Tag: depression

Posted in ASHLEY IN WONDERLAND

FIGHT FOR YOUR WRITES

Posted on by Ashley in Wonderland

Well, it’s been a really, really long time since I’ve sat down and tried to write something – allowed myself to write somthing, rather. As much as I would like to deny it, my greatest outlet, writing, has become very difficult for me, because I don’t want to relive or look back on trauma that I have suffered in the past. I used to write down everything that happened in my life – conversations, feelings, thoughts, events – and now it’s like I can’t possibly bear to relive it. I live my days on autopilot, completely relying on the hour to tell me what it is that I’m supposed to be doing, instead of doing what I want or feel. It just feels easier that way – having a game plan to follow exactly to get you through to tomorrow, instead of wandering and giving yourself free time to think – because thinking leads to wandering mentally, which leads to trouble.

Of all the things that I have done and been in my life, a “writer” is the most important. Writing is so dear and special to me that I know the only way out is through – I have to face this. So I’m going to try to be a little more open and try a little harder to put pen to paper, even if it’s just for my own sake. Sharing my emotions on this platform has always been a wonderful release and hopefully will be a way for me to connect with those that have mutual and shared feelings. 

I had a mental breakdown in December 2017 and I didn’t really expect for it to take this long for me to bounce back. I was really unaware of how bad it was at the time, but I was thinking that I would be back to myself in a week or so, tops. But it has taken years and a lot of pitfalls along the way, and that’s something that I’m dealing with. Before my initial breakdown, I felt like I was handling my mental illness very well – it did not seem to be handling me, that is. I (for the most part) took my medication regularly, and though I had emotional ups and downs, I felt like a functioning member of society, and that helped a lot. At worst, in those years, I would have labeled myself emotional with tendencies towards anger – I had no idea what was brewing underneath. 

When I lost that functionality to “maintain” what I thought I was taking good care of, and when I suffered an injury in 2018 and I lost a lot of myself, mentally and physically, I really went off the rails. Years have passed and I am still looking back over my shoulder trying to find that girl that I knew “before”. The reality is that girl is gone – I have evolved past her, for better or worse, and I have to let go of who I was and accept who I am now – which, let me be clear, is not necessarily a bad thing. There are facets of that person from years ago that I am ashamed to say that I was, and I’m certainly glad to be at this evolved state, because this person is a lot more caring, considerate, and even a little wiser. But it’s still difficult when you have physical and mental limitations that bar you from doing the things that you used to do with ease in the past. It really is a grieving process and I haven’t done very well with it – I mourn myself every single day, and I know that I need to stop that, because I don’t always want to be at some girl from forever ago’s funeral when I could be living my new life right now. 

With my bipolar disease, I have always been more emotional, maybe a little more manic than depressed, and depression has been something that has developed in the last few years. I’m talking soul crushing, absolutely debilitating depression – and that’s not something that I’m used to, and it’s something that scares me a lot – even though it’s been a few years that I’ve been going through it now, when the wave comes and I go under, I am terrified every single time. It is hard to always want to hurt yourself, and to always think about ending your life – and that’s just something I live with daily. I have always been a suicidal person. I remember telling my mom when I was a teenager that I wanted to kill myself and she was just stunned, but I meant it – I wanted to die. I’ve participated in self harm, self dosing, and so on, but I was not used to the intensity that this particular depression brought on – the constantly wanting to die every day, to waking up and being disappointed that I had not died, and that has been overwhelming as well, because that is a scary place to sit at all times mentally. 

I have lost friends because of my openness about my mental illness, and I know that deep down that’s okay, because some people don’t want to or cannot handle dealing with people who are mentally ill. It may be triggering for them, it may be something that they just don’t want to deal with, and that’s okay – not everyone you meet in your life is someone that you keep in your life. 

