A Never Quiet Mind

          I decided, during a black depressive phase, to close down A Never Quiet Mind (ANQM) when it seemed like nothing from inside my brain could be translated into the written word.  I’ve started to regret that decision now. 
          Willingly I put my hand up and admit I am your quintessential train wreck.  Writing doesn’t define who I am, but it does play a major part in my life and in my sanity.  I’m an advocate for mental health awareness and suicide prevention.  By closing down ANQM I do feel, in a way, that I also slipped on the coat of hypocrisy.  Granted, I was depressed at the time and so my mind was out of sorts.  What I aimed to do with ANQM was to lift the veil of mental illness by putting my hand up and saying, ‘Yes, this is me, warts and all.’  By doing so hopefully also raise awareness and show that mental illness doesn’t automatically translate into blithering idiot incapable of doing anything worthwhile.
          What kept going through my mind a few months back was the fear of not being taken seriously as a writer if I revealed too much about myself personally.  This worry began niggling inside my head when The Slayer’s Apprentice was accepted for publication.  Suddenly I wondered if my career aspirations would take a tumble if anyone else found out just how off the rails I can, and do, get at times.  I had visions of people pointing the finger at me and whispering, ‘Zathyn Priest…don’t read anything he writes…first class nutcase!’  Or publishers raising an eyebrow and saying, ‘Not a chance…you’re probably completely unreliable…go away!’  The reality is, when I’m being fair to myself, I’ve never missed a deadline and never failed to step up to plate when asked.  No matter how ill I’ve been at times, I do what I have to do and I do it to the best of my ability.  I also run my own business – I’m not incapable, yet self-doubt speaks more loudly than rationalisation at times.  When I closed down ANQM, I was listening to the self-doubt.
          I’ve decided to reopen ANQM and keep two distinctly different Blogs.  My Author Blog and Live Journal will remain pretty much the same, with writing related posts mixed in with whatever else tickles my fancy.  ANQM will be me personally, somewhere I can vent and somewhere I can keep the mental illness/suicide prevention ball rolling.  Over the next week or so I hope to get ANQM looking decent again.
          A lot of the things I talked about on this site were heavy going and not always pretty.  Which is why I want to keep things distinctly separate.  I’ve also reposted certain things that were deleted in an effort to give a better insight into where I’m coming from and where I hope to go.

Please be patient with me while I get this all up, running, and sorted once more - Thanks :) 

