#stupid ssris that make me fall constantly and fuck with my brain

[milkweedman]

It is interesting how much math comes into even the most basic of like. Making things. Making almost anything. And often not numbers necessarily but proportions and geometry. I think all the time about how castles were built with geometry at the heart of it. And I use the same kind of proportional math to make socks fit. And none of my pieces are ever knit with a prime number of stitches--because you use factors to make neat colorwork and ribbing and different stitches. Idk ! I remember constantly thinking 'how the hell is THIS gonna come in useful ?' But it always does. Math is at the heart of everything, and knowing how to apply it is a tool of critical importance to Thinking Up A Shape And Making It.

#it turns out it is not covid vaccine making me highly fucked up but rather this new med which is fun #um #one of thise 'high but wow. in such a bad way' kinda experience atm #almost fell down the stairs #tripped while just standing #and its like. ok so the thing is i go to pain management to manage my pain right ? makes sense #and then all they have to offer is shit that fucks me up more. the muscle relaxant that seems to have permanently #loosened all my joints so they are WAY WORSE NOW #stupid ssris that make me fall constantly and fuck with my brain #i literally just need a painkiller that works. that is all. we know what was effective from surgery #but they of course will never prescribe opiods. oh the horror. imagine. #i could scream #anyway. uh thinking about the interconnectedness of math in all things is much more fun than screaming #knitting

[jordyn-beloved]

My name is Jordyn, and I have borderline personality disorder. Throughout my life, I’ve constantly struggled. It seems that each time I start to recover from something, a new horror occurs. When I was 6 years old, I was diagnosed with generalized and social anxiety with OCD tendencies. My parents shoved medication down my throat, and I started seeing a therapist, but I never spoke to her about anything. She just observed my behavior as I played with the toys in her office. I didn’t even know that I had been diagnosed with a mental illness until I was 12. It really did explain a lot, but I was still able to manage everyday life.

My entire childhood was lonely and bleak. I didn’t have any friends, and I know a lot of people say that, but I seriously didn’t. I was too shy to approach other children, and even when I did approach them, they thought I was odd, so even though I desperately wanted a friend and I’d cry constantly from how alone I felt, I didn’t make any friends for a majority of my childhood. Instead of playing with other kids, I’d stay at home and watch films and TV shows or play my favorite video game The Sims. I also played with dolls by myself. I’d always ask my mom or sister to play with me, but my mom always said no, and since my sister was 7 years older than me, she found it annoying and childish. I’d always try to bug my sister when her friends were over, and I know most younger siblings do that, but my reasoning was a bit different in the fact that I was so lonely that any opportunity for human contact was worth more than words could describe. I’d often say outrageous things to other children in school in order to try to make them laugh, to make anyone at all notice me, but it just drove even more distance between me and others. At the age of 8, I found out what depression was. I immediately deeply resonated with that word. I saw it on the internet, where I spent all of my childhood. I saw it from videos and comments from others online speaking about their experience with depression. I so closely felt those same things, but I knew I couldn’t tell anyone how I felt. No one would probably believe that an 8-year-old was depressed. No one would take me seriously, and I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to speak about how I felt. All I really wanted was a friend or someone that cared about me, but at the rate I was going, that didn’t seem likely. I also learned what suicide was. What a wonderful thing it sounded like. I could make all of my pain and loneliness stop if I just killed myself? That sounded amazing. But I didn’t know how to kill myself, and I don’t think I had the guts at the time to do it. I think I still had some life left in me, hoping desperately that things would change.

As I grew older, I did make some friends, and it was nice. Still, I struggled with feeling this ache in my chest at random times even when I was with people. A lot of my friendships growing up were unstable, and friends would often be my friend one second and then hate me the next. Middle school is kind of like that, I guess. My first panic attack was when my best friend at the time said she didn’t want to be friends anymore. It sucked. I was hyperventilating. I couldn’t breathe. So many times people had left me. More than half of my life I had been alone, so why was I so affected by this now? I guess I didn’t want to be alone again. Not only that, but this girl meant a lot to me. We had so many inside jokes and fun moments. It was hard to think of all of that ending, me never being able to send her a snapchat of a picture that related to a joke only she and I would understand. Eventually, we made up, but once we entered 7th grade and moved to a new school, we slowly grew distant. I sort of made friends, but life felt pretty lonely. I admit that I wasn’t the coolest kid, and I was pretty dorky and annoying, but life felt really lonely. Once again. But this time, I tried to just continue on with life, and what kept me going was my dog, God, and my favorite films inspiring me. 

