When You're Figuring Out Mental Illness Recovery
To those among us, the mentally dysfunctioning, behavior stumbling, fix-seeking, feel too much, too little, everything, up, down, why am I crying? Some of us make the decision — it’s help time.
Words get thrown around, one sinks in: recovery.
It’s a blimp in an ocean of doubt; it’s a word that suggests up, up and out!
What does it mean? Me being still the same person, still heavyhearted, fed up, strung out, it’s tangible yet it takes route and in the next few weeks, months, years, it’s bound to feel useless.
Recovery is less friends, less drinking and drugs, less low self-esteem…
Except recovery is also relapse and making an old mistake and the promises made to oneself that it wont happened again.
It’s endless explaining to family and friends and starting sentences with “when you do that I feel” or “such and such makes me feel anxious.”
It’s being venerable to stigma in a way you were not before because now you have a diagnosis and the language that surrounds it.
It’s appointment after appointment, doctor, psych, therapy, new drugs, drug changes, drug side effects.
It’s moving back home.
It’s flashbacks and crying over people long gone.
It’s memories that live in muscle.
It’s nature vs. nurture with you as it’s tester.
It’s harm prevention weighed up next to a shot glass, it’s knowing now all things pass, but still sinking so low that you sometimes forget it.
It’s new boundaries and wondering was I too soft, was I too firm, should I just give in?
As time goes on there is growth and self-improvement, there are techniques to calm nerves, to help with sleep and how best to eat and the tireless observing and recording of one’s triggers and warnings.
Recovery is a trigger in itself because it exposes and strips back the ways which we coping, forcing us to face the music.
My unhealthy coping mechanisms, I miss them, they did the job, I could use them so well to avoid really seeing myself.
Self-sabotage is short-term problem solving with the side effect of suffering.
Solving problems in the long run is daunting and difficult, so I take my hat of to those who are trying it.
Ella is a 23 year old Australian who was diagnosed with soft bipolar spectrum disorder, anxiety and cyclothymia in March, 2015. Cyclothymia is characterised by rapid cycling moods that are on the less sever end of the bipolar spectrum. She uses various creative outlets to help manage her mental health including poetry, journaling, comics, visual art, crafts, photography and film. Her poetry and artworks can be viewed at moodmuse.tumblr.com, her photography can be view at ellaolive.weebly.com and she can also be found on Instagram.
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