I'm a scholar of the arts and science faculty at my university

Which means I am in the top 1% of the psychology department. Crazy! The awards ceremony was yesterday. I can't believe it. I can't believe how good my marks are. I know my GPA is 4.15 out of 4.3 but I didn't really think about what that number means. And I don't know why it's been working out so well. I just do my best but I don't work excessively hard.

It feels funny to get such an award. All my life I've been told by teachers that I'm disorganized and not a very good student. I would always hand things in late or pull all-nighters and finish at the last possible second. But since I've been back at university for the second time, my organizational and disciplinary skills have drastically improved. Without me trying to make them better. In the past I tried so hard to improve them, I would read books about being organized and colour-code my schedules etc. Nothing worked. I can only say that God's grace has changed me and also years of therapy. I think because my personal issues are/have been worked on, the rest of me has improved too since I am able to access God's love without my issues being in the way.

I am also in shock because, up until pretty recently, I thought I was good for nothing and that nothing would ever get better. Thanks to the incredible stigma around being a drug addict (and mental illnesses in general), I thought my life was over and that I would never amount to anything. Just a useless lump of meat that constantly needs the help of chemicals just to get through the day. I could not picture a day where I would actually accomplish anything positive. And yet it happened. I am so thankful to my guiding power upstairs and family and friends and therapists and doctors. This is an incredible miracle.

Idea of marriage sinking in

I forgot if I mentioned here but I've been engaged for over a year now. Nothing fancy, we just talked about moving in together and decided we might as well get married too. I've now been to two weddings since that day and the last one (it was my baby-sitter's wedding) really brought things home for me. For a while I just saw it as a huge party with a focus on me and my SO (actually more me), having fun thinking about what it will be like, what dress I will wear etc... But seeing my old friend get married made me think a bit deeper. It means I will be with this person, if not the rest of my life then hopefully a very long time till one of us dies. Having BPD makes it hard to conceptualize and stick to commitments so this idea scares me and at the same time is desirable. I'm not very good at visualizing the future and sometimes I worry, will I ever get sick of him? But I've been told by a very wise person that true love is not a feeling, it is a choice. Choosing to commit. That sounds like you have to be a really strong person to truly love and I don't think I am strong at all. But God has been changing me like crazy so hopefully our love will become stronger as we age. Scared as I am, I can't picture myself with anyone else. I guess there isn't that much mystery around choosing your life partner. You just choose when you feel the time is right. And if for some reason it turns out to be a bad choice, I will have learned a lot. Win-win either way.

World Mental Health Day

Wow it's so great to see so much awareness on mental health issues on facebook trending. Our brains are definitely the final frontier of our bodies in terms of scientific understanding so maybe that's why mental health is lagging behind when it comes to health issues in general. Apparently the theme this year is schizophrenia. Seems very apt since my ex and current SO both have schizophrenia and my ex will not stop calling me. I want nothing to do with him though. I know what he's like. And it is not what most people with schizophrenia are like. I'm sure he also has conduct or anti-social personality disorder. He just doesn't give a fuck about anyone else. It's all about what he wants. And I'm not distorting the truth here as an ex. Plus his delusions always include strong impulses to be physically violent. He tried to kill his mom and ended up in a special jail for those with mental health problems. He would stare at my kitchen knives and put his hands around my neck once. Plus he is a serious drug addict. His favourite drugs are marijuana and crack. The voice message he left me recently was almost impossible to decipher, he was talking so fast.
In complete contrast, my SO is super sweet and would never hurt anyone. Even if he becomes ill again and has delusions he would never purposely hurt anyone. When he was unwell, he was mostly concerned with conspiracies and possible poisonous spiders. It was hard to convince him to take meds but they work. Unfortunately there are side-effects and he feels sometimes that he is not quite himself because of them. But I just remind him that if he stops taking them the psychosis will come back. He will be lost in his own world and I will not be able to reach him there. We would be separated. Meds are definitely not ideal but the main benefit is that they can help one remain part of society, able to be with friends and family and live and laugh together. It's a trade-off but relationships are what give meaning to life.