I have a hard time with the fact that I’m not working – my career meant everything to me, my graduation from mortuary school is one of the greatest accomplishments of my life, and not being in that industry right now is heartbreaking to me – but I also know that I am not emotionally or mentally ready to be out in the world because I am still so fragile and I am still working on myself, and I have to allow myself to be okay with taking time to heal – which is one of the hardest things in the world to do. I have always earned my own money, I have always paid my own way, and to not do those things makes me feel unworthy of living and like I’m not a part of the real world. Being disabled now makes me scared to leave my home because I’m scared that I might fall or have an injury because I’m not sure footed, and so most of the time I just stay home and people come to me and I miss being out in the world. (And I know that we ALL miss being out in the world because we’re all going through a pandemic right now but I’m talking about the before times, when I was too scared to even go to Walgreens). 

While things have been difficult, they have also been so good, which can be so confusing. Things have changed drastically in many ways. I moved out with my fiancé almost a year ago, we’re (mostly) thriving, living on our own, raising three beautiful daughters (two cats and a Cabbage Patch doll), and will eventually start planning a wedding when I’m not lazy. It has been so good for me to be out on my own and to have to take care of my own home, and it’s also been difficult too, because sometimes I have really bad days and just get really overwhelmed by cleaning or organizing or just even taking care of the smallest little things like laundry or emptying the litter box. 

Since I gained 150 pounds after my 2018 injury, I had topped out at 605 pounds – which is not a natural weight for my body. I have always done better in the 300 pound range, and so I was twice the size that I feel comfortable at. I have been trying to lose weight, and managed to I lose over 100 pounds but shit happens, and I’ve been stressed and depressed and back on my binge eating game. And I admit, I’ve done some really unhealthy things with food lately – binging and purging, starvation – punishing myself because I’ve gained some back during the pandemic. I am so angry at the sheer failure of it, but I just keep trying to stay active and keep moving and remember that weight is a fluctuation and it goes up and down and you can lose it and gain it, and it’s just numbers and it doesn’t have to be my whole day, or my whole week, or my whole life. 

What I really miss is writing and I wish that I didn’t feel this aversion towards it because if I’m being honest with myself, I think I am a good writer, and I don’t give myself a lot of credit and whatever talents I may have I dismiss pretty easily, but writing has always been my thing, ever since I was little, and I’ve completely stopped doing it. I always joke that when life started to happen to me is when I put down my pen, and the reality is that I couldn’t handle the life that was happening to me. Much less write about it – because then I would have to look back on it, face it, try to understand it and deal with it – and I didn’t want to do that.

I have spent a really long time thinking that I’ve been handling things, when in reality I was just pushing them under the rug and now at the age of 34, they are coming back up full force – it is a traumapalooza here, and I recognize that, and I recognize that I am not capable or trained to deal with that trauma. I need help. Since my suicide attempt in November, I haven’t been to a therapist – I was fired from seeing my thrice weekly therapist before the attempt, and then I was kicked out of my therapy group afterwards because I spoke against Donald Trump (and really I have no regrets there), but it has made me feel a little iffy about therapy and whether or not it can help me or if I even believe in it. But I have been thinking about trying to get back into it because the trauma that I am dealing with is something that I just can’t handle on my own and I know that. 

I guess the takeaway is that the mind is a really powerful thing, and we really have to nurture it and treat it as well as we can and protect it with all our might, or else we will crash and burn because we haven’t been keeping that guard up. I can tell you honestly, I never once thought of being protective or keeping a guard up around myself or my mind during all of these years – I just barreled through each day, and then one day I couldn’t go any further – I snapped. And it is taking years, literal years of my life, of my youth, to try and get into a better place – and while that saddens me so much, it also encourages me in a way, because I feel like I am possibly heading towards the path that I’m supposed to be on. And look, I have no idea what that path looks like, what it entails, who will be there when I get there – I just know that I have to get going and find that path that I’m supposed to be on. Because as cynical as I am, I do believe there is a path for me – and it may take 20 more years, but I do believe that I will get there, because I do believe that I have a purpose – at least a small one. I really can’t say what it is, I really couldn’t even guess if you paid me, but all I can do is try to find that place that is waiting just for me. And being willing to try to try feels like a monumental moment of growth in itself. 

