Friday, September 9, 2011

I remember we could talk about anything

I've been having a hard time lately.
I have clinical depression and have been dealing with episodes since my teens. A few months after Wash was diagnosed I went on anti-depressant medications. I topped out at 4 different ones to deal.
Earlier this summer for certain medical/health reasons I had to stop taking them. With a very short step-down process. I've been dealing with everything on my own, no meds for a few months now.

I've noticed how hard it is. My Asperger's has become a lot harder for me to control/function around on most days. My depression when it happens, it faster and harder and deeper than before. Medication is not really an option right now, and dislike the kind of numbing it did mentally for me.


I bring this up as it's getting later in September. I hate this month. In 2003 my grandfather died on Sept 16. In the bedroom next to mine. My family and myself had been very close in his daily care even through the home hospice period. That was also the time I had my first real betrayal by my then boyfriend and best friend.
Three years later and my other grandmother had been battling leukemia all summer, while my grandfather's widow was literally trying to die. She passed 3 years to the day from her husband, and 7 days later on Sept 23 my other grandmother passed from the cancer complications.
It was the start of a huge cycle of death and loss that continued for another 2 months that year.

I tend to get 'seasonally' depressed around the anniversary of their deaths every year.
This year it just feels all compounded.

GBM is a fuck awful cancer. I literally live just waiting for a sign or a word that a new tumor has grown back. That's the eventuality. It's a WHEN, not an 'if'. I hate trying to force down from my conscious the worry and the knowledge that waaaaaay sooner than I want my husband will die.
There's maybe a half dozen people in the world with his cancer even 20 years close to his age who have made it more than 4 years. He's almost at 2.

I keep feeling like my time with him is running out. I want to be able to give him something, to take him somewhere, to find a way to have a fucking chance to live before I loose him.

It feels like this cancer has taken my youth and my chance for an "adulthood".

I often and lately have been questioning my own worth and value, especially in this society. The message it sends it really one of "move away or just die". There's no financial system in place for those terminally ill and in their 20's. People judge based on how productive one is- Wash can't do what he used to, and no one pays me to care 24/7 for my husband.

I see less and less humans around. People who will take the time, see us as people not numbers. Right now we are a "cost". Personally, I'm loosing my self worth with the peanut gallery constantly chipping that I have "no" worth.

It's hard mentally for me to continue to keep myself going. I have death and debt to "look forward" to.
I want a life with my husband.
I want a family.
I want a job and a career that pays me for the hard work I put in.

Intangible delicacies.

3 comments:

  1. Depression itself is such an energy suck, and caregiving in any case is a huge suck, and ambivalent feelings are enormous. You have immense value and much to say; I wish there were something I could do. The only "self-talk" that works for my depression is that my thoughts (worthlessness, etc.) are symptoms, not The Truth.

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  2. Tashi, I know it's very dark in your world right now, but daybreak will come. Please hold on until that happens. And know that others, including me, are out there and listening, even if there isn't much we can do but listen. You have an outlet -- keep using it...

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  3. Sending you HUGE HUGS right now with some extra ones for Wash too . I can't make it better but I do care and wish I could. Xxx

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