"mercy has its own country"

I had a very, very discomfiting meeting with my psychiatrist at the beginning of the week. She made me feel she thought I was drug-seeking, I was looking for an easy out and that I was exaggerating. She suggested a measure of my depression should be how functional I am, and if I'm getting out of bed, showering, and going to work every day that I'm not actually that depressed. And for all my brave words, I still forget sometimes that people can have wrong opinions of me, and I assume she's just saying whatever everyone is thinking.

I'm on a fair amount of psychiatric medication. I have been on a fair amount of medication since 1995, and I would say without a doubt I should have been on something in high school, that the drinking started as self-medication as well as self-destruction.

My experience of psychiatrists has not been awesome. I believe that I usually manipulate them into prescribing what I want. most of the time, they either hear my history and believe I'm less functional than I claim, or see my functionality and believe I'm less depressed than I claim. I had one who was, hands down, smarter than I am, but she moved and I've been floundering ever since.

More often than not, I'm afraid that what I'm experiencing isn't really any sort of mood disorder, that I'm just weaker than the rest of the world, that I'm experiencing the same thing as everyone else, I'm just not coping with it very well. That whatever I'm feeling, whatever I'm doing is weakness of will, rather than unfortunate parenting or chemical imbalances.

I was told once that most people end up perpetuating the standard of care their parents led them to believe they deserved. I hate the idea of just playing out the same puppet show, and I'm glad that the story ends here, that no matter what, I'm not passing down this seemingly inborn self-hatred, probably inherited with the granite and the protestant guilt from coming from a family with almost four hundred years of living in New England. Raised by wolves, indeed.

I'm more attached than I probably should be to the idea of being feral, and slowly civilizing myself. And I don't think it's just a desire to live in an urban fantasy novel, I think it might be a useful metaphor. It's possible there's a way to actually like myself, to find some sort of peace that isn't purchased with blood, to not cling to things so hard that I damage them. More acceptance, less screaming. More smug smiles, fewer clenched jaws. I'm still not someone to be picked up or petted out of hand, but I won't always bite at the hands that do so.

"mercy has its own country"

I had a very, very discomfiting meeting with my psychiatrist at the beginning of the week. She made me feel she thought I was drug-seeking, I was looking for an easy out and that I was exaggerating. She suggested a measure of my depression should be how functional I am, and if I'm getting out of bed, showering, and going to work every day that I'm not actually that depressed. And for all my brave words, I still forget sometimes that people can have wrong opinions of me, and I assume she's just saying whatever everyone is thinking.

I'm on a fair amount of psychiatric medication. I have been on a fair amount of medication since 1995, and I would say without a doubt I should have been on something in high school, that the drinking started as self-medication as well as self-destruction.

My experience of psychiatrists has not been awesome. I believe that I usually manipulate them into prescribing what I want. most of the time, they either hear my history and believe I'm less functional than I claim, or see my functionality and believe I'm less depressed than I claim. I had one who was, hands down, smarter than I am, but she moved and I've been floundering ever since.

More often than not, I'm afraid that what I'm experiencing isn't really any sort of mood disorder, that I'm just weaker than the rest of the world, that I'm experiencing the same thing as everyone else, I'm just not coping with it very well. That whatever I'm feeling, whatever I'm doing is weakness of will, rather than unfortunate parenting or chemical imbalances.

I was told once that most people end up perpetuating the standard of care their parents led them to believe they deserved. I hate the idea of just playing out the same puppet show, and I'm glad that the story ends here, that no matter what, I'm not passing down this seemingly inborn self-hatred, probably inherited with the granite and the protestant guilt from coming from a family with almost four hundred years of living in New England. Raised by wolves, indeed.

I'm more attached than I probably should be to the idea of being feral, and slowly civilizing myself. And I don't think it's just a desire to live in an urban fantasy novel, I think it might be a useful metaphor. It's possible there's a way to actually like myself, to find some sort of peace that isn't purchased with blood, to not cling to things so hard that I damage them. More acceptance, less screaming. More smug smiles, fewer clenched jaws. I'm still not someone to be picked up or petted out of hand, but I won't always bite at the hands that do so.