appeared to move forward in that regard ever since – until the beginning of June.

The money came in about three weeks ago, and despite the fact that we didn’t get approved for March (when I was still officially a university student and not available for welfare), we got monthly allowances retroactively from April 1st on. We could pay our bills, and get rid of the debts with the health insurance and the energy provider. I made a payment plan with the collection agency to pay off my old bank account in rates, paid off my sister since she had covered the contents insurance of our worldly possessions earlier this year, and gave two months’ worth of rent to my mother, as a thank you for supporting us when my parents were on a budget themselves.
Having this existential problem lifted off our shoulders has done more for my mental health than any other measure taken during the last months. For the first time in years, I go to bed without being afraid of what the next day is going to bring: even though I still get a fright when one of those “official-looking” letters comes in, I can immediately remind myself that we have the money to take care of whatever is heading our way.
The German welfare system is far from perfect and much criticized, but compared to our situation during the last year – and especially the last couple of months – we are doing peachy right now. Of course, we are not eating steak and lobster, but I can buy everything we need and some more, whereas before I would have to prioritize and calculate whether I had enough money to buy some yoghurt, for example, or whether it had to wait until the next time since it was not strictly necessary.
There was one day when I went to the neighbouring town for shopping, since the local supermarket had some offers which justified spending money on a tram ticket as we would still save compared to buying the same products in our hometown – and I made a mistake when calculating the expense. It was just a minor figure I was off, about 50 cents, but I ended up those 50 cents short for buying the tram ticket back home. I did not dare taking the tram without a valid ticket because of the € 60.- fine if I got caught, so I had no choice but walking home. It was a relatively warm day and I was dragging / carrying about 30 kg (roughly 65 pounds) of bottles and groceries in my shopping trolley and two bags. I had called my husband to meet me halfway, but by the time we got home, I was completely exhausted.
That is only one story out of many about how destitute we were. I walked around in jeans ripped from wear and tear for over a month, because I could not find a pair cheap enough in my size. When I finally found one, it had a bad, unflattering cut and I didn’t like the colour, but at least the prize was very low and the fabric not torn, so I bought it anyway. After just a few short weeks, the pull tab of the zipper broke – cheap material, I guess – so I had to put a safety-pin through the eye of the slider for using the zipper: the result was that every time I went to the toilet or got (un-)dressed, the safety-pin popped open and stung me in the finger. At that point, I made such a pitiful figure that my mother and sister gave me a part of my birthday present, two pairs of jeans, about ten days early.

Maybe that gives a little insight into why I have not been blogging. At some point, I just got too exhausted – all my mental energy went into making sure we would get on state support. And I wanted to escape from the daily struggles, not reflect on them.

The End Of An Era

Yesterday, I exmatriculated from university. Thirteen and a half years of fighting, and then it took all of 58 seconds to leave – there is a form you print out, fill in your name, address and student-ID number, give the reason for exmatriculation (I checked “illness”), and hand it over to the student secretary. She double-checked with my student-ID, stamped the form, gave me a formal statement that I had left uni, said goodbye, and that was it. My niece, who had accompanied me, timed the procedure.

That was in the afternoon, however. The morning my husband and I spent at the job centre, where we had an official appointment to start the welfare process, and saw someone from the employment agency afterwards. She might help my husband find a job, and I had to see her to work out the procedure regarding the “impaired working-ability” label. We got a total of about 50 form sheets we have to fill out: the actual application, and different questionnaires on just about every aspect of our existence, from the flat we live in (size, number of bedrooms / bathrooms / kitchens, how much rent we pay, what kind of heating it has, how much we pay for water and electricity, etc.) over our respective job résumés and occupational histories to a questionnaire on my depression history. We have to bring bank account activity statements for the last three months, and attestations of my health insurance, my husband’s integration class, the exmatriculation from university, a copy of my rental contract, yadda yadda yadda. And all of that has to be ready by Friday next week, because then we have the next appointment.
The procedure regarding my medical status will be that I formally release my general physician, therapist and psychiatrist from their obligation to secrecy, so that the job centre’s medical experts can inquire about my depression history, the treatments and my current status. They will then write a formal assessment, based on these facts, and I will get an invitation for discussing the results. If the results are clear and nobody objects, I will not have to undergo any further examinations through a medical officer.
The lady from the employment agency was very nice and sympathetic; she even inferred that she had personal experience with it – I just could not tell whether she meant depression, panic attacks or both. Regardless of what was the case, I felt treated with respect and in a non-judgemental way, which certainly is a first in my dealings with bureaucracy outside of the mental health sector. She’ll also remain our contact person for the rest of the process, so I’m doubly glad about this.