Posted in ASHLEY IN WONDERLAND, FUNERAL SERVICE, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL, MENTAL HEALTH, relationships, writing

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Posted on by Ashley in Wonderland

We are so close to the end of the year, and that always seems hard to believe, doesn’t it? I mean, the Counting Crows even wrote the annually relevant jam, “A Long December” about what this confused, sort of gray feeling of wistfulness and closing is like. (Note to self: find time to listen to “A Long December” before January rolls around). But just like the song says – “There’s reason to believe that maybe this year will be better than the last.” – and I get that. I think we all do.

With a new beginning (which we all logically know is really just watching the ball drop on TV from Times Square and taping up a new desk calendar at work when we get back from holiday break) comes what we all need so desperately to keep us moving forward – the smallest glimmer of hope. Because hell, maybe this year really will be better than the last. Maybe it takes moving forward to realize that the year we are leaving behind wasn’t really so bad after all – or, in some cases, maybe it truly was an awful one, and we need to prepare ourselves to move on so that we can get some space to start to heal. No matter where you are at in your personal journey, by the time the last dregs of December are clouding the bottom of the glass, I think we can all agree that we are ready to ring in the New Year, if only just to see what might happen next.

Time is so incredibly sentimental and bittersweet. We hold on to it so dearly, using it to mark our good and our bad and our in betweens. I think that’s why I’ve always upheld a particular romanticism in regards to fresh starts and new beginnings. While it sometimes feels scary to enter uncharted territory, even if it is purely symbolic – it also feels so exciting. And that’s because of possibility. Because possibility exists, and because we, even at our darkest hours, exude hope for a better tomorrow – somewhere out there in the ether, the two mix together and become chance. “You never know” – one of the most powerful phrases in the history of language.

With the examination of time come and gone comes the natural reflection of what we have experienced in the duration. I think this reflection is wise, because I believe that we all have the responsibility to try to become a better version of ourselves every year. And reflection is how we do that – how we look back at what we have just survived, as a learning tool, as a way to honor the time spent, as a way to grow positively. We cannot learn if we do not reflect – even if reflecting is difficult and sometimes painful to do.

So, in that vein – I reckon it’s time that I mark down a little something about what 2017 meant to me. Painful as it may have been, sometimes.

Continue reading “HAPPY NEW YEAR” →

Posted in disney, DISNEY WORLD, FUNERAL SERVICE, MENTAL HEALTH, writing

INSTAWHAM

Posted on by Ashley in Wonderland

I have a social media problem. Primarily instagram. I’m not afraid to admit it. What I AM afraid of, however, is the damage it is doing to me as a young woman and a human being. And while I am in this inbetween season of my life wherein I am trying to get a better and healthier grasp of my mental health, preparing for funeral board exams, and eventually finding a place in the funeral industry, I have promised to come clean and honest with every mental and emotional problem that I endure or suffer, in the event that me spilling my guts could possibly help someone else. There isn’t much that I can do right now, other than wait for life to open the next door. So here goes.

Continue reading “INSTAWHAM” →

Posted in MENTAL HEALTH, writing

I ALWAYS KNOW WHERE THE BATHROOM IS

Posted on by Ashley in Wonderland

I always know where the bathroom is
In every building that I go
I always know where the bathroom is
Because that is where I’m safe, I know

I always know where the bathroom is
Flushed red chest and wild eyes
I always know where the bathroom is
Where I can pretend I’m not alive

I always know where the bathroom is
Sweat trickling to the cold tile floor
I always know where the bathroom is
Escape just behind the lock of a door

I always know where the bathroom is
Murmured conversation all around
I always know where the bathroom is
The place where I’m allowed to be upside down

I always know where the bathroom is
Hand to the wall, breathe in, breathe out
I always know where the bathroom is
Where my mind is free to shout

I always know where the bathroom is
A concerned friend texting from outside
I always know where the bathroom is
My head pressed between my thighs, “Oh, I’m fine!”

I always know where the bathroom is
You see, that’s where I stay
I always know where the bathroom is
There’s nothing else, game over, no other way.

