About being stuck in the past. Again.

It seems that the overall theme to my life right now seems to be "being stuck in the past". Or maybe being constantly caught up by my own past, or limited by it. And by my past I specifically mean the fact that I have been through many years which were dark and troublesome. I had my first depression at 10, I lost my mum at 12 and moved on my own at 15. My depressions and anxiety haunted me all through my teens, finally culminating in me being admitted to a psychiatric emergency ward at 22. After that I spent 3 months living at a psychiatric institution and was diagnosed with one and half personality disorder (Borderliner PD and Avoidant PD). I was in therapy for a long while, and was given medication that worked. I've come a long way since then, from a girl who could barely get out of bed every day to being in school studying to becoma nurse. But.

I'm in therapy these days, which might be why I feel so haunted by it right now. But it just keeps cropping up everywhere. As I've mentioned before we are writing essays in school, and all three of them has very much touched on very personal aspects of my past.

Most of my family are also evidently very stuck in my past. They have never been the best at giving me acknowledgement for the good things I do, or even to focus at the positive at all, or let me know if they were proud of me. They might notice the positive things I do, but they very rarely say it to me directly. But they are good at pointing out and focusing on the negative. If I don't answer the phone I must be dead - because of my past. If I postpone an internship to give myself some time to get through losing my soul brother, I must be depressed and headed for the institution again. It couldn't be a rational and wise decision based on the fact that I was emotionally worn out and grieving, and so I needed not to force myself through an internship that to me is very intense and demanding simply because I wanted to avoid hitting the wall and getting completely burned out. No, no. It had to be a sign of me giving up, of failing. Again.

Lastly, I've applied for some jobs lately. Partly because I know I won't get an internship spot this semester because they don't have one to offer me, so I will have fuck-all to do between October 15th and whenever school starts up again next semester in January. And partly because I want more work experience. A lot of students have a part-time job in addition to school, mainly because they have to to make it financially. Student funding and loan in this country isn't enough to get you through University if you live on your own. I'm lucky, I'm on rehabilitation money from the government and therefore am a lot better of financially than most students, so I haven't needed an extra job. But that hasn't been the main reason for not working - I haven't worked out of consideration for myself. School can periodically (like now) be a very rough thing, at times there's a lot going on with exams, lectures or essays, and at other times we have internships which I will claim are a lot more intense than having a full time job, and I know just about every student at my school will agree with me on this. And I know myself pretty well, after years of therapy and analysing my own personality. I need time on my own, to a greater extent than others. And I know that I spend a lot of my energy just maintaining an everyday routine, having to motivate and argue and coax myself into doing the things other people find easy or do automatically. "Emily, do your laundry. Do your dishes. Make a proper dinner. Get a workout done. Brush your teeth. Keep in touch with your friends. Pay your bills. Say yes and go to that party, you need to be social every now and then." Its just who I am, it's a result of my personality disorders, of years and years of isolating myself and not functioning properly. Basically I'm still working on learning how to do the things other people have known how to do since they were 18. And thats why I haven't gotten a job; between trying to get through school and managing my own everyday life (and mental state), I was worried a job would just be too much. Overload. Too many balls in the air. So I have been reluctant to take that risk. But this week I found a few classifieds about small weekend positions suitable for nurses or nurse students. The positions are at Sanderud, a large psychiatric institution about 30 minutes from me. They deal with all kinds of psychiatry; psychosis, drug-related, geriatric psychiatry, you name it. But here comes the past and kicks me in the teeth again; I was admitted to that hospital. Just for 6 days, in an emergency ward, until I was transferred to the long-term institution where I lived. And they might have policies against hiring former patients. And even if they don't, the people hiring might have some serious issues with hiring someone like me. Of course, having been a psychiatric patient yourself can be seen as an advantage in a job like that, at least I do; I've been in their shoes, in a similar situation, I have some insights and experiences that most people don't and therefore can show some genuine compassion and understanding. But they can also view me as a liability, an unstable person. Or they might just simply be prohibited from hiring me due to policies or guidelines.

