Month: May 2009

Singing the praises of aropax

It is clear I have been on the wrong antidepressant all these years. It is clear that the old ones (cipramil) were doing me no favours at ALL and in fact, may have been having a negative effect on me. Things got worse as I raised the dose, I think. Or at the very least, did not get better.

I think I have finally found the right one. I saw a psychiatrist who prescribed aropax, because it deals much better with anxiety than the former. It is also for people with PTSD, OCD and social phobias. Whereas the other was mainly only for depression.I had to come off the others half a tablet a day, have none one day, and then start the apropax. Getting off the old ones, I did have some of the old anxiety ‘attacks’ for no reason, but they have gone again now I’m on apropax. And guess what? I feel NORMAL. Just plain old normal, which after the past two years, is SUCH  relief, nearly a miracle. I am not wanting to sleep all day and all night now. I am finally having a good nights sleep, and have energy during the day. My head is still feeling a bit foggy and out there, but I have only been taking these things one week so still have time to adjust to them.

I went to see my counsellor yesterday (in Australia there is a big difference between psychiatrists and psychologists … pyschiatrists prescribe, psychologists do the therapy). I had nothing I needed to talk about. There are still issues, of course there are, everyone has them and there always will be I guess. But I’m handling them now. And I feel at peace with myself.

WHAT a relief.

I think I will really be able to start tackling uni again next semester (film class … YAY!). I am feeling, instead of paused, as if I’ve hit a turn around, and it’s starting afresh from here. I am at the stage where, instead of battling trying to just deal with my emotions, I want to explore my values and start living my life according to them. Moving forward.

I’ve been attending hydrotherapy and light exercise classes for women who’ve had breast cancer surgery. I’ve been volunteering in Liam’s class doing guided reading with each child individually (I LOVE watching the children learn, I LOVE helping children read!). Slowly starting to re-engage.

Life is good 🙂

The soul is not nearly as rational as the ego.

Returning to Thomas Moore again … so much wisdom…

“The soul is filled throughout with discord and dissonance
and so its first need is poetic madness. That way through
musical sounds we can waken what is dormant, through sweet
harmonies calm what is turbulent, and through the blending
of various elements quell the discord and temper the different
parts of the soul.”
Marsilio Ficino

It is essential in modern life to adore the ego, to think that our social problems and our personal struggles will be resolved once we understand the situation and gain control of it. The current idea of a well-adjusted person is one who is unusually conscious and in charge. It is assumed that the purpose of life is to be more of an ego, successful in the eyes of the world and sanctioned by a swelling egotistic bank account.

The self-reliance characteristic of those who live by the philosophy of modernism betrays its secular core. Other communities of the past and present who live by traditional values acknowledge the mystery of human existence and the immensity of nature. Faced with obstacles, they pray, sacrifice, praise, and petition the source of life beyond themselves. Their religion is not just belief, but a way of being in the world and a profound conception of the self. One way tends toward hubris and self-interest, while the other is rooted in humility.

When we live from a deeper place, we become palpably aware that life is fundamentally mysterious and is ultimately incomprehensible to our rational ways of thinking. We realize that we need other kinds of intelligence and skills. Traditional societies could instruct us in these areas. They worship their ancestors, while we blame our insecurities on our parents and grandparents. They instruct their children in the myths and rites that hold both society and the self together, while we teach our children how to count and use a computer. They heal body, soul and spirit in one, while we break ourselves into compartments and rely on experts trained in isolated specialities.

As we move closer to a soulful life, we learn to life with unruly passions and unpredictable fantasies. We live with our madness and move with it gracefully. Psychosis is not real madness, but is an excess of ego that fractures the envelope in which soul and self lie encircled in each other. Neurosis is the failure to weave autonomous fantasy and stirring emotion into life and is the visible sign of a divided self. The ideal is not to become sane and hygienic, but to live creatively by responding positively to the powerful moods, feelings, and ideas that captivate us. If we don’t meet these life-shapening expressions of the soul creatively, they will quickly become adversaries, and we will develop the split psyche so characteristic of our times, in which our sane lives are flat and aimless while our passions seem incomprehensible and out of control.

To deal with the powerful urges of the deep soul, a poetic attitude rather than a rational one is more effective. Wisdom rather than information guides us, providing the patience to become acquainted with the soul rather than the impatience that leads us into quick cures and explanations. The point is not to flee our depths but to reconnect with them.

The arts could serve us well in this process if we made connections between our experiences of drama, literature, painting, and music and our most personal conflicts and challenges. The arts meet us at the point of imagination, which is a blending of reason and mystery in images. In the arts we contemplate our world and have the chance no longer to be strangers to the deep self that is as opaque to reason as it is transparent to the imagination. An art image is psychosis contained, undivided, and constructive.