We were at the job centre for over two and a half hours, with over an hour of waiting in chairs in between. I had not taken the venlafaxine that morning, because I didn’t want to go into a side-effects frenzy during the appointment, but halfway through the withdrawal set in and my brain started buzzing like a mobile phone. I hope that for our appointment next week the timed-release capsules will prevent that scenario.

I’m Going To Quit University

Instead, I will enroll at the only state-maintained German distance teaching extramural university, starting next autumn. The idea was actually proposed to me by my mother and sister, because my sister is considering doing the same, and they thought it might make studying easier for me. I also discussed this with my husband, and slept over it, so while this was a relatively sudden decision, it’s not a rash one.

Arguments in favour of the change:

• You study online and out of books. Apart from the written tests, there are only two weekends during the entire Bachelor’s programme where you have to attend a seminar in person – and one of the study centres where you can do so is easily accessible to me, even without a car. Since I waste about 75 % of my energy in class on fighting off depression and only the remaining 25 % on taking notes or studying, I believe I will actually be able to study more effectively that way. You receive the materials and literature lists via mail, and you send in your homework and term papers online. There also are video streams of lectures and special software programmes for learning. At any time, you can contact qualified docents if you need additional help, and should you need to see someone face to face, you can also visit the study centres.
• It’s cheaper than a regular uni. Money is always a factor for me. And you pay for the classes you take only, not a fixed sum regardless of whether you actually take any classes at all. So, if shit hits the fan and I have to take a sabbatical (which I hope never happens, but we are talking eventualities here) again, I don’t have to pay just for staying enrolled in the programme.
• It’s more time flexible. I can adjust the learning to my personal schedule, because nobody cares whether I study something on Tuesday morning or Thursday afternoon or Sunday night, as long as I send in my homework punctually.
• Academically, it’s worth just as much as a degree from a regular uni.

Arguments against the change:

• I’ll not have a semester ticket for public transportation anymore. But: With the money I’m saving every semester on fees, I can buy a good number of tram tickets if needed…
• It sets me back to square one. But: I only took 6 hours per week last semester, and the next one would have been the same – I might actually be able to take more classes than that and thus eventually make up for “lost” time.
• They have a limited offer of subjects you can study only. And geosciences is not one of them. That is, in the end, the only heavy argument against it, in my opinion – and the reason why I never thought about making this step before. It would mean changing my major again. But: You can study psychology with them, and that is something I would be really interested in.

In the end, I believe the scale tips in favour of going ahead and doing this, because there are also arguments which fall outside of the pro-and-con-scheme listed above. The days of fantasizing about becoming a world-famous archaeologist are long over, and I don’t see myself crawling through the Andes or Alps, looking for rare minerals, either. What I want above everything else is to finally have some kind of degree and become employable; I’ll happily work as a secretary or a boring office job afterwards. The pipe dreams of glory are firmly buried.

And there are some obstacles in my current university course which did not occur to me when I had to make a quick decision in August 2011, and which I pushed into a remote corner of my mind afterwards: field trips abroad. I can’t do them – it would be ok if I got my own private hotel room at the end of the day, but going abroad and sharing a cabin with people who are essentially strangers for two weeks horrifies me to no end. I have worked really hard on my social phobia, but that is a problem I don’t think can be “treated out of my system”. On top of that, you also have to pay for those trips and all the equipment needed for it in addition to the semester fee, which runs up sums of several hundreds of euros every time, and I just cannot afford that.
Finally, seeing how the current semester ends on Sunday, I could actually apply for welfare myself instead of hoping some cryptic system where I take over from my husband works out – I haven’t been able to pay for the next semester yet, so all it needs is a phone call that I won’t be returning and I’m out.

