Posted by finelinebob on May 7, 2004, at 3:06:33
In reply to I just don't know, posted by tamdon on April 30, 2004, at 5:02:13
Sorry ... long rant ... just my $.02.....
Well, from someone who has moved home to elderly, somewhat disabled parents, I'd just like to warn you that it may be everything and nothing you think it'll be, positively and negatively. All the more reason to do it.
Yeah, there is the chance for you to do some good in taking care of your grandparents. In my case, my diabetic father developed an open sore on his ankle right after I arrived that would have required a nurse's attention on a daily basis if I hadn't been there to do the work, otherwise he would have lost his leg. How did this make me feel? Angry that it fell to me to do it. Tired of dressing the wound twice a day for several months. Grateful that I saved his leg, and having that acknowledged and confirmed by his doctor and vascular surgeon. Thankful that there was something I could do right for a change. It was a mixed bag -- taking care of sick people isn't the most enjoyable pasttime available ... but I was/am sick myself, and finding you have the capacity to heal others can help you convince yourself that maybe, just maybe, you can start healing yourself.
You need to build a foundation, and going back to "the source" may be what you need. A lot of what I do and what I believe about myself, as with most of us, comes out of how I was raised. Moving from New York back to Michigan and my parents' basement, the most frightening thing was the idea of raising some old ghosts. You didn't say much about how talk therapy has or hasn't worked for you. Me? I still call my therapist in NYC every week (SBC's unlimited long distance plan is getting screwed by me!) to help me through it. One thing she helped me realize is that I have survived the traumas that created who I am. Being 600 miles away, I was able to psychologically move away from them. Coming home, I was afraid of somehow reviving them, getting mired in them again. Instead, I've been able to keep my distance from them -- in time, in circumstance, in who I was versus who I am now -- and that has made those traumas more powerless than ever.
The worst thing for me in moving home? I left home 20 years ago, and I'd lived a journey in which finally, after about 17 of those years, I had finally come to a place where I had some hope for having the sort of life I had always wanted to live. That life was taken from me, and I've been scratching and clawing, trying to get it back for the last 2.5 years. Coming home because I had no job, no money, and nowhere else to turn ... it felt like my life was over. That was the worst part of it.
Sounds like you're in the same place.
Well, call me Polly Anna, but there's a simple answer. Took me five months to realize it, so maybe this will save you the trouble.
If your life is over, it's time to start a new one.
If you've read the Hitchhiker's Guide books, you'll appreciate that it's not the answer but the question that's hard to comprehend. If that doesn't work for you, then "There is no spoon". Maybe that will make a connection. Answers are worthless if you don't understand, or even know, the question.
You want to be able to cope with your disorder? Then acknowledge the Beast for what it is. You and I, we're not the "feeling blue" poster children on those Zoloft/Paxil/Wellbutrin TV commercials who are going to start "Feeling like ourselves again" after a few short weeks of popping pills. We have disorders based in our biologies, magnified and expanded upon by our environments and psychologies. YMMV, but the best I've ever gotten from my meds was "traction", as my therapist likes to put it. They give me a solid place to work from. But the rest is up to me.
Meds might help fix your brain, but you gotta fix your head as well. It took me 2.5 years to find the right cocktail of meds, but I have to admit that my current (for the last 5+ years) meds have made the headwork I've accomplished possible ... so I hope you can work that out. Just don't leave it at that, okay?
If you can't be happy being who you are, then stop. It's the hardest thing you'll ever do, because being yourself is just about the only thing you know how to do. Being back home can help you see how that happened in the first place. As for me ... since I couldn't find a job doing what I loved so much, I had to accept that I might not be able to do it anymore. I went on to accept that I needed to make a clean, complete break with that past if I was going to give any new path to my life a chance at succeeding.
Yeah, I'm about as depressed as I've ever been. What to do? I really don't care about just about anything and everything. Well, okay, so there are maybe one or two slight tugs at that. Think about it ... maybe it makes sense that a slight tug in my current state of mind would be something I could be passionate about if I was even 50% of what I should be, right? It just so happened I felt one of those tugs looking through the community ed mailer ... a real estate course. It started off as "why not, I've gotta do something before I rot" to something that is starting to look promising. D'ya hear that? "Promising"?! It's a little miracle, compared to how I was feeling two weeks ago.
"Little miracles will build a cornerstone
Next in line to debts of mine
Little miracles are all I own"You still hanging in there, tamdon? Hope so. Hope this does some good. Bottom line: you gotta start somewhere. Going back to the beginning is a good place for all the right and wrong reasons.
poster:finelinebob
thread:341656
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20040430/msgs/344275.html