In a time of emotional struggle, it might be better to listen to a special piece of music than to consult an expert, and better to draw a picture of the situation than to try to figure it out. Reason is distant and has its own limited requirements for an ordered life, while the arts are intimate and can hold almost any conceivable human predicament.

from “Original Self. Living with Paradox and authenticity.” – Thomas Moore

Midnight things

  • I wish I had a ‘print screen’ function for my brain. I have this strange phenomenon happen in my dreams. It has been happening a while and with increasing regularity. In my dreams, I ‘write’ sentences. Random sentences that belong in a work of fiction. The strange thing about it is, that in my dreams, I observe this happening and know I’m dreaming it and I say to myself “my God, why can’t I write like that when I’m awake? If only I could remember these things.” Because … they are good. Yes, they are good, very good even, and I recognise this in my dreams. Just a sentence or two usually. And what is weirder is that these moments pop up in the middle of other dreams which have nothing to do with whatever, I suddenly become lucid and watch these sentences come up. Then, presumably, I go back to whatever my dream self was doing and I have no memory of anything.
  • What a week. Heavy heavy rain, now we are flooding. This week I have been changing anti-depressants, to one that is more designed to take care of anxiety. Coming down off one half a tablet a day, one day with none, then slowly starting the new one. I have had excrutiating headaches this week, now I’m just Spacey with a capital S. I was beginning to wonder if perhaps the original ones were doing me a big disfavour. I’ve been feeling more my old self more than ever. Except tonight, just before coming to bed, inexplicable teariness and melancholy, like a spike in a graph. No reason. I know it is just the chemicals/change of chemicals fucking with my head right now.
  • Talking of headaches, I’m really worried about my sister Natalie, the one with the brain tumour. The tablet form of chemo has been doing so well for her that the last two MRIs showed barely anything. Not only have they been taking care of the symptoms (little seizures) but actually shrinking the tumour. The oncologist was amazed … didn’t expect that much of a result. So they gave her a break from the chemo tablets and said they will keep on eye on her. She’s been off it 5-6 weeks now, and she had a couple of little turns this week. Nothing after that. Today we went out to lunch to celebrate my father’s birthday. Natalie has had very bad, and quite constant, sharp stabbing headaches all day long.  I’m worried for her.
  • I have acquired myself a copy of Photoshop CS4 extended. 🙂 I’ve been having fun learning it. It’s not a difficult learning curve, already being very conversant with Paint Shop Pro. But I love it. Hours of fun there.
  • I’ve actually been reading Stephen King again. I haven’t read him for quite a few years. I picked up his two newest books last week, and I’m thoroughly enjoying the short stories now.
  • Been philosophically pondering the common feeling that people diagnosed with cancer get to rediscover their creative side. With me, and another woman I met last weekend (I still have to blog about last weekend’s jaunt), it was music, with my sister, it was more crafty things, though previously she painted. Is it because we (unconsciously even) look at the things we value more? There seems to be a spiritual connection there though, something more than just living according to our values. The need to create, the need to express ourselves through the creation, the need to find solace, safety and comfort in the creating. Hmmm… someone should write a book about that lol!
  • Hope my American friends have a lovely Memorial Day weekend. Missing friends lately, missing important discussions, shared loves, sharing little treasure-finds … missing all of that dreadfully. Thinking I will probably miss it forever. Thinking again on the love/hate relationship with solitude, the nature of melancholy. (The importance of not writing fragments for sentences as is my wont!!) Maybe I’m coming full circle.
  • Here’s a thought … confronting and facing fear and terror is something all of mankind is having to do in this stage of our evolution. This was something someone said last weekend that really struck strings in my soul. And, strangely, it bought me a certain sense of calm, quiet and, dare I say it, nearly peace. It depersonalizes my own struggles somewhat. That’s a very nice thing.
  • Circling back up to the creativity thing … the biggest news (beyond even the all clear for a return of cancer in my breasts) is that I have been offered a piano … for free. I only have to pay to have it hauled from where it is (4 hours south) to here. Cheap, really. And apparently it’s a beautiful instrument. I won’t be able to have it until I move as I don’t have space here, but this is my biggest, longest-held & cherished dream come true. To have, and be able to play, a piano again. I haven’t been playing guitar much either lately, but I’m starting to get itchy fingers. And I’m starting to do regular watercolour painting. Hopefully, somehow, all of this will help beget my dream sentences into waking life 🙂

All clear…

I FINALLY got the official word today (nearly 4 weeks later) that the mammograms and ultrasounds show no sign of cancer. I guess this makes me a one year survivor? HURRAH!

