One week left before eviction

As of yesterday, there is one week left before I have to move out of my house. I’m not looking forward to this move at all. The place I got I rushed into since I was in a complete panic at that point. There are only so many apartments in the campus area available around this time, and they’re usually pretty crappy. Overall, the place was a steal because of it including all utilities, which would knock off about $100 a month. But I’m still anxious about the move. I’ve been living at the co-op for longer than all but 1 other member out of 27. I was entrusted with a great deal of knowledge about what works and what doesn’t work at the co-op. So in moving out, I feel like a lot of time has been wasted over the past few years.

I’ve also begun the process of expanding my anxiety to the entire co-op even though I’ve tried to stop it. When I usually have a traumatic event, I have difficulty with the general area around the place that it happened. And this time it happened where I live. I barely feel comfortable in my own room. Most of the time I spend is at a chapel near by that has a student center in it. There I can relax, eat some snacks, and not worry about bumping into people. I don’t think that most people realize that springing things on people who have anxiety issues is a far more traumatizing event than for people who don’t struggle with anxiety. The effects of trauma don’t go away, they linger and consume one’s mind. For me, it’s so strong now that even though I wanted to stay before, I no longer do. Just because I have associated so much anxiety with this place.

Although, thanks to abilify, I’ve bounced back at least some in terms of mood. I don’t harbor a terrible amount of resentment against some of the people who voted against me. Others I just want to go away for ruining another part of my life. I don’t think abilify is going to change that. The good news is that I’ve developed a much better relationship with my parents out of all of this. Now they’ve seen me in my chaotic moods and known what has happened that made me disappear for several months. I’ve had to visit them more because my old house is almost a safe haven now. It’s not perfect, my parents still don’t know how to really respond or interact with my diagnosis, but it’s better as a result of getting kicked out to the curb. So at least some good has come of all of this drama.

But in some other ways this has been good, including the past semesters where I struggled with depression and anxiety. One day I hope to obtain a decent position in a university as a professor. Seeing these events unfold and seeing how it impacts my life will definitely make me a more empathetic individual. It reminds me of one of my math professors who encouraged me two semesters ago, when I was depressed, to simply drop the class and not worry. He too had a meltdown, but it was in grad school. His daughter also had one. For me, seeing someone survive and get a good position is something that was very encouraging. And here I am, after what can only be described as the worst year of my life with dealing with a girlfriend who tried to commit suicide, being failed by a professor who was not empathetic, having surgery, 3 bad drug interactions in 6 months, 2 suicidal episodes, erratic mood cycles every few days, finishing 3 classes during all of this, and eviction; I’m still standing. Life can get really rough sometimes, but it can be endured.

Going back home after being evicted

So while I’ve been evicted, I have until the 15th of august to leave. I’ve also been at my parents for the past 5 days trying to recuperate in a stress free environment. But today, I need to go back. I still have duties to perform and school work to get back to. Still, I’ve generalized my anxiety to the entire co op house. Even though I know that there are people there who support me, the returning to the physical structure itself is making me anxious. This isn’t the first time that I have had problems with certain physical locations. After becoming severely depressed and anxious, I have a hard time entering the math building on campus.

I’ve discussed this with my psychologist and it’s something that’s common that I suspect that many people do not realize. That once a certain traumatic incident has happened, the mind responds be seeing everything around it at the time of the trauma as a possible source for fear.

There are ways over this that I’ve found. The biggest one is to approach the area carefully and on your own terms. When I reacclimatized to the math building, I first went when I knew there was no one that was going to be around. Having people around just adds stimuli that I didn’t want to deal with. Also, doing it at night was more calming for me. Even though I sundown, going at night also means that there will be fewer people who might look at what I’m doing as weird. The thing is, that even though I knew that nobody would really care, when I’m anxious, it’s hard to move the thought of people judging me out of my mind.

After being in the math building, I went into the largest room I could find. The small rooms felt claustrophobic, but being in a lecture hall that can handle 300 people felt open and with no one in it, I truly felt completely alone. Then I started doing a little math, just cantor’s diagonal proof, but it felt good. There wasn’t any judgment or anyone looking, it was just me. It was freeing to do this.

Dealing with anxiety, I find that approaching the obstacle on my own terms is the best way. Being pressured into it through time tables or other people will just make it worse. The key in my overcoming anxiety is to control all the variables myself, or as near to as many as possible. Taking time to do some mindfulness exercises to let some of the anxious thoughts pass by and taking command has allowed me to get over my math building fears. The difficulty that I’m facing with the co-op is that I cannot control when people will be there. I cannot control how I can do some of my duties with no one judging me, as it was made pretty explicit that a lot of people are going to constantly judge me while I there. In evicting me through the use of secret meetings, they did more than just kick me out of the house I lived in for two years, they mentally destroyed my ability to live there currently. So, yeah, right now, I’m anxious and want to hide away for the next 3 weeks.

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Update: Still at home, my car has a problem with it and I sometimes get panic attacks while driving. Not looking forward to two hours in the car. I’ll definitely have to use back road highways to be able to cope with the drive. It’s a sober reminder that no matter what, anxiety can still rule over whatever you try to do. Hence why medication is so important to getting better, our different minds need a little push to get them into the direction we want them to go.