Posted in ASHLEY IN WONDERLAND, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL, turning 30, writing

Every stumble & each misfire

Posted on by Ashley in Wonderland

Oddly enough, I have been surprisingly calm about turning 30 – maybe even a little excited, dare I say? In all honesty, my calmness has been entirely shocking to me. Typically by the time September rolls around, I start to get that metallic, anxious taste at the back of my throat because I start thinking about aging and lost opportunities and all of the societal terrors that are ever so kindly imposed on women. In the week before my birthday, I am at my worst – crying, panicking, and most of all, in an endless cycle of self-loathing and self-criticizing. I have never handled birthdays well, no matter what the age – any mention or reference to aging has always been enough to make me clench my buttcheeks hard enough to suck an entire chair up my ass, legs and all – but somehow, when it comes to this one, I feel cool. Seriously. I feel pretty cool. This tells me that I’m either growing up or about to have an absolute mental breakdown – is there even really a difference between the two?

Continue reading “Every stumble & each misfire” →

Posted in MENTAL HEALTH, writing

BEFORE/AFTER

Posted on by Ashley in Wonderland

I have been living with a pain in my neck and shoulders for the past few days that feels like some sort of stress-born entity has planted roots and taken up a permanent residence inside of me, tendrils coiling lovingly around the knobs of my spine. Very matter of factly did it move in, like I had no choice or say in it at all. I never even thought to fight it, never even thought I had the right to. I am and always was bound to be the corporeal home of this being – was always meant to carry this weight.

I lay in my bed and I study the world around me through the tiny screen that is my way out – I compare, I compare, I hate myself, I hate everything about who I am. How did all of these lucky people that I know get to become able, capable, confident? What exactly is it that happened to me to make me so hard on myself? I try to look back on my life and pinpoint it – was it a childhood trauma,  some deep, emotional disturbance? I don’t know. But every day feels like I’m tip-toeing closer to the edge of a cliff.

What happens next? What do I do? Who am I? I don’t know.

Agitated, agitated. I’m happiest alone, but I crave motion, company. Stillness makes me nervous. I don’t feel like myself anymore, I haven’t for years – I constantly think back to the “old me” and wish I could find her again, she was fun, she was free, she wasn’t afraid. Instead I feel restless, old, stuck, uneasy, caged – I can NEVER see the forest for the trees. Summer is hard for me – summer is always hard for me. I want to say that I am not okay, I want to scream it as loud as I can until someone hears me, but I can’t find my voice, and even if I somehow could, what would matter? What would change? Those who want to help me annoy me most. I’m too tired to talk, it takes too much energy to try to make anyone understand that I feel like I’m already gone.

I am aware that time is flying and I can feel it, sticky and hot, as it rushes by and sucks the breath out of me, but somehow I still seem to be exactly where I’ve always been, watching everyone else pass me by.

Always watching.

Jealousy and spite are getting the best of me, I am a bent and bowed creature, labored and wanting. I don’t want to work, I don’t want to fight, I don’t want to do anything at all. I feel dumb, sluggish, my once attractive features warped into a constant ugliness that is all that I can ever see or fixate on. If I could pick myself to death, skin clean from the bones, I would, and with a smile.

I have lost sight, I have lost hope, I am unfocused. I search for answers, I have no answers, there are no damn answers. I hurt and I hurt and I hold it because I can’t bear to share it, can’t stand the feeling of my guts hitting the floor as I pour them out.

 

Posted in ASHLEY IN WONDERLAND, FUNERAL SERVICE, MENTAL HEALTH, PHOTOGRAPHY, SCHOOL, writing

Summertime Sadness

Posted on by Ashley in Wonderland

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Well, it is unofficially and undeniably already here – my very own case of summertime sadness (thanks, Lana, for giving such a clever name to that listless and unfulfilled feeling that haunts me from late May until early September).