8th grade was what I call the worst time in my life. Nothing particular happened, but this was when I slowly started falling into severe depression, and my social anxiety grew worse and worse until I became selectively mute. I could speak at home, and I could speak to my only friend, but in certain situations, I couldn’t open my mouth. I wanted to. I wanted to so bad, but I just couldn’t. I felt the loneliest I’d ever felt during this time in my life. I had a single friend, and she meant a lot to me, but I still felt lonely. I thought that if I maybe made more friends, I’d feel less lonely, but I’m not so sure now if that would’ve been true. During this time in my life, I was obsessed with death. It inspired me. Reading poetry online about depression and suicide was one of the only ways I could cope with how I was feeling. Oh, how death seemed so beautiful. I thought about it almost every day. I couldn’t, however, bring myself to do it no matter how miserable I was. Some days, I’d tell myself that this was the day, and others, I held onto hope that things would change. I suppose I still had, though small, a little bit of life left in me.

I opened up about my OCD getting worse to my psychiatrist, and he prescribed me Sertraline aka Zoloft. It’s an SSRI commonly used to treat OCD, but since it’s also used to treat social anxiety, maybe this was what helped me most. Sometime between the summer of 8th grade and right before I started 9th grade, I became entirely new. I went to an event with my friend, and I, for once, could talk freely. Oh, how freeing it felt to be able to open my mouth without feeling afraid of what might happen. I danced and I laughed and others were surprised at how outgoing I suddenly became, but how surprised was I? I didn’t know why, but I didn’t question. Suddenly feeling a bit happier, a bit more optimistic, a bit freer, oh, it was wonderful. It felt like I overcame the most horrible things in my life.

In 9th grade, I was about to go to a new school. My old school was just too much for me to handle, and going to my new school was probably the best decision I ever made. For a few months, I felt so happy. I was talkative, and I had all of these ideas. I’d come up with poetry and thoughts in my head during class, and I’d write them down, and my new favorite color was yellow because it stood for happiness, and I decided that I wanted to become Catholic, and I felt so wonderful, so, so wonderful. But of course, it crashed. I began to feel depressed again. It was inevitable. It wasn’t for any particular reason. I just did. And it sucked because I felt happier and on top of the world once again, and then it crashed, and then I felt happy, and then it crashed, and it was a constant cycle. It was annoying, but at least I wasn’t always miserable. I still had so much life left in me. For once, I wasn’t thinking about suicide. 

The summer before I started 10th grade, I spent it alone. I didn’t do much. I mostly just listened to music and watched films. I mean, at the beginning, I hung out with a few people, but they had left to go places, and I stayed in my town in my house in my room in my bed. I didn’t do much at all. 10th grade started, and my school changed entirely. They got an entirely new staff, and the entire structure was redone. It sucked. But I was trying my best. Even so, my depression was horrible. I decided to finally open up about my depression and my apparent manic symptoms, and I was prescribed Lamotrigine aka Lamictal, a mood stabilizer. It helped a lot even though I didn’t necessarily realize it at first. I’d go through phases of taking it and not taking it, and I guess I realized that when I didn’t take it, I’d become irritable and sad much easier, and I guess that was worse than being able to feel manic. 

So many things happened between then and now. I changed so much, and I’m sure I fought hard. But things are different now. I’ve been feeling weaker and weaker each day as my borderline symptoms keep growing worse.

The first time I heard of borderline personality disorder was from my dad. He worked in a hospital, and most of his patients were there because they were dangerous to society or had committed violent crimes. He spoke of borderlines as if they were evil and manipulative and would only seek attention from others. I later found out that this isn’t true. I also found out a lot of things. So many people judge others for their actions, but you cannot say you wouldn’t do something if you weren’t in another person’s shoes and you didn’t have their brain. I do stupid things sometimes because of how horrible I’m feeling inside. And each day, my emotions grow stronger and become harder to deal with. Each day, I lose the life left in me. And the one person in this world who I trusted, well, I don’t know anymore. I don’t just feel alone this time. I feel hopeless. I feel weak. It’s been so difficult to deal with my feelings, and I just want to give up. I don’t want to live this way anymore. I don’t want anyone to blame themselves because it’s no one’s fault. It’s my choice. If I decide to kill myself, that’s on me. I think I’m just growing closer to giving up. I don’t know what I believe anymore, if there’s some place you go after you die, but anywhere can be better than me right now feeling how I’m feeling. I just want to make this pain stop. If what doctors say about me is true, I’ll be fucked up for the rest of my life. A lot of articles say borderlines are manipulative and difficult to deal with. I don’t do it on purpose, but maybe it’s true. 

God, I’m such a failure at everything. I always ruin things. I always fuck up. I should have given up a long time ago. 

I don’t know. Will I kill myself? It’d be nice. If I do, I just hope that God forgives me. I know I’m doubting Him right now, but I hope He forgives me.