Maybe it makes me look fickle in the eyes of some, but over the course of the last three semesters I realized that most of my problems with uni stem from the system itself, and I genuinely believe that my mental health would profit both from taking a break until October and even more so from getting out of that system. I love learning and writing papers and all of that, and I want to focus on this instead of how to effectively hold back tears in a classroom.

Arranging Appointments Around An Antidepressant

The good news of the day: after my therapist’s statement arrived in the mail, I was able to start the application process for welfare today and it got dated back to March 1st, meaning that once the application gets approved, I’ll get the full sum for this month already.
The bad news of the day: it’s a damn complicated process. As a university student, I am not covered by welfare – except when the student is not able to work at least 18 hours per week, which I’m currently not. But to earn the “impaired ability to work” label, I first have to meet the job agency’s doctor; until then, I count as a non-impaired person seeking state support – and as such, I cannot apply for the kind of welfare I would qualify for, because I am a student. Are you still following me? So the idea the people at the job centre came up with was that my husband needs to start the process, and put my name on the list of other people in the household who’d belong to the “community in need” (a rough approximation of the German construct “Bedarfsgemeinschaft”) instead of the other way around, and once I saw their doctor, we would switch the application over to me as the main applicant… We have another appointment on Thursday morning, which will hopefully bring more clarity about the proceedings.

Which brings me to the next problem: the new appointment is at 9 AM. Right now, I’m toying with the idea of taking the venlafaxine afterwards, because the withdrawals in the morning are generally less severe than the side-effects after taking the pill. That also means that I am going to stay on the current dose until then, because I am sure increasing it will also increase the side-effects again for a while.
Generally I am doing better; the nausea / sickness is finally gone and my appetite usually returns around 4 PM, which allows me to have a normal dinner. The only persistent symptom I currently have is vertigo or dizziness, so that I still have to lie down again after breakfast, but it feels very normal, no paraesthesias or “funny feelings”.
I am not sure if I have any positive effects from the venlafaxine yet. My husband claims I handled our financial crisis last week much better than he expected and credits the antidepressant for it. It might very well be the case; I have not had any severe anxiety recently, but on the other hand I have been so consumed with just managing every single day that there was literally no time for me to worry about anything else.

Welfare & No Therapy

Yesterday I mentioned going on welfare, and that I had been in the process of writing a blog post about it when the news of my therapist’s illness made some of that draft obsolete. Here follows the part which still is relevant:

Financial troubles have been a steady companion for a long time: I cannot work a job on top of uni, and my husband wants to work, but is currently handicapped by a lack of language skills (even though he is making a lot of progress since he started integration class). We have been living off my husband’s savings, support from family members, and once we also had to borrow money from a friend. Our life is rather frugal: 80% of what I buy is on offer or from the “reduced box” – groceries which are about to expire soon and hence reduced in price. We do not go out or buy anything that is not absolutely necessary.
A while ago, my therapist came up with the idea of me going on social welfare, which would roughly equal the salary of a student job. I could not object based on pride as I am not in the position to turn up my nose at any kind of support available. But I kept putting off visiting the department of social services because frankly I was afraid of doing so. For starters, I have a bit of bad history with administration and it is a very anxiety-laden topic for me. But also, the idea of having a place to turn to in even harder times was so comforting that it was difficult letting go the promise of relief at the expense of possible rejection. It is a pretty stupid concept and I would advise everyone to just get it over with as quickly as possibly if being told this story. Inside my own head, however, things are not always straightforward.
Fortunately, I finally managed to drag myself there, with the result that the state support my therapist suggested is not even available for me. As a student, I fall into a different category of welfare which I have to apply for at the employment agency instead, so the journey continues for a while.

To repeat from yesterday’s post, I need a statement from my therapist that I am not capable of working a job; usually, it would be the employment agency’s own doctors who have to come to this conclusion as a result of their examinations, but with mental health problems, that is hardly possible.
Going on state support was not a decision I made easily, or even voluntarily, but it’s the only practical solution left. It would be great if someone gave my husband a job instead with which he made enough so that we could exist from that income, but that’s unlikely in the current situation. All I know is, if I have to work, that is the certain end of my university career – I tried before, and the result was that I prioritized my job over classes, because “without the money I can’t stay enrolled in uni either”, and I had not enough energy for both. And I do not have it in me to make a third start from scratch, should this second attempt fail. It is all or nothing in regards to uni now.