I’ve got a lot going on these days. I’m working full-time as apprentice funeral director/embalmer, I’m going to school full-time (which involves traveling an hour and a half away twice a week to Piedmont Tech for biology classes after work – meaning I don’t get home until nearly 11 PM at night) – this plus the rest of the coursework for other classes and trying to maintain sanity as I learn an entirely new career that isn’t quite so simple (I mean, embalming a human body is a little more complicated than working as a cashier at Target, and I can say that with confidence, as I have done both) – my point being, I don’t feel good. I’m stressed, and stress is hard for me, because I take it to a bad place. I take it to a place of blame and self doubt and it is truly the sickest and cruelest thing I could ever do to myself. I feel sad a lot lately. I feel overwhelmed and stretched thin and all of the things that I love seem to go abandoned – like blogging, reading, crafting, etc. I know – at least I hope and pray – that all of this will be worth it in the end, when I have that degree and my apprenticeship is complete, but it is hard to give away your time when you feel like you have none to give, I guess. Especially now, during my personal hardest time of the year.

I’ve always been prone to summertime sadness – while everyone else is orgasming at the first mention of summer rolling in, I withdraw, isolate myself, go away inside – I’m mean, snappy, frustrated easily, angry – I don’t know why this is. I just know that I have never felt joy in this time. It has always felt like something to be suffered (probably because I have the good common sense to be revolted by 95 degree heat). And mentally, as far as my levels and mania and ups & downs go – this is where I always find myself at my worst and most desperate. So to have an already heaping amount of external stress dumped on top of a place where I’m already trying to hold a hand over an open wound in myself feels like a mountain I’m too tired to climb again this year. Already, my teeth are gritted, shoulders hunched, “can’t can’t can’t can’t” a steady mantra on repeat in my mind.

I thought that taking a mini vacation to Disney World before this semester began would be a really good thing for me, and in some ways it was (pics to come later) – I flew again for the first time in years and got over that major fear (HALLELUJAH), and that felt AMAZING – plus I had a great time with my best friends at one of my favorite places in the universe, so you really can’t complain about that. Sadly, some “triflin’ shit” got in the way of pure & total rest & bliss, and it put quite a bit of a damper on my relaxation, but that was also a learning opportunity, too, which I’m grateful for – I’m quite used to trying to constantly be everything for everyone, and I worry to the moon and back about everyone’s happiness but my own. Fortunately, the aforementioned “triflin’ shit” helped me to put my foot down and realize that sometimes I deserve to be happy, too. And I think that was a big step for me – and having that notion cinched in my mind is something I’m going to carry with me into the summertime sadness – I DESERVE TO BE HAPPY, TOO. There. I said it. It’s on the internet, so it must be true.

I think something important for me, at least during my bouts of summertime sadness, is to be mindful of my triggers, so I can at least step around the landmines as best I can vs losing my damn leg to one. But how to get past the depression? That, I have no clue. This is how I always end up around the beginning of September plotting my suicide and being irrational and out of control to the point that none of us – my family, my friends, myself – know how to handle me- I get so down that I can’t see up, only straight ahead.

I guess I just wanted to chat with myself on my blog and rationalize what I’m feeling. The first step to getting over or past any hurdle is to accept it, and I accept it – I’ve got the damn summertime sadness. It’s a real thing, it’s valid, and I’ve got to somehow gird my loins and try to make it through. And mostly I think I just needed a good whine, and writing always makes me feel better. I get so damn hung up about writing and trying to make it perfect, but none of it will ever be perfect – and I guess I’d rather post lots and lots of sullen or meaningless crap than look back and wish I had taken the time and wonder what I was thinking way back when.

Feel free to leave your favorite summer suggestions in the comments – just remember, I hate the outdoors, all people, places that aren’t air conditioned, and basically everything. Just kidding – I’d love to know your tips and tricks for summer fun – or, even more importantly, what helps you get through your own version of “summertime sadness”.

Till next time xx

Posted in FUNERAL SERVICE, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL, MENTAL HEALTH, turning 30, writing

A LIFE WORTH WRITING ABOUT

Posted on by Ashley in Wonderland

Whenever I try to write these days, I feel a sense of panic that I can’t really put words to. Writing used to be my most natural and craved form of expression – every word, every exchange, every thought had to be documented once, twice, three times over. I was religious in my documentation, the telltale hump on the middle finger on my right hand always red and swollen. My diaries were my friends, my confidents, the only people who knew the truth about who I was, what I had done, and how I hurt. Like a fool, I took for granted the person I was and the life that I was naturally living, and instead used to cry to the fates and beg the universe for a life worth writing about. And then when one fell into my lap, when things were hot and fast and out of control, when I had EVERYTHING to suddenly write about – the pages slammed shut and I put away the pen.

