Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Warning: Curves Ahead

I'm getting ready to be busy. Swamped. Distracted. Tired.

I'm headed back to my old job. Oh sure, I could look at it like giving up, like giving in... but those who might say that... don't live in Calgary. This place could surely be one of the most expensive cities to live in. And while I made the most ever in my last year of writing... It's not enough to survive. If surviving is ensuring I drive a safe truck, my kid can attend soccer camp and take gymnastics lessons.

In essence, I've put off my dreams just a little so I can give my kids a little more. I'm definitely not stopping writing, I have more books to write, more articles to write... but I'm just not doing it "full time". I tried to come up with reasons why I didn't do a better job over this past year and all I could come up with was "well, I just didn't... I had kids".

But this pending change has left me a little grumpy. I find myself sniping at friends and family. I find myself with a short temper.

Amidst this, my doctor believes I have premenstrual dysphoric disorder or PMDD. The typical treatment involves medication. Something not practical for me and a breastfeeding one year old. So my doctor has prescribed me Vitamin E and a B-50 Complex. After speaking with the most wonderful homeopathic pharmacist you'll ever meet I also picked up some iamara and sepia officinalis.

Just what does PMDD feel like? For about three days a month it feels like I'm going insane. I feel unable to cope, I feel mean, I feel angry. I feel like the best thing for me is to slam my bedroom door, crank up some Pink and scream into a pillow.

I normally hope that the urge occurs when my son is playing and my daughter is napping. It doesn't work that way though.

Here are some comments from others:

It was as if the normal ‘sane’ me was inside watching a psychotic me take over.

I would go off on him for absolutely no reason, or overreact to the point of being really hurtful.

At first I thought my emotions were simply out of whack and that I just needed to deal with it somehow. The past few months have been terrible in the sense that anger has turned into rage, sadness into depression, normal irritations bring on great frustration!

There’s a dark rage that takes over, turning everything black. Triggering stupid, impatient reactions to things that I can normally laugh off. I don’t even know who I am sometimes. I watch myself behave terribly, but I can do nothing to stop it. I have tried. I have tried so hard.

I’ve been trying to control my outbursts at others by going somewhere and crying until my eyes are swollen, then when I get home I scream at my son for no reason.

Ten days before my period I start to suffer severe anxiety and I can barely sleep or eat, I feel physically ill and I have the most awful panic attacks to the point where I just want to escape from my own mind. At these times I sincerely believe I have a terminal illness and that I am a bad, ugly person.

No comments: