The Wednesday HodgePodge (February 22, 2023)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s Wednesday again so I’m joining the Wednesday HodgePodge. Here goes.

1. What do you find is the most boring part of your life at the moment?
There isn’t anything extremely boring about my life, but my life isn’t exciting either. I’d say the thing that makes my life a bit boring is the fact that, due to the way things work at the care home, I can hardly make plans.

2. February 22nd is George Washington’s birthday. You’ll find his face on the US $1 bill. What’s the last thing you bought for roughly $1.00? (.94 €/ .83 £)
I honestly can’t think of anything. I do probably have some cash in my wallet but rarely if ever use it. I also hardly ever go into a store just for something that costs like $1. The closest I could get, when I checked my recent purchases on my bank account, is €1.35 for a box of tissues, but that’s not roughly $1 I’d say.

3. Is it ever okay to tell a “little white lie”? Explain.
It’s never really okay, but it is understandable in some circumstances. Is there a difference? I think so, in that I can see why I or someone else would tell a “little white lie” in some situations, but that doesn’t make it right.

4. What’s the last thing you ‘chopped’? Cherry pie, chocolate covered cherries, a bowl of cherries, cherry vanilla ice cream, maraschino cherries, a cherry lifesaver…your favorite cherry flavored something?
I don’t think I chopped anything recently. Honestly, when I used to cut veggies when cooking myself, given the size I’d leave them, it wasn’t really considered chopping.

I don’t really care for cherry-flavored anything, so give me a bowl of the actual fruit instead.

5. Describe yourself with three words using your first, middle, and last initials.
Okay, this is hard, if for no other reason, then because I don’t have a middle name. My last name does have a prefix though so I’m going with that.
Authentic, Vivid imagination, Weird.

6. Insert your own random thought here.
I have this burning sensation somewhere along my spine that I’ve finally decided I’m going to ask the staff to call my GP about. So far, when I’ve asked the staff to take a look at where I think the sensation originates from, they don’t see anything but I do have a large mole on my back that I’ve been worrying about for months now. A picture of it did get looked at by my old GP back in Raalte and he said it wasn’t of any concern. Let’s hope he’s right and the burning sensation won’t be anything worrisome either.

Fun and Games for When You’re Bored #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to my letter F post in the #AtoZChallenge. I want to have a lighthearted topic for today. After all, I’m bored and don’t want to delve deep into some topic of self-care. Of course, dealing with boredom appropriately can be an act of self-care. I’m sharing a few fun activities to do when you’re bored.

1. Card games. I particularly love the game of “pesten” (“bullying” in English), which is a variation to the card game of mau mau and similar to Uno. It is played with a deck of 55 cards (52 of a regular pack plus three jokers). The goal is to get rid of all of your cards first, but you can bully the person next to you by the cards you play. For example, if you play an eight, the person next must pass his turn. If you play a two or joker, the next person must draw two or five cards from the stack, respectively. There are some other rules too that are pretty complicated particularly if there are more than two players in the game. For example, an ace means to turn around, so it’s often hard to remember whether we’re playing clockwise or counterclockwise. For this reason, I usually play the game with one other person.

I should really be trying to learn some other card games, as “pesten” is the only one I know. I guess playing solitaire is a good boredom killer if you’re by yourself.

2. Board games. I don’t play those often, but as a tween, I did. I particularly liked monopoly. I now have an audio-based version of monopoly on my iPhone. Still figuring it out though.

3. Word games and puzzles. I particularly like to make word strings, where the next word has to start with the last letter of the previous word. These can be themed, such as first names, animals, etc. I also like to do word puzzles on my phone. Most regular word games are not accessible with VoiceOver. However, I have an app called 7 Little Words that is.

4. Reading. We as a system like to read a variety of books depending on who out of our personalities is fronting. For example, the young alters like reading funny stories and jokes. Like we said yesterday, there are many free kids’ stories available in eBook format from both Amazon and Apple Books.

The teens and adults prefer young adult novels and occasionally fiction geared towards adults. We also love memoirs.