The thing is, I value my past. Most of it was absolutely shite and parts of me wish I never had to go through all the crap I have. But I know that it has a huge part in making me who I am, for better or for worse. And I truly believe most of it is for the better. I have learned so much, about communication, about how people work, how life works, and how I work. It's made me wiser, better at giving advice, more compassionate and it's given me a lot of invaluable experiences. If I didn't have that past I probably would have been a much shallower person. So I can see the positive side of it. I just wish other people would too.

“We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it’s our job to invent something better.”
- Chuck Palahniuk.


“When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours?” - Franz Kafka

About writing a paper

The near week that has past since last time I blogged has been a rough one, at least emotionally.

In school we are currently writing these essays. We are supposed to write three in total, and on mid-october they will randomly pick out one of the three to be handed in as a major exam. Each paper is supposed to be around 3500 words, and we are given a specific patient situation/case and a "problem" we have to answer for each of them. I'm finished with two ; the first was on general psychology and the 2nd was on "overall rehabilitation". It's funny how I've drawn on just as much personal experience as nurse literature in writing these papers - I've been an admittet psychiatric patient and I've been in rehabilitation, a lot of the aspects we've been lectured on or read about, I have experienced. "I've been there, maaaaan". Some times it feels very paradoxical, before I was on the other side, I was the patient. Now I'm supposed to be the helper, the one with the answers, the knowledge, the provider of help and support.

This monday we were given the patient case and problem for this last paper, and this one hit particularly close to home. I've been dreading it ever since the semester started, because I knew the topic of this last essay was going to be "care for the dying patient". And to make it even worse the case had to be about a terminal cancer patient. It's already been 10 months since I sat by Mats deathbed, but its very much something I struggle with every day, and why I am in therapy again. In many ways I struggle more with it now than I did in the first few months after. And now I have to sit here and write an essay where I have to describe the illness they call cancer, its symptoms, why it kills, I have to write about pain and pain management, what the term "palliative care" entails and describe all its aspects. When I was with Mats I was a next-of-kin so to speak, I was as close and personal to the situation as humanly possible, but now I should try to look at palliative care with professional nurse-goggles. Of course I will meet dying patients, and cancer patients, in my work as a nurse in the future, I have to learn to deal with it. And I have the dubious advantage of having had personal experience with it, giving me invaluable insights into a very difficult subject. These are all things I could try to take comfort in, things that could make writing this essay easier. But it doesn't. Every time I sit down with this essay, Mats is constantly on my mind. Or, more specifically, my last weeks and days with him - I relive them over and over, the emotions I had, the sights, the sounds, the smells, the mood.

To top it all of they've made the "problem" for this essay as wide and general as they possibly could. I could probably have written a doctorate based on the case and that problem. So I have to narrow in the paper, leave things out, and I still haven't quite managed to figure out what. All aspects affect each other, and to me they all seem as important; the physical, the emotional, the social, the spiritual. And I have a lot to talk about on this subject, a lot of thoughts and opinions. Oh well. I'll get through it. It's just making my life very hard right now.

About never letting the past go.

My brother and I had what you might call an encounter yesterday. You would think we had grown out of that sort of thing, me being 26 and him 38. Maybe some siblings will be eternally different and never will. Anyway.

In short the situation boiled down to that I was asleep and my phone on silent (at 7pm, which admittedly is an odd time to be asleep). My brother had an iPod charger cable that he wanted to give to me, and he was driving past the town where I study. Suddenly I'm woken up by someone banging on the front door, and my dog goes bananas. Before I get time to get clothes on the banging continues on the frigging windows, first at my bedroom, then my livingroom. Was someone dying? Was the earth collapsing? No, he just wanted to give me that cable. Jeez. "I've tried calling you three times!" Well it was on silent, and there was a reason for that - I was sleeping!

Yes yes, he was just doing me a favor, wanting to be nice and handing me a cable I'd forgotten in my home town, even I can see that. But the niceness kind of vanishes in the fact that he seemed prepared to bloody tear down my house to get to me. I would have surived without that cable. No one was dying, no crisis was happening. I just had the audacity to not answer my phone, because it was on silent and I was comatosed. If I had rung his doorbell, banged on his windows and then shouted angrily at him for NOT answering his silent phone when he was asleep, he would've been slightly cross as well.