We judge on actions, not the illness

I’m currently sitting in a chair waiting to see if I’m going to be evicted for lacking in duties while I was severely depressed. One phrase kept cropping up “we’re judging you on your actions, not on whether you’re mentally ill.” I’m personally baffled at this kind of statement. You do not have a mental illness if it is truly all in your head, it has physical manifestations as well. That is why it is so destructive to people’s lives, it manifests itself in behavior. To judge the behavior is to judge the manifestation of the mental illness. One cannot separate the two into “bipolar” and “bipolar actions” without ignoring the direct link between the two. To see this see that it is impossible to say to someone that you’re fine with them being bipolar, but you cannot stand the behavior of bipolar people. It’s like saying “it’s ok to be bipolar, but it’s not ok to act bipolary.” The crucial problem is that we cannot help it. If I could stop acting on what goes on inside my head, then I would do it in a flash. But that’s why I take medications, that’s why I do cognitive-behavioral therapy, to try to stop it. However, this is not perfect. And it frustrates the hell out of me to think that people think that it is perfect and solvable in just a matter of months. I don’t know, this is a rant, but I cannot believe that the people I’ve lived with would be so ignorant about this.

Discrimination and Bipolar

I’m writing this while mildly inebriated off of klonopin, a new drug for me since I usually take xanax. The back story will give the reasons why.

I went on vacation this weekend, my moods had been out of sorts, my girlfriend’s mother had her birthday, and I figured that I’d also meet the folks. Being in Cedarburg, I had limited internet access, but saturday night I received a quick message: there was an agenda item about my at my co-op. I was rather irritated since I wasn’t going to be there, and I asked if it would be postponed. It was, until sunday, when I got another email saying that they were going ahead with the meeting. I asked what it was about, no mention, just that it’s about “negativity” in the house. Ok, cool, I’d rather be there if I am mentioned, but if it’s just abstract discussion then I’m relatively ok with it.

I come back on sunday after the meeting has taken place. They’ve decided to try to evict me. It sent me into a tailspin of anxiety and depression that left me at the hospital under suicide watch because of how bad it was. What’s worse, is that they won’t tell me why they’re trying to evict me, just that I am. After reading over the notes, I discovered that most of it is due to me not doing things in two time zones, one occurred in may and the other was june. In may I had a catastrophic reaction to seroquel, I ended up having itunes communicating secret messages to me. Doing things while under that kind of influence tends to be difficult and heavily embarrassing, I had to postpone make up work on my classes by a month. Then during June, I had a surgery on my back and was not able to walk for about 3 weeks all while experiencing what can only be described as a chronic concussion. These were not considered as acceptable excuses, instead as something for me to hide behind under the threat of law suit.

But other issues were brought up, particularly my usual appearance-disappearance behavior that is linked to my mood swings. The only way that I’ve discovered that I can cope with bipolar is to have a lot of me time. So some weeks things would slide, then the next week I would make up for it in some other way. It’s a little ad hoc, but most of my life is ad hoc at this moment.

Still, there is a movement among the other members of the house to kick me out for these behaviors. Their reasoning comes down to the idea that you can have a mental illness, so long as it doesn’t effect your ability to do things. Personally, I don’t know of a mental illness with these traits. I just feel depressed and alone when I hear misunderstandings like that.

Even more worrisome than just the fact that I might be evicted do to a misunderstanding about mental illness is the fact that it is even an option in people’s minds. As an atheist, I find that there’s a lot of discrimination in public areas, but there’s a growing acceptance. And let’s face it, we have pretty good laws protecting eviction due to religious beliefs. Here at my co-op, we have christians and atheists living together in the house, at no time would we evict either one because those beliefs interfere with their lives in the co-op. Especially if it was a religious observance.

Instead, because I have a mental illness, I’m cast (their words and not mine) as untrustworthy and a liar and lazy. Most of these ideas stem from the ad hoc nature of my life where I may say that I can do something given some time, and then a mood swing knocks me on my ass. While it might be frustrating to them to have to wait a day or two longer, it’s equally frustrating to me to be humiliated in being unable to achieve a simple task on time. And it’s frustrating as hell to think that I can be discriminated against and possibly evicted over something that I literally cannot control but am actively attempting to control. Nobody’s perfect, we all have slip ups, and in my case, slip ups will be a common experience in my life, but I can still get the majority of things done, and when manic even more.

However, it’s frustrating to explain this to people, and then have the common line that I’ve heard dozens of times that “maybe you just shouldn’t do x in the first place” be it living with other people, having kids, going to grad school etc… Who gets to have the right to decide what I can and cannot do? What sort of patriarchal sensibility says that others know best about my unique diagnosis and life? The discrimination that is occurring is not just the opposite of empathetic, but it’s a casual assumption that being mentally ill, I cannot make proper decisions for myself. And in order to rid themselves of the discomfort of my minor disappearances, they can legitimize it in thinking “well, this is better for you.” It’s a discrimination that is both condescending and self centered. But they’ll have to face reality, at some point in your life, you’ll have to live with, work with, or know someone with mental illness. We’re not going anywhere. The line of reasoning above is just an excuse to brush it away so that it doesn’t have to be encountered in any substantial form and people can go on with their merry little lives.

As a form of discrimination, mental illness is pervasive as ever and easily excusable. It’s so pervasive that I can live in a house that prides itself on serving every member of the community, except for the crazies. And it adds another fold to what it is like to live with this diagnosis, that people are not only afraid of me, but that I can actually be evicted because of my condition. This is an injustice that I’ve rarely heard from other groups, but I’ve now seen 3 times in the past 6 months. We, the mentally ill, need a stonewall of our own where one day we won’t take it any more and demand our rights. But of course, then we’d just be dismissed as literally the lunatic fringe. Right now, I live in a world of catch-22, and I’ve never experienced hopelessness quite like it.