What fun activities can you think of to do when you’re bored?

A Mixed Monday

Posted on by Astrid

Today is a truly mixed bag! I started out feeling relatively well. The flu seems to finally have left me, although I still sound a bit hoarse. Then in the morning I ate just a little too much sugar-free liquorice. This type of sugar-free liquorice has manitol in it, which works as a laxative. If I eat moderate quantities of liquorice, I’m totally fine, but if I eat too much, I get like the worst diarrhea imaginable. I thought I hadn’t eaten too much, but apparently I had. If my husband reads th is, he’s going to say he warned me.

I was still relatively okay during the morning. Went for a short walk. Then in the afternoon I didn’t feel well. This usually affects my mood before I’m even aware I’m physically unwell. I started to get really frustrated with how quickly my iPhone battery level would go down, which honestly isn’t that quickly at all given it’s an older model. Then I started to get annoyed with my fellow clients’ sounds. My fellow clients are all non-speaking, so it really is no wonder they make sounds. Just because I can’t understand them, doesn’t mean they need to shut up. Finally then I got annoyed with my staff having mindless chatter while I was trying to indicate I wanted help finding something to do. I found a simple shape-sorting task eventually, but it didn’t satisfy me. In this sense, it frustrates me that I need the level of support and low-stress environment geared towards people with severe intellectual disabilities, but at the same time need much more stimulation. My range of understimulation and overstimulation even seem to overlap a lot, so that my window of tolerance is very narrow. I try to tell myself I just need to accept boredom if I want to keep my level of support, for if I am judged to be too much of a handful, the result is likely that I get less support. That being said, telling myself not to be a pain in the neck doesn’t mean I actually am not a pain.

Finally, I started talking to my assigned staff. We agreed to try out soap making again someday soon. It’s something I enjoy and is a relatively quick activity even if I need hands-on assistance, that will nonetheless satisfy me for a while. I will ask my husband to bring my soaping supplies when he next visits me.

When I returned to the care home, I browsed my favorite soaping supplies store. I was talking to my assigned day activities staff about also knowing how to make lip balm. That’s an even easier activity that can be made more complex by using individual oils and butters rather than ready-made lip balm base. While browsing the store website, I came across a starter kit to make your own bath bombs. I’ve been wanting to do that forever, but since the goal up till recently has always been full independence, I thought this wouldn’t be a suitable activity. When I get back in the swing of soaping, I may buy myself the starter kit. It has some supplies I already have, such as colorants and fragrance oils, but you can never have enough of those. We have a bathtub at the care facility, so I’ll actually also put them to use.

In the evening, I was so excited I wanted to tell my home staff about the soaping idea and the bath bomb craziness. Then however the staff were talking among themselves for like an hour. They weren’t talking about clients, but still I beat myself up over wanting to interrupt them. That led to more frustration and overload and I eventually ended up banging my head. I feel incredibly annoyed with myself for being an attention-seeker like this, even though I didn’t act out when I thought the staff were looking. They eventually were though. Now I’m not sure whether this will eventually be used against me to kick me out. The staff said no, I won’t be kicked out, but in the end if I don’t change will they not reason life isn’t better in the facility for me? It is better, generally speaking, but I still struggle a lot.

Validating Jane?

Posted on by Astrid

On Saturday, it’s the twelfth anniversary of the mental crisis that landed us in a psych hospital. As those who’ve checked my “About” page or those who’ve known me long-term know, this hospital stay took 9 1/2 years. Then we were kicked out for allegedly being too dependent.

We fought a long battle for the right care. In a way, it started that very day, November 2, 2007, or even before. It hopefully ended when we moved into the long-term care facility we now live in on September 23, 2019.

Most of us are relatively happy here. Content, at least. At least one of us though isn’t. Jane is still telling us to get a real life. To give ourselves a good kick in the behind and go to university, find a jjob and above all, live fully independently. She doesn’t even want us living with our husband, as we could be manipulating him into getting us care.

Today, I’ve been thinking. I recently joined a Facebook group for DID that subscribes to the philosophy of managing dissociative symptoms by thinking of each of your system members as their own individual. We need to work for the betterment of the entire system.

