Two Mental Health Memories. Dissociation and Drug Withdrawal

 

Broken, by Lucy

Beauty, broken.

Invaded, violated,

Forced to

Cooperate and shut up.

We split.

Tore apart.

The only way to

Survive, safe.

Lucy

Lucy is mostly quiet at the moment.  Mostly.  She's one of our dissociative parts.  Two years ago today I was obviously having a bad day because she wrote those words and drew that picture.  My life is massively better than it used to be but there are still bad days.  There are days of not coping.  There are days when the old temptations to die creep in.  Even that is acceptable.  It is a part of what still is and I offer it all the love it deserves because to love even the parts of me that would die is to more fully love myself.

That's where healing comes.  Not in rejecting oneself.  Not in rejecting the parts and aspects of oneself that aren't likeable or arise from trauma, pain, harm.  We must all learn to accept and offer compassion, metta, even to our darkest shadows.  Otherwise they will always remain shadows and never find peace in the light.  Easy words to write.  Difficult words to live, to experience, and to conscientiously love.

Five years ago today I was in a mess.  Over-drugged by medicine.  Hallucinating beauty and nightmare together.  Filled with a false belief that a particular psychiatric diagnosis applied to me and so living out that diagnosis in my head and falling into even deeper nightmares than my drugged brain was offering.

Five years ago today was day two in my first attempt to get off those drugs.  I failed.  That attempt was over two days later because the effects even of cutting out one of the doses of one of the pills were so ghastly.  Later I tried again and failed.  A third failure followed.  The fourth attempt came after much reading and after learning how to safely taper off the drugs slowly.  Even tapering doesn't work for some people because the effects the drugs have can prevent withdrawal.  I got through it and it's one of the best decisions I ever made but even tapering was hell.

The day after beginning the first withdrawal attempt I wrote this:

The Second Day

Repetition, irresistible rebellion

Against a morning of swallowed meds

Against their barbed, quicksand lure.

Now she curls mentally on straight chair

In temptation of less crowded corners

As every-sense cacophony haunts her.

This day's inferno sets fire to neurons.

Supernova black-bright, thunder cloud quiet.

Each amplified moment, fearfully and wonderfully made.

Does she wish that anxious fire wouldn't burn

When the extinguishing Pregabalin dose

Robs her of moments of vivacious, joy fire?

To soothe or not to soothe?

To welcome the ease of psychotropic somnolence?

That is her generously patient question.