Life goes on, with or without me. With or without therapy. No matter how unfortunate it is that my therapist got ill just now, when I would have liked to be able to write to him about the whole welfare business, I need to try without him the best I can.
My last therapy session was in early December; the one scheduled for January didn’t happen, and it was a bit of a warning sign already when it took three weeks before my therapist could tell me when he’d have the next opening – we were supposed to meet at the end of March again. He’s been chronically overworked for at least a year: last spring / summer it was pretty much the same, when I’d have a session in April, then an emergency appointment in June, and then nothing until September. My blog is full with comments on staff shortage at the hospital. What’s sad is that on the last day we emailed, he told me he was currently working in a new colleague and that he hoped that we could have “at least one session per month” from April on.

I guess this post is rather all over the place, but all of this has become one huge “cluster” to me anyway.

Looking Back At 2012

The first half of the year is characterized by a very tight and stressful schedule regarding both university and the bureaucratic acts of getting married and starting my husband’s immigration process. Eventually, this proved too much activity, and at the beginning of the second half of the year, I fell into a pit of lethargy and low moods. With the end of the summer, I began working my way out of that, and tried to maintain a healthy equilibrium.
The most important facts of what happened in 2012 are all in this blog, even if not always in as much detail as planned or wished for. On top of that, I already had two retrospective posts this month. Due to this, I decided to employ the form of last year’s review and “count my blessings” by writing about what I am grateful for in this year past. After all, it is a good exercise in shifting the focus on positive aspects.

My husband: I am thankful for his company and for his willingness to embark on the adventure of immigration. For waiting so many hours together with me in front of various offices, even when his presence was not required. For talking to me at 2 AM even though he was tired. For not talking to me in the mornings much, because that is when my brain does not function. For making sure I don’t oversleep. For comforting me many mornings when I would cry because I did not want to leave for university. For foot massages and back rubs. For accepting me the way I am. For encouraging me to pursue what I enjoy. For understanding how depression and anxiety work. For saying sorry and meaning it. For not feeling threatened by the feminist and lesbian blogs, websites or videos I read and watch. For hours upon hours of discussion on Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey, The Hobbit, etc. For paying honest compliments. For believing in me. For making me smile. For making me laugh.

My friends: I am grateful for them reaching out when I retreat too far from contacts. For listening. For taking me out of my own mind. For making me laugh. For sharing their own experiences. For their kind and comforting words, even when they cannot do anything about my problems. For their encouragement. For providing a faithful readership for this blog. For rooting for my husband and me all the way through the bureaucratic labyrinth to marriage and immigration.

My parents: During the first months of the year, there was a lot of friction between my mother and me, so I am especially appreciative of her becoming generally calmer over the last months. I am thankful for the financial support from my parents. For being so nice towards my husband on Christmas. For their occasional donations of food / groceries and clothes. For increasingly trying to understand what is going on with me.

My sister: The day before my wedding, we had a major fallout, and for months afterwards I carried underlying resentment with me, because she would never apologize for the things she said that day. As a result, I am really grateful that she appears to have mellowed out since. That she is seeking professional help from a psychiatrist now and taking medication which makes her moods more stable. That she took us out on her birthday and thus allowed my husband and me to enjoy something we could not have afforded otherwise. That she is becoming more approachable.

My niece: I am grateful for her being the kind of person she is: kind-hearted, quirky, bubbly, never shy to express her fondness. For her not hesitating to extent the same sentiment towards my husband despite the language barrier.

My mother-in-law: I am thankful for her financial support and for her friendliness towards me, a person she has never met.

My husband’s daughter: I am grateful for her being in my husband’s life again. (It’s a long and complicated story, but not the right place to tell it.) For her being the friendly, funny, open-minded person she is.

My therapist: I am grateful for his continued professional support, both in the sessions and via email – especially when I am at my worst. For helping me grow. For encouraging me to try myself out and providing a safe environment for that.

A very happy 2013 to all of my readers!

December News: A Short Overview

Sometimes, there are some smaller events which fit into the blog, but don’t warrant a post of their own. Or topics where I don’t want to go into a full analysis right now because that would depress me, but which I might like to come back to later. This blog entry is a collection of such “news snippets” and comments, and I am planning to make use of the feature in the future as well.