A woman in my hydrotherapy for breast cancer surgery patients group today said she’d put no stock in that, as she had a mammogram that showed nothing, then was diagnosed with breast cancer 2 weeks later. I’m not letting that get to me.

More later … I have a lot to say on what went on this weekend just gone …

But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep

It’s 4.30 in the morning. I can’t sleep. I haven’t slept. And that little Robert Frost verse keeps on looping in my head.

In a few hours I have to be awake, tending to Liam, and I have to spend the day being reasonably sociable at my parents, as it’s Mothers Day. My mind … monkey mind. Chattering away and having a gay old party swinging from the branches. It’s full moon torture time. I lay in bed and think and think and think and imagine and daydream and uselessly project into the future. I torture myself.

I have to tell a secret. A very big secret. Can I just say, out there and out loud, I hate what I’ve become. Yes I do. I absolutely hate it. I hate me, I suppose. I have lost my awe and wonder. I hate being miserable a lot of the time. I hate having lost my magic and the part of me that can be whimsical. I hate torturing myself. I hate feeling like the worlds slowest and numbest sloth. I HATE feelingl stupid thanks to chemobrain. I hate my life being on pause, I hate just plain not being free.

I just want to be free, free of me and what I am now. This heaviness, this whinging miseryguts. This deadness. Deadness. I hate wanting, I hate needing, and I hate crying. I hate my inability to let go. I hate acting so pathetically. I hate wishing, and nostalgia, and my unquiet brain. I hate loss. I hate trusting people and learning it’s a mistake. I think of me and I feel sick in the stomach. I HATE BEING A MISTAKE. How little that makes me. I think of some things and my soul just wants to cry to the heavens, like a mournful night-creature. I feel insufficient, deficient, dirty, invalidated, unwanted and unwantable. Unloved and totally unlovable. I hate needing to feel wanted and lovable.

I feel silenced and stifled because I can’t converse about shared love of movies/literature/poetry/art/music with the one person who has the identical loves and tastes, soulmate-like.

I know a lot of this is illogical, negative thinking. I’m well versed in CBT and the like 🙂 But this is the way I feel, logical or not. You can accuse me, as someone has recently, as being mired in self-pity, but that’s the wrong term … it is self-loathing.

Is this what the specialist oncological psychologist meant when she said life after cancer is harder? Because right now, it TRULY is a case of who am I now? What am I now? and where the fuck am I now? I have no frame of reference for anything anymore, and to try and explain how that really is to someone ‘not in this’ is impossible to relate.

I keep waiting. Waiting until I move, “and then I’ll feel better”. Waiting until I start the new antidepressant, “and then I’ll feel better”. Waiting until the healing ‘conference’ next weekend “and then I’ll feel better”.

But there’s this. On Friday Liam’s school had a Mothers Day Liturgy, and morning tea afterwards. The classes all gave presentations of some sort. Year 6 read the poems they wrote for their mothers. A couple of classes did dances to moving songs. Liam’s class all said “I love my mother because …” (Liam’s was “because she reads me books at bedtime” 🙂 ). Afterwards they presented us each with a little posy of wildflowers and a portrait they had painted of each of us. So beautiful, so warming, yet so sad, and so hard. There was one little girl in year 2/3 who was sobbing during their dance because she misses her mum (I don’t know her story beyond that). A year 6 girl included a part in her poem about how “some kids don’t have mums with them and I don’t see how mothers could leave their children”. I found it extremely difficult to keep myself together with those. Because it brings up the biggest fear that cancer gives me … that if I die, I leave Liam without a Mummy, and that will hurt him beyond belief. That is the panic of cancer for me, nothing else. If I didn’t have Liam, I wouldn’t be half so scared of dying. Might even think of it as a bit of a relief. My little boy is my reason for fighting.

Anyway, I held it together until nearly at the end of morning tea when a friend told me she had noticed me getting a bit teary during the thing and then the floodgates opened. Quietly, but they opened, and i had to leave via the back door. I cried all the way home and then was able to have a good solid cry when I got in my front door. Catharsis.

It reminds me that every mothers day, EVERY day of special celebration with Liam, is incredibly precious. I am lucky to have him. I am lucky to still have my own mother here on earth, some of my dearest friends don’t. I am lucky to be alive myself.

But none of this stops me from squirming around in the mud like the slimy worthless creature I feel I have become.

Just call me Gollum 🙂

whinge over.