Tag: Economics

How Am I Doing?

The short answer is, better. The long answer is, as it has been previously, it depends on how far back you look. Compared to two years ago, I am noticeably improved. Compared to ten years ago, I am still a complete wreck. There is no question that I have more energy and less brain fog than I did last year, but I still jump at sudden noises, I still have difficulty being out in public for any length of time, and I currently have a bruise on my forehead because I woke up from a dream all in a fluster, leapt out of bed because my pager had gone off, or someone called a code, or I can’t even remember what, and I went face-first into a wall. There is still work to be done.

Again, though, I do feel like I’m starting to come back to life a little bit. Nothing much has been showing up here, I’m afraid, because I’ve been spending a great deal of time playing No Man’s Sky, and working on an unnecessarily complicated and overly detailed setting for a Dungeons and Dragons game I hope to start running next week.

I’m going back to see the TMS1 people next week to see if I might benefit from some supplemental brain-zapping, and I continue to take my meds and see my therapist. I have been assured there isn’t much more I could be doing to help myself along the road to recovery. The speed of recovery wouldn’t be as much of an issue if we currently had a functional federal government. I have been waiting for a final decision on social security disability benefits for some time now and I can’t really foresee much progress coming in the next 3-4 years. This is something of a disadvantage.

At this point, all I can do is try not to worry about it. I have to get better and find something economically viable to do with myself, sooner rather than later, but there really isn’t much else I can do to speed the process along. Things will work out or they won’t.

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  1. Transcranial magnetic stimulation, for those who may not recall ↩︎

Optimism?

Talking about feeling better and making progress is more difficult for me than bitching about being miserable, which makes a little bit of sense considering I don’t trust not feeling gloomy and on edge. It just isn’t normal. Hopefully this is something I will have the opportunity to get over.

From the above, astute readers may guess that I have been feeling a bit better. Why? Who f@#*ing knows. Again, this is my frustration with brains. There is really no way to determine why they do anything. I can come up with a dozen plausible theories but there isn’t any way to find out which, if any, are even remotely related to what is going on. That said, my baseline mood has been better this month and, over the last few days, I would even say I’m approaching what I think “normal” might be.

One of the contributing factor to this improved mood is almost certainly that we finally got some assistance from the social safety net in the form of SNAP1 benefits. They’re giving us kind of a ridiculous amount of money for food every month, for a household with only two people2. It does carry over month to month, which is nice, and having a dedicated (and more than adequate) food budget has expanded our options somewhat. I’m certainly not going to complain.

Getting SNAP money does not cure all the financial uncertainty going on right now. It has, however, been enough of a relief that if I ever manage to get disability benefits, I’m actually pretty optimistic about what that would do for my mental state. I’m not holding my breath.

  1. Supplemental nutrition assistance program? I think? Something like that. It’s the new and improved version of food stamps. ↩︎
  2. SNAP does not cover pet food which is an understandable but unfortunate gap. With two animals on special diets, the amount per month we spend on their food gets pretty close to what we spend for human food. ↩︎

Clever Title

It turns out Dr. Psychiatrist is very likely correct in that I have found a plateau of stability with my current medication regimen. There are unquestionably still some bumps that need to be smoothed out. I still startle at just about any unexpected noise, although this is better than it was previously. I still have occasional episodes where I see or hear something three or four conceptual jumps from anything hospital related, my brain immediately decides to make those jumps, and settles on “Hey, isn’t this just like [$awful_thing]”? No, it really isn’t like [$awful_thing]. In fact it isn’t connected at all. Thanks for bringing it up though, because now all I can think about is [$awful_thing]. My brain is not particularly helpful a lot of the time. And, of course, I still can’t seem to tolerate being out in public for more than 2-3 hours. On the up side, the first hour or so seems to be getting a bit easier but when it’s time to go, it is still time to go.

Bumps aside, this calming of the inner turmoil has allowed me a bit more clarity than I have perhaps had in the past, which brings me to the point of this particular post1. I am improving, and I continue to improve, but I am not doing it quickly. Also, there really isn’t much I can do to speed up the process. It has been brought to my attention that putting pressure on myself to recover may, in fact, be counter-productive. This is a realization that has been growing for a while now and I am only starting to really grasp what it means.

Among the more obvious sequelae of not being able to hurry recovery is the effect it has on my prospects of returning to work. Previously, as recently as this summer, I had been operating under the assumption that when it came right down to it, and I had used up all the resources that have been made available to me, if I wasn’t ready to go back to work I would sweep everything under the carpet again and just go do it, much like I have in the past when I was feeling run down and burned out. What I have come to realize is, this is how I ended up here in the first place. There is no room under the carpet anymore and I can’t keep trying to sweep stuff under there. Not “can’t” as in “shouldn’t for my mental health”, “can’t” as in “am actually unable to”. I find that I can’t2 ignore things anymore, which may also explain why I jump every time there’s a noise.

I know I have posted about how I never really understood how people who survive disasters could describe themselves as lucky3. If you were lucky, your house wouldn’t have been hit by a tornado. My difficulty was misunderstanding the word. You can have Win The Lottery luck, or you can have I Didn’t Die luck. I bring this up because I am incredibly lucky4 in that I have a great many supportive people in my life. The time will come, sooner rather than later I suspect, when I’m going to have to lean on the people in my life even heavier than I am already.

  1. Penalty; unnecessary alliteration. Five word penalty and repeat the paragraph. ↩︎
  2. See previous discussion on the intended sense of the word “can’t” ↩︎
  3. Nope. Still not going to go back and look up which post it was. It’s back there somewhere. ↩︎
  4. In the I Didn’t Die sense of the word. Again, in the I Won The Lottery sense I wouldn’t be in this position to start with. With as vague as this goddam language is, it’s a wonder anyone can communicate at all. ↩︎