But here comes my point - whenever I bring up the argument of not having heard my phone, they bring up the "but we were worried, something might've happened!"-argument. Geez louise, what did people do before mobile phones I wonder? And then it really comes - "well, considering your history..." Ah, there we have it. I'm crazy. So god knows what I might get up to! I might decide to carve an intricate pattern into my lower arm with a sharp knife, or swing by my neck from a rope? Ugh, I never even tried to commit a serious suicide attempt when I was at my absolute worst mentally, for chrissake. I've come one hell of a long way in the past 4-5 years. But apparently I'm the only one who can see that. How about showing me some fucking respect, giving me some credit and even more importantly, show me some actual trust? Trust in the fact that I have the capability of doing something with my situation before it gets so bad that I'll fancy ending my life, that I'm more stable and predictable than I was 5 years ago. "So, is my history going to follow me and haunt me forever, then?" I asked my sister. "Yes." Too bad. I just won't accept that.

I understand that I have been sick, that I probably was a huge burden and source of endless worry and frustration back when I was really sick. But that doesn't give you the right to use that against me any more. All I am trying to do it put the past behind me, all my wrongs and mistakes, and live my life as best I can. But you can't seem to forget the past, so how am I supposed to?

About the cure for the common cold

Yes, I'm still here and alive, to the great disappointment of some of you, apparently. Anyway.

I've just had the manflu, transmitted to me via internet courtesy of Wulfy, or at least that's what I suspect. Now, so far no one has managed to cure this ailment also known as the common cold, because the cold is a virus. And viruses (virae? viral infections?) are notoriously impossible to kill for reasons I could explain to you in intricate detail, but I won't because it'll bore the pants off you, and I wouldn't want to do that (well I would want to bore the pants off some of you but that's another story).

(By the way, fun fact about the cold! When you have a cold lots of little cold-virus-particles hang out in your sinuses. A virus particle then injects part of itself into one of your own cells, whose normal job it is to be for example skin or musocal tissue or cilia. This poor cell gets mindcontrolled to stop being whatever it is and to start producing new virus particles instead. It continues to do so until it gets so full it explodes, destroying the cell and all the new virus clones spread out to the surrounding cells. So that whole thing of having a stuffy nose, feeling like your whole head consist of phlegm that keeps dribbling out your nose? Yup, snot is basically blown up bits of cells and virus trickling out the only way it can. But, I digress.)

Now, the cure! I tried running 18 minutes on that elliptical thing, thinking logically that evil might chase off evil, but that didn't work. So the next day was spent moping in bed. But then I made a smoothie and et voila - it's gone! So here's the cure:

• A handful of tropical fruit mix
• Some raspberries/strawberries
• A dash of rice milk
• A splash of orange juice
• A few drops of lemon juice
• A pinch of cinnamon (no really)
• And a tablespoon of flax seed oil (oddly accurate, that one)

Mix/crush with a blender of some description, and nom. If you have a sore throat use frozen fruits and you'll have a lovely icy slush to soothe the throat as well.

Also - eat spirulina. It's literally the most nutritious food known to man, and don't be discouraged by the fact that it's a blue-green algae because it comes in pill form. Consists of 60% complete protein (compared to beef or chicken at 25%), complete meaning that it contains all eight essential amino acids (and 10 other non-essential ones). It's also rich in Omega 3, 6 and 9, it's the highest know source of vitamin B12 and beta-carotene and provides other nutrients such as vitamins E, other Bs and minerals like calcium, iron, phosphorus, iodine, magnesium, zinc, selenium, copper, chromium and potassium. It also has chrolophyll, other phytoutrients and powerful antioxidants. And to top it all of this microscopic life form doesn't have the usual tough cell walls found in normal plant life, making it very easy to digest and absorb. There's a reason it's called a "superfood".

About exercising.