1.) Integration Class: When my husband was granted a residency permit for three years in June, it was under the requisite that he attended integration class for learning German. The first vacancy in such a class in our home town was in December: given our financially restrained situation, a different location was no option as the costs for public transportation would have bitten a serious chunk out of our budget. So we had a lot of time to bide just waiting for December to roll around.
On the morning of the big day, he left for class, only to be back home an hour later – the course had been moved to the end of January due to problems with the class rooms available. So that meant waiting for another seven weeks, and on top of that, we had not even gotten the letter informing us about this the week before. Especially my husband was deeply disappointed; he had looked forward to finally getting started after so many months of waiting.

2.) Christmas Party: I attended the Christmas party at the library where I used to work until February 2011. Last year I chickened out of going at the last minute, blaming it on an uni test (which we really had, but it didn’t interfere with the party). This year, however, I was determined to go, and it turned out really nice.

3.) Class Reunion: Just before Christmas, there’s the annual class reunion of my school; basically consisting of having drinks at some pub and catching up with who’s doing what. The last time I attended was in 2009 for the tenth anniversary of leaving school, which proved the kickstart for an episode of major depression that led straight to the panic attacks of June 2010 and consequently to antidepressants and psychotherapy. (So there came something good out of it, eventually.) It made me feel so inferior about myself – labouring around with my university education, a really complicated love life I did not feel like explaining to anyone, and nothing else worth talking about either – while everyone else gave rundowns of their academic credentials and fancy jobs, or not so discreetly flashed chunky engagement rings… It was an experience I have not had any desire to repeat since, especially since hardly any of the people I would like to meet again attend either.
Usually, I’d just ignore the Facebook invites and pretend I hadn’t seen them. This year, however, I felt the desire to actually decline officially. I did not give any reason; I could hardly write the truth (“Most of you are a bunch of phonies and it depresses the shit out of me to see that even the stupidest and those most lacking in positive character traits managed to carve out more of a career than me”). And it’s not so much that I feel ashamed of myself rather than having no desire to share intimate details about my mental health with people I have no contact with otherwise. Maybe by the time the fifteenth anniversary rolls around I’ll give it another try, but for now, I am quite happy to stay at home.

4.) Gastritis: For the last couple of weeks, I have had stomach problems, especially in the late afternoons and evenings. The symptoms match those of gastritis, which I’ve had a couple of times already over the course of the last fifteen years. I didn’t even see a doctor for it, because the advice they give is always the same: stick to rice and apples and drink lots of tea until the symptoms go away. Antacids are not covered by the health insurance in such a case either.
It’s stress-related anyway in my case, and when it did not go away by itself, I switched to a somewhat restrictive vegetarian diet for the last couple of days: apples, bananas, rice, pasta, bread, potatoes, legumes, corn, vegetables. No meat, fish or poultry, no eggs, no coffee, no hot spices, no berries, no citric fruit, very small quantities of dairy products only (which I have to be careful about due to my latent lactose intolerance anyway). It helped a lot, but tonight I’ll try to steer off that list with small portions of the “forbidden foods”, because I start missing them.

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?

Writer’s Block

Words don’t come easily these days. I’m suffering from some kind of writer’s block, which ultimately is only a symptom of problems in other parts of my life. And the blog isn’t the only way it manifests: my last therapy session was the one I posted about in April and I haven’t written to my therapist either in the meantime. We talked on the phone briefly when he had to cancel my appointment in May due to staff shortage at the hospital, so he has a vague idea that I am not too peachy, but despite a few attempts I could never finish an email even though trying really hard – I can’t put into words what exactly the problem is or what he could do to help me. Same goes for my husband. He asks me to talk to him about it, but I just don’t know what to say. I don’t know where the root of the problem is and I don’t know what to do to make things better – all I can tell him is that I am increasingly suffering from university-related anxiety, but that’s something he can tell without me pointing it out to him.
Yesterday, I woke up two hours prior to the time the alarm clock was set for, and the thought of going to class filled me with such dread that I burst into tears and ended up staying at home. Today was hardly better, just less teary, and even though I left for class, I just ended up counting down the minutes until I could go home again. On the outside, all I have to do is sit there and take notes, nothing more, but inside me there is so much anxiety that even that leaves me completely exhausted after two hours.