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit - Peter Ustinov

*REPOSTED*

  
         2008 marks the seventh year since Ryan’s death.  I’ve never been able to visit his grave and, for reasons I won’t go into, was not able to attend his funeral.  I’m not quite sure if this is a blessing or a curse.  Some would say I was denied the chance for closure.  I believe suicide denies the chance for closure whether one can attend a funeral or not.  Laying flowers of Ryan’s grave would not answer the questions still circling inside my mind.  To have seen a coffin, and knowing my soul mate lay inside it, is an image I’m thankful does not reside in my memory except in morbid imagination.
          Regular readers of this Blog would by now have noticed how little I say in regards to my memories of Ryan and I together.  This isn’t for lack of ability to recall the memories from a grief stricken heart and mind.  Ryan isn’t here to give me his blessing in revealing intimate details.  He was an intensely private man; he gave only a very select few a snapshot into his life.  Only I was given the privilege to be invited all the way in to his soul.  I’ll never betray his trust.
          I’m often asked if I’m angry with Ryan for taking his own life and leaving me here alone to grieve with shattered fantasies of what may have been.  The answer to that question is ‘no’, I’m not angry with Ryan.  Furious with the situation, yes, but not with Ryan.  Love is the most powerful of all human emotions.  In its most potent form it will always win out over anger.  Ryan honestly believed I’d be better off without him.  He made a tragic, dire misjudgement while caught in a tornado of depression and upheaval.  Ryan had his faults, just like everyone does.  What he couldn’t comprehend was how I could overlook them and love him in spite of them.  Ryan wasn’t perfect - but he was perfect to me.
          Seven years is a torturously long time to exist without experiencing the joy of looking into the eyes of the one you love.  It is a torturously long time to go without hearing their voice or bathing in their laughter.  Over two thousand five hundred nights of lying alone in the dark without the warmth of your love beside you.  The same amount of days in which living becomes an endless repetition of motion just to get through the hours.  Ryan swept into my world and suddenly I couldn’t envision my life without him in it.  To even imagine such a world froze my heart.  Now, for seven years, my heart has been encased in the ice of that nightmare.
          The night Ryan died I folded within myself.  The world instantly became a frightening and lonely place to be and so I shut it out completely.  Work became my only saviour, something to channel the remnants of my spirit within.  Fictional worlds became my reality.  In fiction I could escape entirely and control every aspect from start to finish.  In fiction fate is in my hands not in the lap of the Gods.   When you lose control of a situation to the point where you cannot stop your soul mate taking their life it leaves an indelible imprint forever.
          The fear of losing control has imprinted every aspect of my existence.  I’m a workaholic in the truest sense of the word.  Obsessive-Compulsive in regards to work and it dictates everything I do from the moment I wake to the moment I sleep.   If for some reason I cannot work due to another commitment, it causes deep anxiety.  For me working is the only safety net my sanity has.  I’m a perfectionist and I need order or I feel that sense of control slipping away.  If that sense of control does slip out of my grasp, then I fear the repercussions of another dire tragedy.  This includes my emotions also. 
          Strangely, it wasn’t until the PTSD set in that I realised my need to try and control everything.  Prior to the PTSD setting in I worked an absolute minimum of twelve hours a day, over eighty hours a week.  That was the minium.  Social Anxiety has always kept a firm lid on my social life, but when work became my obsession it also became more important to me than seeing the few friends I had left.  Hence, those few friends dwindled even more.  I am, without a shadow of doubt, consumed with work. 
          During the period of July 2007 until late December 2007 my ability to work was flattened by the PTSD.  I couldn’t concentrate, my creativity disappeared, and my ordered goldfish bowl existence was thrown into chaos.  Suddenly I lost all control.
          It’s January 2008 and my old workaholic habits have resurfaced.  My need to create a controlled environment has re-emerged with even more vigour than before.  You see now I have the added fear of falling back into that dark hole I dwelt in from July to December.  Now I feel even more necessity in order and it reflects in everything.  Never before did I make the connection with losing Ryan.  His suicide has left me stripped.  And yet I’m not angry with Ryan.  How can I be? 
          In his troubled mind he believed he wasn’t worthy.  It didn’t matter how many times, or in how many different ways, I tried to reassure him.  I know he loved me deeply and honestly.  With all my faults he loved me.  What he couldn’t grasp was how someone could love him with the same magnitude.  Therefore, in the bewildered and frightened state he was in, there was the fear I’d one day walk away and leave him to pick up the pieces.   Like I said, I’ll never reveal intimate details of what it was Ryan had been steamrolled by.  It was a complicated, terrifying time for him in so many ways.
            ‘Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit’
          Yes…when Ryan committed suicide he killed the best part of my soul at the same time.  He drove a dagger into my heart and each minute without him twists that dagger even deeper.  I put one foot in front of the other, many times stumbling blindly, just to get through another day.  There can be no arguing the fact Ryan’s decision to end his life resulted in my life falling into disarray.  I’m a workaholic because it is my only escape from the pain.  I need to control everything as a direct result of not being able to control losing him.  I find the world to be a frightening, unpredictable, lonely place to be.  If I ever knew what defined me as person, I’ve forgotten it now.  My work is me, that’s all I know.  There are days I’ll sit staring into nothing, silent tears streaming down my face, and my entire body trembling.  With Ryan I knew who I was, and if I ever forgot he’d remind me.  Without him I feel lost. 
          There have been times when I’ll speak out furiously, ‘How could you do this to me?’  I wouldn’t be human if my anger at being left alone to deal with this was never expressed to Ryan in any way.  But those moments are rare.  When the day comes for us to be reunited, however soon or far away, I’ll say exactly the same thing as I said to him that tragic night seven years ago.  ‘There’s nothing to forgive.  I don’t blame you.  I’m not angry with you.  I love you.  I’ll always love you.’ 