As I'm already on the object of body glorification (or rather the opposite), I might as well stay on the subject. Because for as long as I have had issues with my weight, I've also had a wish to get more exercise in. "Wish" might be the wrong term, come to think of it. More lik "it's been hanging over me like some cloud of doom", one of those eternal demands you put upon yourself but never seem to get around to fulfil. "I should work out more. I should eat healthier. I should stop smoking." And I should exercise more. Not just because I want there to be less of me, but also because it makes me feel better. I get more energy, more focus, I feel less heavy, is reduces stress hormones, makes me sleep better and can lower my blood pressure.

So what's the problem? Well, for one I am incredibly lazy. My mum claimed that I was born tired; I came out, yawned and went to sleep. And that's pretty much how it carried on. As a baby I was so docile and apathetic my aunt has in later years admitted to thinking there was something seriously wrong with me. "All you did was just.. lie there, and look around at things!"


I have succeeded in exercising, occasionally, but only for a limited period of time. Growing up I tried a lot of different sports, if this was of my own volition or me caving in from parental pressure I can't remember. I swam for many years, I even have a prize or two proudly displayed on my piano (they're basically glorified drinking glasses, and my sister used them as shot-glasses at a party once...). I did Tae Kwon Do for a year or two, and I loved that form of exercising, but when all my friends quit of course I did too. I had some feeble attempts at handball and football, but soon realised that having astigmatism ("optical defect in which... oh, google it.) made me practically incapable of catching a ball with my hands, or hitting a ball with my feet. Astigmatism should be the term for "always getting hit in the head with the ball". Plus, I'm just not a "team" kind of person. I had a summer I did nothing but cycle - everywhere, miles and miles every day. Until I got so tired of it I wanted to chop my bicycle to bits. The year I went to "folk high school" I was very active - but it's easy to be when you live on campus and people knock on your door every day asking if you want to come work out, and the gym + swimming pool is in the neighboring house.

I guess that's my other problem, besides my inherent laziness - lack of motivation. I can be so good for a period, if I am working towards something, like looking good for a holiday or an event. But if I hit a rough spot, get depressed, get extra work at school or have a heavy internship, I just.. fail. I also have a slight impulse defect, being I give in to them way too easily, and the impulse so skip the workout and remain seated tends to win quite often.

The key to getting exercise done is finding a form of workout that you like. Said my therapist. I couldn't agree more. He promptly suggested youthful stuff like pilates, aerobics and zumba. This is where my illustration for this blog post comes in. Because that is how I feel in those sort of classes; like a hippo in a tutu. A huffing, puffing, sweating, red-faced one. Seeing all the other slim, happy, fit people bounce around me like they were made of air is very demotivating. And those manicly perky instructors always inspire so much hatred in me you could bottle it. The sheer idea of going into a gym is in general a very icky thought. I know they are there for people to get into shape and start a better life, but have you noticed that when you go there everyone seem to be in perfect shape already?

I would've loved to start doing Tae Kwon Do again. But I tried that a year and a half ago, and learned the hard way that I have exertion asthma on top of everything else. TKD is just too hard and brutal for me, I need to get myself into better shape first. And gyms are, in addition to being icky, very expensive around here. I could always swim, but that's not cheap either. My neighbors have an ellipse machine that they never use anymore, it just gathered dust and took up space in their living room so they asked if I wanted to borrow it. So I said yes. It's the least horrific of those kinds of machines - treadmills, step machines, cycles.... This way I can workout at home, whenever I want. I can be as pissy and angry and moody as I want, I can listen to loud music and yell at myself or the wall and sweat without grossing anyone out. And to be honest, sometimes getting a workout done really is that much of a challenge. Sometimes I get so frustrated at how tiring it is, how uncomfortable everything is, the poor shape I'm in, that I end up in tears. Or throw things around in a tantrum. Maybe I'm fighting some of my demons, who knows. But I will at least try to get it done. I started out with 12 minutes, upped it to 15 now, the goal is to reach 20 within october and then up it to 30.

Wish me luck. Or kick me in the backside. I need both.

About weight.

My body is my arch enemy. It's badly constructed, things keep getting broken and it keeps malfunctioning.

First of all I'm short, but no one informed my back about that. So, I ended up with the back of a person who is about 180cm tall. While I in reality only measure in at 154. On a good day. After 8 hours of sleep. As a result my body consist of about 75% upper body. Which surely isn't the right porportions.

