Chaos, Coffee, and Confessions: Finding my way back to mental health

I had my followup appointment at the Mayo Clinic on Tuesday, and I came away with some good news. The cream is working on my lichen sclerosis and she said my skin is looking a lot better. I can feel that it is--most of the burning is gone and I only have some swelling and bruising most days. There is tightness around my anus that has yet to fade completely, but I figure in time that too will, not go away, but lessen to the point I don't feel it much anymore.  The ultrasound showed I had a cyst on my ovary, which could be causing some of the bloating and discomfort that has been the main source of my anxiety, but my ovary pills ran out three weeks ago and she seemed surprised I was no longer on them. Maybe the "no refills" was an oversight on her part, but that's okay. She's putting me on something new that she said will work even better. I have to pay for them, but considering that so far this whole health odyssey has been "free" at least money-wise, I t...

My anxiety is worse today for some reason, and I have no idea why. I'm logged into my job and it's slow because of the holiday weekend. I'm not feeling bad--in fact, I'm feeling better than I have in a long time. But my anxiety it twisting my stomach making me feel a little nauseous, and I have that electrical current strumming through me and that only happens when I have anxiety.  Surprisingly, I am feeling better than I have in while. I don't have much bloating and fewer twinges in my belly today, though my sick stomach has sent me to the bathroom a few times this morning (not to throw up, but the other thing if you know what I mean). My nausea will go away once the panic fades, but I've noticed I don't feel good in the mornings in general, and I don't know why. Scared to face another day of feeling like crap? Maybe. I work a job where I'm tethered to a computer and time offline counts against me (as is the case with most call center jobs) and par...

Someone said something that brought me down the other day. That's easy to do, don't get me wrong. While I might be feeling better in some ways, my appointment in February wasn't the golden ticket I hoped it would be and needless to say, I'm still mentally fragile. So when someone close to me said I wasn't doing good enough, it hit hard. I'm doing my best, and for the four years I've felt like shit, I've been doing my best. Sometimes my best was just getting out of bed and taking a shower. Sometimes my best was getting a solid day's writing in. Some days my best was just going to the store, making sure my kids had food, and dropping into bed for the rest of the day.  People like to judge you, and since I've been sick, I haven't been a stranger to it. The incredulous part is, the people who judge you have no right. I mean, no one does, but if you really look at people who do the judging, they don't have perfect lives either. They take their...

The past few days have been rather rocky for me, in terms of how I feel physically and mentally. As I'm writing this, I think I'm back on a more even keel, and I hope things can continue that way for a bit. I never know when I'm going to feel off in my head, and I wasted a lot of Sunday fixating on how I felt and if it means more than what my doctor said it does. Tuesday I was really bloated and had twinges under my bellybutton, my anxiety was out of control, and for the first time in a long time, my sister and I didn't have our weekly date.  I realize I need to tell you what's going on with me or this blog isn't going to make any sense. I wanted to kind of ease you into all that happened to me, but after two posts, if I don't tell you, you won't know, and dropping breadcrumbs only gets you so far. This isn't a mystery novel.  In my first post, I alluded to my troubles starting way back, as early as 2016, but I think what I was going through with my ...

We bandied that phrase around a lot when COVID was going on, yet wearing masks and isolating did wane, even if they shouldn't have.  Getting used to a "new normal" isn't easy, even if that "new normal" was something you were living before.  It might sound odd, but this is where I'm at now. Nothing feels really wrong, but nothing feels right, either. Let me explain what I mean. In the past few years I've had a lot going on. I got a divorce, which was amicable and wanted on both sides. We share a couple of kids, and we're friends--he still has a key to my apartment for emergencies and he comes over on holidays. But even though it was smooth, going through a divorce is a stressful, life-changing event, and maybe one I still haven't gotten over because of all the other shit I've been dealing with since then.  During my divorce I met someone on Twitter--he was a writer too, reaching out as a lot of people are, trying to find a connection, a pe...