Struggling.

Hello everyone,

I am still unwell. I wish I could say that my problems have been simply the lingering effects of that horrid cold I had a little while back. (Thanks to the gods that it didn't turn into full blown bronchitis.) My difficulties are all based in my mental illness. It has had me feeling more than a little bit of despair. I'm working with my psychiatric care provider but there isn't much we can do at this time. Adjusting my medication can only take me so far right now. It doesn't magically make the days have the same length as they do in later March or any warmer.

I have been struggling to get much of anything done. Writing has been very difficult. It has also been rather painful. Much of what comes out when I sit down to write is related to trauma. I will only say that I have lived through enough that my case has been compared to that of veterans of combat and I have had several psychiatrists surprised I have everything as pulled together as I do. As some of my Christian friends would say, there but by the grace of God go I.

The gods have been ever present. When I have been struggling with things as basic as making sure I eat properly, they have nudged reminders into my path if not have said something directly. I sit here torn between the unhealthy part of my psyche telling me that I am making all of this up and the part of me that says it doesn't matter if I am so long as it works. I haven't started hallucinating, as I feared I would with the decrease in one of my medications. I suppose that is a point in my favor.

I look at my notes and what I had drafted out for posts on here and I find myself filled with such despair. I look at it and ask what the point to it all even is. I feel as though I am shouting out into the void with out even my own echo in reply. I know that I am not engaged in useless exercise. I intellectually fully grasp that my work here is valid and appreciated. My heart tells me that I am needed. My illness tells me that I am a fraud and that all is but shallow lies woven by madness.

I pray for this fog of despair and depression to lift but it hasn't happened yet. I have decided that if I am not doing better by the end of the week, I will be calling my psychiatric care provider to see if there is anything we can change. I drink my herbal tea. I meditate. I pray. But I still feel as though the world is beyond my grasp and that I am unworthy of its joys. Please forgive me for my silence. Please forgive me for this depressing post. If it were not for these words of grief and struggle, I would have nothing to say right now. I'm sorry.