My body was also designed with a funky feature called PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. Say that 10 times after half a bottle of whisky, I dare you!) This is a medical condition that, without going into too much detail, messes with my ovaries somewhat. The result is a hormone imbalance which comes with an array of delightful sideeffects. Thin hair, thin skin that scars easily, striae (stretchmarks) and depressions to mention a few. But the real kicker is the overweight. And it's not normal, everyday "oh I'm a bit too pudgy and should lay off the cinnamon buns" kind of overweight. It's the kind that makes me gain a pound by just thinking of pasta, or indeed anything else that might contain carbohydrates. And, in stead of all the adipose tissue being distributed evenly over this poor excuse for a body, it all gathers in the middle. Causing me to look like I am four months pregnant. Or like I really, really, really love beer. Oh,and it gives me a hump. Yup, like The Hunchback. Lovely condition, this PCOS, isn't it?

There isn't much I can do about this. Ironically the only cure for PCOS is to lose weight. And losing weight is three times as hard for someone who has it. The hormone imbalance causes us to have a quite apallingly bad metabolism, and we are nearly "allergic" to sugar and carbohydrates. We just can't handle our glucose, and we handle fluctuations in our bloodsugar levels as bad as a diabetic. But as they go into insulin shock, we just get fat and cranky.

I've been grieving over my body and my weight for many years now. I've always felt fat, but looking at photos from when I was 20-25 kilos lighter Ican't help but think "seriously, what had I smoked?" I looked perfectly fine. Now I weigh an horrific 84 kilos, which is 25-30 too much. I feel, to varying degrees, very uncomfortable in my body, when I am out and about I feel... just wrong. I look at myself in the mirror and sometimes I can't help but think "Who are you? This isn't me. This isn't who I am, no on the inside."

And it's not just my vanity that makes me hate the extra weight. My mother was overweight, and being on cortisone for her asthma most of her life just made it worse. She died of a heart failure at 45. My brother had two (small, but still!) heart attacks at 30. Clearly people in our family aren't constructed with the best of tickers, quality wise, and being overweight isn't going to prolong my heart's life span (or, as a result, my life span). "They" say that the tummy fat is the most dangerous kind, but then again "they" say a lot of things. Discovering that I had a high bloodpressure that needed medicating at 25, and heart arrythmias, didn't exactly soothe my nerves.

And honestly, I'm tired of being heavy. Of feeling awkward and uncomfortable. Sick of sucking my gut in. Sick of having no energy, of hating clothes because nothing ever looks good on me, of hating on skinny girls who can stuff their face with whatever they want. And I'm so. tired. of. obsessing. about. food. I've changed my diet a lot over the last year, eliminating a lot of carbohydrates and dairy out of my diet. Now I eat mostly proteins, meats, eggs, I have a home-made high-protein granola, I make berry or fruit smoothies with rice milk. And I've added things like coconut oil, flax seed oil, lots of cinnamon and spirulina tablets (yay for superfoods!) I feel better for it, I have more energy, my blood sugar is stabilized somewhat, and I am a lot less sick. But I'm not losing weight.

My extra kilos get unfairly blamed for a lot of things, probably. Somehow my overweight is in my mind inevitably linked to me being a miserable, lonely wanker. For some reason I have some notion of life being so much easier, simpler, happier, if I had just been designed a bit differently. Take away 20 kilos and a pregnant beerbelly and I'd be happier, healthier, have more friends, everything would've been perfect. And I would definitely have had a boyfriend.

Which is probably a very unfair way of thinking about boys. And people in general. Because I really want to believe that people aren't that shallow. I should give people more credit. I want to believe that my weight has nothing to do with how many guys talk to me out at the pub, or how many friends I have, or whether or not that person I have so much in common with and love talking to, would fall for me. But evidently people are shallow.

In some ways I have to believe that. Because I can't face the other alternative. If I'm miserable, reclusive, lonely and single because people simply just don't like me, that it really all comes down to my personality and it's completely unrelated to my beergut... I can't deal with it.

I can't be fat and have a horrible personality. Life just can't be that cruel.