Black Holes

You don't need to be in space to find yourself devoured by a black hole; sometimes the one in your heart is enough to swallow you up.

But, thanks to friends, I'm clawing up and out -- or through to the other side. Or however one escapes a black hole.

Which is entirely the point: However you have to escape a black hole, just do it.

Anxiety Social Network

The first Anxiety Social Network, Anxiety Social Net, has launched.

ASN is a meeting place for people afflicted with anxiety disorders, as well as those who have managed to overcome them. If you have helplessly watched a family member grapple anxiety disorders, you are encouraged to join too.As an ongoing sufferer, you may find explanations to some of the sensations you often feel, but cannot easily put into words. You may even get answers to questions you haven't been able to frame, because you don't understand your symptoms well enough. Here some things you an do in AnxietySocialNet:

• Write your own Diary and share your experiences
• share pictures, articles and video with the anxiety community
• ask /answer questions within our community using our anxiety Q&A system
• One on One anxiety chat with other members of the anxiety community
• Create/Join groups
• share your emotional state with the community using our emotion chart
• Learn about anxiety on our Anxiety Blog

AnxietySocialNet is the brainchild of a former sufferer, who has overcome his own struggles, and aims to help those who hope to unshackle themselves from the problems that hold them captive. Medication can lessen their symptoms, but the kindness and the presence of someone to talk to someone who understands, can ease their burdens.

It's free to join. And I'm giving it a try because I hope there will be others who understand my emotional state and perhaps I can help a few folks too.

If you do join, you can connect with me here. And I started a group for survivors of abuse and domestic violence.

Today's Funk: When Practical Is A Punishment

Struggling post divorce is typical. Loss, disappointment, trying to be capable, strong and wise in front of your children... And financial devastation.

Each and every one made worse when the whole mess is a result of domestic violence.

The result: Some days, I just don't feel up to being, well, me.

I would just bury my face in my dog's fur and cry (his coat absorbed many tears of mine over the years), let his sweet gaze fill me with comfort and hope, but I had to put my beloved dog to sleep a year ago.

I miss him desperately.

I have tried to cope with the loss of him. I have coped with hope. The hope that this year was the year I might get a puppy for Christmas, but, well, practicality is often a punishment, if not it's own hell.

There's still a girl dog here; but she doesn't give a hoot for me. Despite my having raised her from a pup nearly a year before moving in with the current (and last!) husband, this dog is his dog, not mine. She brings me no comfort. She only demands things from me -- actually stops snuggling or playing with my husband to come get me to take her out to go potty!

She is not my dog.

I miss my dog.

You know, I have a certificate for a companion therapy animal. It's supposed to prevent a loss of housing and whatnot for having a pet; protection for the discrimination against the anxiety ridden and/or depressed. But the certificate does not provide a dog or money for a dog. (It's never just the cost of the dog, but the ongoing costs.) Nor does it make the dog I have become a therapy animal or even my companion. Stupid dog can't read. And probably wouldn't care even if she could.

I had no illusions about really finding a puppy under the imaginary Christmas tree. I know the balance in the old bank account. I just hoped that somehow one would find it's way there, my very own Christmas miracle. But there wasn't -- either a Christmas miracle or a puppy.

I was OK. Resigned enough not to pout, anyway. But then today...

Papers were delivered regarding court action on an old medical bill. Horror! Shame! I swallowed them under the usual calm-headed practicality of a survivor who knows that you just have to keep struggling, comforting myself with the fact that this bill, while more than we have now, is something we can accomplish. Eventually. (If only the car would stop needing repairs, if only those other "bumps" in the road of life wouldn't set us back each month, threatening to return me to my post-traumatic induced agoraphobic-dressed bed. The thing, induced by violence, that led to the companion animal certificate.)

And then, not 10 minutes later, the phone rang. "Hello! We have Basset Hound puppies -- and there's a male available for you!"

I then did the worst thing possible: I went to look at pictures of the pups online.

How can something so cute knock you to your knees? Make you want to vomit? Make you cry with all the self-pity of a self-absorbed teenage girl? Force you to humble yourself with a "Dear Diary" entry online -- or risk balling all the way into the family dinner time, alarming all?


I blame no one else. I should have said, "No, thank you, not this time," and got off the phone.

I should not even have asked, "How much?" (In some perverted twist of irony, the exact same price as the medical bill -- and both available/due within similar time frame, give or take a week, as puppies, not claims, are flexible with their dates.)

I should not have gone to look at them.

I broke my own heart.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that the bad news of the medical bill situation has me too sober to even kid myself into the dream -- which means that now hubby won't be forced into playing The Bad Cop, forced to introduce dreaming me to the sad reality that we cannot afford a puppy.

He, however, can console himself with his dog.

Me?

I guess I just get to take his dog out before it pees on the carpet and makes more work for me.

And blog to vent so that I don't end up scaring, scarring, the children. Or stuck in my bed. Again.

We Are In Process; Change Or Not

I found this post so poignant, so moving, that I had to share it -- even if I don't have much to add to the conversation...

I went back and read a post from a year ago, a post of mine. I used to be so caring and there was such a compassion there when I blogged. 1 year and month later I can absolutely see a separation, larger, from how normal I was a year ago. It’s just more convincing for me that I really am pretending to be normal. I see I am beginning to become more calloused and I don’t really want to be that way.

I'm not bipolar, but I have my swings...

If I have anything constructive to say about this post is that journaling can be therapeutic; so can reading our own words. But sometimes, we might not like what we see/read... We are in process.

Do I Seem More Or Less Credible To You Now? (Or, The Real Affects Of TMI In Mental Health Journaling)

At first I used to worry if discussing my pain, my craziness was a good thing. Journaling is agreed upon as a good therapeutic tool; but only a tool shares such things in public under their own name, right?

Journaling in public, aka blogging under your own name, can negatively impact one's career. I mean, would you hire me to write for you, to consult for your business? For a number of years I hid my true identity from thoughts/posts like these. But writing under a pen name felt... well, dirty, somehow. As if I couldn't wouldn't own my own words. If I want to encourage other survivors, the anxious, the depressed, into the empowerment that is writing, sharing, communicating -- if I want them to feel like they are worth more than they and society say they are, I need to walk the walk about the talk. So in the end I opted to out myself. Plus, multiple identities is exhausting.

But while I battled with the issues of me, myself and my credibility, time was passing...

Now my kids are older. They use The FaceBook. They sometimes visit my FaceBook page. (And admit it by posting on my wall!) Do I want them to read all this?

It's one thing to post about the stuff they do and say; it's just another way parents embarrass their kids. Right?

Seriously, I do try to keep mum on specific details, others involved, etc., as much as possible. And I don't post many of the more sensitive posts either. But do they need to know how bad things are in my head and soul? And what about the others who Google my name... I'm not paranoid; I've been presented in court with print-outs of the comments of others on my posts to be used against me. (Another, very long, topic.) Just how upsetting, or, in the legal vernacular, detrimental, are posts like these?

Yet, if I -- if we -- don't share out thoughts and experiences, how many others will go crazy, believe they are alone, suffer...

It's a fine line. One I'm continually redrawing.

I'd love to hear from others on this subject.