I rationalized this because a lot of things that I needed to say were hard. And some things are just too hard to write about. So … I stopped, pretty much completely.

Can you blame me, honestly? It’s like, you try as hard as you can and work with a furious fervor to squirrel away the things that hurt into a place where they aren’t constantly falling back into your immediate line of vision – and writing is just purposely recalling blinding, white hot pain for the sake of …?

Of what?

What was the point of recalling what I barely made it through the first time? Then again, didn’t I always want this? Countless pages in countless diaries, wishing one life away to make room for another?  Oh, how I wanted to be a real, bonafide adult, like the ones on TV – to have all the mythical secrets of adulthood unlocked and for the taking. Wasn’t that the story that I kept waiting to write?

It is this narcissistic and frustrating combination of finite disinterest and fleeting whimsy that seems to be where I spend most of my time these days. All of the time that I wished away is exactly where I wish I could run like hell to now. Most days, I feel like a battery in a car that won’t turn over – you try as you might, but the damn thing just won’t do it.  Everything in my life, not just writing, falls into two categories – hard, or not. If it is hard, if it even SEEMS hard, I don’t even bother looking at it. Writing is hard, so I don’t do that anymore. Facing my fears is hard, so I’ll just turn away and not look. It isn’t that I don’t want to move forward, or that I don’t want to be present or progressive – I just can’t find the strength. But here I am. Ashley the adult!

Every day, I’m toeing the line between desperate to make a point and exhausted by the idea of even trying. Working around the deceased has made me siamese, one single body split, fighting two alternative visions. There are only so many times that you can artfully arrange the shell of what used to be a human being into a fancy casket before you make yourself look down and wonder what the hell we are all really doing here in this life. When death becomes real to you, really, really real, everything matters SO much. The fear of wasting a second of your life is all-consuming. I panic so often about not doing it (life) right – the same old fear of not living “a life worth writing about” –  yet similarly, I can’t help but feel that nothing truly matters in the grand scheme of things, because we all leave the same way – alone, and with nothing. Both viewpoints are right in their own ways, but there has to be some sort of middle ground that doesn’t leave me hollow inside and terrified of facing reality.

I have to laugh now when I think about the desperation of wanting to carve out “a life worth writing about” – it’s sort of like walking willingly into quicksand.  Before you know what you’ve done, you’ve gotten so far off track – one leg stuck in the muck, no escape foreseeable. I have spent SO much of my time in this life wishing for something better, something bigger, SOMETHING WORTH WRITING ABOUT – but I have very rarely been willing to actually work towards the promise of a better tomorrow. If wishing hard enough created reality, I would be the richest woman in all the world. But instead I am poor, because I have robbed myself blind. I’ve stolen my own ambition, I’ve bartered away my strength and confidence, and I’ve crippled and hobbled the purest and best part of me – my imagination – and replaced it all with cynicism and fear.

I wish I could go back in time and tell myself to stop wishing everything away, to stop questioning everything so damn much and just take each day one at a time. Because we do all die, and you don’t get a second chance, and you should never waste your time worrying or being afraid. Instead of letting that reality be my touchstone, I have spent nearly 30 years wringing my hands and wondering if I’m doing it all wrong. An entire life that has always been a game that I am playing against myself and am still somehow losing. If I could go back in time, i would shake my old self by the shoulders and tell her that life was and will always be worth writing about, even on the hardest day, and to never, ever lose that good and pure part of yourself. It doesn’t have to be extraordinary to be documented. Face your fears, every single one of them. Don’t NOT try because something might not come from it.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my time here – none of us ever really get it all right – but the biggest one that I ever made was putting down my pen and shutting myself up because I got scared. It may take everything that I’ve got, and it may truly be for nothing in the end – but a life worth living, much less writing about, would not mean a damn thing without this, my purest expression, my most honest release. And I know that I can do this, because just like I know without a doubt that I would go back in time to tell my younger self to never stop writing, my younger self would visit me in the future and be shocked that I ever had.