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okay last part first
When we last met, it was November 3 and my mother's um-friend had just passed away and I was in wracks of agony about choices she had made at the beginning of that relationship and hoping that now that the relationship was, perforce, over, I wouldn't have to Deal quite so much with those choices anymore.
The next day, of course, was Election Day, and as you know, Bob, the good guys did pretty well all the way up and down the street. It was a good Tuesday night and a good Wednesday morning.
Which is why it was a surprise when I got to work Wednesday morning and I was still wound up way too tight and feeling much too upset to function and subject to four-or-five-minute crying jags for no obvious reason at random intervals. I did not like it. I have come to expect to feel like this—although not to this degree—for the month of October, but here it was October 36 and I wasn't feeling any better, and that hasn't happened in 12 years. So I said to my boss, in my daily check-in email, I think I'm also going to have to write up some ways I'm realizing my mental health has been not okay for a while now and regrettably may have been affecting my work. Always fun. (To his credit, he immediately said "Well, we've got to find some time for you to come talk to me, okay, because I see an employee say 'mental health,' I sit right up and pay attention.")
- October 16, 2012, my mother said the oncologist said my dad couldn't have any more chemo and it was time for us to come home. He died October 28, and since then the whole month has been an annual struggle of tension and anxiety, TMJ issues, insomnia, and not letting my rotten mood affect my relationships.
- In 2013 I was laid off October 1, which probably hasn't helped, now that I think about it.
- This year is the first time since 2013 that I've spent the month of October with people who didn't already know me well. Somehow it didn't occur to me that that might make it harder than usual.
- Meanwhile, my mother had a stroke in 2017 and has developed progressive dementia in the past five years. Last July we moved her from her um-friend's home to an assisted living facility here near me when it became clear her condition was worse than any of us had realized.
- At the same time, the prince—and I've looked back and seen that I only made the most oblique reference to this at the time—made a series of attempts to harm himself and spoke about suicidal ideation. HE IS FINE NOW. But over that summer and the beginning of that school year he had camp counselors and teachers take away scissors and pull him away from trying to poke his finger into an electrical socket, and at home he talked about stabbing himself, said he wanted to die, got a butter knife out of the drawer and made like he was going to cut his hand with it, and tried to climb into the freezer.HE IS FINE NOW. We got him more help and changed his medication and he remembers that he used to have intrusive thoughts but doesn't have them anymore.
- That, of course, is when I originally asked my doctor about medication for chronic anxiety rather than just the occasional Ativan for acute anxiety.
- Anyway, my mother's condition has continued to deteriorate, and after a year in assisted living we moved her to memory care.
- My brother's mother-in-law died September 22, so a planned fall family visit was postponed and has still not been rescheduled, meaning there's been extra sadness and no mom-related respite.
- October was October as usual. (Actually apparently worse than usual.)
- My mother's um-friend went into hospice care on October 23 and died November 2.
- So: I'd been on daily anxiety medication for almost a year and a half, but in the first week or so of November I realized that for about six weeks I'd been feeling exactly the way I was feeling when my kid was struggling (see above), only worse. I spent the whole autumn taking deep breaths to get through a tightness in my chest that it took me way too long to recognize as anxiety breaking through.
Update: HA HA HA when I began it on November 20, this was going to be a post about how I emailed my doctor on like November, I don't know, 5 or 6, and she immediately (like, by that weekend) agreed to double my dose of Lexapro, and within a couple of days I was breathing more easily, and I stopped crying so much of the time, and hopefully if that happens again one of us will realize it a lot sooner so I don't spend so long suffering? And then for some reason I was looking through the old entries in here and found where someone in one of my Discords said "panic attack" on July 23 and apparently none of us (self, Himself, my brother [who doesn't live locally but given that the major precipitating event was evidently moving my mom to memory care, his input is not irrelevant]) listened? So, erm, that wasn't our best collective decision, in retrospect.
And then it turns out it's a good thing I've bumped up my Lexapro dosing, because holy shit the first week of December has been what in the being-my-mom's-children racket could safely be called a humdinger in ways I simply cannot talk about right now. I can feel the tightness trying to tighten up my chest, in fact, and not being able to do it. It's something. But whoo boy.
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Oh dear. This sounds extra hard.
Sending warm light your way!
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Good GRAVY that is a lot. Thinking of you.
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