In this light, I’ve been thinking of how to validate Jane. She’s been saying “No” to our every attempt at getting care ever since, well, since she emerged in 2001. I wonder whether she’s “just” an introject, as our parents hold similar views to hers, or there’s more to it.

I remember once, when we’d only been diagnosed with DID for a few months or maybe a year, so in 2011 I think, our then therapist saying that Jane represents our healthy side. Another therapist called her a punitive parent. That never sat well with any of us, but neither does seeing her as the healthy adult. After all, why then does she minimize our every struggle? Isn’t vulnerability part of being an adult, too?

I’m wondering whether we’re doing more than just her a disservice by being in the care facility. I don’t mean we need to leave, but I realize most of us, including me, would like a more enriching life. Many of us feel bored at day activities.

Of course, our recent (and not-so-recent) attempts at doing something to enrich our life, have usually failed. I mean, we could be committing to a class at college, but that hasn’t been a success in ten years. I’ve been looking at writing courses, but they are pretty expensive and I don’t know they’ll actually make me a better writer. I want to go to the gym or horseback riding again, but don’t know whether I could commit to that on a weekly basis considering even just the limits of the ParaTransit system here. Ugh, I’m not sure how to get out of the boringness of lying in the sensory room for over an hour each day, walking for maybe half an hour, and sitting on our ass the rest of the time. I don’t know whether that’s an entirely accurate picture of our day, but it feels like it is.

Clarissa

Freewrite on My Transition Into Long-Term Care

Posted on by Astrid

Yikes, in less then a week, I’ll be in the care facility in Raalte. It’s exciting, but of course it is also scary. I have been planning on writing more about the transition. In fact, I have Mari L. McCarthy’s 22-day transitions journaling course. I had it already before I moved in with my husband, but never quite used it then. I’m not sure I’ll use every prompt this time either. The day 1 prompt is to freewrite on your hopes and fears and such re the transition. Here goes.

I’m really excited to go into long-term care. I’ve been looking forward to it for almost a year. However, now that it comes close, I’m second guessing myself.

I mean, am I not happy with the situation as it is now? The honest answer is “No”, but does that relate to the situation or to me? As a fellow patient on the locked ward once said, you take you everywhere. As such, I need to be really clear that I’m not just depressed because I suffer with a mental illness. I need to separate what is my depression that just is from what is my unhappiness with living semi-independently.

Besides, am I truly unhappy? My husband said this time in my life was perhaps the happiest for me, judging by his observation, since he first met me in 2007. Then I must counter it’s perhaps the least unhappy time period in my life.

I really hope I’ll be able to have a happier life living in long-term care. I know I often feel very depressed when alone and that’s not a time my husband sees me. The times I have no-one to rely on, will most likely lessen a lot, but having my own room means I’ll still be able to have alone time.

I fear, however, that I’ll be understimulated in long-term care. One of the things the behavior specialist from the blindness agency wrote in her report on me from observing me at day activities, is that the activities are not challenging. I do simple puzzles, construction play and such. If that’s all I’ll be required to do at my new day activities, I’m sure I’ll get bored. Part of me says that we’ll find a way to deal with this and that I need to be content to get the care I need. Another part says that I shouldn’t stop desiring stimulating activities just because I am in long-term care.

I also fear that going into long-term care will be a slippery slope. My father’s voice is in my mind, saying I manipulate the world into giving me care. If he is right, going into long-term care will just make me lose skills, become more dependent and ultimately need a lot of one-on-one support. It may lead to backlash from the care facility, causing me to get kicked out again.

I will, of course, also be missing my husband. I can deal with it, but it’s sad. I’m scared that he’ll grow tired of visiting me every week because of the long drive (nearly 90 minutes one way). I don’t want to lose my husband. I said, when originally falling apart in 2018, that I would choose him over long-term care if I had to. I don’t really need to choose, as we’ll still be seeing each other, but what if I do? Will it be too late to choose him? I hope not.

Confessions of a New Mummy