Mental Health month

It has been almost a year, and I feel like I am in a place that I can write about it. I mostly want to write about it for me, I strangely feel that if I put it on paper maybe I can prevent it from happening again. I also hope it might help someone traveling a similar road.

When I think back on memories of the past, I see colors as well as the memory. August is usually golden, May – green, November – shades of brown, January is usually sky blue. I don’t know why, I don’t really know how to adequately explain it, but it is, and it has been for as long as I can remember.

When I think back on last July, it is black. Pitch black, no flicker of light. I had never been in this place before, I was unsure how to navigate through. I couldn’t find a map, who am I kidding, I could not even look for a map.

Since Jason passed, July and August are typically tough months for me. In the beginning I thought that was it, just another little bit of a sad time. Before I really knew what was happening my mind had spiraled out of control. Scarier than the sadness was the anxiety, I did not know where it came from, or recognize it until it was big and scary. I could not grocery shop without my heart racing, several times I couldn’t finish. I raced to the check out, I raced home and shut the door like I was being chased. I did not want to go anywhere; I didn’t want to do anything. I struggled to articulate it to my husband. He struggled to know how to help.

I cried often, I was angry, I was scared, I was all the dark emotions. The only thing that got me to work most days was the fact that Tim and I work in the same place. I spent most of the month with my office door closed because I could not do people. I wanted my home, my room, my bed, my quilt, my pillow, my sleep, my silence. It was a black month, I couldn’t even pray.

I saw my oncologist late in the month, toward the end of the appointment I casually mentioned I was feeling anxious. She spun her chair towards me, pulled up close and asked me to tell her about it. I did, I told her all of it. I told her about the black hole I was in and that I did not know how to get out. I told her how tired I was of feeling sad, and how I hated feeling anxious. I told her I was scared. I told her the depth of it that I had been afraid to utter, as if speaking it might make it more true or more real. She listened. Then she talked about some options, about how trauma can build up. She told me how common PTSD is in cancer patients. She did not tell me to snap out of it or get over it. She told me to give myself a break, not to be hard on myself, she told me I was going to be okay.

So, something happened, instead of making it more real, it was already as real as it was going to get, speaking it lifted a dark veil. Speaking it made it less scary, speaking it began the healing.

I am almost a year away from the blackest of it. I take medicine and supplements to support my health, all of my health. I talk as openly about my anxiety as I do my cancer. I want to help move mental health out of the shadows until we just say health, and don’t feel like we must qualify it as mental or physical.

Do I still have moments? Yep. Are they black? Nope. I have tools now to recognize it before it overtakes me. I am not foolish enough to think that it can’t happen again, but I am on my guard. I’m not ashamed to ask for help, I have a support group who now knows this struggle is part of me.

If any part of this is you, talk to someone, please.  It get’s less scary every time you say it out loud. For me every time I say it out loud I feel like I am feeding the “light” and starving the “dark”. What I feed grows.

May is mental health month, let’s take this stuff out of the shadows and the dark. Let’s make a mental check up as common as a physical or a teeth cleaning. Let’s take the stigma out of asking for help. Let’s give the gift of this freedom to the next generation. What if we could say, “I’m feeling anxious, I need to stop and take a few deep breaths” as easily as we say “I’m getting a headache, I need to rest my eyes for a few minutes”? What if . . .

Wounded

It has been a long time since I have posted here. I have written several posts, but never posted them. I write them and read them, and something does not ring true. If there is one thing I want to be on this blog is honest and transparent. So I did not post. I have come to think that my not posting is not really honest or transparent. It is hiding, plain and simple.

The truth is that I was struggling. Not something I want to say out loud, I want to be able to say that I feel great, that I am okay. I don’t want to be so open and say, I was sad. I was having a hard time staying connected to my friends and family. I don’t want to admit that if I could have stayed home in my room for days I would have. I don’t want to admit for all to see that I was on the edge of falling into a very dark hole.

I remember a long time ago, I was probably about 10, I fell and really banged up my knee. The wound was deep, but I knew that if my mom found out she would put some horrible medicine on it that stung like crazy, so I hid it. After some time it became infected, there was dirt and gravel trapped in the wound, I kept hiding it. One day my mom saw it, by this time it was greenish and full of puss. It required a trip to the doctor to have it reopened and cleaned out. How much better it would have been if I had just shared that wound with her in the beginning.

One of the things I am learning is that a wound hidden festers. The wound needs to be opened up and cleaned out. It needs exposure in order for it to heal properly. It needs medicine. So here today, I am opening up my wound. I am struggling with some anxiety and mild depression.

I really feel this depression is not the grieving process, but born from the grieving. Does that make sense? I feel like I am moving through the grieving process well, but there are physical injuries that happen to us when there is such a grief. These injuries are not visible, but real all the same.

A month ago I finally went to the doctor and spoke my pain out loud to the first person besides Tim. Even with Tim I was not as totally honest as I should have been about how sad I was feeling. I am taking a medication for a time and I must tell you the huge difference it has made. I realized I had not even been truly honest with myself.

Today, I feel so much more like myself than I have in a long time. And I share this to be honest, to ask for your continued prayers, and to encourage others that may be hiding festering wounds to expose them, ask for help, it is out there.

Things are much brighter these days. God has been so gracious and patient with me. Through this all he has held me close, whispered truth to me through his word, and been loving enough to give me the human arms of my husband to hold me when I could not feel my Heavenly Father’s.

I wish you a blessed Christmas season, filled with the love of family and friends, but most of all the love of our Savior.