ghost from the past

My psychotically violent ex keeps calling me once in a while even though I never answer any more. I just can't have someone like that in my life in any way, shape or form. He was leaving messages like, I have a girlfriend, I'm sober but I'm bored. Let's hang out. Eventually as I didn't answer, he would mostly hang up or be like, please call me back at this number. As the months passed he would still call me! It's been since February when I last saw him and he just left me yet another message. I could barely make out what he was saying he was talking so fast. He started with just words: crack, single, pissed off. Let's hang out and have a few joints or drinks if you want. Call me at this number... And I couldn't even if I wanted to because he said the numbers so fast, no one can make it out. I've never heard him so high on crack before. I feel bad for him that he relapsed but also scared. Crack is not good for someone who already normally has violent, unpredictable tendencies. I had to call my dad and warn him to keep everything locked just in case he shows up. Luckily he doesn't know where I live but he still knows where my dad lives and I told my dad just to call the cops if he shows up. And then of course I had a dream where I was smoking up. I think I may have to change my number...

the research lab

So I thought I would have a bit of a break before the rats come in in mid-October. I was so wrong. I've been working my butt off training. I went to classes, lab meetings and mostly shadowing and helping another girl with her experiment. Luckily she is very nice and so is the grad student I'm supposed to help. But man, she asks for a lot of help. Sometimes I get worried that it is all too much for me plus my two courses but a church friend prayed for me and I felt better. Yes I am scared but God is great and if He wants me to do this, He will provide all that I need to do it. This can be hard to remember when I'm burned out at the end of the day (like right now) but I must trust Him. If I can't do that, I can't trust anyone at all.

Mental Illness Awareness Week

I've been so busy that I hardly had time to pause. Hence the lack of posts. I haven't been this busy in 10 years. I guess it's another stepping stone up from the complete dysfunction I used to have only a couple years ago. So it's another time for mental health issues awareness. I'll relate what I've been going through on the subject.

This should be an obvious fact for both sufferers and their loved ones that having a mental illness will affect how productive you can be. And yet, it can be so hard to keep in mind. For severe depression you're really not going to get much done at all. For anxiety, stress, personality disorders it will be that sometimes you can't function in certain situations or on certain days. If you have bipolar and are in a manic phase, you'll get a whole ton of stuff done in the blink of an eye sometimes. For ADHD your productivity levels will fluctuate a lot. All this to say, if someone has a mental illness don't compare them with the same measuring stick that you would use for the average person. What am I trying to say? First let me make sure that I don't sound like I am saying that all people with mental illnesses are deficient. Like I said, some can be more productive than the average person and all kinds of varying degrees of productivity are seen in different people. But it sure does throw a wrench into your life plans especially since a lot of mental illnesses come out during early adulthood.

My life plan was to graduate with a fine arts degree and become a full-time working artist. That meant that I would freelance a lot and I knew that. But that takes quite the amount of productive self-discipline which became one of the many things that mental illness stole from me. In fact, I barely was able to graduate since I became very suicidal in my last year of university and instead of being a working artist, I fell into a hellish abyss of dysfunction. I was completely unproductive for quite a few years. You know what made it worse? Expecting the same from myself as I always did, even before I got sick. It drove me crazy to think about how I was not achieving my goals and how I was wasting time while everyone else my age were getting careers started etc...

For a long time I couldn't let go of my original life plan and it didn't help that my dad thought the same thing. We both put extra pressure on me that made my illnesses worse. I saw myself as a failure and hated myself more. But through therapy I began to see that using the same measuring stick I used before is unrealistic. I lowered my expectations with difficulty but it really helped me achieve more than I would have if I didn't. If I was able to get out of bed that day and go grocery shopping, that was a great achievement. If I did the cooking for my dad and brother that day, I learned to be proud of that. If I was able to put off taking drugs until after therapy I was impressed with myself. This sounds kinda sad but it actually gave me a new starting point that I could work with for future growth. With less pressure on me to achieve, I was freer to work on myself and eventually go back to school with a new life plan. And now I'm on track, older than almost everyone in my classes but on track with a plan that has taken me step by step back into functionality and productivity. I'm even better at school now than ever in my life and I know God will keep guiding me into a grace-giving career as a psychologist. It's funny, in my dysfunction, I found my function.