*REPOSTED* 

          I’m fairly certain I’ve never mentioned I was diagnosed with TLE (Temporal Lobe Epilepsy) several years ago - in my late teens to be exact, although the seizures started in my mid-teens.  A lot of research is taking place to learn more about the relationship of TLE vs Bipolar and whether or not the two are linked.  Is there a possibility bipolar actually is a form of epilepsy?  There certainly seems to be enough evidence around to warrant the research.  There also seems to be many who have landed a TLE diagnosis only to then land a bipolar diagnosis at a later date.  Interesting food for thought.
          My seizures began as quite severe myoclonic jerks.  In layman’s terms, muscles spasms.  I remember being around the age of fourteen and standing in my aunt and uncles living room with hairbrush in my hand.  My arm jerked violently and the hairbrush flew from my grip and catapulted toward an antique plate, shattering it into a hundred fragments.  I recall standing in shock with my mouth gaping open and saying, “I swear, I didn’t do it on purpose!‘  The myoclonic jerks starting happening on a regular basis.  My arms or legs would spasm, my head would wrench backward, and pretty soon I was scared to sit at the table with sharp eating utensils!  This went on for a few years without anyone doing anything about it.  At around the age of fifteen I woke up one morning paralysed from the neck down, somehow I’d managed to slip a disc in my sleep.  How I did it remained a mystery until quite a few years later.
          Although annoying - and embarrassing - things didn’t turn really sour until I began having horrific hallucinations.  Each time I tried to sleep I’d be bombarded with what I can only describe as being caught up in a graphic, realistic nightmare.  I’d have hallucinations of people strangling me, hallucinations of being on an operating table without anaesthetic, voices, murder, you name it I experienced it.  I couldn’t move, I couldn’t scream, these horrifying delusions would last minutes and I’d have clusters that literally lasted hours.
          It’s interesting to note at this point that TLE has been responsible for what some people believed were evil possessions.  TLE is a complicated form of epilepsy with a wide range of symptoms.  For some the seizures are so mild they don’t even realise they’ve had one.  For others the seizures are devastatingly frightening for the sufferer and for those witnessing it.  They can range from a feeling of déjà vu or an odd taste in your mouth to a complete loss of reality perception. 
          I felt as though I were going insane.  Every time I tried to sleep I’d be hit with these God-awful hallucinations.  I was terrified and I’m sure this is what triggered my insomnia and sleep phobia.  I went to the doctor, certain he’d think I was a mental case, and tried to explain what happened to me.  He sent me for an EEG and the results were conclusive, I had Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and was put on anti-seizure medication.  The medication helped but didn’t halt the seizures completely.  Normally TLE seizures are restricted to one side of the brain, the affected temporal lobe.  Occasionally they will generalise and ‘cross over’ to the other hemisphere causing a tonic-clonic (Convulsive) seizure. 
          This happened to me not long after I was diagnosed, again when I tried to sleep.  I lived with a friend at the time but as I was in bed alone, she didn’t know until the following morning.  It was a strange experience.  I guess that sounds like a gross understatement.  Again the tonic-clonic seizures clustered (one after the after with a period of consciousness in between).  I could feel it happening but it didn’t hurt.  I awoke from one and was dazed for a period of time.  How long exactly I’m not sure.  It then felt as if my head buzzed with electricity and that travelled down my body. I felt my body stiffen, my head arc back, and lost consciousness again.  By the next morning I was exhausted and very scared.  The mystery of the slipped disc when I was younger seemed not so mysterious.  It had probably happened then too. 
          Fast forward a couple of years and the seizures stopped as suddenly as they started.  Or at least I thought they did.  I was weened off the anti-seizure medication but began having symptoms leading to a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder.  In December of 2006 the diagnosis changed to bipolar.  I still heard voices tormenting me but it wasn’t the same as what I’d experienced before.  I had psychotic episodes that lasted days and weeks not hallucinations lasting minutes.  Then, just when I thought the TLE had vanished, I began having the odd seizure here and there, especially if I was sleep deprived.  Sleep deprivation lowers seizure threshold.  However, they weren’t regular enough for me to consider going back on specific anti-seizure mediation.  Mood stabilisers such as Lithium, which I take, can also assist in regulating TLE somewhat.
          Fast forward to the present.  I’ve again been having seizures regularly, at least three to four times a week when I try to sleep.  Last week I had a hallucinatory seizure, clustered, involving Ryan.  I realised - in the hallucination - that Ryan had never committed suicide and it was I who’d walked away when he needed me most.  I saw, heard, and felt everything as though it were occurring.  Me desperately trying to find Ryan to apologise and beg him to take me back, emails, phone calls, crying, screaming, all of it as though it were happening.  When the seizures ended I was an emotional mess.  Last night it happened again, only the hallucination was different.  I felt as though I were being held down on bed by invisible hands and all the time I was screaming… ‘Ryan’s dead!  He’s dead!  He’s dead!  Ryan’s dead!’  At other times the seizure hallucinations have replicated those I had in the past.
          This is beginning to get out of hand now and tomorrow I’ll phone my psychiatrist.  Time for another EEG to see what the hell is going on.  Still, it raises the question once more…are Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and Bipolar linked?  The pattern of my bipolar has changed over the last seven or eight months with more depression than manic episodes.  Oddly, I suffered severe depression as a teenager when the TLE first made its appearance.  When the manic episodes took over with more regularity, the seizures all but stopped. 
          What I do know is I can’t ignore the seizures now because they’re happening far too regularly.  I live alone.  The chance of them generalising into tonic-clonic seizures are slim, but it’s happened before.  They’re frightening enough at the best of times, but when they involve Ryan they’re also emotionally devastating.